OMG Valerie Jarrett: Unemployment Stimulates the Economy

[The T]

I have a couple of patients whose unemployment compensation is about to run out. I don't think they see themselves as great stimulants to the economy. I see them being scared shitless about how they will make it once their unemployment compensation is gone.

I mean, really. Other threads talk about the PC police. Claiming that unemployment 'stimulates the economy' is just crass.

That's the argument for UI. People spend all of their UI. Without it, their spending will fall and the economy will suffer.

The argument against UI is that because they are scared, they will look harder to find a job and will accept any job.

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive ones does not stimulate the economy. A different argument is that unemployment insurance tends to keep people out of the labor force.

Softens them up to the ideals of Socialism by design...now you know the reason for the extensions...

 

[Toro]

OK, so you're going with, "Things would have been much worse without it." That is a big fail-o. It is the last refuge of gov't failure.

No, that's not what I said. You are saying, with complete certainty, that you can extrapolate the current trend in unemployment and assume the stimulus had zero effect. That is the first refuge of the unknowing and the ignorant. I don't know if that's true or not. It might be, I don't know. What I do know is that highly partisan and ideological people will accept arguments which reinforce their view and dismiss arguments that do not, regardless if it is really true.

Even the Obama Administration was smarter, saying the stimulus would keep UE under 8% (or whatever the figure was). In fact, with the stimulus UE rose above their own projections of what it would have been without the stimulus, never mind with.

This assumes that economists can consistently and accurately predict the future. In fact, that number came from Christina Romner, who said at the time that it was an estimate and far from certain, and should not be taken only as such. The fact that members of the Obama administration took it with more certainty does not mean the stimulus was a failure. It means those people did not understand the context in which the estimate was set.

Again, UE insurance is either stimulative or it is not stimulative. Theory would predict increased UE with longer UE benefits. Which is exactly what happened. Which part of that is wrong? That theory does not predict that if you reward certain behavior you get more of it? Or that we have not had unprecedented UE benefits? Or that UE is not historically high coming out of a recession? Because all three are demonstrably true.

The theory says UI benefits will be spent and used until someone finds another job. Because unemployed people will have more money to spend, they will spend it, as opposed to having no money, which will not be spent.

It's amusing that people say this is discredited because there are a lot of well respected economists who agree with it. That doesn't mean they are correct but people with far less training and far less understanding and far more politically and ideologically motivated aren't exactly beacons of knowledge on this subject.

 

[Toro]

I have a couple of patients whose unemployment compensation is about to run out. I don't think they see themselves as great stimulants to the economy. I see them being scared shitless about how they will make it once their unemployment compensation is gone.

I mean, really. Other threads talk about the PC police. Claiming that unemployment 'stimulates the economy' is just crass.

That's the argument for UI. People spend all of their UI. Without it, their spending will fall and the economy will suffer.

The argument against UI is that because they are scared, they will look harder to find a job and will accept any job.

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive ones does not stimulate the economy. A different argument is that unemployment insurance tends to keep people out of the labor force.

Yes, that is the argument. It's the same argument.

 

[Bfgrn]

OK, so you're going with, "Things would have been much worse without it." That is a big fail-o. It is the last refuge of gov't failure.
Even the Obama Administration was smarter, saying the stimulus would keep UE under 8% (or whatever the figure was). In fact, with the stimulus UE rose above their own projections of what it would have been without the stimulus, never mind with.
Again, UE insurance is either stimulative or it is not stimulative. Theory would predict increased UE with longer UE benefits. Which is exactly what happened. Which part of that is wrong? That theory does not predict that if you reward certain behavior you get more of it? Or that we have not had unprecedented UE benefits? Or that UE is not historically high coming out of a recession? Because all three are demonstrably true.

What is constantly flawed in right wing regressive dogma is the "if you reward certain behavior you get more of it".

The Obama administration was left with a jobless rate at 3/4 million jobs lost per month and getting worse. WTF would you do asshole? There are 5 unemployed citizens for every 1 job opening. NO ONE lost their job because of anything they did. And NO ONE is going to be satisfied or on easy street on 1/2 or less of what they made while working. And then having to either go without health insurance, or pay through the nose for Cobra.

This is such typical right wing scum talk. You right wing scum believe in only ONE solution: PUNISHMENT.

FUCK YOU!!!

