More "proof" Keynes was wrong?

There really is no dealing with fanatics. I have a few friends that only remain friends because we don’t discuss politics or religion.

Interesting distortion of history. I’m not going to watch another TED talk, so I’ll only comment on the depression. It was 1941 before the unemployment rate dropped below 10%. I know you want to believe that is a wonderful picture of how well the stimulus worked but Really? 12 years of Staggering unemployment and you call that success? It does however, explain why you think Obama’s stimulus worked. Hell if he can get us back to any normal level of unemployment in less than a generation, he’s golden. Let’s ignore the fact that every other recession we’ve had is of much shorter duration. Let’s also forget the fact that Europe has actually followed Obama’s plan to raise taxes. Naw, that wouldn’t have anything to do with thier economic woes.

Once again, isolate the facts you like ignore those you don’t and you can make up the rest. Good job.

@Jaxk When a trend continues until policies change, it’s safe to assume that the change in policy is responsible for the change in the situation. As for raising taxes, we wouldn’t need to if there weren’t so many dodgers; why should you,a small business owner, pay out the ass so that multinationals can pay nothing? But let’s not argue (that never is productive) and focus on the fact that things cannot improve so long as there is disagreement on facts and history.

Regardless of what Republicans did in the past, they’re no longer even close to the same party. In the last 50 years, they’ve reversed their positions on too many issues to claim that they’re right now because they were right decades ago.

@jerv

Once again you make these broad generalizations that I have trouble putting into any kind of perspective. First, what facts are in question? What history is in question? You make it sound like you don’t believe the unemployment rate or that Europe has increased taxes, or that it took 12 years to get the unemployment rate to less than 10%, or what is it that you disagree with?

And just for the record, it doesn’t make any difference who made what changes only that the changes produced very different results. I know you want to argue that Republicans are bad but maybe you could let that go for a minute and talk about the policies. I’m not sure you’re capable of doing that.

I think there are a lot of people who assume that they understand everything that goes on and why it happens, who is to blame and what their intentions are.

Gotta love the irony in the question though…

Keep in mind that a change in policy most likely won’t have any obvious effect until a few years after it was made.

@Jaxk You cannot accuse people of distorting history and then ask, “What history is in question?. It’s obvious that different people view history differently, or else you could not accuse anybody of distorting it. I’m not here to argue what the real history is, merely to point out the sheer lack of logic there. We both know that I will never make the least bit of sense to you, and I will always find enough logical fallacies, historical counter-examples, and the like to make it difficult to agree with you very often; since we both know that, lets not fight, okay?
If the policy changes of Obama and the Democrats were all bad, how come the stock market and corporate profits are both growing after having plummeted under the policies of his predecessor? Strip the party labels out and you are left with the point I was making; policy changes lead to a different outcome than continuing the old policies. Regardless of partisanship or whether the changes are good or bad, you cannot deny that simple fact.
The fact that you wish to refute those two points (that we don’t all agree on history, and policy changes lead to change) just blows my mind.

@jerv

Let me demonstrate my point. I agree that the stock market plummted and has rebounded. That is historical fact. I can’t quite buy into your conclusion however. Here’s why. It is also fact that under when the recession of 2000 hit and was followed by 9/11 the market also crashed. Down to about 7200 if I recall, a similar figure to what happen in 2008. It then rebounded to 14000, higher than it had been before the crash. If I use your logic, Bush’s recovery was just as good and in the same time frame so that would be proof that tax cuts worked. We have an impasse

That scenario is only using the stock market as a measurement and ignoring everything else that took place during those periods. I would also note that the stock market is not the best measurement of the economy. In fact the stock market benefits the wealthy much more than the lower incomes. A point you complain about endlessly. I would also note that with interest rates at or near zero most excess money and saving will flow into the market simply because there is no profit anywhere else. I will give you that and it is one of the current policies. A policy I would expect you to be complaining about.

Last point about your policy change must be the reason argument. When the recession hit (2008) jobs were shed at an alarming rate. That happens in any recession. Jobs will continue to be shed until the economy reaches equalibrium (enough workers to handle expected sales and production) then levels off. Stimulus was not the only change made during that period. TARP was an equally large spending program. I have some misgivings about TARP but there is little doubt in my mind that it stabilized the banking industry. I can see a credible argument that it was TARP more than anything else the helped to find the bottom. We hit bottom before a single dime of Stimulus had been spent. It seems difficult to credit stimulus for that event. Stimulus was intended to make the economy grow. It hasn’t or is at best is meager. I find it easy to argue that stimulus hasn’t done the intended job.

My personal measure of how well the economy is doing is unemployment. If it’s doing well unemployment is low or declining. When it is high and stagnant, we’re not doing well. So again, what history is in question? Where do we disagree on history? Or is it really that we disagree on conclusions? Hell, I don’t refute either of your points, I just point out that they are only using very narrow and hand picked statistics.

@Jaxk Don’t confuse “we” for “you and I”, and you will have your answer.

@Jaxk I love full employment just as much as you do. But when we are talking about recession that has several definitions. By any accepted definition, we were out of recession in early 1941 before Pearl Harbor, and we are long since out of the Great Recession of 2007–2009. By any of those definitions, the EU is still in recession. That’s history without the ideological spin applied.