Looks right

[Plane]

Myth 3: Government spending and hiring alleviates unemployment.

Two economists from the University of Delaware, Burton Abrams and Siyan Wang, used data from 20 developed countries over three decades to examine how government spending as a share of GDP affects the unemployment rate (when accounting for other relevant factors). They found


That increases in government outlays hamper economic growth and raise the unemployment rate. Moreover, different types of government outlays are found to have different effects on growth and unemployment, with transfers and subsidies having a larger effect than government purchases. In addition, Granger causality tests suggest unidirectional causation from government outlays to economic growth and the unemployment rate.

These findings are notable because they don’t just establish a correlation; they use causality tests to find that government spending causes higher unemployment, not the other way around. Research by other economists arrives at similar results.

Moreover, scholars have examined the relationship between public employment and private employment. Using data from a sample of developed countries over the years 1960 to 2000, European researchers found, “On average, [the] creation of 100 public jobs may have eliminated about 150 private sector jobs, slightly decreased labour market participation, and increased by about 33 the number of unemployed workers.”

And recent study by the International Monetary Fund comes to the following conclusions:


High rates of public employment, which incur substantial fiscal costs, have a large negative impact on private employment rates and do not reduce overall unemployment rates … Public-sector hiring: (i) does not reduce unemployment, (ii) increases the fiscal burden, and (iii) inhibits long-term growth through reductions in private-sector employment.

All this evidence suggests that bigger government isn’t the solution to persistent unemployment. In fact, there is reason to believe that bigger government results in undesirable employment outcomes.
http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/5-more-economic-myths-that-just-wont-die

http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/5-economic-myths-that-just-wont-die

Myth 1. The idea that economic growth helps the poor is trickle-down economics … it doesn’t actually help them.

In a 2001 paper titled “Growth Is Good for the Poor," economists Art Kraay and David Dollar of the World Bank found that when average incomes rise, the average incomes of the poorest fifth of society rise proportionately. This result held across regions, periods, income levels, and growth rates. In 2013, more than a decade after their original paper, Kraay and Dollar explored the relationship between economic growth and poverty again, using data from 118 countries over four decades. They came to the same conclusion. According to the economists,


This evidence confirms the central importance of economic growth for poverty reduction … institutions and policies that promote economic growth in general will on average raise incomes of the poor equiproportionally, thereby promoting “shared prosperity” … there are almost no cases in which growth is significantly pro-poor or pro-rich.

This means that policies that enhance economic growth through methods such as limiting the size of government and lowering barriers to international trade are key to alleviating poverty. Economic growth, not transfer programs, is in fact the primary driver of poverty reduction, and this empirical truth has been proved for a long time.

[Plane]

Good articles that have food for thought.

Now do I like them because they match my prejudices or confirm my preconceived notions?

Or does their ring come from real truth?

How exactly can I check?

[Plane]

http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/5-economic-myths-that-just-wont-die
Myth 1. The idea that economic growth helps the poor is trickle-down economics … it doesn’t actually help them.
Myth 2. Free trade doesn’t lead to better economic outcomes in the real world.
Myth 3. The government ended child labor. In a free market, child labor would still exist.
Myth 4. Countries like Sweden and Denmark prove that high taxes don’t harm economic growth
Myth 5. Capitalism isn’t economically superior to socialism.

http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/5-more-economic-myths-that-just-wont-die
Myth 1: Immigrants take American jobs and reduce American wages.
Myth 2: Multinational corporations are shipping our jobs overseas.
Myth 3: Government spending and hiring alleviates unemployment.
Myth 4: “Conservative” economic policies lead to slower employment growth.
Myth 5: Government spending is good for economic growth.

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Look at that second number five, that is like a summation of FDR's first term.

Myth?

[Xavier_Onassis]

One of the main reason child labor ended was a requirement that all children attend school. Of course, making it illegal for mines to employ tiny children to serparates coal from rocks and slag was also a factor. These clowns make it sound like there was no reason for child labor laws at all.

It is bloody obvious as all Hell that government spending improved=s at least some of the economy. It worked from 1933 through 1936, it worked again during WWII and Korea and it clearly worked from 2008 to the present. Bailing out the bs and GM was very useful and we should all be grateful that there were no Austrian economists in charge at the time or we would still be in a huge mess. Of course, they would be blaming unions, a lack of tort reform and high corporate taxes.

The thing is that economics has many, many factors involved, and these Hayek worshipers oversimplify everything

[Plane]

It is bloody obvious as all Hell that government spending improved=s at least some of the economy. It worked from 1933 through 1936, it worked again during WWII and Korea and it clearly worked from 2008 to the present. Bailing out the bs and GM was very useful and we should all be grateful that there were no Austrian economists in charge at the time or we would still be in a huge mess. Of course, they would be blaming unions, a lack of tort reform and high corporate taxes.

  I don't see this being clear at all, you are not oversimplifying?

    The basic problem with using government spending to support the economy is that the government has nothing to give to the economy that it hasn't first taken from the economy.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Nonetheless, the economy has vastly improved as a result of QE.
Nonetheless, WWII ended the Great Depression.

Theory is nice, but it rarely works in practice.

[Plane]

  What is the greatest length of Depression or recession in our history?

    There is really no way to prove that the great Depression was not lengthened by the multiple boondoggles of the FDR administration.

   And we helped win the war by being basically pretty strong economically in comparison to the other participants in the war.

     That war didn't help the economy of 'England or Germany or Poland very much did it?

    There is no way to test the theory that the Great Depression would have run its course just as soon without government action, or that prosperity would have returned eventually even if Germany and the Axis had not gone nuts on everyone else.

