>> ^marinara:

>> ^NetRunner:
Exports alone don't account for the rise in prosperity post-WWII. A lot of it was that we'd build up a huge industrial infrastructure that pivoted from making bombers and tanks to making refrigerators and cars.


so you're saying the postwar boom was not because Americans were making money on exports, but because factory production was so profitable. If you think 18% of world exports wasn't the reason for the boom, then I have nothing
Read my comment again. I'm saying the higher exports was a part of it, but not the entire reason.

You're taking position that the one and only reason America got more prosperous was because exports were higher, and to support this argument that this alone was the cause, you just provide a chart showing that they were higher back then.

Seriously, think about it. Would the American standard of living improve if the only change in the economy post WWII was that we sold a larger portion of what we produced to other countries? Wouldn't we have to have consumed more domestically to make our standard of living go up?

>> ^marinara:
The debt can't go up forever, period. I agree w/ you on this: you can grow your way out of a huge debt. What reason do you have to think that we're going to go back to huge GDP growth here in the USA? I'm saying, either we need to grow, or control the debt. Don't you agree?

I do agree. My position is that our debt isn't a problem right now, and that most of the expected problem in the future would be fixed if we got unemployment and GDP back up to trend.

>> ^marinara:
You're saying we need deficit spending to grow. We've had lots of deficit spending, and where is the growth? I'm talking over the last decade.

But what did we spend it on? Tax cuts for the wealthy, a couple wars, and a prescription drug benefit that was tooled mostly as a payoff to big Pharma.

We also did that in a period of expansion, which is when Keynesian prescriptions sound positively right-wing -- according to it we should've engaged in fiscal austerity during the expansion (like Clinton did), rather than trying to engage deficit spending aimed entirely at the supply side of the economy.

>> ^marinara:
[W]e have to fix what's wrong before we can recover.


I can't argue with that. So what's wrong, and how do we fix it?

PS: Krugman on Iceland vs. Ireland. Revisiting it, he never calls it Keynesian, but Iceland is talking a considerably more left-wing tack than Ireland, and Iceland is recovering a lot faster.

>> ^NetRunner:
Exports alone don't account for the rise in prosperity post-WWII. A lot of it was that we'd build up a huge industrial infrastructure that pivoted from making bombers and tanks to making refrigerators and cars.


so you're saying the postwar boom was not because Americans were making money on exports, but because factory production was so profitable. If you think 18% of world exports wasn't the reason for the boom, then I have nothing
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/conc5en/shareworldexports.html

>> ^NetRunner:

I think you're assuming all debt leads to inflation. Have you looked at the stats on debt and inflation recently? Debt's going up fast, but inflation has stayed flat and long-term bond interest rates have fallen,
The debt can't go up forever, period. I agree w/ you on this: you can grow your way out of a huge debt. What reason do you have to think that we're going to go back to huge GDP growth here in the USA? I'm saying, either we need to grow, or control the debt. Don't you agree? also... http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/02/news/economy/interest_national_debt/index.htm

I can't find any evidence that the recovery in iceland was "Keynesian "

You're saying we need deficit spending to grow. We've had lots of deficit spending, and where is the growth? I'm talking over the last decade. I don't disagree that extra spending will help. I do assert that interest rates change, that you can't just spend X and get outcome Y. Rather, we have to fix what's wrong before we can recover.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^NetRunner:
One war brought to an end, one more to go.

Oh good! So, I guess our savior will be bringing all the troops home from Iraq? Surely there won't be a [dramatic cue] postwar occupation?

What savior?

As for postwar presence, technically we're already there. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over. The new operation (IIRC, called "New Dawn"), is supposed to end next year, and all troops are supposed to leave.

I'm definitely going to keep my eye on things to see if we have some sort of reversal, but unless one happens, I'm declaring victory and focusing on pressuring politicians to bring Afghanistan to an end.

>> ^NetRunner:
One war brought to an end, one more to go.


Oh good! So, I guess our savior will be bringing all the troops home from Iraq? Surely there won't be a [dramatic cue] postwar occupation? But who cares as long as it's not called a war, right?

They'll bring thousands of troops home but at the same time deploy new ones in their place. Old strategy to show they're 'bringing the boys home' when in fact they're just recycling them through.

I agree with 1-3.

