If government spending really is a great stimulus what happened these last eight years

[Bandit]

The American government went on the biggest spending spree in history and in doing so brought the USA to economic ruin. The biggest spending spree in history and not a single thing to show for it except maybe the greatest Afghanistan Opium Crop in history. Democrats want to spend as well but they want to have something to show for their spending. New Bridge, hospital, highway, etc.. Is government spending the end all be all for fiscal recovery? Only if spent on something tangible I would guess.

[ixion]

1. the myth of "government spending" is that there is trickle down.

this is false.

Sure, money goes out, however it stops at the top and does not trickle down. The top 1% made out like thieves over the past 8 years... perhaps because they ARE just that: thieves.

[yourout]

4. Bingo....if you want money in the system give it to the 90% that are not at the top.

Then it will create monetary movement.

[earth mom]

35. Exactly-give the money to the people!

10K per person:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5013681

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

10. It doesn't stop as much as move laterally.

Rich people giving other rich people some money.

[immoderate]

2. Spending money on things that go *BOOM* ...

...does not accrue to the common good.

--imm

[nebenaube]

3. silly rabbit...

the stimulus from spending on ammunition is wasted once the weapon has been discharged... We burned it.

[Bandit]

6. Kind of makes one wonder why Obama just said his first Defense Budget

Would be the largest in History..

[SammyWinstonJack]

16. Seriously? He said that? What on Earth for? Why?

:wow: :wtf: x( :argh: There's some Change we can believe in :silly:

[Zynx]

5. You hit on it somewhat. The issue is what it was spent on.

Defense has not been particularly productive for stimulating the economy.

[Bandit]

7. But Republicans are constantly throwing out the canard that it was

WW II that brought us out of the Depression and not FDR's recovery act.

[ProfessorPlum]

11. jinx

You owe me a coke. They are half right about this canard.

The New Deal did bring us out of the depths of depression. But what made the economy boom, and roar, was spending that actually got to the workers in the country. WWII spending included hiring lots of people in manufacturing, to make things. They were at the lower part of the economic ladder, and spent that money and really got the economy going.

[ProfessorPlum]

8. Defense works just fine to stimulate the economy

Remember WWII? The only thing is, you've got to pay people who don't already have all of the money in the world. Giving rich people more money doesn't do anything. You've got to hire poor people to work for you - Rosie the Riveter, working class GIs and welders and people on assembly lines. Once you start paying them - instead of the CEOs at Raytheon, GE, Halliburton, etc. - you get stimulus.

[Bandit]

12. How much of the five trillion dollars spent over the last eight years

was spent on Military Industrial Complex? Do you think the CEOs made all the bullets and bombs that were expended in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't buy for one instant that "War" is good for America's economy. I don't believe it brought America out of the Depression and I don't think it has ever served America well financially. If what you say is true we would be swimming in money now..

[ProfessorPlum]

15. I'll take your questions one at a time

1. Nearly all of it
2. No, the CEOs didn't make the bullets and bombs. Some of that money did go to domestic manufacturing (but I wouldn't know how much - do we still make our own munitions in this country? It would be about the last thing) and to the extent that it was made by actual workers, it did have a stimulative effect. But most of the money was "lost" or "mis-spent" or given to companies and their executives and workers who were already rich and had no incentive to spend it.

What they did with it instead was inflate bubbles - the housing bubble, for example - and gamble with it, on the unregulated "swaps" market.

I don't believe the war brought America out of the Depression either. The New Deal did that. But all of that government spending, even if it was just to make a bunch of stuff that would be sunk into the sea like the USS Iowa, really does stimulate an economy. Getting money into the hands of working class people is what does it. If you don't believe that, then you are missing the whole point of the stimulus package.

[kiranon]

24. Not when pallets of cash disappear in Iraq and no one knows where

the money went. Not when consumer spending by over salaried CEO's and CEO wannabes spend their huge salaries and bonuses on high end consumer items that are produced overseas. The trickle down theory was always a joke on the American people and I believe one of its strongest proponents David Stockman(?) wrote just that in his book.

