Of course, it was a social program. Millions of people got the benefits, and the benefits were engineered to encourage them to buy homes and get educations. It was remarkably successful in creating an educated middle class that could work in the growing corporations of the era.

Just because you liked it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a social program. You’re just gonna have to admit that even you like the government sometimes!

bluecon said:

Geez Pch, we are living through the actual Keynesian stimulus government boondoggle spending plan. No need to look at ancient history. The stimulus plan has already been in effect for almost a year. Trillions already gone and Obama about to hugely increase it. So far all that stimulus has been spent and the economy continues to worsen.

It is like trying to put out a gasoline fire by pouring more gas on it. The Keynesian stuff never works. The old New Deal failed and the new New deal will also fail.

Pch said:
“The key to government spending is that it has to go into the right places. If it goes only into useless projects that put a lot of money into the hands of very few people, then the money goes into a hole and accomplishes very little. If it ultimately gets spent by businesses and consumers and cycled many times through the economy, then it did its job.”

As Michael Lewis points out, the “stimulus” offered so far has been sat on by the banks. If you read the articles I posted bluecon, you would not say that one cent of TARP can be defined as stimulus.

Now then, like it or not, we are entering a phase of massive deficit spending (not that the Bush administration wasn’t all about that as well). The question is one of economic focus, and its going to shift quite a bit. Bush and co entrusted another 700 billion plus to the very people who….well, I am not going to continue that thought.

With regard to Paul Krugman, again it is important to read what he has to say. He makes arguments backed by charts and statistics, and along with some other economic historians addresses two significant points about FDR’s policies. One, government intervention was neither as deep nor aggressive as was required to stem the depression. But two, FDR had the right idea.

Now I am not going to rehash all of Krugman’s arguments, but I am going to say that an outright dismissal of well documented, highly structured arguments tells me you haven’t read his ideas. It’s a shame, but you are about to benefit from them in any event.

The GI Bill was a massive social program. There was low unemployment due to the war, and a large transfer payment program called Social Security.

The government spending caused by the war spurred business investment and employment. The spending had been unprecedented, and required large amounts of debt to pay for it. When soldiers returned from the war, they bought houses and cars and went to work in the massive corporations funded by the war.

The key to government spending is that it has to go into the right places. If it goes only into useless projects that put a lot of money into the hands of very few people, then the money goes into a hole and accomplishes very little. If it ultimately gets spent by businesses and consumers and cycled many times through the economy, then it did its job.

Economists will argue the spending thing over and over forever because even if one side could make a much better argument, the other side would never let them win.

Couldn’t it all just be that at the end of the war we had the most efficient and productive economy in the world combined with a government that spent next to nothing on transfer payments and social programs? Couldn’t it be that the amount of trust and pride of Americans kept a lot of the friction out of the market? Many of these things tend to get ignored as if all that spending happened in a vacuum. It’s not just government investment is always good or bad, but actually whether it is good or bad. I define government spending as either necessary (little of it today other than social security because it was paid for, not just promised) or not. Then, of the unnecessary stuff, there is stuff that works for various reasons. So long as we get value for the money, and it doesn’t interfere with the market creating it’s own value, then it’s all okay with me.

That was obviously my point. The war drove the government to pursue a debt-driven fiscal stimulus that was far, far greater than even FDR thought they had needed.

Those companies had one customer — the government. The government needed to borrow massive amounts of money to pay for the equipment. Had they not borrowed the money, there would have been no boom driven by government spending, and those weapons would have not been built. This should be really obvious, they weren’t building P-51’s to sell them to Uruguay or the Good Humor Man.

Had the New Deal spent that kind of money in the mid-30’s, the results would have occurred that much sooner. FDR was in uncharted territory and undershot, attempting to turn off some of the programs before the time to wind them down was right.

The lessons have been learned. The stimulus is coming on harder and faster than it did during the FDR presidency. You’re about to witness the financial equivalent of WWII, and the benefits won’t be experienced overnight.

Without WWII there would’ve been no WAR Bonds.

I was a sub-prime mortgage banker for a couple months in 2005, before it made me sick, and there is a big distinction between a modular home and a manufactured home.

With regard to financing there is no difference between modular homes (not on a trailer frame, consisting of many pre-fabricated pieces) and traditional on-site construction.

There is, however, a difference between financing traditional construction and manufactured homes (single and double wide trailers); they are much more difficult to finance. Amusingly, the VIN is part of the mortgage application for a manufactured house, so I would have to ask people to find the VIN on their houses.

Er, who do you think paid for that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8H00RPk948

Debt funded expenditures didn’t get us out of the Great Depression. The huge manfucaturer upswing that the United States went through to update its military for WWII is what saved the economy. At the time most of the military techonology of the U.S. was from WWI. All FDR did was create a huge amount of debt and inflation and WWII saved his ass. The Japanese tried something similar to the New Deal in the 90s and it didn’t work, all it did was create massive debt. I sugggest you read ‘America’s Great Depression’ by Murray N. Rothbard

@bluecon: Even if WWIII started tomorrow, we wouldn’t have the manufacturing upswing that we had in WWII not to mention the U.S. is no longer even capable of manufacturing on that scale.

As far as motor homes and travel trailers are concerned, I’d be surprised if most people who want one for the flexibility it gives don’t already have it. You can stay in a lot of nice motels for what one of ‘em costs.

It is like trying to put out a gasoline fire by pouring more gas on it. The Keynesian stuff never works. The old New Deal failed and the new New deal will also fail.

Warren Buffett bought the Recreational Vehicle business; Coachmen kept the pre-fab business.

Your marketing idea is already being tried by a number of companies:

http://www.slate.com/id/2171842/

But then I’m not Warren Buffett, either.

It was an experiment that didn’t go far enough, fast enough. But it was better than the Hoover alternative.

There is an abundance of post-1929 history that demonstrates that well-managed stimulus programs do work, just so long as the debt is ultimately repaid once the economy is restored. In addition, we have plenty of pre-1929 experiences that show that revisionist conservatism doesn’t work, because contraction feeds a downward spiral.

You can either read the history and draw a rational conclusion based upon it, or else you can rewrite it based upon an ideological bias. Doing the latter requires ignoring most of it, which leads me to believe that it may not be such a good idea.

Kinda like the Granny Clampett cure for the common cold. Drink this and go to bed for a week and you will be cured.

Paul Krugman has been working hard to debunk O, let’s call them myth-conceptions even if puns are lazy writing.

Since he is the most prolific economist likely to hold some sway with the Obama administration, it makes sense to read his blog daily, and all of his New York Times articles. He is deliberate, persuasive, and most importantly influential. He is calling for multi-trillion dollar stimulus packages over the course of the Obama administration, and interestingly enough, he argues that somewhat inefficient use of the money will have positive effects.

As a side note, Michael Lewis, of Liar’s poker fame has a pair of articles in the NYT that are both worth a read. I urge everyone to read them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhorn.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhornb.html?pagewanted=all

pot, kettle, black.