What Is Wrong with "Trickle Down Economics"?

[datagal]

No money for basic protection of your ground troops but lots of money for inefficient research, not to mention the blunt corruption in the form of cost-plus contracts for companies like Halliburton during the occupation of Iraq.
But hey, the right-wing mantra is that everything about government except for the military is inefficient.

No, our mantra is that no government spending is probably more efficient than military spending, which is itself insanely inefficient.

We had the Sgt. York AA gun (about $14 billion in today's dollars), Crusader artillery system (about $13 billon), Commanche stealth helicopter ($8 billion), A-12 flying dorito ($7 billion?). And that's the cheap, tracked, support vehicles, helicopters, and subsonic aircraft.

As they say, every time you pull the trigger, millions of taxpayers dollars get burned up.

Efficiency in the military is measured by whether it wins wars or not. the purpose of government is to defend, and it can't do that if it does not spend on military equipment. I'd rather spend the cost in money than pay for it with the lives of fallen American soldiers. the purpose of the military is not only to win wars, but also to deter them, if we cut the budget, we may tempt the enemy into starting another war because it perceives weakness. The best way to prevent wars is to make it clear to the enemy that he will lose if he starts one. Democrats encourage the enemy to start wars because they always doubt whether we can when, and if they doubt it, the enemy figures he has a chance.

I'm no economic expert, but what I just read does not sound right.
Sounds like partisan crap. Even conservative Economists will scratch their heads after reading this.
Btw, there were Economists that work with Bush II too and I didn't any good coming from them as well.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Just for Mars' edification:

WW2 was an economic gain for the US because of massive government deficit spending. It put people to work producing things that weren't actually profitable, but it didn't matter because people were getting paid. We achieved full employment. But then we also had a draft and basically the whole economy was participating in the war effort.

That hasn't happened since. That's why Korea, Vietnam, our two wars in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan didn't have any noticeable stimulus effect on our economy. They have certainly been a boon for companies that supply our military, but since we didn't retool our entire economy to produce war materiel, the stimulus effects of those wars were negligible.

I'll put it to you like this: to achieve the stimulus effect of WW2 mobilization, you would need to devote so much of the economy to wartime production that your food and energy will be rationed by the government. How good of an idea do you think that is?

The WW2 recovery was basically a one-off. It was a unique set of circumstances that are not likely to recur. Same with the '50s boom, which we were able to have because European economies were in tatters, leaving us as the sole industrial superpower. Guess what? That isn't happening again, either.

Then efforts to curb discrimination came about, which expanded the labor force and labor mobility, and women entered the workforce en masse. These all contributed to downward wage pressure. Not saying we should go back to discriminatory policies, either, just that those had a large and irreversible effect on wage levels.

Reagan's trickle-down policies were an effort to bring back some of that '50s prosperity. In reality, it was a glut of cheap oil that enabled much of the '80s boom. Of course, it also had speculative bubbles (S&L, etc.) which came crashing down and gave us another recession. Conflict in the Middle East spiked the price of oil, which thrashed our recovery. After the Gulf War, prices came back down and, what do you know, we were booming again--this time helped by the general public getting access to the Internet, which enabled dramatic efficiency and productivity gains in many sectors.

But then what happened? Well, the Internet gave us another speculative bubble. When that popped, investors bailed, and this led to another recession. Our recovery from that was hampered by--guess what?--rising oil prices.

See a pattern here? When a basic input to your economic production--energy--rises in price, that damages production all down the line. Our economy is based very heavily on oil, so when the price of that goes up, spending on other things goes down. You have to have the energy to make businesses run. It's a required expense. So when that goes up, you may hire fewer people and try to get more work done with a smaller staff, or you raise prices, or both. We have seen plenty of this. It is a drag on the economy.

Basically, the only way a war could jump-start our economy at this point is if we invade the Middle East, conquer everyone, and take all their oil. This would, of course, not be at all successful, and is just a horrible idea in general, but I have seen people advocate it.

Having said all that, that's why I support the exploration of new energy sources, including wind, solar, and geothermal, and I think the government should invest heavily in those and offer incentives to encourage private investment. There have been high-profile failures (e.g. Solyndra) but the fact is, oil prices are rising over the long term and they will continue to be an economic drag until we provide more robust and price-stable alternatives.

