Year to year inflation numbers do not reflect changes in the economy or population and are not considered to be reasonable or accurate for comparing the year to year activity of any economic actor. The only way to make reasonable comparisons over time is to take into account growth in the economy. A company that maintains the same gross income, adjusted for inflation, will lose market share when the economy grows. It will sell the same amount of products and reap the same income but it will become an ever smaller part of the economy. It is the same with government. If the government does not increase its revenues and expenditures to match a growing economy its lack of spending can become a serious impediment to economic activity and future growth. This is becoming increasingly apparent in the infrastructure of the US, which is rapidly deteriorating due to decades of underfunding caused by imbecilic ideological roadblocks against all tax increases and all increases in government spending despite the increasing number of catastrophic infrastructure failures that are harming the economy. Honest people face reality as it is and recognize problems that need to be dealt with now - they do not ignore the problems that do not fit into their ideological fantasy land.
BS. You have it totally backwards. The govt is not funded to maintain "market share" or make a profit - the govt is not a company. Profit and market share are irrelevent. The proper way to do it is to define the the tasks of the govt and then fund it to perform those tasks. If the task of the military decreases, then spending on defense should decrease - independent of "market share" or GDP. If the defense dept tasks are unchanged, then funding should be held constant adjusted for inflation - with no regard to changes in "market share" or GDP.
If a defined task of government is to maintain infrastructure and support the poor and elderly its spending on those tasks should be determined by need, not inflation.
I never said funding should be determined by inflation. Just the opposite. The issue that started this was the claim that govt spending increases and decreases were determined by govt spending as a percent of GDP. Year to year spending should be measured by spending adjusted for inflation.
So, if you are well versed in Keynes, his theories are bunk, et cetera et cetera...you should have no problems finding where Keynes actively encourages nationalization of industries.. I mean your public vs private goods line should be validated with quotes from Keynes from his books. But then again that would require reading. I'm fairly sure you just listen to talking heads on youtube. And the hilarity of all the Keynes haters on the internet these days is they don't really understand that macroeconomics has evolved to the point that there is really no "true" Keynesian running around printing cash until it turns into Zimbabwe dollars.
All economics is bunk. Economics is the art of explaining tomorrow why what you predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Keynesian economics turned a 3 year depression into one that lasted over 10 year- The Great Depression Classical economics turned an economic crisis with more dangerous potential - The Depression of 1920 - to a 10 year period of prosperity in the course of 7 months. I see you didn't pay attention in history either!
No. You didn't pay attention history. Here's a clue... Keynes' General Theory and other works weren't published until the 30s. His influence being more notable even later in time than that. Blaming him for what occurred during the Great Depression is what Southern people call ignant. Thanks for blatantly showing you haven't a clue about Keynes' history, let alone his work.
LOL are you joking? What kind of fiscal policy did FDR enact during the great depression? Deficit spending/Expansionary. Obviously.
Like I said you have no clue what you are talking about. You blamed Keynes for extending the Great Depression into a decade long event. Which is amusing considering his influence was not great during that period of time. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/aboutfdr/budget.html
Nice revisionist propaganda! It is Keynesians who maintain that FDR successfully saved America from the Depression by deficit spending.
OK, I think you need to study up on what the definition of a surplus is...and then recheck the data....
I see you are easily confused, and you mistake propaganda for fact. Let me guess....conservative ...right?
I see you trying to use condescension as a valid form of debate. Generalization is a liberal's favorite tactic. I am a libertarian!
That was my second guess. I was referring to your belief in the propaganda that Keynesian ideas prolonged the Great Depression. When the actual data shows quite the opposite effect. Do you want to examine what actually happened or do you want to regurgitate the lies you read on some Libertarian blog?
protowisdom: I haven't gotten to that part of my thinking yet. Over the years, I have come up with many possible options, but I think I should talk about them one at a time in new threads.
It depends on the service and goods. For example, private enterprise colleges and universities are of much lower quality that public and non profit-colleges and universities, so public is better there. I assume that private is better at producing washing machines than public would be, although we haven't actually tried to have our government produce washing machines. Public funded basic research might or might not be of better quality than private basic research, but there isn't a chance to find out because private corporations refuse to fund basic research because it isn't immediately profitable. Basic research is profitable in the long run because it generates knowledge which can be used to make new inventions, but a corporations isn't going to spend money on something that doesn't make money this year, or within a couple of years. Public funding of the space program was extremely successful, especially given that developing rockets is so complex and difficult. The new private space companies so far are using the knowledge the government gained. They haven't added anything substantially new. But it is still early and the private space companies might eventually make some major progress. In Iraq, private companies provided meals, vehicle repair, and so forth at higher prices than the government had previously been doing on its own. So there, private businesses did worse. Others could come up with more examples.
What data are you referring to? When economists have openly debated about the effects of FDR's policies on the Great Depression and the results being inconclusive? You sound blinded by ideology.
I can agree with you that public is more realistic and tends to run smoother when it comes to infrastructure. However, I can't believe you would say that private schools are worse than public schools...If this is true, then why are are the best colleges private? (Ivy Leagues) etc.
Is that what the tell you? That the debate is inconclusive? Not the good economists, the real ones, the Nobel prize winners, maybe some guy who is an "economist" at Liberty University, thinks it's inconclusive, in the same way that some people say the data on Global Warming is inconclusive. But the 1930's and 40's pretty much confirm everything that Keynes said.
Please, sit down, kiddo. [video=youtube;AQQon4tjlSA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQQon4tjlSA[/video]
Why is Thomas Sowell a nutcase? What, are you going to call Milton Friedman a nutcase as well? Also, I'm still waiting on all these "Nobel prize winning economists" who say that FDR fixed the Great Depression with the New Deal...I'm waiting!
