Obsticles to Recovery: Marxism and Keynesianism

[20000miles]

So do you agree with my definition or not?

[JollyRedGiant]

1920-21 was also a period of recession caused by inflation used to fight the war. Now had there been strong unions, government interventions in the labour market and high unemployment benefits, then mass unemployment would have surely ensued. As such the recession ended within 2 years. The same cannot be said of the Great Depression, where fascism was actively implemented in the United States, and labour was managed under federally-supervised cartels.

Russian Revolution 1917
German Revolution 1918-1919
Italian Revolution 1919-1922 (defated by fascism coming to power)
Hungarian Revolution 1919
Turkish War of Independence 1919-1922
Mexican Revolution 1919
Polish Uprising 1918
Finnish Revolution 1918
Indian Revolution 1919
Irish Revolution 1918-1922
And these are just a handful of the revolutionary upheavals of the period - most in the main led by labour organisations.

In the USA the International Workers of the World became a powerful force in American society and the period 1917-1920 in the USA was later known as the 'First Red Scare'. The country was rife with general stikes breaking out all over the country - interestingly one of the most famous was the Boston Police strike of 1919.

So you see sunshine - you are seriously talking through your rear-end and, when you do that, no one is going to take you seriously.

[feargach]

I do not disagree with your statement. For the simple reason that it says nothing about economics, and thus there is nothing to disagree with in the statement as regards economics.

All possible economic behaviours are consistent with that statement, so it cannot possibly be right or wrong.

[20000miles]

It is everything to do with economics. I can see that we're done here.

[JollyRedGiant]

I can see that we're done here.

Not surprising - you can only bullsh*t so much.

[20000miles]

I take it you mean that wage falls occurred becuase unions were violently put down.

That's a nice theory and I'm not going to argue against it. But you havent been addressing what I've been saying. Unemployment is caused by keeping wages above their clearing levels, and pro-union legislation would have undoubtably exacerbated the problem.

[Hazlitt]

Haha, we should have a cage fight, yourself and 20k with Hazlitt for good measure, with Pat on the benches until someone has to go to work.

Haha, could you imagine. Like a Royal Rumble. A locked thread, once you go offline you're out (over the top rope)... gas

Free market practises brought us to this quandry, and more of the same isn't going to get us out of it.

You know I disagree with you on this Dios, but I'll try stick to the thread topic. The recession was revealed when the property bubble burst, and I think it's generally accepted at this stage that the extension of easy credit at such low interest rates was a major contributing factor to this bubble. Of course people saw property prices rising and rising and attempted to "get on the ladder" with a view to reselling their own property at a higher price than they bought for and this was the secondary contributing factor. It is also undeniable that the low interst rates are set by the european central bank (not the free market for loanable funds), and also that the inflation of the money supply by our fractional reserve banking laws was one of the reasons there was so much credit available. Therefore in my opinion, and please point out what I said here is wrong - the european central bank's low interest rates encouraged construction industry to borrow to build and people to borrow to buy, and the government laws facilitated a further growth in the credit markets. Without these the bubble would not have grown to the extent it did (if it all) and therefore we would not be now in a recession. Please point out any point of mine that is incorrect. None of the above can be considered the free unhampered market for loanable funds. (I won't even get in to the money production argument in this thread! Let's leave that for another one)...

Anyway.... back to thread topic - can some people defend the Marxian or Keynesianist solutions for getting us out of the recession and also the boom-bust cycle rather than re-focus the thread topic? Please post faults with the OP.

Our problems are caused by greed and a failure to properly control those who are full of it.

The market "controls" people who loan out irresponsibly by putting them out of business. When we take this control away there is no disincentive for people to lend out money "recklessly". That is what we are doing essentially by not allowing these bad banks to be liquidated.

This thread is going seriously off-topic - back to the OP - Point out the errors in the OP or please someone give their theories on how Marxism/Keynesianism policies can get us out of recession and also out of the boom-bust cycle.

One of the contributing factors to the Wall Street crash was the Agricultural Recession which was caused by the imbalance of supply and demand which was due to a large extent on better technology.

Please can you define the measurement for the Agricultural Recession? I hope you are not claiming that improved technology is a bad thing? This isn't (I hope) one of those "Thomas Edison was bad for inventing the lightbulb because he destroyed the candle-making industry" arguments I hope?!

by recovery, do you mean sustainable recovery? or a return to the 'grow grow grow' kleptocracy fuelled by private greed?

I actually think this is a very good point/question and one possibly worthy of a standalone thread. I don't think the "grow grow grow" mantra is shared by everyone (certainly not me). Very good question Akrasia.

Again, I'm reading numerous posts here (feargach) that has nothing to do with the OP and is misdirecting the discussion here completely, I'll ask again that you and others deal with the question in the thread title. Please try defend the statement and back it up with any theories or views you may have.

Evolutionary psychologists have interesting theories to explain this obstinacy, saying that such mechanisms would have been ultimately beneficial to small tribes living on the african Savannah 1000 centuries ago.

This illustrates my point completely. What the hell has this got to do with the OP and thread title? We are going on a serious tangent here people. I see 2 pages of posts about defining "human rationality" but nobody seems willing to discuss the topic of the original post.

[feargach]

You are entirely wrong Hazlitt.

The OP starts with a link to a tract on the Mises.org site. That is a strictly Austrian criticism of the current state of play.

I referred directly to that. The last several posts have, in fact, been bang on-topic.

Topic being: is the Austrian critique of the economy that started this thread worth a fart or not?

[20000miles]

So we're all agreed: wages need to fall to re-employ the unemployed.

Glad we settled that one.

[feargach]

So we're all agreed: wages need to fall to re-employ the unemployed.

Glad we settled that one.

Nope wages are almost irrelevant to creating new jobs.

If there's no new demand for new goods and services, there will be no new jobs created to provide these goods and services.