 

[datagal]

Yes, I have a BA degree in Economics from Pace University, so technically, I am an Economist. And I know that Milton Friedman's economics works and Keynes does not because history has proven Friedman's theories and not Keynes, it hasn't worked in the 1930s, the 1970s or today, printing money, taxing and spending more does not stimulate the economy, all your doing is taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another. The government performs no magic on money taxed that makes it more stimulative than if the original owners of that money kept it and spent it on their own wants, desires, needs and investments.

Technically?
Just because you have a college degree in Economics doesn't mean that you are an Economist in the professional level a least bit. Unless Fox Business or CNBC call you up for your "professional" take, you're just a novice with BA degree in Economics IMO.
And your take about Friedman's is better than Keynes's doesn't really make any sense to me.

Look at all the professional Academic economists helping out Obama now, what good are they? Many of them are from Ivy league schools, and have worked as university professors, but judging from the results they have accomplished, do they really know what they're doing? Considering we've had 4 years of recession, I'd say not. I keep saying they should cut taxes, cut taxes, but they don't listen to me, instead they try the same old thing, run up the deficit and spend spend spend and every time they try it, it doesn't work. So who really is the professional, just because they can put some equations on the blackboard and solve them doesn't make them good economists. So by government standards, I'd say I'm fairly competitive, since these folks policies aren't working, the Fed Chairman is incompetent because I see prices going up, he is not upholding the value of the dollar. Do you have some other standard to measure an economist by? Whether a liberal-Marxist professor gives him an A on a report per chance?

I'm sorry but that makes no sense at all. No sense at all. I'm no expert when it comes to advance economics, but I do know basic economics and what I just read is nothing more than partisan crap.

 

[horatio83]

Indeed, no war after WWII required such a massive temporary increase of military spending as WWII. Precisely because it was so massive and temporary it lead to a boom.

Massive and temporary is what we would have needed and still need right now. Although the majority of pundits claim that the ensuing increase of public debt would be horrific it isn't as destroying public debt, be it via socialization, inflation or default (this obviously only applies to countries like Greece who are de facto bankrupt), makes households and companies start to spend and invest again and as you can grow out of the debt like the US has after WWII. Yet a top marginal income tax rate of 91% like under Eisenhower would be impossible in the current political climate. If a top marginal income tax rate of 35% suffices to be called a Marxist I wonder what the contemporary reactionary forces would have to call Ike with his 91% if he were in power.

Let's not forget that all three Republican presidents after Carter have driven up public debt unnecessarily (in contrast to a necessary short-run increase like during the New Deal, WWII and right now), that the anti-debt rhetoric is not driven by an actual desire to keep long-run public debt on a low level via appropriate taxation like in the decades after WWII but rather by the desire to lower taxes for the rich without reducing expenditures. Fiscal conservative is a fictional term.

 

[Mars]

Indeed, no war after WWII required such a massive temporary increase of military spending as WWII. Precisely because it was so massive and temporary it lead to a boom.

That kind of sounds like, "This flying machine will only work if you jump off a high enough cliff." if one has not enough credit or money to reach a high enough spending level then one goes bankrupt, that is why I don't like Keynesian economics, as it requires a nation to basically max out its credit cards and go bankrupt in hopes that the multiplier effect will come to its rescue and save it. What is the rate of return on the multiplier effect any way? Are there any multiplier effect funds, where investors contribute their money so someone can hold a massive and extravagant party and reap a return on their investment through the multiplier effect? How do we know the US Economy is even large enough to spend sufficiently before its credit and currency become worthless? The problem isn't how much you invest but how you invest it and on what. World War II required the development of many technologies that had civilian applications, such as jet engines for instance. The Drones used in the War on terror also have many civilian applications.

Massive and temporary is what we would have needed and still need right now. Although the majority of pundits claim that the ensuing increase of public debt would be horrific it isn't as destroying public debt, be it via socialization, inflation or default (this obviously only applies to countries like Greece who are de facto bankrupt), makes households and companies start to spend and invest again and as you can grow out of the debt like the US has after WWII. Yet a top marginal income tax rate of 90% like under Eisenhower (ironically the contemporary reactionary forces would have to call Ike a Marxist, Stalinist or whatever) would be impossible in the current political climate.