So if you DON'T reward some behavior you WON'T get more of it? In which fucking universe, Einstein?
The Obama Administration inherited an economy bottoming out. UE was the best it ever was in his administration on the day he took office. UE has never recovered to taht point since. Is that despite his actions, or because of them?
It was clearly because of his actions. There is no other explanation. Unless you want to say that gov't cannot influence the economy, which no one believes. We have had the highest rate of joblessness of any recovery. And the highest UE benefits paid. Coincidence? No, I dont think so.
So the administration's approach ahs kept people unemployed, and degraded their employable by keeping them out fo the workforce. If that isn't a big Fuck You to the workingman, I dont know what is.

You REALLY need to stop listening to the sources you are being brainwashed by and join the adult world.

 

[Trajan]

What is constantly flawed in right wing regressive dogma is the "if you reward certain behavior you get more of it".

The Obama administration was left with a jobless rate at 3/4 million jobs lost per month and getting worse. WTF would you do asshole? There are 5 unemployed citizens for every 1 job opening. NO ONE lost their job because of anything they did. And NO ONE is going to be satisfied or on easy street on 1/2 or less of what they made while working. And then having to either go without health insurance, or pay through the nose for Cobra.

This is such typical right wing scum talk. You right wing scum believe in only ONE solution: PUNISHMENT.

FUCK YOU!!!

So if you DON'T reward some behavior you WON'T get more of it? In which fucking universe, Einstein?
The Obama Administration inherited an economy bottoming out. UE was the best it ever was in his administration on the day he took office. UE has never recovered to taht point since. Is that despite his actions, or because of them?
It was clearly because of his actions. There is no other explanation. Unless you want to say that gov't cannot influence the economy, which no one believes. We have had the highest rate of joblessness of any recovery. And the highest UE benefits paid. Coincidence? No, I dont think so.
So the administration's approach ahs kept people unemployed, and degraded their employable by keeping them out fo the workforce. If that isn't a big Fuck You to the workingman, I dont know what is.

You REALLY need to stop listening to the sources you are being brainwashed by and join the adult world.

you want to explain the reason you posted that?

 

[Trajan]

I can see it. But that ain't very good as a selling point IMHO.

True.

thats not the point imho, its a safety net, a temporary payment to help maintain base sustenance, we pay or that is the co. we work for pays into a state pool for UE insurance.

the fed. kicks in too, it has not nor ever has been classified as an economic driver and anyone who is classifying it this way deserves all the derision that they get, becasue they are mischaracterizing the payments to fit a political slant.

anything is always better than nothing when ti comes to money, we know this.

BUT it is a transfer payment and those funds in the state UE bucket have been exhausted long ago, meaning its being funded via present tax dollars taken in ( and raising UE tax on biz) , which means something else is going without OR they are borrowing it.....thats why Transfer payments are a net loss and always have been to the economy at large.

OK, so you're going with, "Things would have been much worse without it." That is a big fail-o. It is the last refuge of gov't failure.

No, that's not what I said. You are saying, with complete certainty, that you can extrapolate the current trend in unemployment and assume the stimulus had zero effect. That is the first refuge of the unknowing and the ignorant. I don't know if that's true or not. It might be, I don't know. What I do know is that highly partisan and ideological people will accept arguments which reinforce their view and dismiss arguments that do not, regardless if it is really true.

Even the Obama Administration was smarter, saying the stimulus would keep UE under 8% (or whatever the figure was). In fact, with the stimulus UE rose above their own projections of what it would have been without the stimulus, never mind with.

This assumes that economists can consistently and accurately predict the future. In fact, that number came from Christina Romner, who said at the time that it was an estimate and far from certain, and should not be taken only as such. The fact that members of the Obama administration took it with more certainty does not mean the stimulus was a failure. It means those people did not understand the context in which the estimate was set.

Again, UE insurance is either stimulative or it is not stimulative. Theory would predict increased UE with longer UE benefits. Which is exactly what happened. Which part of that is wrong? That theory does not predict that if you reward certain behavior you get more of it? Or that we have not had unprecedented UE benefits? Or that UE is not historically high coming out of a recession? Because all three are demonstrably true.

The theory says UI benefits will be spent and used until someone finds another job. Because unemployed people will have more money to spend, they will spend it, as opposed to having no money, which will not be spent.

It's amusing that people say this is discredited because there are a lot of well respected economists who agree with it. That doesn't mean they are correct but people with far less training and far less understanding and far more politically and ideologically motivated aren't exactly beacons of knowledge on this subject.

the exchange above your quote is what I said earlier......this is my reasoning, and frankly Valerie or pelosi are dopes for making such a case, period.