However, I will say unequivocally that Ben Bernanke is not an idiot. Crook is possible, but I think that's unlikely. As for deflation, let's put it this way: Bernanke has expanded/is expanding the money supply radically, and we're seeing no response from the CPI, and unemployment is still going up. If Bernanke reversed course, and contracted the money supply, do you think the CPI would go up, or down? Would unemployment go up, or down?

Personally I think the simple answer is that America has neglected the importance of actually creating real goods and services for people, and instead have built an entire economy out of get-rich-quick schemes. A particularly large bundle of "get rich quick schemes" all just got found out, and shut down (by investors, mostly). Thinking that adjustments to our monetary policy is all we need to fix things seems like another get rich quick scheme, and one we should shut down.

I think what we need is a return to a postwar-style New Deal economy. Seems to me, the bad stuff started happening when we started ditching that about 30 years ago...

Thanks for the link grinter! I changed my tags in your honor.

Some excerpts:

In fact, Kennedy's statement is both grammatically correct and perfectly idiomatic, and cannot be misunderstood in context. The urban legend is not widely known within Germany, where Kennedy's speech is considered a landmark in the country's postwar history. The indefinite article ein can be and often is omitted when speaking of an individual's profession or residence but is necessary when speaking in a figurative sense as Kennedy did. Since the president was not literally from Berlin but only declaring his solidarity with its citizens, "Ich bin Berliner" would not have been correct...

The citizens of Berlin do refer to themselves as Berliner; what they do not refer to as Berliner are jelly doughnuts. While these are known as "Berliner" in other areas of Germany, they are simply called Pfannkuchen (pancakes) in and around Berlin. Thus the merely theoretical ambiguity went unnoticed by Kennedy's audience, as it did in Germany at large. In sum, "Ich bin ein Berliner" was the appropriate way to express in German what Kennedy meant to say

Tags for this video have been changed from 'postwar, propaganda, social guidance, 40s' to 'postwar, propaganda, social guidance, 40s, coronet, are you popular' - edited by fissionchips

Re Chomsky: on Pol Pot, etc:

http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/chomsky/chomsky/5/6.html

" The Pol Pot Affair

Collaborators once more, Chomsky and Edward Herman published The Political Economy of Human Rights in 1979. In the second volume of this two-volume work, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, they compared two sites of atrocity ­ Cambodia and Timor ­ and evaluated the diverse media responses to each. It embroiled Chomsky in an entirely new controversy.

In a 7 November 1980 Times Higher Education Supplementarticle called "Chomsky's Betrayal of Truths," Steven Lukes accused Chomsky of intellectual irresponsibility. He was contributing to the "deceit and distortion surrounding Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia," Lukes charged, because, "obsessed by his opposition to the United States' role in Indochina," he had "lost all sense of perspective" (31). Lukes concluded that there was "only one possible thing to think" : Chomsky had betrayed his own anarchist-libertarian principles. "It is sad to see Chomsky writing these things. It is ironic, given the United States' government's present pursuit of its global role in supporting the seating of Pol Pot at the [United Nations]. And it is bizarre, given Chomsky's previous stand for anarchist-libertarian principles. In writing as he does about the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, Chomsky betrays not only the responsibilities of intellectuals, but himself" (31).


The Obscure History of East Timor

Lukes makes no mention here of the subject of the book, which is clearly stated in the introduction to volume 1, which is entitled "Cambodia: Why the Media Find It More Newsworthy than Indonesia and East Timor." It is an explicit comparison between Cambodia and Timor ­ the latter being the scene of the worst slaughter, relative to population size, since the Holocaust. Now if the atrocities perpetrated in Timor were comparable to those perpetrated by Pol Pot in Cambodia (and Chomsky claims that they were), then a comparison of Pol Pot's actions to those committed in Timor could not possibly constitute an apology for Pol Pot. Yet somehow Lukes suggested that it did. If such comparisons cannot be made without the intellectual community rising up in protest, then the entire issue of state-instigated murder can become lost inside the polemics of determining which team of slaughterers represents a lesser evil.

