> CB: And you can't even be sure that your "full-measure" program would
> be effectual in reducing unemployment before years passed. Your
> favorite example- FDR's full measures -didn't end Depression levels of
> unemployment for several years after they were instituted.
>
> Give a historical example where civilian Keynesian full measures
> immediately ended a Depression.
The Depression didn't end "immediately", nor was that the expectation. But the New Deal focused on direct job creation from the beginning and unemployment fell steadily from 1933 until it was interrupted by the recession of 1937-38 following the Roosevelt administration's retreat on government spending.
^^^^^
CB: The New Deal was great for the working class. I'm referring to the claims by so many economic minded, like Krugman, that the Congress should have done a bigger program presently, like a New Deal scale, in order to immediately, yes right away, not over several years, lower unemployment. There's much analysis that the poor economy caused the election loss for Democrats. So, this advice had claimed that the improvement in the economy would have been fast enough to be before the elections. That is not the pace at which the New Deal reforms improved the economy. In other words, there _is_ an implied expectation in the present circumstance that the positive effects of a "larger Stimulus" etc. would have kicked in _before_ the election, "immediately", whatever the expectation may have been of the "stimulus" in the early 1930's.
^^^^^^^
By contrast, the stimulus enacted by the Obama administration was inadequate given the size of the economy, and a large chunk of it was directed at tax cuts for small business rather than emergency job-creation projects. While the unemployment rate would undoubtedy have been higher without the stimulus, it has still risen from 5% to nearly 10% since Obama took office.
^^^^^^^ CB: But even if the stimulus enacted by the Pelosi Congress was as big as the "stimulus" or whatever enacted by Congress in 1932, we know that the 1932 stimulus didn't take effect fast enough in today's terms to have improved the economy before the election, so a larger stimulus by the Pelosi Congress probably wouldn't have helped the Democrats in this election.
^^^^^^^
But what has any of this to do with Rich's comments on the tea party or my gloss on them?
^^^^^^^ CB: You say: Rich's conclusion, however, is that "the tempest will not be contained within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican Party itself" once "the Republican establishment’s panacea of tax cuts proves as ineffectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting deficits as the half-measures of the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress."
^^^^ CB: You imply that "full measures" would have been effectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting deficits. Economic science can't make such a certain prediction. Keynesianism isn't that precise.
There will always be economic crises under capitalism, even when full or extra, super , duper Keynesian civilian, fiscal, social spending directly to the working class is carried out. If a FDR-style public works programs, welfare as we once new it under the War on Poverty/ Great Society, Model Neighborhoods, Block Grant, Revenue Sharing, etc. had been instituted by the Congress in 2009 and 2010, it would have been tremendous for the working class, but unemployment might not fall for a while. There will always be busts adn increases in unemployment with capitalism, and Keynesian full ( not half) measures cannot prevent them.
We favor all these measures because they are good for the working class,not because they can end the business cycle under capitalist relations of production. That's the conclusion from economic history that we should be broadcasting. The New Deal/Great Society reform, our best example, was great as far as it went , but, alas, it proves that capitalism cannot be reformed, because , in the end, it failed. Well, you gotta throw in that the bourgeoisie has carried out a successful counter-reform/reactionary movement to repeal much of that great reform.