Let's not forget that all three Republican presidents after Carter have driven up public debt, that the anti-debt rhetoric is not driven by an actual desire to kepp long-run public debt on a low level via appropriate taxation like in the decades after WWII.

 

[Mars]

Technically?
Just because you have a college degree in Economics doesn't mean that you are an Economist in the professional level a least bit. Unless Fox Business or CNBC call you up for your "professional" take, you're just a novice with BA degree in Economics IMO.
And your take about Friedman's is better than Keynes's doesn't really make any sense to me.

Look at all the professional Academic economists helping out Obama now, what good are they? Many of them are from Ivy league schools, and have worked as university professors, but judging from the results they have accomplished, do they really know what they're doing? Considering we've had 4 years of recession, I'd say not. I keep saying they should cut taxes, cut taxes, but they don't listen to me, instead they try the same old thing, run up the deficit and spend spend spend and every time they try it, it doesn't work. So who really is the professional, just because they can put some equations on the blackboard and solve them doesn't make them good economists. So by government standards, I'd say I'm fairly competitive, since these folks policies aren't working, the Fed Chairman is incompetent because I see prices going up, he is not upholding the value of the dollar. Do you have some other standard to measure an economist by? Whether a liberal-Marxist professor gives him an A on a report per chance?

I'm sorry but that makes no sense at all. No sense at all. I'm no expert when it comes to advance economics, but I do know basic economics and what I just read is nothing more than partisan crap.

That's basically because your wearing your partisan blinders and you don't want it to make sense, but then I don't have to demonstrate on the black board Obama's failures, as its evident in the World around you if you care to look, but then Democrats make excuses for every one of his failures and say that is reason to reelect him. Sorry, I don't accept excuses in the work place for not getting the job done.

 

[horatio83]

That kind of sounds like, "This flying machine will only work if you jump off a high enough cliff." if one has not enough credit or money to reach a high enough spending level then one goes bankrupt, that is why I don't like Keynesian economics, as it requires a nation to basically max out its credit cards and go bankrupt in hopes that the multiplier effect will come to its rescue and save it.

Short-run macroeconomics cares little about how it sounds or whether you, I or anybody else likes it or not. I don't like that there are underemployment equilibria which are not caused by excessive labour taxation but by a short-run demand shortage either but closing the eyes and singing lala doesn't undo them. I don't like gravity either but if I ignore it I will hurt myself.
The right's ignorance of short-run macro has hurt millions of people, in the US as well as in Europe. It is time to call them what they are, the enemies of every working man and woman. Opponent implies that I can respect the other side because they have valid points I don't agree with (there are still many of such intelligent conservatives I respect, they just don't wield much political power at the moment) but when the other side lives in a post-factual world, simply lies and hurts millions of people via doing so a stronger word is required: enemy.

 

[JarodRussell]

Efficiency in the military is measured by whether it wins wars or not. the purpose of government is to defend, and it can't do that if it does not spend on military equipment. I'd rather spend the cost in money than pay for it with the lives of fallen American soldiers. the purpose of the military is not only to win wars, but also to deter them, if we cut the budget, we may tempt the enemy into starting another war because it perceives weakness. The best way to prevent wars is to make it clear to the enemy that he will lose if he starts one. Democrats encourage the enemy to start wars because they always doubt whether we can when, and if they doubt it, the enemy figures he has a chance.

*buzzer*

Effectivity is: does the military win a war or not?

Efficiency is: how much does winning a war cost?

I have nothing to add to this thread other than that.

 

[Mars]

Just for Mars' edification:

WW2 was an economic gain for the US because of massive government deficit spending. It put people to work producing things that weren't actually profitable, but it didn't matter because people were getting paid. We achieved full employment. But then we also had a draft and basically the whole economy was participating in the war effort.

That hasn't happened since. That's why Korea, Vietnam, our two wars in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan didn't have any noticeable stimulus effect on our economy. They have certainly been a boon for companies that supply our military, but since we didn't retool our entire economy to produce war materiel, the stimulus effects of those wars were negligible.

