You know I was going to answer to your other thread EMRGLOBAL but I'll do it here. You talk of redistriibution of wealth of being Marxist and so forth, that's exactly what you have in the US! The tax cuts for the most part only affect the rich, only affect dividends, or capital gains, or no more death taxes. That right there is a redistribution of wealth, if you're going to use your argument you must use it both ways, don't pull the Marx card only when your taxes are going up but keeping quiet when they're going down.
And tell me how capitalist it really is to protect your old industries through lobbying, isn't capitalism to have fresh new companies take over? I mean why has there not been an american car company been created in the last 80 years that lasted? These days "green" energy is favoring Big Nuclear over Big oil or Big coal, where's the small players? All it is is a battle of the private interests, that is NOT capitalism. Capitalism is letting the markets decide.
As for the New Deal, as Angrycat put it, a lot of it was dismantled in the 1940s, but tell me how it miraculously reappeared in the 1970s? The inflation in the 1970s was blamed on big labour and unions, it's a convenient theory because it ignores the Vietnam war or the budget deficits that were happening since the 1960s. While everyone gangs up on the key events that didn't completely solve the great depression, why not talk instead of causes of the great depression?
Let's start with the big guns, taxes were reduced in HALF from the beginning of the decade to the end. Budgets were in surplus, spending low.
Monetary policy was lax, (and no one ever blames the Fed for the 70s inflation?)
The use of credit purchases first appeared in the 1920s, as a result it was possible to have expansion and higher profits while you were really making future sales, you had terrible over expansion of industry. The employment figures of the late 1920s were UNSUSTAINABLE, get that.
People's wages didn't keep up either.
Or what about the use of leverage on Wall Street? Didn't anyone think that with too much leverage banks could be in trouble and with their weak banks as it was, it would spell doom?
What about a lack of SEC, that allowed Bank CEOs to short their own companies?
Or what about the over concentration of a few industries? Who knows what's to blame for that one, maybe lack of capitalism and technological growth prevented a diversified economy.
When you look at economics you can't look at 5 years and say you got it.
Today's problems as most know go all the way back to the 1980s, even further in some areas.
What's hard to understand that for general business to thrive and sell more every year it must pay more to its consumers? Take a look at the 19th century if that's what you want. The only industries that existed were industries of the bare necessities. You bought clothe, food, shelter, furniture and that's it. That went on for over 100 years, you call that capitalism? Only when people's incomes went higher could they spend on discretionary items, and those created whole industries.
Don't give bullshit like "high wages forced small businesses to close." That's almost propaganda. Small business close for a number of reasons, take a look in Canada where junior exploration and drilling companies are closing because of LACK OF CREDIT and lower commodity prices. I bet a large number of the small businesses were suppliers to unsustainable over expanded industries or failed because the banking system failed. What the New Deal did is raise wages, it was not a silver bullet but it did its part. Why did you have prosperity in the 1950s? Everyone agrees that the full employment just after the war gave a lot of spending power. No spending power no growth.
