With all due respect that's because you haven't read more on the subject. Lord Keynes himself is quoted in Rothbard's book as approving of the United States government's response to the crisis. The notion that depressions are caused by a fall in aggregate demand is looking totally at the symptoms of the crisis and not the causes. Rothbard might be one person but he's not a minor figure in 20th century economics by any means. He's not really on the level of Hayek, Friedman, Keynes, or Mises in terms of influence but he's no joke either.
Hoover was the main force in the Harding administration to respond to the crisis of 1920-21 which Harding wisely ignored. The contraction in the economy was very severe but we recovered quickly and no one remembers it--except Austrian economists like Rothbard.
And considering the lengths Roosevelt was willing to go to I'm not surprised Hoover didn't like all of The New Deal. I'm not sure Hoover or anyone else saw the seizing of all gold coming. I'm not sure why history forgives him for that act of theft.
You were doing awesome until "seizing of all gold" -- obviously had a viewpoint but were giving credence to other viewpoints as well.. then that doozy. History forgives him because he ended the depression, won WWII and not everyone agrees with you about abolishing the gold standard being equivalent to quote "seizing of all gold".
Gold standard and gold seizure are two different things.
Executive Order 6102 required U.S. citizens to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve, in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, as amended on March 9, 1933, violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 ($166,640 if adjusted for inflation as of 2008) or up to ten years in prison, or both.
First, in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the U.S. Government, under the Gold Confiscation Act, confiscated gold money from its citizens and replaced it with paper Federal Reserve Notes. It became illegal for individuals to own gold, except for small quantities that coin collectors and dental practitioners could hold. This alone eliminated the public’s capacity to hold government inflation of the money supply in check; they could no longer redeem inflated paper money for gold.
I don't know when exactly it ended but I'm quite certain there was little time to continue experimenting with socialist schemes when one is under attack. Industry needed to be able to function in order to produce everything required to win.
And, yes, war is NOT good for the economy or anything else, other than repelling invaders. When all your shit's blown up, you ain't got shit.
I figure that without the wars of the 20th century, we'd all have twice as much wealth, if not more.
Well, yes and no. The position the US found itself in after WW2 was that all its rivals (Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan) had been devastated, and all its factories were fully intact and geared up for mass production. Not such a big leap from tanks to construction machinery, jeeps to cars, bombers to airliners. The Marshall plan was about kickstarting export markets, not altruism.
So on the one hand, you are right, war is a destroyer of wealth. But on the other hand, the US benefitted enormously from it. The net effect was to concentrate wealth that would have existed in territories of its rivals to it.
We are told the Marshall Plan worked wonders. But interestingly, two countries that were both enemies ended up with very successful economies. And both were bombed pretty hard at the end of the war.
Which makes me think that a nation's culture and the freedom its citizens have to take risks and benefit from doing so are more important than handouts. But you could probably guess I was already pretty biased in that direction.
Not to mention twice (or much more) as many people. Oscar Schindler saved over 1,100 Jews from death, and there's over 5,000 or 6,000 descendants of those survivors today. Can't remember the figures exactly, but it's a lot. And of course, with more people, markets are bigger, potential workforce is bigger, which leads to more wealth, which dovetails nicely with your point about wealth.
Comments
With all due respect that's because you haven't read more on the subject. Lord Keynes himself is quoted in Rothbard's book as approving of the United States government's response to the crisis. The notion that depressions are caused by a fall in aggregate demand is looking totally at the symptoms of the crisis and not the causes. Rothbard might be one person but he's not a minor figure in 20th century economics by any means. He's not really on the level of Hayek, Friedman, Keynes, or Mises in terms of influence but he's no joke either.
Hoover was the main force in the Harding administration to respond to the crisis of 1920-21 which Harding wisely ignored. The contraction in the economy was very severe but we recovered quickly and no one remembers it--except Austrian economists like Rothbard.
And considering the lengths Roosevelt was willing to go to I'm not surprised Hoover didn't like all of The New Deal. I'm not sure Hoover or anyone else saw the seizing of all gold coming. I'm not sure why history forgives him for that act of theft.
You were doing awesome until "seizing of all gold" -- obviously had a viewpoint but were giving credence to other viewpoints as well.. then that doozy. History forgives him because he ended the depression, won WWII and not everyone agrees with you about abolishing the gold standard being equivalent to quote "seizing of all gold".
Gold standard and gold seizure are two different things.
Executive Order 6102 required U.S. citizens to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve, in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, as amended on March 9, 1933, violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 ($166,640 if adjusted for inflation as of 2008) or up to ten years in prison, or both.
[Edit: steveplace beat me to it. I'll leave this comment around for the reference.]
Abolishing the gold standard is not "equivalent" to "seizing of all gold". Both things just happened concurrently:
http://www.greatdepressiononline.com/gold-and-the-great-depr...
First, in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the U.S. Government, under the Gold Confiscation Act, confiscated gold money from its citizens and replaced it with paper Federal Reserve Notes. It became illegal for individuals to own gold, except for small quantities that coin collectors and dental practitioners could hold. This alone eliminated the public’s capacity to hold government inflation of the money supply in check; they could no longer redeem inflated paper money for gold.
For the record, the great depression didn't end until after WW2.
War productions does not make prosperous societies simply because the allocation of resource is redirected to military purpose, not to civilian needs.
I don't know when exactly it ended but I'm quite certain there was little time to continue experimenting with socialist schemes when one is under attack. Industry needed to be able to function in order to produce everything required to win.
And, yes, war is NOT good for the economy or anything else, other than repelling invaders. When all your shit's blown up, you ain't got shit.
I figure that without the wars of the 20th century, we'd all have twice as much wealth, if not more.
Well, yes and no. The position the US found itself in after WW2 was that all its rivals (Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan) had been devastated, and all its factories were fully intact and geared up for mass production. Not such a big leap from tanks to construction machinery, jeeps to cars, bombers to airliners. The Marshall plan was about kickstarting export markets, not altruism.
So on the one hand, you are right, war is a destroyer of wealth. But on the other hand, the US benefitted enormously from it. The net effect was to concentrate wealth that would have existed in territories of its rivals to it.
Yes, one is better off when you win.
We are told the Marshall Plan worked wonders. But interestingly, two countries that were both enemies ended up with very successful economies. And both were bombed pretty hard at the end of the war.
Which makes me think that a nation's culture and the freedom its citizens have to take risks and benefit from doing so are more important than handouts. But you could probably guess I was already pretty biased in that direction.
Not to mention twice (or much more) as many people. Oscar Schindler saved over 1,100 Jews from death, and there's over 5,000 or 6,000 descendants of those survivors today. Can't remember the figures exactly, but it's a lot. And of course, with more people, markets are bigger, potential workforce is bigger, which leads to more wealth, which dovetails nicely with your point about wealth.
And for whatever reason, rising wealth seems to correlate with a decline in birthrates.
Killing people isn't the only thing that keeps a population in check.
Huh? The entire war-production system was a socialist scheme. Who was buying all the goods?