This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - More Than Mortal
Pages: 1 ... 192021 2223 ... 502
601
« on: November 29, 2016, 05:34:27 AM »
Loan for what?
For drugs, moron. Can't you read?
602
« on: November 29, 2016, 05:05:32 AM »
What are your thoughts on the NHS?
Not a fan.
603
« on: November 29, 2016, 04:36:17 AM »
I've given up talking about the American healthcare system.
You lot have amazingly managed to convince me that it's more of a political black hole than the NHS in this country.
604
« on: November 29, 2016, 04:28:03 AM »
wtf is my life lads
605
« on: November 27, 2016, 03:47:11 PM »
later tonight
606
« on: November 27, 2016, 01:43:34 AM »
Give him a break; he was too busy coming up with fantasies about some genocide in a backwater Balkans shit heap to be paying attention.
607
« on: November 27, 2016, 01:25:21 AM »
PBS. NEW YORK — A new report suggests a “sophisticated” Russian propaganda campaign helped flood social media with fake news stories leading up to the presidential election.
The Washington Post, citing a yet-to-be published report from independent researchers, said the goal was to punish Hillary Clinton, help Donald Trump, and undermine faith in American democracy.
The report comes from a nonpartisan group of researchers called PropOrNot. The group describes itself as “concerned American citizens” with expertise in computer science, national security and public policy. The researchers say they traced the origins of posts and mapped the connections among accounts that delivered similar messages.
The findings show just how effective the bogus reports and propaganda were, according to the report. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed 213 million times.
While it’s not clear whether fake news and propaganda helped sway the election in Trump’s favor, millions of Americans get their news from what’s shared on Facebook and other social media. In recent months, fake and misleading stories have proliferated, even as Facebook has insisted that they make up a tiny fraction of the overall stuff users share on the site.
Both Facebook and Google have said they are taking steps to stop the spread of misinformation on their sites, including by turning off access to advertising.
PropOrNot’s report, provided to The Post in advance of its public release, identified more than 200 websites as “peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans.”
PropOrNot did immediately not respond to a message asking for the report on Friday afternoon.
608
« on: November 27, 2016, 01:23:46 AM »
...
No. Karl Marx was the face of Marxism.
609
« on: November 25, 2016, 02:58:31 AM »
610
« on: November 22, 2016, 08:42:42 AM »
I member
611
« on: November 22, 2016, 04:35:29 AM »
Holy shit you're such a shit poster now, please die
you need to chill fam, big man ting
612
« on: November 22, 2016, 03:53:54 AM »
When you realise how much of a giant cunt you were as a teenager. Especially to your parents.
613
« on: November 22, 2016, 03:40:46 AM »
It took me three long years to climb out of that hole. We can't always see it, but the light at the end of the tunnel is there. Somewhere.
614
« on: November 22, 2016, 03:08:04 AM »
You're a scumbag.
615
« on: November 20, 2016, 10:39:09 PM »
I like weed, I like liquor
You're all right.
616
« on: November 20, 2016, 12:23:14 PM »
Most Conservative opposition to liberal social policies is because they stem from the federal government, rather than the state and local level, not because they actually disagree with it.
Not sure about that. A lot? Yeah, sure. Most? Eh.
617
« on: November 17, 2016, 11:59:56 AM »
SSC, last four paragraphs: Stop turning everything into identity politics. The only thing the media has been able to do for the last five years is shout “IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS!” at everything, and then when the right wing finally says “Um, i…den-tity….poli-tics?” you freak out and figure that the only way they could have possibly learned that phrase is from the KKK.
Stop calling Trump voters racist. A metaphor: we have freedom of speech not because all speech is good, but because the temptation to ban speech is so great that, unless given a blanket prohibition, it would slide into universal censorship of any unpopular opinion. Likewise, I would recommend you stop calling Trump voters racist – not because none of them are, but because as soon as you give yourself that opportunity, it’s a slippery slope down to “anyone who disagrees with me on anything does so entirely out of raw seething hatred, and my entire outgroup is secret members of the KKK and so I am justified in considering them worthless human trash”. I’m not saying you’re teetering on the edge of that slope. I’m saying you’re way at the bottom, covered by dozens of feet of fallen rocks and snow. Also, I hear that accusing people of racism constantly for no reason is the best way to get them to vote for your candidate next time around. Assuming there is a next time.