A large part of the money spent in the U.S. for WWII re industrialization stayed here. Jobs were created, salaries earned, housing built, clothes made for the troops and so on. That was a time when we actually made things here rather than outsourcing. It was a time when people sacrificed and saved. I remember my mom taking bacon grease to the butcher shop and being paid for it. The grease was used for the war effort. I remember Victory Gardens in Chicago. I remember no one had so many cars that they could not fit them all in a garage. In fact, cars were not made during the war. I remember the G.I. Bill and how that helped to uplift many families and this country. All this government spending stimulated jobs and future economic growth.

No one sacrifices now for the common good. People lose their homes to foreclosure and no one is stepping in to stop this financial madness. Stop the foreclosures and allow people to refi at reasonable rates on debt more closely tied to the assets now value. If the property goes up in value later, the banks and the homeowner can share in the uptick.

[Winterblues]

25. The GI Bill came after the war and from what you say the "War" actually hurt the economy

No cars built, sugar, rubber, copper, etc. were rationed and not allowed on the regular market. The economy slumped big time during the war because everything was geared for the war. Most of the "working men" were off fighting the war. Women made way less than men for identical jobs. It was after the war when all the men came home and the GI Bill was put into place that the economy soared. When Republicans look back at the halcyon years it is always the fifties, not the forties which should be the case if the economy really took off at that time.

[Zynx]

26. WWII is an extreme example. That was a total war effort. Limited wars don't do much.

A total war effort gets every industry in the country from coal to electricity firing on all cylinders. A limited war has shitty multipliers.

[Kansas Wyatt]

34. WW II was the biggest jobs program in American history...

All the military personnel drafted, were actually compensated for their time served, and all the infrastructure projects that were built and all the factories that produced war supplies, weapons, vehicles, etc. etc. needed workers. Not to mention all the countless other jobs that it took to run the war effort. Those below the upper class were suddenly given an opportunity to improve their lives by working and making something of themselves. The wealthy were taxed at high rates, but none of them went broke. Corporations were not allowed to rip-off the government, yet they survived.

Republicans claim that WW II ended the Great Depression. No, it was the jobs that millions of Americans were given that took us from the Great Depression to the biggest economic boom in American history. Tax cuts for the rich did not achieve this.

A few facts from history:

When you put your citizens to work, paying decent wages, your economy improves.

Taxing wealthy people at high tax rates will not break them.

Making sure corporations are not ripping you or your citizens off, will not cause that corporation to go bankrupt, unless their business is fraud.

Another fact:

Tax cuts to the rich, while eliminating millions of good paying jobs from the middle class will cause your economy to fail.

Even the most educated and brightest people in Washington can see this, so why is there even a debate on the issue?

[Orrex]

9. MIlitary spending over the past eight years is only one factor in the ruin

Massive deregulation and willfully incompetent oversight contributed greatly to the collapse of the American economy, and they will continue to do so until they are remedied.

[EmilyAnne]

13. Of course, it depends on what the money is spent on. Bush didn't make good investments.

[Earth_First]

14. Are you KIDDING me!

You just have to see WHO was making the money.

Lockheed Martin
General Dynamics
Northrop Grumman

Plenty of defence contractors are making mountains of money.

[anonymous171]

17. Republicans aren't against spending. They are against helping people.

They hate the idea of the Welfare State. They believe that the Government should only do what people cannot do for themselves (thus their emphasis of the military.)

[endarkenment]

18. "The American government went on the biggest spending spree in history "

bullshit.

Is there a coordinated barrage of rightwing talking points this morning?

[Winterblues]

20. Are you saying that spending over and above our revenues by five trillion dollars

is not the biggest spending spree in history? The Bush* Administration not only spent every dime of revenue but they also increased our National Debt by more than every other Administration Combined.

[endarkenment]

22. In real inflation adjusted dollars as a % of GDP? Not even close.

[Hannah Bell]

29. your chart is to 2004. throw out ww2, add in the last 4 years, bush wins

& his dad & reagan come in 2nd.

[endarkenment]

30. yes sure if you throw out the REALLY BIG NUMBERS

the not so big numbers look bigger. Your statement regarding 'biggest spending spree ever' is not quite accurate, and that is being generous.