 

[Sunshine]

I have a couple of patients whose unemployment compensation is about to run out. I don't think they see themselves as great stimulants to the economy. I see them being scared shitless about how they will make it once their unemployment compensation is gone.

I mean, really. Other threads talk about the PC police. Claiming that unemployment 'stimulates the economy' is just crass.

That's the argument for UI. People spend all of their UI. Without it, their spending will fall and the economy will suffer.

The argument against UI is that because they are scared, they will look harder to find a job and will accept any job.

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive ones does not stimulate the economy. A different argument is that unemployment insurance tends to keep people out of the labor force.

I don't believe that. People who work are accustomed to living above subsistence level. That is all unemployment is about. subsistence. Having been my family's sole breadwinner, I can say that I would not have been happy to live on the unemployment compensation. I liked having money so my children could participate in school activities, so that we could drive an up to date car, live in a nice house, and wear good clothes. Just because a person on unemployment spends it all doesn't mean that it is contributing to the economy in any meaningful way. To have that breadwinner able to provide the things listed above for their family contributes to the economy in a meaningful way.

Moreover, the people I know who have had to live on unemployment compensation have had to spend a considerable chunk of their savings. Granted we are not a savings oriented society. But it is not good for the health of the nation's economy for most of her workers to be living hand to mouth.

Thank God I'm a nurse. There are never enough people to fill the jobs in that field.

 

[Sunshine]

.....the exchange above your quote is what I said earlier......this is my reasoning, and frankly Valerie or pelosi are dopes for making such a case, period.

I agree. And they are insensitive clods. Anyone is who think that a person who has been a family breadwinner would be happy living at subsistence level and not working. We work for a reason. Because we like the lifestyle working gives us. DUH!

 

[Trajan]

.....the exchange above your quote is what I said earlier......this is my reasoning, and frankly Valerie or pelosi are dopes for making such a case, period.

I agree. And they are insensitive clods. Anyone is who think that a person who has been a family breadwinner would be happy living at subsistence level and not working. We work for a reason. Because we like the lifestyle working gives us. DUH!

Anyone is who think that a person who has been a family breadwinner would be happy living at subsistence level and not working.

see, now you're being insensitive...its perfectly fine to find every reason in the book to get on the state/federal tit, as it has already been made an offense to take offense when we have to sppt. folks who have children out of wedlock , drop out of high school, etc etc ....Oh, and apparently the disability claims/roles have exploded over the last 3 years, gee who didn't see that coming?

wait, soon there will be those who will create a bill where in the stress due to looking and lack of a job over a certain amount of time will qualify someone for disability...you heard it here first.

 

[Foxfyre]

That's the argument for UI. People spend all of their UI. Without it, their spending will fall and the economy will suffer.

The argument against UI is that because they are scared, they will look harder to find a job and will accept any job.

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive ones does not stimulate the economy. A different argument is that unemployment insurance tends to keep people out of the labor force.

I don't believe that. People who work are accustomed to living above subsistence level. That is all unemployment is about. subsistence. Having been my family's sole breadwinner, I can say that I would not have been happy to live on the unemployment compensation. I liked having money so my children could participate in school activities, so that we could drive an up to date car, live in a nice house, and wear good clothes. Just because a person on unemployment spends it all doesn't mean that it is contributing to the economy in any meaningful way. To have that breadwinner able to provide the things listed above for their family contributes to the economy in a meaningful way.

Moreover, the people I know who have had to live on unemployment compensation have had to spend a considerable chunk of their savings. Granted we are not a savings oriented society. But it is not good for the health of the nation's economy for most of her workers to be living hand to mouth.

Thank God I'm a nurse. There are never enough people to fill the jobs in that field.

The wages that you earn to support your family and then spend are a positive for the economy as you are trading the value of your wages for what you receive and what you invest or spent increases the amount of money in the economy. Generally the rule of thumb is that free enterprise dollars earned via wages or sale of products and services and then spent or reinvested can add to the GDP up to $5.00 or so before everything evens out.

Government money can't do that because it is draining money from the economy with every dollar it pays out.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Really? Automatic stabilizers such as UI are taught in Macroeconomics 101. It may or may not be correct but it is very well known as a concept to every economics student.

And the test of whether or not it is stimulative is empirical, not some narrow-minded dogma.