Stop centering criticism of Donald Trump around this sort of stuff, and switch to literally anything else. Here is an incompetent thin-skinned ignorant boorish fraudulent omnihypocritical demagogue with no idea how to run a country, whose philosophy of governance basically boils down to “I’m going to win and not lose, details to be filled in later”, and all you can do is repeat, again and again, how he seems popular among weird Internet teenagers who post frog memes. In the middle of an emotionally incontinent reality TV show host getting his hand on the nuclear button, your chief complaint is that in the middle of a few dozen denunciations of the KKK, he once delayed denouncing the KKK for an entire 24 hours before going back to denouncing it again. When a guy who says outright that he won’t respect elections unless he wins them does, somehow, win an election, the headlines are how he once said he didn’t like globalists which means he must be anti-Semitic.
Stop making people suicidal. Stop telling people they’re going to be killed. Stop terrifying children. Stop giving racism free advertising. Stop trying to convince Americans that all the other Americans hate them. Stop. Stop. Stop.
618
« on: November 16, 2016, 04:27:36 PM »
Thank God for the electoral college.
619
« on: November 16, 2016, 12:58:45 PM »
man fuck theodore roosevelt
- Massive increase in anti-trust prosecutions. - Dealt with the coal strike of 1902. - Created the Dept. of Labor and Commerce. - Meat Inspection & Pure Food and Drug Acts. - Investigated and prosecuted corrupt officials who cheated Natives out of land. - Increased fedeal protection of land for conservation purposes, created five national parks and signed the Antiquities Act.
620
« on: November 16, 2016, 12:42:50 PM »
First ThingsIn the wake of the unexpected insurgence of Sanders and Trump, it has become commonplace to pit “populism” against the “Establishment.” Supporters praise the uprising of popular politics against the shared interests of an entrenched patrician and business elite, while party leaders and pundits on both sides fear the rising tide of populist fervor. Their fear is outmatched only by a palpable disbelief in the success of these ‘outsider’ candidates.
The fear is not unwarranted. Trump’s campaign has unleashed passions that, however legitimate in origin, are arguably dangerous, not least because of the growing violence on display at his rallies.
But populism is not the problem. On the contrary, “populism,” as the late Christopher Lasch once said, “is the authentic voice of democracy.” And we are, after all, committed to that particular political experiment. No, the problem with Trumpism is not populism; the problem with our populism is Trumpism.
In a superficial sense, of course, Trump’s campaign is populism to a tee: plain speech, division of the country into a “silent majority” versus an elite minority, and a refusal to respect the social conventions of the latter. Trump has an almost preternatural ability to sense and to respond to the anxieties of the average citizen—or at least the average primary voter—rather than pandering to them reluctantly.
Even Trump’s refrain that the American people have gotten a “bad deal” recalls populist movements of the last century, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal to Theodore Roosevelt’s “square deal.” The latter is especially instructive.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, a wealthy New Yorker, broke with the Republican ‘establishment’ which he criticized for being in the pocket of big business, and formed the “Bull Moose” Party (which split the vote and paved the way for an otherwise unelectable Woodrow Wilson). Roosevelt was the quintessential “strong man” who did battle for the “common man”: he took on the corporations (“trusts”), defended worker’s rights, and exuded all manner of manly stereotypes.
Of course, the differences between the two men are also stark. The Bull Moose had a literary disposition, being an avaricious reader who penned numerous scholarly books and delivered some of our country’s best political speeches. His panoply of “manly” experiences included military service, ranching in the West, and hunting big game in Africa. Roosevelt was also a seasoned politician, having served on the United States Civil Service Commission, as a New York state assemblyman, police commissioner of New York City, assistant secretary of the U.S. navy, governor of New York, and vice president of the United States —all before becoming president of the United States.
Still, Trump has skillfully coopted the politics of populism. One might be forgiven for mistaking one for the other. Like popular movements of the past, Trumpism was made possible by a political climate in which—as Lasch put it over forty years ago—our “parties no longer represent the opinions and interests of ordinary people,” while the “political process is dominated by rival elites committed to irreconcilable ideologies.” What Lasch described in 1972 as “the familiar materials of popular discontent, quietly persisting through three decades of ‘affluence,’” are once again on the rise: “distrust of officials and official pronouncements; cynicism about the good faith of those in positions of great power; resentment of the rich; a conviction that most things in life are ‘fixed.’”