During World War II factories were retooled for war production and then additional factories were build, and when the war ended those additional factories were retooled for civilian use, instead of building bombers they build passenger aircraft. World War II forced investments that were profitable because being profitable and winning the war both required efficiency, the weapons made were both cheap an numerous and the ability to make weapons cheap and numerous also led to the ability to make other things cheap and numerous, things people bought and which produced profits for the people who made them, also competitors such as Japan and Germany were knocked out of competition for the 1940s and 50s, that certainly helped.

I'll put it to you like this: to achieve the stimulus effect of WW2 mobilization, you would need to devote so much of the economy to wartime production that your food and energy will be rationed by the government. How good of an idea do you think that is?

The WW2 recovery was basically a one-off. It was a unique set of circumstances that are not likely to recur. Same with the '50s boom, which we were able to have because European economies were in tatters, leaving us as the sole industrial superpower. Guess what? That isn't happening again, either.

Then efforts to curb discrimination came about, which expanded the labor force and labor mobility, and women entered the workforce en masse. These all contributed to downward wage pressure. Not saying we should go back to discriminatory policies, either, just that those had a large and irreversible effect on wage levels.

Reagan's trickle-down policies were an effort to bring back some of that '50s prosperity. In reality, it was a glut of cheap oil that enabled much of the '80s boom. Of course, it also had speculative bubbles (S&L, etc.) which came crashing down and gave us another recession. Conflict in the Middle East spiked the price of oil, which thrashed our recovery. After the Gulf War, prices came back down and, what do you know, we were booming again--this time helped by the general public getting access to the Internet, which enabled dramatic efficiency and productivity gains in many sectors.

But then what happened? Well, the Internet gave us another speculative bubble. When that popped, investors bailed, and this led to another recession. Our recovery from that was hampered by--guess what?--rising oil prices.

See a pattern here? When a basic input to your economic production--energy--rises in price, that damages production all down the line. Our economy is based very heavily on oil, so when the price of that goes up, spending on other things goes down. You have to have the energy to make businesses run. It's a required expense. So when that goes up, you may hire fewer people and try to get more work done with a smaller staff, or you raise prices, or both. We have seen plenty of this. It is a drag on the economy.

Basically, the only way a war could jump-start our economy at this point is if we invade the Middle East, conquer everyone, and take all their oil. This would, of course, not be at all successful, and is just a horrible idea in general, but I have seen people advocate it.

Having said all that, that's why I support the exploration of new energy sources, including wind, solar, and geothermal, and I think the government should invest heavily in those and offer incentives to encourage private investment. There have been high-profile failures (e.g. Solyndra) but the fact is, oil prices are rising over the long term and they will continue to be an economic drag until we provide more robust and price-stable alternatives.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Uh, again, no. I've never had much money, and I'm from the region of the US where Democrats go to find poster children for abject poverty. You are from the rich area of the US, where Democrats come from, to exploit us for political advantage, to take more and more of what little we produce and connive to make us produce even less, so what we lose what little we have so you can lead your crazy revolution that ends in our murder, while you sip lattes in Manhattan and talk about the plight of the working people, as if you'd ever actually met one. Communism never worked in the US becuase workers despise you for what you are. That's why you're bypassing workers and taking your insanity directly to goverment dependents, essentialy the hangers on at court and their goverment dependents. You have to pitch to the non-working parasite class because that's all communism is, its core of lazy, disaffected, greedy people who want to live on the back of others.

Infraction for Trolling. Comments to PM.

 

[horatio83]

also competitors such as Japan and Germany were knocked out of competition for the 1940s and 50s, that certainly helped.

This is a valid point and US industry certainly had a competitive advantage after WWII but I doubt (this is just a hunch, of course the question is a quantitative one) that it had much of an influences upon US GDP. It is not as if the US ruled worldwide manufacturing, German and Japanese industry had no problems after WWII.
The US did, like the rest of the West, so well after WWII because they were social democratic. Taxes were high to reduce public debt, education was better than today (nowadays the average American worker is no more the most skilled one in the world) and a moderate welfare state has been established which eased the pains of the business cycle while demand management smoothed it as much as possible.

