You're saying the president was counting on the deaths to fix the economy?

:har::up:

Although I don't know if we could afford Hurricanes...it might come down to:

http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseu...ges/Pup-02.jpg

Why would you even suggest that?

I'm saying that the deaths DID help stop the Depression be reducing the % unemployed.

Just read your post that way and had to ask.

But wouldn't the reduction in unemployed by death be more than counterbalanced by the maimed and insane who were unable to work but entitled and deserving of government welfare support plus of course all the widows and orphans the government gets left supporting.
So your reduce the unemployment idea of having some potential workers removed from life involves a scheme which puts more potential workers and many more women and kids on government handouts for what in efect is a minimal reduction in workforce coupled with huge government expenditure followed by outrageous government expenditure.

WW2 put literally everyone to work.

The great Depression was deflationary, and incredibly uncertain, and have very very high unemployment (20%+).

WW2 instantly employed everyone. They were either in the military, or working in war industry. So many were employed that even women had to work.

Throwing money at the problem, and even civilian work programs didn't cut it since they simply could not hire the huge volume that WAR demanded.

So we have millions instantly employed who were not, then when the war was over, not all those millions came home. As it was, there were some problems post-war WRT jobs, but it was better than had there been an extra 400,000 looking for work. hence the deaths helped employment a little (the biggest factor was certainly all the "hiring" by the military).

So it was a huge government workfare scheme?
Does your countries national debt growths match these workfare schemes?

Nah, it was just dumb luck on FDR's part that Hitler found a good petri dish to start his form of slime mold in :)

(I'm sure there are "FDR knew about PH before hand" whack-jobs here, but I'm not one of them)

Surely under your economic vision germany in the 20s and 30s with its population losses in WWI should have been immune from unemployment and economic collapse.

Unless of course your approach makes very little sense at all especially given the national cost of conflicts and the huge long running government outlays which follow its end.

Immediately after ww1, Germany went into a period of inflation as we discussed above—partly because they had low unemployment (plenty of money to spend, part of "velocity" in mookie's terminology). The unemployment in the US helped drive deflationary pressure (little or no spending).

What are you arguing, that employment has nothing to do with inflation or deflation? That's an argument you can get into with mookie I suppose. Presumably there is a camp that maintains that inflation is entirely on the monetary supply side, vs one that uses human factors (confidence, spending etc).

I'm suggesting that the massive change in the US from 20-something % unemployment to 0% unemployment (with job growth on top of that) was a major factor in ending the US Depression. Economics, of course, is not even a science, so there are plenty of other factors to go around. But almost everyone going to work, literally overnight, was a damn good start.

No I am arguing that your views make little sense if any
Look again at what you wrote especially about deaths in WW2 fixing 1930s unemployment.


Though it could in a sense be said that your view is that the only way for a downward spiral to be stopped is by the government throwing huge amounts of money away and building a massive perpetual cycle of debt that can never be repaid

Unemployment in the US was at al all time high in the 1930s.

WW2 employed virtually everyone, then upon war's end, when all those "instantly" employed soldiers returned home, the impact of their return on post-war unemployment was mitigated by the fact that fewer of these workers returned than left by several hundred thousand.

Did the "hiring" by the military help end the cycle of FDR's Depression? Without question. Did the fact that fewer returned than left have any measurable impact on post-war employment statistics? Yes, it did.

So what your current president should do to fix the mess is put almost all the population into government employment and cull a proportion of them, then later allow those not culled to work to pay a government debt that can never be repaid