But while Trump’s popularity may be a response to a similar state of affairs, he’s no populist. He represents, rather, a demagogic perversion of populism.
Lasch spent much of his career resuscitating the legacy of a specifically American populism, which he thought was tarnished by a false association with rabble rousing and reactionary politics. For Lasch, true populism is rooted in mutual respect, which demands that we hold ourselves and our fellow citizens to shared standards of conduct and discourse—a necessary precondition for both civil disagreement and a healthy body politic. The erosion of such standards, Lasch worried in 1994, leads us to accept “second-rate workmanship, second-rate habits of thought, and second-rate standards of personal conduct. We put up with bad manners and with many kinds of bad language, ranging from the commonplace scatology that is now ubiquitous to elaborate academic evasion. We seldom bother to correct a mistake or to argue with opponents in the hope of changing their minds. Instead we . . . shout them down.”
In other words, Trumpism is precisely the kind of problem for which Lasch saw populism as the solution.
Consider Trump’s so-called political incorrectness, his widely-praised penchant for “saying it like it is.” Whether or not Trump means what he says, his speech is no more “plain” than his manners. Instead, his rhetoric signals a rejection of the very notion of politics. What politicians say and how they say it is essential, especially in a democracy. Democratic politics is the art of persuasion, which, however passionate, requires civility and diplomacy no less than rational debate. Even if Trump’s provocations reflected his true feelings or those of the average citizen, it is not the role of the statesman to give voice to feelings.
Trump knows this of course; that’s the key to his success: he rejects the very role of statesman. In this he is a masterful politician. It’s just that his political rhetoric is predicated on the incoherent and dangerous proposition that politics can only become populist when it is stripped of the political—when rhetoric becomes unrhetorical. It’s the emperor’s new politics.
It’s preposterous that a New York billionaire and media personality (much less a sitting Senator, Bernie Sanders) could be considered any sort of “outsider” to the elite political-media-business class. Perhaps, as some argue, Trump channels the anxieties of a class whose economic and social standing is in demonstrable decline as a cynical ploy to win popularity—this is a man who once called the poor “morons”—while winking at the ‘establishment,’ who can take comfort in knowing that this reality-television caricature of themselves actually shares their political opportunism, if not their economic values. If so, Trump adds Machiavellian insult to demagogic injury.
In fact, Trump’s reputation as an ‘outsider’ stems not from his sociological position so much as his anti-political posture, which is buttressed by his having never been “tainted” by political experience. His popularity is predicated on widespread distrust of our public institutions—and, paradoxically, an openness about his own complicity in their corruption—from which he would liberate us by destroying them.
But populism, to say nothing of our democratic republic, depends upon healthy institutions that provide the framework for our shared political projects. Lasch reminds us that the corrosion of our democratic way of life and especially our public discourse has its roots in widespread distrust of our institutions and the traditions around which they have developed and of which they are the expressions—whether the family, church, and local communities, or private enterprise and all the various levels of government.
It is for this reason that defending (not bashing) and reforming our form of government, which—quelle horreur—includes the federal government, is populist rather than elitist. For our constitutional heritage is one of limited powers, which is predicated on and was designed to ensure a civic life distinct from political life. Limited government provides a framework in which our other institutions and communities can flourish. Thus our national, partisan politics presupposes politics of another, classical sort: that we are by nature members of a community, bound together by what Cicero called the “ties of social affection, which originally united men in political associations for the sake of public interest,” of which our national politics is only one, albeit essential, part.
It was some such vision of our country that Lincoln—a true ‘outsider’—evoked with his “mystic chords of memory,” which, “stretching . . . all over this broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Trump, in stark contrast, enlivens our baser passions by blending mass entertainment and national politics into a discontented froth, promising to redress our ills through belligerent action. Thus does he pervert that populism at the heart of American civic life at its best.
