Re: [OT] USA Elections
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Nov 05, 2012
- 2845 views
It does argue the questionable conclusion that WWII ended it.
If not WWII, then what? There was a noticable boom after WWII - or are you disputing this?
This is a decent article. Sure, the economic statistics improved (drafting millions of men sure helps unemployment figures). But that's not the same a healthy private economy that creates wealth (war, of course, does the opposite).
When the battleground is your country, sure. No battles were fought on American soil. Neutral areas (like Macau) were able to make money during the war by selling lots of weaponry, sometimes to both sides. The US didn't sell to the enemy, of course, but they did hire factories to build tanks and then bought them all.
Much of the worst of the New Deal went away by the time we entered the war. Of course, afterwards, we were about the only ones whose industrial capital wasn't blown up, which gave a huge advantage. But many thought that we'd have lots of economic problems without lots of additional government spending. The recovery began in earnest before any of that happened.
Well, it was recovering during the war effort itself. And there certainly was a lot of government spending during and after the war.
Furthermore, public unions are often largely responsible with funding the elections of the very people with whom they negotiate. It's true that unions didn't cause a lot of other problems, but that doesn't mean that they aren't a problem.
I can see the concerns here, esp. in regard to election funding. I guess I just wanted to point out that getting rid of public sector unions completely was not the right answer either. There must be a middle ground here.
I think a good first step is to not allow them to force members to pay dues to support more than bargaining activities. That makes sense for private unions, too.
Matt
I think I can live with that.
