Just because it never ever worked before is no reason not to try it again

Both of these are about public spending as the road to economic growth, as in there is no such thing.

GREAT MOMENTS IN CENTRAL PLANNING: Watch: Insane footage shows China blowing up 15 skyscrapers that had sat vacant for nearly a decade.

Flashback: 34 Unforgettable Photos Of China’s Massive, Uninhabited Ghost Cities.

Plus this.

Amity Shlaes on Biden As the New FDR: It’s the same old bad deal for jobs.

Not until World War II did joblessness finally begin to subside, in good measure because of military mobilization — important, but not the same as peacetime employment.

As often discussed, errors in monetary policy contributed to the misfortune that was the 1930s. The cause of the duration of the Depression, though, was Washington’s persistent intervention. The chief economist at Chase, Benjamin Anderson, noted that after failing by playing God, the government chose not to retire but simply “to play God more vigorously.”

The first lesson of this sorry account is that an arbitrary national economic campaign from atop generates damaging uncertainty in the economy. However charmingly it reverberates, the very phrase “bold persistent experimentation” stifles growth.

The second point is that what helps the union hurts the worker. President Biden’s proposal to end “Right to Work,” if it becomes law, will dramatically stifle employment.

Flashback: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

Both from Instapundit.

14 thoughts on “Just because it never ever worked before is no reason not to try it again”

  1. Here in Victoria Maximum Leader has a far better strategy than spending billions building things that no-one will ever use.
    He spent $1.1 billion stopping construction of something vast numbers of people would have used.

    7

  2. Why is Dan such a dh, he just has to say whatever to show he is the superior premier?
    Someone yesterday was telling me tales from Dan’s school days.
    Much in line with a couple of anecdotes shared here.
    she’s so reckless

  4. Couldn’t help but wonder if those 34 unforgettable photos of China’s massive, uninhabited ghost citiesare but harbingers of the New World Order’s Great Reset as the world is systematically depopulated.

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  5. Flashback: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

    What could have been done instead?

    Worthwhile looking at the UK’s response to exactly the same crisis. (Reduce taxes, reduce government spending, reduce red tape).

    The UK’s soaring industrial output helped it survive the Nazi onslaught until the USA joined the war. In some war materials production metrics, the USA never matched the UK’s for the entire war. IIRC tonnage of warships was one example.

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  6. Roosevelt’s role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century’s second-most influential figure.

    Well, it is sort of true. Just not the way that they think.

    Funny – a ‘progressive’ President who wanted to keep the American economy in the 1920’s, while in the 20’s a Republican (conservative) President (Hoover) freed the economy (in the ‘forgotten depression of 1920/21) to move from the 1910’s to the 1920’s.

    Because Hoover allowed the economy to correct itself his depression was a minor event and people do not remember it or credit him) while the Great Depression was a cataclysmic event spanning over a decade so Roosevelt, who tinkered and meddled and stretched it out, is revered as a demi-god.

    1

  7. tonnage of warships was one example.

    Not even close in either tonnage or bottoms, I’m afraid.
    Britain may have had the capacity, but they lacked the capability.
    A good example of their capacity/capability gap was the Hawker Typhoon.
    That gap was so great the Tiffy was scrapped before the shooting stopped.

  8. He spent $1.1 billion stopping construction of something vast numbers of people would have used.

    .

    For a keynesian $1.1 billion to stop construction of a freeway and $1.1 billion to build it are the same – $1.1 billion in spending.

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  9. Just because it never ever worked before is no reason not to try it again

    It works every time – the theft of everything you’ve ever managed to accumulate. By the left. This time they’re just doing it better than ever before.

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  12. UK VS USA vessel production.

    Pretty comparable with the exception of merchant vessels (tonnage) and light aircraft carriers (number). Particularly if you consider that one was subject to direct enemy action and the other wasn’t.

    Aircraft carriers [10]
    Battleships
    Cruisers
    Destroyers
    Convoy escorts Submarines
    Merchant tonnage

    United States
    22 (141)
    8
    48
    349
    420
    203[11]
    33,993,230

    United Kingdom
    14 (25)
    5
    32
    240
    413
    167
    6,378,8

  13. Lotocoi,
    The typhoon was scrapped?
    This would come as a surprise to the people that fought through Europe.

    1

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