621
« on: November 16, 2016, 09:41:57 AM »
From the Social Mobility Commission.Key findings: Britain has a deep social mobility problem - the poorest find it hardest to progress but so do families with an annual income of around £22,500
people born in the 1980s are the first post-war cohort not to start their working years with higher incomes than their immediate predecessors
millions of workers - particularly women - are trapped in low pay with only 1 in 10 escaping
only 1 in 8 children from low-income backgrounds is likely to become a high-income earner as an adult
from the early years through to universities and the workplace, there is an entrenched and unbroken correlation between social class and success
in the last decade, 500,000 poorer children were not school-ready by age 5
children in deprived areas are twice as likely to be in childcare provision that is not good enough, compared with the most prosperous areas
families where both parents are highly educated now spend on average around 110 minutes a day on educational activities with their young children compared to 71 minutes a day for those with low education. This compares with around 20 to 30 minutes a day in the 1970s when there was no significant difference between the groups of parents
over the last 5 years 1.2 million 16-year-olds - disproportionately from low-income homes - have left school without 5 good GCSEs. At present, just 5% of children eligible for free school meals gain 5 A grades at GCSE
a child living in one of England’s most disadvantaged areas is 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school than a child in the most advantaged
young people from low-income homes with similar GCSEs to their better-off classmates are one third more likely to drop out of education at 16 and 30% less likely to study A-levels that could get them into a top university
young people are 6 times less likely to go to Oxbridge if they grow up in poor household. In the North East, not one child on free school meals went to Oxbridge after leaving school in 2010
in the North East and the South West, young people on free school meals are half as likely to start a higher-level apprenticeship
in London, the number of top-end occupational jobs has increased by 700,000 in the last 10 years compared to just under 56,000 in the North East
despite some efforts to change the social make-up of the professions, only 4% of doctors, 6% of barristers and 11% of journalists are from working-class backgrounds
home ownership is in sharp decline - particularly among the young. Rates among the under-44s have fallen by 17% in the last decade
people who own their homes have average non-pension wealth of £307,000, compared to less than £20,000 for social and private tenant households
there is a new geography of disadvantage, with many towns and rural areas - not just in the North - being left behind affluent London and the South East. In 40 local authority areas, one third of all employee jobs are paid below the living wage
more than half the adults in Wales, the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the West Midlands and Northern Ireland have less than £100 in savings Proposals: Key recommendations
Early years - the government should:
introduce a new parental support package at key points in a child’s life to support children falling behind
set a clear objective that by 2025, every child should be school-ready at the age of 5 and the child development gap has been closed with a new strategy to increase high-quality childcare for low-income families
double funding for the early years pupil premium to ensure better childcare for those that need it most
Schools - the government should:
have as its core objective the ambition, within the next decade, of narrowing the attainment gap at GCSE between poorer children and their better-off classmates by two thirds, bringing the rest of the country to the level achieved in London today
rethink its plans for more grammar schools and more academies
mandate the 10 lowest performing local authorities to take part in improvement programmes so that by 2020 none of those schools are Ofsted-rated inadequate and all are progressing to good
reform the training and distribution of teachers and create new incentives - including better starting pay - to get more of the highest-quality teachers into the schools that need them
require independent schools and universities to provide high-quality careers advice, support with university applications and share their business networks with state schools
repurpose the National Citizen Service so that all children between the ages of 14 and 18 can have quality work experience or extra-curricular activity
Post 16-education and training - the government should:
develop a single UCAS-style portal over the next 4 years so that youngsters can make better choices about their post-school futures
make schools more accountable for the destinations of their pupils and the courses they take post-16
school sixth form provision should be extended and schools given a role in supporting FE colleges to deliver the Skills Plan. The number of 16- to 18-year-old NEETs should be zero by 2022
low-quality apprenticeships should be scrapped
a new social mobility league table should be published to encourage universities to widen access
over the next 10 years, higher education should be extended to those parts of Britain that have no or low provision
Jobs, careers and earnings - the government should:
create a new deal with employers to define business’ social obligations and the support they will get
develop a second chance career fund to help older workers retrain and write off advanced learner loans for part-time workers
work with large employers, local councils and local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) to bring new high-quality job opportunities backed by financial incentives to the country’s social mobility cold spots
support LEPs in social mobility cold spots to tackle local skills gaps and attract better jobs to the area
all large business should develop strategies to provide low-skilled workers with opportunities for career progression
introduce a legal ban on unpaid internships
Housing - the government should:
commit to a target of building 3 million homes over the next decade - with one third being commissioned by the public sector
expand the sale of public-sector land for new homes and allow targeted house-building on green-belt land
modify the starter home initiative to focus on households with average incomes and ensure these homes when sold go to other low-income households at the same discount
introduce tax incentives to encourage longer private-sector tenancies
complement plans to redevelop the worst estates, with a £140-million fund to improve opportunities for social tenants to get work
622
« on: November 16, 2016, 09:18:41 AM »
"Liberal and Labor, you're both bad, but Labor's a little bit better for the working-class".
