| vlad321 said: The only impairment in history I have is that I thought Carter was also in the early 80s, causing the staglfation. Everything else stands. You cherry-pick and deflect matters in a very artful and tactful manner though. I love how you just dismiss a very simple economic fact like the one wehre every industrialized nation was completely in ruins by the end of WWII, except for the US which was literally untouched. Then you try to play it off to a, relatively, minor fact for the times. Yes, being dominant currency is important, but it pales in comparison to being the only supplier of many goods. I also did not bring up car manufacturers, I rbought up the workers who worked on the assembly lines in factories, which ended up getting kicked out once other nations began to be competative again and US businesses realized they needed to pay them less and lay them off to remain profitable. I also need to point out that Reagan's deregulation is not what fixed stagflation, is was the ridiculous amount of money he spent on constructing bombs. As I mentioned earlier, there is no difference between making bombs and building roads or waging an army. What deregulation did was cause a nuclear meltdown over in Japan a few months ago, which I am sure you have heard of, among many other atrocities from businesses. As it stands if you look at the best living and worst living (within reason, obviously we don't count Ghana and Haiti, etc.) you will notice that the countries with the lower living conditions have less debt as % of GDP, meanwhile the ones with the best living conditions are the ones that have the obscene amounts of debt. This trend is almost without fail. Basically, well being is directly linked to the amount debt a country has and the US has a lot of it. |
Can you provide any evidence from any economist that believes that stagflation was fixed by Reagan's military budget?
As for the economic argument about WW2: I will not deny that having most of Europe in ruins was advantageous for the US, but to argue that is the only reason America has done well for the past ~50 years is incredible. What about the periods before WW2?
Compare the data:
- http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_per_cap_in_190-economy-gdp-per-capita-1900
- http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_per_cap_in_195-economy-gdp-per-capita-1950
What was capitalism in America like pre-WW2? If you look at the data, America's GDP per capita was still incredible in 1900 without any world wars destroying any industrial capacity in Europe. So what am I looking for, exactly?
Finally, if you are arguing that debt is good, shouldn't you be praising Reagan, Bush and Obama?
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
