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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (43326)	5/20/2010 1:36:22 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

We had an industrial base Our industrial base now, even in the midst of a recession, dwarfs that of the 30s. we had the most resources of any developed country And we still do. we had relatively cheap labor OK, we don't have that, but I'd rather have higher productivity and compensation, than lower wages. we had the best educational system I'm not so sure about that. But it was pretty good compared to other countries. Now, in some ways its better than it was, and in some ways its worse. One of the main ways its worse is that its so much less efficient, we spend tons more money (adjusted for inflation, and per student, not just total nominal dollars), without clear benefit from all the spending. But I'd still say eduction here is better than in China. Today we are like a "house of cards" with an economy based on "who can keep buying the most stuff with the most debt". Which started in the 30s, in terms of government debt. And there was a bit of that in the 20s in terms of private debt. Overall debt levels are higher now (as a portion of the economy, nominal dollar measures would be silly in this context, but of course they are bigger as well), but that doesn't keep our economy from being bigger and better by almost any measure, except for the debt (and economic freedom if your counting from before FDR really started to intervene). WE were the OPEC of the 1930's as far as fossil fuels. We were the world's largest oil exporter. Not that I'd trade our economy for that of the largest exporters of today. We had EVERYTHING back then, We had desperate poverty back then, but today's standards even the boom before the depression (or the years after it) was a time of severe poverty. We had 25% unemployment. Price controls. Government destruction of food when the country was going healthy. Government attempts to imprison a man for providing discounts. Regulations against letting people pick the chicken they wanted to buy ( see hnn.us and volokh.com ) Racism was more prevalent, fascism and communism where on the rise, etc. including TOTAL isolation from ANY potential enemies. We thought we had such isolation. We found out differently soon enough.