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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (462171)	3/9/2009 1:01:57 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576112

"During the 30s the median unemployment rate was 17.1%, and at no time did it fall below 14%. " That is not true. Wrong again. It IS true: 1931 - 15.82% 1932 - 23.53% 1933 - 24.75% 1934 - 21.60% 1935 - 19.97% 1936 - 16.80% 1937 - 14.18% 1938 - 18.91% 1939 - 17.05% 1940 - 14.45% 1941 - 9.66% It steadily declined until the pullback in 1937 and spiked to nearly 19% and started to decline again until the start of the war to 9%. Right. It steadily declined to 14.18%. Solely because the government was paying people, not because real jobs were coming back to the economy. This is evidenced by the fact that as soon as the government spending was cut back, unemployment shot back up to 19%. I suppose, that employers hire people when there isn't any demand for their products. You keep pushing this novel theory. We've had this argument before and you lost it then, too. There is no evidence that a meaningful economic recovery can be "created" through government hiring. None at all. That's not to say I'm opposed to it. In lieu of unemployment benefits I would have no problem with paying people to do useful work -- for the government to provide make-work jobs in order to give people money in their hands is a reasonable thing to do that can keep soup lines from forming. But it is utterly stupid to pay them to watch Oprah. The incentive in that instance is to stay ON unemployment, not to better oneself by finding a better job. >> I dunno about that Exactly. The only misunderstanding seems to be with those who, for purely ideological reasons, are desperately trying to rewrite history and ignore important facts. There is no ideology involved. It is a matter of using your common sense to look at the events of the FDR era and understand that FDR's actions did not lead to an end to the Great Depression. WWII did it, and only by massive spending amounting to 4-5x the budget which we can ill-afford to do now because of the massive debt the New Deal left us with. It isn't about ideology. It is about understanding the issues, which you obviously don't.