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Originally Posted by cardiacpaul
are you suggesting that some gov't body should have a check off sheet that would determine whether I'm smart enough to manage my own money or not? thats scary.
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No, but given the fly-by nature of this and other posts I put up when I should wait until I have the time to write better, I can see why you're asking.
What I meant was that on the way to dismantling this beast, those who are well off will have to take a cut in their SS payments. Otherwise, this thing will never go away.
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Ragnar: It was constructed in defiance of what was politically possible, by a tyrant who sought alleviate a mess that was created by the principles he enacted to counter it.
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CP:
Partially true.
With the US In a deep depression, the industrial revolution gearing up, the dynamics of the country were changing. People that had generational family farms were moving to the cities in droves.
As a rural agricultural based economy and lifestyle, families typically had multiple generations living under the same roof. with the moves to the city, that ended (for the most part)
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This is one of the more rational perspective of the Great Depression that floats around. Unfortunately, it's as accurate as the claim that the US was founded by the Pilgrims.
Here's the deal:
Truly free economies don't stall. Specific industries may hit a recession, but barring a massive unforeseen development, truly free economies make no note of the factors offered by CP, or the hundreds of other parallel reasons offered in similar accounts of the GD.
When an open-market stalls, it's
always due to Gov interference.
The huge trigger of the GD was the FedReserve.
After WWI, the UK needed huge amounts of cash to rebuild. SO did many other allies and parts of the US. Since we were far more sane in those days, no politician would dare ask the US people to extend foreign aide/credits.
So what did these people, people who thought it would do the US good to get into WWI, as its people had gotten too comfortable with the good life?
They put pressure on the FedRes to keep interests rates low.
Result?
EZ credit, sound familiar?, and endless speculation were not countered by a commensurate increase in interest rates (what a truly free banking system would have done) leading to a total collapse.
(The FedRes has been a disaster since day one. Letting government set interest rates is only matched on the insanity scale by setting aside the gold standard.)
As for the New Deal:
OLD!
This was taken by FDR and friends, almost world for word, from the Weimar Republic. (The WR, remember, had its roots in striking a compromise between semi-free economy advocates, and Communists who were always resorting to violence to get their way. Same mentality, literally the same movements, came to Chicago and unleashed the union movement here.)
Further, repeated attempts at fixing that disaster by both parties have been shown to have made things worse -- much, much worse.