The high taxes and the moderate welfare state did not seem to have any disincentive effects, GDP growth was on normal levels.
This is the rough model we have to return to, post WWII or Scandinavian style democracy. Why? Because among all the stuff we have tried in the last centuries, pre-modern life, anarcho-capitalism, fascism, communism and social democracy aka moderated capitalism, the latter has worked best. To claim otherwise is to ignore empirics and be an idealist who merely dreams about his utopia or only cares about his ideology.

 

[datagal]

Look at all the professional Academic economists helping out Obama now, what good are they? Many of them are from Ivy league schools, and have worked as university professors, but judging from the results they have accomplished, do they really know what they're doing? Considering we've had 4 years of recession, I'd say not. I keep saying they should cut taxes, cut taxes, but they don't listen to me, instead they try the same old thing, run up the deficit and spend spend spend and every time they try it, it doesn't work. So who really is the professional, just because they can put some equations on the blackboard and solve them doesn't make them good economists. So by government standards, I'd say I'm fairly competitive, since these folks policies aren't working, the Fed Chairman is incompetent because I see prices going up, he is not upholding the value of the dollar. Do you have some other standard to measure an economist by? Whether a liberal-Marxist professor gives him an A on a report per chance?

I'm sorry but that makes no sense at all. No sense at all. I'm no expert when it comes to advance economics, but I do know basic economics and what I just read is nothing more than partisan crap.

That's basically because your wearing your partisan blinders and you don't want it to make sense, but then I don't have to demonstrate on the black board Obama's failures, as its evident in the World around you if you care to look, but then Democrats make excuses for every one of his failures and say that is reason to reelect him. Sorry, I don't accept excuses in the work place for not getting the job done.

Someone is wearing partisan blinders and it's not me. I'm not making excuses. Your take on the economy and economics as a whole doesn't make any sense at all for me. I'm not speaking as a Democrat/Liberal.
Damn, even gturner's take makes more sense than yours and I never agree with him.

 

[J.T.B.]

Efficiency in the military is measured by whether it wins wars or not. the purpose of government is to defend, and it can't do that if it does not spend on military equipment. I'd rather spend the cost in money than pay for it with the lives of fallen American soldiers. the purpose of the military is not only to win wars, but also to deter them, if we cut the budget, we may tempt the enemy into starting another war because it perceives weakness. The best way to prevent wars is to make it clear to the enemy that he will lose if he starts one.

Nonsense. There is no unique definition of "efficiency" that applies only to the military. Just like everywhere else, it's minimizing the energy and/or resources consumed to accomplish the desired work. Efficiency doesn't enter into the argument above; its implication is that a bloated, wasteful and inefficient military is just as good as an efficient one as long as it's not perceived as weak. If that's the position, OK, but it shouldn't be argued from efficiency.

Democrats encourage the enemy to start wars because they always doubt whether we can when, and if they doubt it, the enemy figures he has a chance.

Democrats like Franklin Roosevelt?

It was never fought on the scale of World War II, the government spent trillions of dollars that was not related to fighting the war, we could easily have out numbered the Afghan troops with all our soldiers, we could have surrounded them and defeated them, instead of the handful we actually sent.

See South Africa, Indochina, Vietnam, Afghanistan 1980, Iraq and many other asymmetrical insurgency wars.

Justin

 

[Mars]

Efficiency in the military is measured by whether it wins wars or not. the purpose of government is to defend, and it can't do that if it does not spend on military equipment. I'd rather spend the cost in money than pay for it with the lives of fallen American soldiers. the purpose of the military is not only to win wars, but also to deter them, if we cut the budget, we may tempt the enemy into starting another war because it perceives weakness. The best way to prevent wars is to make it clear to the enemy that he will lose if he starts one.

Nonsense. There is no unique definition of "efficiency" that applies only to the military. Just like everywhere else, it's minimizing the energy and/or resources consumed to accomplish the desired work. Efficiency doesn't enter into the argument above; its implication is that a bloated, wasteful and inefficient military is just as good as an efficient one as long as it's not perceived as weak. If that's the position, OK, but it shouldn't be argued from efficiency.

Democrats encourage the enemy to start wars because they always doubt whether we can when, and if they doubt it, the enemy figures he has a chance.

