The Forgotten Man and the Economic Stimulus Bill:

For those of you who did not read the book mentioned in the title of this essay I refer you to the reviews with this Google Search. While well researched the author rather misses the point when she states that it was World War Two that ended the depression not FDR spending. How exactly does she think world war two was funded? Surely she does not think that war bonds and stamps paid for it. The Second World War was funded by borrowing and spending by the government.

America is now facing a second great depression that may in fact be far more persuasive than the one of 1929 to 1933. Will we work our way through this one as we did through the last one? I think we will but there will be great suffering. Already people are dying because they cannot afford medical treatment. At the moment there are hungry Americans living in cars because they have been foreclosed out of their residence. I am unaware of any American starving to death but frankly I expect that too will happen.

I do not think there will be the horrors of the Second World War such as German death camps and the Battle of Stalingrad to say nothing of the deaths caused by the American bombs dropped in the final days of the war. Yet to say we will avoid this kind of blood bath is slight comfort. The best guess estimate of the cost of the Second World War can be found here: Google Search.

Now I think what we have to ask ourselves is: are we prepared to spend the trillions needed to bring prosperity back to America? And if we are how will we invest such that our own bankers do not cause a third depression. I think that what we must do is invest in the country itself in the form of health care and energy independence. It may be that we can no longer continue to expand our sphere of influence as we have tried to do with our overwhelming but largely target less military.

We can start this process by acknowledging that it is going to cost huge sums to turn this crisis around. The other thing we have to realize is that governmental deficit spending was responsible for the beginning of the end of the depression as well as the final victory that went hand in hand with our victory over German and Japanese military.