I was taught a lot of crap that's either not true or just a lie, they also teach that FDR was "Great" too, that the New Deal rescued us from the Great Depression and that's the opposite of true and accurate.

Harding, Coolidge and Mellon addressed a bad economy by letting assets, liabilities and labor reprice and in 18 months UI went from 12% to 4%, that's what I call stimulus.

Hoover and FDR addressed a bad economy with Government spending, programs and higher taxes and we got an economy worse than the 7 Biblical Lean Years.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

I knew you'd join the non-thinking eventually, you have almost perfect State Defense response, I had hope you'd hold out longer than 45 seconds.

Remember this later when Val Jarett tells you that eating the brains of the living stimulates the economy

empiricism > ideology

You should try it some day.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

 

[tinydancer]

.....the exchange above your quote is what I said earlier......this is my reasoning, and frankly Valerie or pelosi are dopes for making such a case, period.

I agree. And they are insensitive clods. Anyone is who think that a person who has been a family breadwinner would be happy living at subsistence level and not working. We work for a reason. Because we like the lifestyle working gives us. DUH!

The saddest point though is the mentality that the dollars never run out. I've watched people go down over this.

Then people seem to go into a catatonic state. The money is gone. It's over.

 

[Sunshine]

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive ones does not stimulate the economy. A different argument is that unemployment insurance tends to keep people out of the labor force.

I don't believe that. People who work are accustomed to living above subsistence level. That is all unemployment is about. subsistence. Having been my family's sole breadwinner, I can say that I would not have been happy to live on the unemployment compensation. I liked having money so my children could participate in school activities, so that we could drive an up to date car, live in a nice house, and wear good clothes. Just because a person on unemployment spends it all doesn't mean that it is contributing to the economy in any meaningful way. To have that breadwinner able to provide the things listed above for their family contributes to the economy in a meaningful way.

Moreover, the people I know who have had to live on unemployment compensation have had to spend a considerable chunk of their savings. Granted we are not a savings oriented society. But it is not good for the health of the nation's economy for most of her workers to be living hand to mouth.

Thank God I'm a nurse. There are never enough people to fill the jobs in that field.

The wages that you earn to support your family and then spend are a positive for the economy as you are trading the value of your wages for what you receive and what you invest or spent increases the amount of money in the economy. Generally the rule of thumb is that free enterprise dollars earned via wages or sale of products and services and then spent or reinvested can add to the GDP up to $5.00 or so before everything evens out.

Government money can't do that because it is draining money from the economy with every dollar it pays out.

Yes, it's an ever shortening downward spiral.

 

[Bfgrn]

I was taught a lot of crap that's either not true or just a lie, they also teach that FDR was "Great" too, that the New Deal rescued us from the Great Depression and that's the opposite of true and accurate.

Harding, Coolidge and Mellon addressed a bad economy by letting assets, liabilities and labor reprice and in 18 months UI went from 12% to 4%, that's what I call stimulus.

Hoover and FDR addressed a bad economy with Government spending, programs and higher taxes and we got an economy worse than the 7 Biblical Lean Years.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

I knew you'd join the non-thinking eventually, you have almost perfect State Defense response, I had hope you'd hold out longer than 45 seconds.

Remember this later when Val Jarett tells you that eating the brains of the living stimulates the economy

empiricism > ideology

You should try it some day.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

I can't hear you Frank...speak up.

Here's my answer Frank...STAY THE COURSE! We could spend $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute in Iraq extinguishing human life. So I say at least double it to save American families. How long? As LONG as it fucking takes. There is ONE job for every FIVE unemployed.

So Obama and Congress should do what FDR did. Invest in Americans, put them to work, get something positive for that investment and give the unemployed the dignity of work and contribution to the Great Republic. Start a new WPA, CCC and pubic works program. During the Great Depression the government hired about 60 per cent of the unemployed in public works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh, the Montana state capitol, much of the Chicago lakefront, New York's Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge complex, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown.

It also built or renovated 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields. And it employed 50,000 teachers, rebuilt the country's entire rural school system, and hired 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors and painters, including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

In other words, millions of men and women earned a living wage and self-respect and contributed mightily to the national infrastructure.


If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
President John F. Kennedy

 

[Toro]

I was taught a lot of crap that's either not true or just a lie, they also teach that FDR was "Great" too, that the New Deal rescued us from the Great Depression and that's the opposite of true and accurate.