      But the theory that the alphabet agencies and the war caused the Depression to end is just as non-provable .

[kimba1]

I`ll just focus on child labor laws. from my personal experiences with dealing with people older than me in America. we can`t trust these old farts from not working children to death. all these romantic stories of supporting their families when their ten years old and omitting 3 to five of their sibling died in the mines . makes me weary about our overall ability to judge what`s safe. these laws are made after children were maimed and or killed from these jobs. economicly it`s harsher on the family but through the decades we seem to adjust,but I`m not under the illusion that`s it`s we can be safe to supervise kids to work. it`s a pretty safe bet children will be passing out if we lets them work in a amazon warehouse. adult`s love to say "he/she can handle it"way too much.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I know for a FACT that what FDR did served to end the Depression for my family. My parents, my Uncle Jay, my Aunt Martha, my grandparents and my Uncle Wyatt all were living in one income (my grandfather's) for most of 1933 AND 1934 in the house my grandfather and his father built in Kansas City. They told me of how they scavenged cardboard to put in the bottoms of their shoes and how they walked downtown to save a nickle trolley fare.  They told me that they would pick cigarette butts out of the gutter and bring them home to reroll and smoke. They pooled what money they could to drive out to Kansas and shoot rabbits to eat.

In 1934 my father and my Uncle Jay joined the CCC and went off to a national forest in the Ozarks. My Uncle Jay got a job in the mailroom. My father, who was an accountant, got a job in  the quartermaster corps. They were issued clothes, they were fed and they were given a small amount of spending money, which they saved, since there was no where to spend it. The rest was sent home to the families. After a couple of years, my Uncle Jay got a job on the mail train, where he sorted mail in a mail car between KC and Omaha. My father got a job at a paint company. These turned out to be where they both worked until they were 65.

So you can read reactionary crap about how FDR was a great charlatan and how his "alphabet agencies" did not work and believe it if you wish, but it is nothing but crap to me. 

France was ravaged by war, but by 1955, ten years after the war's end, it was better off than it had ever been before the War. It took Poland a little longer, because it was ravaged by both the Germans and the Russians, but by 1965 is was also better off. The US had a bull market that went from the end of the Korean War until the mid-70's. 

[Plane]

  My Father drove a truck for the CCC and loved FDR with a passion.

   But of course so did Ronald Reagan.

   FDR had to fight his programs through an un-co-operative congress and compromised a lot and bent the rules a little, but success earns a lot of forgiveness.

    But would this success have happened without FDR?

     Hard to prove without access to a parallel universe.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Reagan did not love FDR. Read his book. Reagan was  total asshole. The more I hear about Reagan, the more I consider building a private shrine to John Hinckley.

And there was no way that a guy like Hoover, who was certainly more competent and qualified than Wilkie or Landon, would have been willing to try stuff until it worked. The CCC was a great idea, and it worked. 

[Plane]

    What FDR tried worked in the course of a decade, what Hoover was trying failed to work in the course of two years.

   Well what FDR was doing didn't work in two years either.

    Whether Hoover was right and his method might have worked faster is intellectual exercise , but otherwise pointless.

    Perhaps the Depression was greater and lasted longer because of FDR , there is no way to tell.

     For all I know what FDR did was exactly the best thing, I have no more proofs than you do.


    But Hoover definitely gets a bun rap, he was a large scale problem solver and humanitarian with a successful scheme to rescue Europe from famine already accomplished to his credit.

     There isn't much reason to think that any of his contemporaries understood economics better than Hoover.
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     You read Reagans book?

     Which one?

 

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have read both of Reagan's "autobiographies": Where's the Rest of Me?. written by Robert Lindsey, and "An American Life", by Peter Robinson. Reagan liked the second one so well, he said he was going to read it someday.

The first one mentions his first wife, June Wyman, with whom he was married for five years or so, in a single sentence.

Hoover did a great job of feeding hungry Belgians. But he did very little for hungry Americans.

The thing about FDR was, he knew what the problem was, and he tried very hard to solve it. Had he not been constrained by Congress, he would almost certainly done even better. Hoover thought that the Depression was some sort of normal phenomena, like an earthquake or a volcano, which it was, but it was not a planetary problem but a regularly occurring flaw in capitalism. Hoover thought that capitalism was like earthquakes and volcanoes: an irremediable system.

What was learned from the Great Depression was examined and analyzed and some remedies were found and applied, and that is why the DJIA is today at an all-time high, after only six years. Obama did better than FDR.

[sirs]

It is amazing that when the DOW is doing well under a GOP President, it's an indication of how evil the GOP is in trying to make the rich, richer, at the expense of the poor.  But when it's a Dem at the wheels, it's a great thing

Does the left realize that under Obama's policies, the "rich have gotten substantially richer", while those who have dropped out of the work force and those collecting food stamps have grown substantially higher?  Or are those rather inconvenient facts too hard to rationalize? 

So, who exactly is the Oligarchy commanding again?

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is not a bad thing when the stock market goes up. It does not actually affect those who do not invest.
When real estate prices go up, that benefits the sellers (once) and the speculators (many times) and is an actual disadvantage for the poor and ,middle classes, who cannot afford to buy a home and must pay higher rent, so the landlords can pay off THEIR mortgages. It is the nature of capitalism to reward the investors before the
average person. 

The Oligarchy is simply taking every advantage that it can, and fighting such things that would tend to cost them money, like labor unions,  raising the minimum wage, consumer protection and  taxing capital gains at the same rate as it taxes money people have to work to earn.