My econ professor at UofW was (Dr. Ellison) an aide to Keynes when he drafted parts of the Marshal Plan. Some inciteful stuff. Basicly the Cold War was a battle of who could out spend whom with upfront production and armament placements.... had the Soviets not lost in Afghanistan and the world understood how weak they were against an intenched untrained ethnic insurgent force.... we probably would have been in a deficit siphon a decade earlier. And now that China knows that we are in the same position the Soviets were twenty years ago, the tables have shifted again.
Posted on Wednesday, November 03, 2010 - 10:38 am:
for the rest of us dumbies...... economics From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search Syndicalism · Third Way
Keynesian economics (pronounced /ˈkeɪnziən/, also called Keynesianism and Keynesian theory) is a macroeconomic theory based on the ideas of 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.[1] The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936; the interpretations of Keynes are contentious, and several schools of thought claim his legacy.
Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy—predominantly private sector, but with a large role of government and public sector—and served as the economic model during the latter part of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war economic expansion (1945–1973), though it lost some influence following the stagflation of the 1970s. The advent of the global financial crisis in 2007 has caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. The former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former President of the United States George W. Bush, President of the United States Barack Obama, and other world leaders have used Keynesian economics through government stimulus programs to attempt to assist the economic state of their countries.[2]
Posted on Wednesday, November 03, 2010 - 02:26 pm:
The big basis of it is fundamental fiscal responsibility. Say that the government allocates itself from the IRS to another arm say the NEA 100k for the budget year. You know they are going to spend every penny of it, and at somepoint come back and say that it wasnt enough. Now give money to a family or a business, and you cant guarantee the same response, they may reinvest some, may save some, may spend some, pay off some bills, ... but there would not be a guaranteed path to spending that you do with the govt. So the private sector is deemed 'less efficient' than government.
and know you see why they would fund squirrel highways in Arizona rather than, pay down the deficit, cut government expansion, tackle immigration....yadda yadda yadda. but hey, we have the best squirrel infrastructure in the world. We're #1!