Look - I'm on your side, but we don't need to lie and distort to make our case. They need to lie and distort to make their case because the truth is not on their side. We can actually stick to the facts. The facts are that outside of WWII Republican administrations since Nixon left office have used massively irresponsible fiscal policies to run up relatively huge deficits for no good reason. They don't believe in Keynesian counter-cyclical policy, they believe instead in tooth fairy money grows on trees tax cuts solve everything bullshit. They don't even really believe that, they know it is bullshit too (or at least some of them know it is bullshit, the rest are simply idiots.) Instead they lie to the public, promising them that they don't have to pay taxes, promising them tax cuts that get delivered only to the rich, promising them that everything will be just jolly if the rich get richer and richer and richer 'cause it will be good for bidness, when what they are really trying to do is kill social security and medicaid by drowning the federal government in debt and destroying its revenue base.

We don't have to lie. We need to stick to the truth.

[Hannah Bell]

32. I didn't make any statement about spending sprees, that was someone else.

You said Bush's increases weren't the biggest in history "by a long shot".

No, if you include WW2, they're the second biggest.

[Odin2005]

19. The Pukes never had problems with "millitary Keynesianism".

Because it lets them prop up the economy while keeping the money in the hands of their rich buddies.

[havocmom]

21. $ given to corporations that have headquarters in PO Boxes and/or duck taxes,

outsource jobs (which cuts into taxes paid back into Treasury) is not a stimulus, but a robbery. $ given to corporations that dodge taxes AND make war is worse than a robbery.

GOP talking point needs to be met often with the rest of the story of bush/cheney spending; they robbed us, they did not stimulate the economy.

We got nothing but heartache for the money the GOP spent. There are other things we need, as a nation, to buy. And we can but them in ways which will steer the economy out of the nose-dive the GOP put it into.

[kentuck]

23. It stimulated the very top...

and they were wrestling with each other to see what regulations they could do away with so they could accumulate more and more. Soon, they had it all. And the economy collapsed because that is indeed the flaw in capitalism.

[Ganja Ninja]

27. It depends on where and how you spend the money.

You can load pallets of cash on a C130 and pass it out without any record or oversight or you can invest it in hard tangible assets like roads, high-speed rail and other infrastructure project.

You can use the money to bribe the "coalition of the willing" or you can invest the money on the education of the American people.

You can build a pipeline in Iraq, watch it get blown up and rebuilt a half dozen times, or you can build wind & solar power projects here in America.

[mariema]

33. Where IS all the money we spent in Iraq?

You are so right, GN.

When Barney Frank said, “The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq.“ he was speaking truth.

Most of the money spent in Iraq went to a very few contractors who did not put any of it back into the US economy.

It certainly wasn’t spent on our troops or their families.

It wasn’t spent on bombs and bullets and body armor. If we had used hundreds of billions of dollars worth of munitions in Iraq there wouldn’t be much of Iraq left.

It wasn’t spent on reconstruction; for the money spent I bet every Iraqi family could have had a new house.

See: "Iraq reconstruction history details waste, failures"
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/02/iraq.reconstruction/index.html

All that money went somewhere, probably into some off shore accounts, because it sure didn’t stimulate the US economy.

[madokie]

28. That was the wrong kind of spending though

giving rich people more riches won't do anything for you or me. in fact since the tendency is to want more as one aquires more it would be counter productive to a solution.

[NNN0LHI]

31. This should answer your question

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/30/americans-income-doubled-bush/

400 richest Americans’ incomes doubled under Bush.

Bloomberg reports that, according to recently released IRS data, “the average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a third to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration and their average income doubled to $263.3 million.” Much of their income came from capital gains resulting from the Bush tax cuts:

The drop from 2001’s tax rate of 22.9 percent was due largely to ex-President George W. Bush’s push to cut tax rates on most capital gains to 15 percent in 2003.

Capital gains made up 63 percent of the richest 400 Americans’ adjusted gross income in 2006, or a combined $66.1 billion, according to the data. In all, the 400 wealthiest Americans reported a combined $105.3 billion of adjusted gross income in 2006, the most recent year for which the IRS has data.

The Wonk Room has noted how “the conservative approach of putting big corporations and the very wealthy ahead of the middle class has failed to create prosperity that can be shared by all Americans.”