Democrats like Franklin Roosevelt?

World War II began under his watch, did it not?
Roosevelt's military build up began only after Hitler launched his invasion of Poland and started World War II, it occured too late to deter Hitler. If Roosevelt really wanted to deter Hitler, he should have started his military buildup at the same time Hitler began his. If the USA maintained parity or exceeded Hitler's military build up and placed bases ringing Germany, what we would have ended up with would have been an arms race instead of World War II, and that would have been preferable and a lot less deadly than actually fighting World War II.

It was never fought on the scale of World War II, the government spent trillions of dollars that was not related to fighting the war, we could easily have out numbered the Afghan troops with all our soldiers, we could have surrounded them and defeated them, instead of the handful we actually sent.

See South Africa, Indochina, Vietnam, Afghanistan 1980, Iraq and many other asymmetrical insurgency wars.

Justin

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

Roosevelt was before the Democrats made the great change to question America, FDR had no problem bombing enemy cities and inflicting massive civilian causalities so long as military victory was assured. FDR also had no problem imprisoning Japanese-American citizens, and if he'd been fighting the War on Terrorism, he would have done the same to Arab-Americans.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

I don't care what your politics are, beliefs like this are dangerous and scary.

 

[datagal]

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

I don't care what your politics are, beliefs like this are dangerous and scary.

That's an understatment.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I keep saying they should cut taxes, cut taxes, but they don't listen to me

Lulz.

Sorry, I don't accept excuses in the work place for not getting the job done.

Soooo... what is your job then?

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

Yeah. Curse you, democracy!

Dafuq?

Roosevelt was before the Democrats made the great change to question America, FDR had no problem bombing enemy cities and inflicting massive civilian causalities so long as military victory was assured. FDR also had no problem imprisoning Japanese-American citizens, and if he'd been fighting the War on Terrorism, he would have done the same to Arab-Americans.

And that would be... a good thing?

 

[gturner]

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

I don't care what your politics are, beliefs like this are dangerous and scary.

Actually, making Nixon a dictator probably wouldn't have changed anything because it was Nixon who went for a Vietnamization time-table that was too rapid. His plan all along was withdrawl and stalemate, not victory.

There is an argument that Democrats caused the fall of South Vietnam by calling in all our loans, cutting off all their arms and spare parts, and then putting an arms embargo on them. From that perspective, we actually won the Vietnam War because we switched sides.

However, Nixon was the one who pushed for us to get out of the war through "Vietnamization", several years before the South was remotely trained and equipped enough to handle the task. MACV wanted to stay for two or three more years, Nixon made them leave on a time-table they didn't think was acceptable. However, he did so under domestic pressure, not thinking there were other options because the Pentagon failed to see all the better options (and there were many that would've resulted in far lower troop numbers, far less combat, no bombing, and no Northern victory).

Ford was the one who threw out our treaty commitment to come to the South's aid if the North rolled south. Based on the 1973 action, our airpower would've obliterated the North's armored forces moving through the central highlands in '75, requring the North to spend 2 to 5 more years rebuilding their army, by which time the South should've become too economically dominant for the North to be a realistic rival (like South Korea vs. North Korea, or West Germany vs. East Germany). If the South had made it to the 1977 to 1980 time frame, the North probably would've been forced to give up any idea of invasion. The 1973 fighting had left them scared and demoralized because the South Vietnamese troops were already outfighting them, man-for-man. In '75 the South's soldiers were out of ammunition before the battle even started, so it didn't matter how good they were.

In any event, the US military and our advisors were also the ones who left Vietnamese forces positioned to fight an insurgency instead of a conventional invasion, and who never had the clear insight that the war was actually the same as Korea, where half a country wanted to invade the other half (the North Vietnamese depended on us misperceiving the war as a revolution, instead of a conventional large-army civil war between two distinct regions). Who failed to build a defensible DMZ, and failed to provide for a credible seaborne invasion threat to make the North think twice about sending their entire army south, leaving the North itself unprotected (the Inchon scenario).

Our military and political advisors were also the ones who thought the main combatants were the South Vietnamese Army and US versus the Viet Cong and NVA, leaving out the largest combatant force, the South Vietnamese popular forces, who were given little bits of junk here and there for most of the war. We armed them far too late, with far too little, even though they were actually doing the bulk of the defensive fighting.

