Fair enough, I was interested in pointing out the irrelevancy of Jimmy’s citation of the study and quote.

The reason the New Deal started not working is Roosevelt tried to balance the budget again. It wasn’t until WWII rolled around that our country was truly pulled back up out of a Depression.

In other words, Obama’s plan can work…he just has to be bold about it and not be afraid to deficit spend.

Also, to answer your question about Communism: NO.

Also, Obama has decided not to repeal the Bush tax cuts, so perhaps he is getting on the right path Jimmy? I would agree with you that we should put less emphasis on taxing incomes and savings, but do you agree that higher consumption taxes should be put in place? If not, what do you propose?

The New Deal is very poorly understood by people today as many of its achievements and efforts are no longer around. The NRA and the WPA in particular.

Another thing to remember about the 1930′s depression is the dust bowl and the associated declines in agricultural production and employment, prompting migration to cities, particularly in the west, thereby adding greater pressures to their economies.

Finally it should be noted that the 1937 slump is nearly universally blamed on the attempt to retract from some of the New Deal policies to satisfy political critics.

Do your own research but beware of new-fangled hype that all seems to agree. There are literally decades of scholarship on the New Deal and evidence from dozens of other such cases here and in other countries that all consistently point to New Deal-style remedies being effective against a severe economic downturn.

If you think about it from a high, general level it is kind of obvious, too.

Oh, and by some accounts Roosevelt’s New Deal prolonged the great depression by 7 years. From UCLA professor Howard Cole:

“”The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. “Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”

The one positive that I can see is that at least so far, folks haven’t figured out better options to buying US gov’t bonds and bills. Bills offering close to 0% interest are selling./ This means that the gov’t price for borrowing is nil.

Interesting note: today’s unscientific reader CNN poll on what the gov’t should do reports that 36% want the gov’t to give them another check, 26% say “stop spending,” and 24% want spending on roads and bridges.

I am in favor of government spending that focuses on improving, updating, and modernizing our national infrastructure. In particular, we ought to focus on things that would need to be addressed sooner or later anyway, like the national electrical grid and communications, and updating schools, roads, bridges, and so on.

I think a direct refund to taxpayers, while a welcome relief to some individuals, would not encourage economic growth.