The European Debt Crisis and the Euro - Page 62

On February 10 2012 01:05 Hider wrote:


Ive read much keynesian (nonsense). But facts are facts. Just take that article for the facts.



I think someone has made you very confused :O.
Where have you read about this.

In short, it was capitalism that finally ended the Great Depression, not FDR's hair-brained cartel, wage-increasing, unionizing, and welfare state expanding policies.

This book has several things going for it, but objectivity and balance are not among them. DiLorenzo makes no pretense of trying to present evidence on both sides of historical debates, a failure that some scholars argued marred his previous book, The Real Lincoln (See Thomas Krannawitter, "Dishonest About Abe, Spring 2002), an all-out condemnation of the 16th president. Much of the scholarly literature is ignored. He does little or no original research, but superbly describes the work of a select number of other scholars.

While errors are inevitable in a book-length treatise, the number in this volume is high, ammunition for detractors who will argue that this is nothing but a polemic. For example, DiLorenzo implies that Ohio tried to tax the First Bank of the United States out of existence in 1819, when in fact that bank's charter had expired years earlier and had been replaced in 1816 by the Second Bank of the United States. He claims the Sugar Act (1764) "levied higher taxes on sugar imports." Actually, the Sugar Act lowered taxes, but provided for rigid enforcement, heretofore lacking. DiLorenzo speaks about "economic historians Robert Gray and James Peterson," when really talking about Ralph Gray and John Peterson, neither of whom was an economic historian (although they wrote a textbook in the 1960s).

Sometimes DiLorenzo stretches the truth to make a point. He says that "progress against poverty in American stopped and reversed itself at precisely the moment when the federal government declared 'war' on it." Strictly speaking, this is incorrect. The poverty rate fell significantly in the first nine years after the War on Poverty was declared (from 19% in 1964 to 11.1% in 1973). It would have been correct to say, "Poverty rates had fallen sharply before the War on Poverty was declared, but stopped falling within a decade of the war's declaration— and even today are higher than three decades ago." DiLorenzo's point is valid that the War on Poverty was a failure in the long run, but the factual misstatements expose the entire argument to discredit.

One more example should suffice. Speaking of occupational injuries, DiLorenzo asserts that "they have not gone down since the creation of OSHA." That is dubious, to say the least. Statistics are distorted by changing notions of what an injury is, but my reading of the data is that decline has continued since OSHA's creation. Occupational fatalities (on which there are no definitional difficulties) are clearly down sharply over the last three decades. Still, DiLorenzo is more right than wrong. While occupational safety has improved, most of the improvement reflects changes in the nature of work (e.g., reductions in dangerous mining and factory employment), and is merely a continuation of improvements observed before OSHA was created. There is little evidence that OSHA has accelerated the downward trend. Yet, by denying the existence of such a trend, DiLorenzo reduces his credibility.

On February 10 2012 04:27 Hider wrote:


It actually mentions the politics (non-laizzesfaire) of Roosevelt. They were analyzed by keynesians economists. I never actually said that article prooved anything except that the great depression wasn't the fail of free markets. So take it for the facts, and ignore your bias (seirsouly dude, i never recommended any book. check what i wrote lol, and now your reviewing a book which mentions fallacies that has no relevance to anything in this debate).

Investment = Consumption short-term doesn't make any sense. What you may have wanted to say was that consumptions drives investments (?). But why should they be equal short-term?

And why is that even relevant? If Greece is spending more than what they can get in from revenues, how can more investments help them? Who should finance those investments?

Investments can come from 2 sources. IN a free market investmenings comes from savings. In a manipulated market, investmentings can come from "printed money". What is the solution? And investments are mostly seen as a long-term cure, if greeces problems are short term (?), why would increased investments help them to finance their debt?