MACV largely corrected many of the earlier mistakes with a change in policy in 1969 or so, when Creighton Abrahms replaced Westmoreland, but under Nixon's timetable they just didn't have time to get the South fully ready to go it alone.

Interestingly, before the anti-war protests started, it was conservatives who were questioning the war, since what we were doing over there didn't seem to make a lick of strategic or tactical sense, like we were just mucking around.

 

[J.T.B.]

Democrats like Franklin Roosevelt?

World War II began under his watch, did it not?

In China and Europe. FDR gets the blame for that?

Roosevelt's military build up began only after Hitler launched his invasion of Poland and started World War II, it occured too late to deter Hitler. If Roosevelt really wanted to deter Hitler, he should have started his military buildup at the same time Hitler began his. If the USA maintained parity or exceeded Hitler's military build up and placed bases ringing Germany, what we would have ended up with would have been an arms race instead of World War II, and that would have been preferable and a lot less deadly than actually fighting World War II.

You have no idea what you are talking about. There was absolutely no concept for the US manning overseas military bases on European soil at that time, it never occurred to anyone, that is fantasy land. Here in the real world, the US figured little in Hitler's pre-war plans. As for the military build-up, you might recall the Great Depression was on, but the building blocks of victory began in the '30s. Go read up on things like when the specs went out for the B-17 and B-24 bombers, the P-38, P-40 and F4F fighters, and the PBY patrol plane. Or when the army and navy aviation cadet programs were initiated, when navy ship construction was funded to full treaty limits, when the first classes of fleet submarines were built, and when the build-up of the merchant marine/naval auxiliary force began.

See South Africa, Indochina, Vietnam, Afghanistan 1980, Iraq and many other asymmetrical insurgency wars.

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

Victorian Britain, post-WW2 France and the Soviet Union had Democrats? Astounding!

Roosevelt was before the Democrats made the great change to question America, FDR had no problem bombing enemy cities and inflicting massive civilian causalities so long as military victory was assured. FDR also had no problem imprisoning Japanese-American citizens, and if he'd been fighting the War on Terrorism, he would have done the same to Arab-Americans.

The war powers of the president changed a lot post-WW2 in ways that would be totally foreign to FDR, so I don't think we can judge what he would do.

Justin

 

[Davros]

That's because the Enemy had the Democrats on their side, without the Democrats they could not have won. Make Richard Nixon a Dictator and he could have crushed North Vietnam.

Dropping all those bombs on them was a strange way for LBJ to show his support.

Look at all the professional Academic economists helping out Obama now, what good are they?

30 months of private sector job growth seems to indicate they are on to something.

Yes, doldrums that continue until the sun runs out of hydrogen.

The private sector job growth isn't keeping up with population growth, which means we're going backwards in per-capita terms (jobs per potential worker).

A vast improvement over the minus 800k jobs a month we got from the supply side economics of the GOP. We would be getting more jobs had the Republicans not continued to filibuster jobs bill after jobs bill. Even revenue neutral ones. Mitch McConnell made it abundantly clear that the GOP places their political gain over the good of the country when he announced that their priority was getting Obama out of office instead of getting it back on it's feet during the greatest economic crisis since the great depression.

If you adjusted employment for population growth, or real GDP for population growth (making per-capitareal GDP the measure instead real GDP), we probably never got out of the recession, making this something we could call a "per-capita depression."

Companies are sitting on record profits. Not having enough money is the least of their problems The reason they are not hiring is because customer demand is not forcing them to do so and that won't ever happen by waiting for the owners to trickle them down to everybody else. Only by middle out stimulus will we see the job growth we need, and we won't get middle out stimulus 9out of the current GOP, or the top down economic theorists they subscribe to.

The economic collapse may have been just temporarily staved off, depending on whether China's banking system implodes under the weight of fake collateral. That's only been revealed over the last couple of days, kind of like us when we were seeing the first tranches of bundled mortgage securities go under.

But don't worry. If Obama is in charge when China goes under, I'm sure he'll make it very clear that the drastic consequences are not his fault.

China isn't going anywhere.