Harding, Coolidge and Mellon addressed a bad economy by letting assets, liabilities and labor reprice and in 18 months UI went from 12% to 4%, that's what I call stimulus.

Hoover and FDR addressed a bad economy with Government spending, programs and higher taxes and we got an economy worse than the 7 Biblical Lean Years.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

I knew you'd join the non-thinking eventually, you have almost perfect State Defense response, I had hope you'd hold out longer than 45 seconds.

Remember this later when Val Jarett tells you that eating the brains of the living stimulates the economy

empiricism > ideology

You should try it some day.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

Context was never your strong point, eh Frank?

Oh wait, Hoover and FDR caused the Depression.

lol

 

[CrusaderFrank]

empiricism > ideology

You should try it some day.

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

Context was never your strong point, eh Frank?

Oh wait, Hoover and FDR caused the Depression.

lol

The Fed started the decline by shrinking the money supply by 1/3 Hoover and FDR's Soviet style Central planning economy (tax increase, government spending and regulation) gave us an economy worse than the 7 Biblical Lean Years

 

[Bfgrn]

During the height of the FDR Depression, from 1933 to 1940, UI AVERAGED just under 20% and never dipped below 14%, where's the beef? Where's the stimulus doling out those UI checks?

Context was never your strong point, eh Frank?

Oh wait, Hoover and FDR caused the Depression.

lol

The Fed started the decline by shrinking the money supply by 1/3 Hoover and FDR's Soviet style Central planning economy (tax increase, government spending and regulation) gave us an economy worse than the 7 Biblical Lean Years

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Making shit up again Frank. Try some facts instead...

Sorry Frank, FDR and the New Deal were a HUGE success.

Top Five Years for GDP Expansion:

1942, +18.5%
1941, +17.1%
1943, +16.4%
1936, +13.0%
1934, +10.9%

Top Five Years for GDP Contraction:

1932, -13.1%
1946, -10.9%
1930, -8.6%
1931, -6.5%
2009, -3.5%

Unemployment Frank? ...maybe you missed this...

The greatest yearly increase in GDP occurred during the New Deal, AND, the LARGEST DROP IN UNEPLOYMENT in America history occurred during the New Deal...


Census document HS-29 (available in PDF). Quoting directly from Census data, here are the unemployment rates and total number of official unemployed at the beginning and end of the presidential terms since the Great Depression:

ROOSEVELT PRE-WWII NEW DEAL
1932 Unemployment Rate: 23.6% (12.8 million total unemployed)
1940 Unemployment Rate: 14.6% (8.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -9.0
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.7%

ROOSEVELT WWII
1941 Unemployment Rate: 9.9% (5.5 million total unemployed)
1944 Unemployment Rate: 1.2% (670,000 total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -8.7
Total unemployment percentage change: -87.9%

TRUMAN
1945 Unemployment Rate: 1.9% (1.0 million total unemployed)
1952 Unemployment Rate: 3.0% (1.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +1.1
Total unemployment percentage change: +81.0%

EISENHOWER
1953 Unemployment Rate: 2.9% (1.8 million total unemployed)
1960 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (3.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.6%
Total unemployment percentage change: +110.03%

KENNEDY
1961 Unemployment Rate: 6.7% (4.7 million total unemployed)
1963 Unemployment Rate: 5.7% (4.0 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -1.0%
Total unemployment percentage change: -13.6%

JOHNSON
1964 Unemployment Rate: 5.2% (3.7 million total unemployed)
1968 Unemployment Rate: 3.6% (2.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -1.6%
Total unemployment percentage change: -25.6%

NIXON
1969 Unemployment Rate: 3.5% (2.8 million total unemployed)
1974 Unemployment Rate: 5.6% (5.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.1%
Total unemployment percentage change: +82.0%

FORD
1975 Unemployment Rate: 8.5% (7.9 million total unemployed)
1976 Unemployment Rate: 7.7% (7.4 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -0.8%
Total unemployment percentage change: -6.6%

CARTER
1977 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (6.9 million total unemployed)
1980 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (7.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: 0.0
Total unemployment percentage change: +9.24%

REAGAN
1981 Unemployment Rate: 7.6% (8.2 million total unemployed)
1988 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (6.7 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -2.1%
Total unemployment percentage change: -19.0%

BUSH I
1989 Unemployment Rate: 5.3% (6.5 million total unemployed)
1992 Unemployment Rate: 7.5% (9.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.2
Total unemployment percentage change: +47.2%

CLINTON
1993 Unemployment Rate: 6.9% (8.9 million total unemployed)
2000 Unemployment Rate: 4.0% (5.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change -2.9
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.3%

As you can see, in terms of the unemployment rate - that is, the percentage of the total workforce not working - the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the single largest drop in American history. Yes, I'll say that again for conservatives, just to make sure they get it: The PRE-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940 - not the WWII era - saw the largest drop in the unemployment rate in American history. And by the way, that even includes the recession of 1937-1938.

