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To: studdog who wrote (89614)	11/3/2008 5:04:52 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

The "Austrian School" is just standard economics prior to John Maynard Keynes, and the antichrist milton friedman. The concept is simple, "If you don't want the collapse, don't have the bubble which preceded it". You simply can't have a bubble which deflates partially, without market dislocations which are more severe than the original problem. The thrust of Keynes work is to avoid "lost production" due to widespread unemployment. Work which could have been done, but wasn't, is a perpetual loss to society. The question is how you can achieve this without also channeling other resources into wasteful activities, possibly creating an even greater loss to society. After all, the recent real estate bubble created more housing than can be afforded - housing which will rot at an accelerated rate due to lack of proper maintenance. If you achieve the same result through a public works program, instead of a bubble, the result is the same. Public employment building things which have no immediate economic use are not going to pencil out well, even assuming the labor is free. So the question is, although doing nothing may not be politically viable, doing nothing is better than most schemes of doing something. We must allow for the possibility that there are likely productive schemes for doing something that don't waste other resources in the process of preventing lost labor - the problem comes in knowing what that is. Many of FDR's New Deal programs were designed to avoid social problems of starvation or violence, despair or antisocial behavior by the bored unemployed. These WPA programs provided society with valuable social social goods in themselves and usually were designed to use few other resources, such as murals, and forestry projects. This sort of project is more or less outside of the field of economics and so you are not likely to find any economic studies or comment. But any reasonable person will understand their value. .