Aussies have zero illusions about their politics, it seems.
623
« on: November 15, 2016, 10:25:00 PM »
624
« on: November 15, 2016, 10:05:17 PM »
Yahoo Beijing (AFP) - Chinese state-run media lauded Donald Trump Tuesday after a phone call between him and President Xi Jinping, saying that the president-elect's emergence could mark a "reshaping" of Sino-American relations.
The pair spoke Monday, when Xi said that the two powers needed to co-operate and Trump's office said the leaders "established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another".
On the campaign trail Trump frequently demonised Beijing, but questions have been asked whether his conduct in the White House will match his promises as a candidate.
Monday's conversation was "diplomatically impeccable and has bolstered optimism over bilateral relations in the next four years", China's frequently nationalistic Global Times newspaper said in an editorial.
Barack Obama, whose foreign policy pivot to Asia alarmed Beijing, was "profoundly affected" by the Cold War-shaped outlook of American elites, the paper said, but Trump's views "have not been kidnapped by Washington's political elites".
"Trump is probably the very American leader who will make strides in reshaping major-power relations in a pragmatic manner," it added, saying his ideology and experience "match well with the new era".
It was a sharp contrast to the same newspaper's editorial the day before, which baldly warned the incoming president not to follow through on campaign-trail promises to levy steep tariffs on Chinese-made goods or Beijing would take a "tit-for-tat approach" and target US autos, aircraft, soybeans, and iPhones.
But the president-elect's ambiguous and sometimes contradictory views on key questions on the relationship between the world's two largest economies, including trade, the South China Sea and North Korea, have cast a pall of uncertainty over how he will manage it.
While campaigning, Trump went as far as calling the Asian giant America's "enemy", accused it of artificially lowering its currency to boost exports, threatened to impose tariffs of 45 percent, and pledged to stand up to a country he says views the US as a pushover.
But he also indicated he is not interested in getting involved in far-off squabbles, and decried the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal, which encompasses several other Asian countries and has been seen as an effort to bolster US influence, for costing American jobs.
TPP has been signed by the US but not ratified by the Senate, where its chances are seen as poor.
Tuesday's editorial in the government-published China Daily newspaper called the Xi-Trump chat "propitious", noting that Beijing is "understandably relieved that the exclusive, economically inefficient, politically antagonising TPP is looking ever less likely to materialise".
Instead, Washington should consider joining the China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade area encompassing the Southeast Asian grouping ASEAN, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Something of a mirror image to the TPP, it includes six of the putative Washington-led grouping's 12 members.
625
« on: November 15, 2016, 07:00:46 PM »
Just to let you know, I'm working on compiling a list for the areas you said you were interested in. Will post them as a separate thread.
626
« on: November 15, 2016, 06:26:35 PM »
I don't recall saying that.
I obviously could be wrong, but I have a vivid memory of you saying something along those lines. Like I say, though, could be wrong.
627
« on: November 15, 2016, 10:59:07 AM »
Globe and Mail.If you work in clean energy, chances are your inbox and Twitter feed have been overwhelmed with stories about the implications of a Donald Trump presidency for the renewable energy sector. If you were watching markets, no doubt you took note of falling stock prices for clean-energy companies.
The prospects seem grim. And that won't affect just U.S. companies. Canadian energy companies, from Enbridge to Alterra Power, have been growing through investments in renewable power south of the border. This investment creates jobs at headquarters here in Canada, not to mention value for their Canadian shareholders.
There's no doubt that Mr. Trump and opponent Hillary Clinton had differing views on climate change and the opportunity clean energy offers. A lot of people lump the two together: If you want to reduce carbon pollution, build more clean energy. Since Mr. Trump thinks climate change is a hoax, that pretty much eliminates the case for clean energy – right?
Not so fast.
The reality is that clean energy has been booming in the United States for a whole bunch of reasons that don't have much to do with climate change. Things such as health, security and innovation, which lead to high levels of support amongst Republicans – yes, Republicans – for harnessing the power of American water, wind and sun.