Now, it is certainly true that the percentage drop of total unemployed was bigger in WWII than it was in the pre-WWII New Deal era. But as the data show, even by that metric, the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the second largest percentage drop in total unemployed in the 20th century, going from 12.8 million unemployed in Roosevelt's first year in office to 8.1 million unemployed at the end of his second term in 1940. That's a 36.7 percent drop - larger than the Clinton era (36.3%) and, yes conservatives, larger than the Reagan era (a mere 19%). At the absolute minimum, that would suggests the New Deal was a positive - not negative - economic force (and empirically more positive than, say, Reagan's free-market agenda).

These are the hard and fast numbers conservatives would like us all to forget with their claim that history proves massive spending packages like the New Deal will supposedly harm our economy.

The Forgotten Math: Pre-WWII New Deal Saw Biggest Drop In Unemployment Rate in American History

And you keep forgetting that your right wing austerity approach doesn't work. FDR found that out. FDR had his own right wing regressives to contend with, HERE is where that led.

The Recession of 1937–1938 was a temporary reversal of the pre-war 1933 to 1941 economic recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. Economists disagree about the causes of this downturn, but agree that government austerity reversed the recovery. wiki

 

[Toro]

Frank's right about the Fed.

 

[The Rabbi]

That's the argument for UI. People spend all of their UI. Without it, their spending will fall and the economy will suffer.

The argument against UI is that because they are scared, they will look harder to find a job and will accept any job.

No, that is not the argument. The argument is that taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive ones does not stimulate the economy. A different argument is that unemployment insurance tends to keep people out of the labor force.

Yes, that is the argument. It's the same argument.

They are not even close to being the same. One speaks to the effect UE insurance has on workers, the other to the aggregate effect it has o the economy. If you cannot see the difference then there isn't much to debate here.

 

[The Rabbi]

Context was never your strong point, eh Frank?

Oh wait, Hoover and FDR caused the Depression.

lol

The Fed started the decline by shrinking the money supply by 1/3 Hoover and FDR's Soviet style Central planning economy (tax increase, government spending and regulation) gave us an economy worse than the 7 Biblical Lean Years

As you can see, in terms of the unemployment rate - that is, the percentage of the total workforce not working - the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the single largest drop in American history. Yes, I'll say that again for conservatives, just to make sure they get it: The PRE-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940 - not the WWII era - saw the largest drop in the unemployment rate in American history. And by the way, that even includes the recession of 1937-1938.

Now, it is certainly true that the percentage drop of total unemployed was bigger in WWII than it was in the pre-WWII New Deal era. But as the data show, even by that metric, the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the second largest percentage drop in total unemployed in the 20th century, going from 12.8 million unemployed in Roosevelt's first year in office to 8.1 million unemployed at the end of his second term in 1940. That's a 36.7 percent drop - larger than the Clinton era (36.3%) and, yes conservatives, larger than the Reagan era (a mere 19%). At the absolute minimum, that would suggests the New Deal was a positive - not negative - economic force (and empirically more positive than, say, Reagan's free-market agenda).

These are the hard and fast numbers conservatives would like us all to forget with their claim that history proves massive spending packages like the New Deal will supposedly harm our economy.

The Forgotten Math: Pre-WWII New Deal Saw Biggest Drop In Unemployment Rate in American History

And you keep forgetting that your right wing austerity approach doesn't work. FDR found that out. FDR had his own right wing regressives to contend with, HERE is where that led.

The Recession of 1937–1938 was a temporary reversal of the pre-war 1933 to 1941 economic recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. Economists disagree about the causes of this downturn, but agree that government austerity reversed the recovery. wiki

You are an idiot. There are any number of fallacies in your post, starting with UE is a measure of how many people are out of work. It is not.
Second, so you mean we've been calling it The Great Depression when in fact it ought to be The Great Prosperity? So everything was actually hunky dory and all those historians are just misguided? You mean that 12% UE is acceptable, heck even desirable?