Those federal tax credits for wind and solar? They were passed last December by a Republican Congress with bipartisan support. Revoking them would require a legislative effort that may not be looked upon kindly by the many Republican lawmakers who have renewable energy manufacturing and development in their states. Lawmakers like Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, who said this summer: "If he wants to do away with it, he'll have to get a bill through Congress, and he'll do it over my dead body." He won't be the only one: looking across the country – and the electoral map – the top-10 wind-energy producing congressional districts are represented by Republicans.
Besides, much of the renewable energy boom has been driven by state policy. You might recall that back when he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush passed legislation requiring utilities to buy renewable energy.
It led to a building boom that has made the state the largest producer of wind power in the United States. Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and North Dakota lead the United States in the proportion of electricity generated by wind, and all are led by Republican governors. Ditto North Carolina, which trails only California in the development of new solar projects.
Up in New Hampshire, which also went for Mr. Trump, the newly elected Republican governor won on a platform that included support for the Northern Pass transmission line, which would move clean hydroelectricity from Quebec into New Hampshire and the New England power grid.
Not only is this good news for Hydro-Québec, but it's also good news for New England states, as it will provide base-load power that can enable more development of in-state wind and solar.
Down in Florida, as Floridians delivered their support to Trump, they also voted to maintain unlimited opportunities for the expansion of rooftop solar. There are hundreds of state-level policies in red states and blue states that aren't going to disappear, and they are driving significant investment in clean energy.
Just last year, the United States saw $56-billion (U.S.) in clean-energy investment, second only to China. That kind of investment creates a lot of jobs: Almost 210,000 Americans are now employed in the solar industry, double the 2010 figures. This represents more people than those employed in oil and gas extraction. The U.S. Bureau of Labor notes that wind turbine technician is the fastest-growing occupation in the country. Would Mr. Trump put these good jobs in jeopardy? Doubtful.
Looking at dollars and cents – and customers' wallets – it's also worth highlighting that the unsubsidized cost of wind and solar just keeps falling, down 61 per cent and 82 per cent respectively, between 2009 and 2015.
And these trends will continue, making clean energy the competitive choice. It's one of the big reasons that so many major U.S. companies are committing to renewable energy and signing big contracts for wind and solar.
If we learned anything from Mr. Trump's campaign, it was that we should expect the unexpected.
Most people, and the stock markets, seem to think Mr. Trump will be bad for clean energy's prospects in the United States. They may very well be right.
Or, it might just turn out that clean energy will continue to rise. For clean energy, opportunity should trump ideology.
628
« on: November 14, 2016, 09:36:09 PM »
Oh, I would also say one area where the New Deal can be considered a genuine success is in shifting expectations. Introducing a new policy regime specifically to combat the Depression signals seriousness; almost like a form of forward guidance.
629
« on: November 14, 2016, 07:43:44 PM »
Mike Pence and Trump's cabinet ministers had better be prepared. Trump will set grand strategy, but they will be the tacticians executing it.
630
« on: November 14, 2016, 03:26:39 PM »
I assume good faith in my curriculum Why? Also, I was going to write a couple of paragraphs in response to your points, but it's easier and quicker for me to just list them. - It depends heavily on what you consider the New Deal to include. If it includes monetary policy, which I'm not sure it should, then you could reasonably say the New Deal ended the Great Depression. But this kind of ignores nuance in considering the effect of non-monetary policy. - Even if you include monetary policy, I'd still argue the government prolonged the Depression. Monetary policy was effectively controlled by the Treasury at the time, and a tightening of policy in 1937 is what led to the Roosevelt Recession. Monetary policy technically ended the Depression, but did so in a highly sub-optimal way. - The usual scope of the New Deal--fiscal policy and things like NIRA--can probably be considered failures. Fiscal stimulus didn't play much of a part in the recovery, and even if it did the negative effects of NIRA likely outweighed any positives. - Non-New Deal factors, like tariff barriers and international gold flows, also played a role. In conclusion, the most accurate statement would probably be that government policy unnecessarily prolonged the Depression from whatever angle. Monetary policy was responsible for its end, but it took longer than it would've done had they known any better. One area I would distance myself from Turkey in is that he seems to think fiscal stimulus prolongs recessions; he said as much about the Obama stimulus. If this is why he thinks the Depression was prolonged by government policy, he is incorrect. Fiscal stimulus is justifiable.
Pages: 1 ... 192021 2223 ... 502
|
Show Posts