That Lukes could ignore the fact that Chomsky and Herman were comparing Pol Pot to East Timor "says a lot about him," in Chomsky's opinion:

By making no mention of the clear, unambiguous, and explicit comparison [of Pol Pot and East Timor], he is demonstrating himself to be an apologist for the crimes in Timor. That is elementary logic: if a comparison of Pol Pot to Timor is apologetics for Pol Pot, as Lukes claims (by omission of the relevant context, which he could not fail to know), then it must be that the crimes in Timor were insignificant. Lukes, then, is an apologist for the worst slaughter relative to population since the Holocaust. Worse, that is a crime for which he, Lukes, bears responsibility; uk support has been crucial. And it is a crime that he, Lukes, could have always helped to terminate, if he did not support huge atrocities; in contrast, neither he nor anyone else had a suggestion as to what to do about Pol Pot. (13 Feb. 1996)

The vigor of Chomsky's remarks reflects the contempt that he feels for this kind of by-now-familiar tactic. Decorum must not take precedence over decrying slaughter and falsity, and Chomsky is compelled to demonstrate this: "Let us say that someone in the us or uk . . . did deny Pol Pot atrocities. That person would be a positive saint as compared to Lukes, who denies comparable atrocities for which he himself shares responsibility and knows how to bring to an end, if he chose. That's elementary. Try to find some intellectual who can understand it. That tells us a lot . . . about the intellectual culture" (13 Feb. 1996). The point of course goes beyond Lukes, and extends into a general discussion concerning the intellectual community, which itself, in Chomsky's opinion, "cannot comprehend this kind of trivial, simple, reasoning and what it implies. That really is interesting. It reveals a level of indoctrination vastly beyond what one finds in totalitarian states, which rarely were able to indoctrinate intellectuals so profoundly that they are unable to understand real trivialities" (14 Aug. 1995).

Within weeks, two long and lucid replies to Lukes's piece were sent in to the Times Higher Education Supplement, accusing him of selective reading, of missing the entire point of both volumes of Political Economy, of ignoring the first volume, of trivializing the moral potency of Chomsky's thesis, of cold-bloodedly manipulating the truth, of misrepresenting Chomsky and Herman's work, and of disrespect. Neither reply came from Chomsky; one was from Laura J. Summers, the other from Robin Woodsworth Carlsen.

Though bolstered by the support of those sympathetic to his position and his larger aims, Chomsky knew that a smear campaign could be much more effective and have a much wider dissemination than rational argumentation. In Herman's opinion,

the Cambodia and Faurisson disputes imposed a serious personal cost on Chomsky. He put up a diligent defence against the attacks and charges against him, answering virtually every letter and written criticism that came to his attention. He wrote many hundreds of letters to correspondents and editors on these topics, along with numerous articles, and answered many phone enquiries and queries in interviews. The intellectual and moral drain was severe. It is an astonishing fact, however, that he was able to weather these storms with his energies, morale, sense of humour and vigour and integrity of his political writings virtually intact. ( "Pol Pot" 609)


Cambodia today: continuing carnage

As ever, Chomsky is quick to point out that being the subject of such treatment did not make him unique. But the ferocity of the attack on him does reveal something about the power of popular media, the lengths to which endangered elites will go to eliminate dissent, and the nature of what passes for appropriate professional behavior. In a letter he wrote to the Times Literary Supplement in January of 1982 ­ a reply to an article by Paul Johnson in that same publication in which he, like Lukes, accused Chomsky and Herman of sympathizing with the Khmer Rouge ­ Chomsky examined one of the tactics used against him: "[A] standard device by which the conformist intellectuals of East or West deal with irritating dissident opinion is to try to overwhelm it with a flood of lies. Paul Johnson illustrates the technique with his reference to my `prodigies of apologetics . . . for the Khmer Rouge' (December 25). I have stated the facts before in this journal, and will do so again, not under any illusion that they will be relevant to the guardians of the faith." Chomsky asserted that the smear campaign was a side issue; the larger concern was, of course, the intellectual apologists' ability to forgo reasonable analysis when their own government was at fault:

The context was extensive documentation of how the mainstream intelligentsia suppressed or justified the crimes of their own states during the same period. This naturally outraged those who feel that they should be free to lie at will concerning the crimes of an official enemy while concealing or justifying those of their own states ­ a phenomenon that is, incidentally, far more significant and widespread than the delusions about so-called "socialist" states that Johnson discusses, and correspondingly quite generally evaded. Hence the resort to the familiar technique that Johnson, and others, adopts. ("Political Pilgrims")

Otero even goes so far as to describe (in a note he added to Language and Politics) the reaction to Chomsky's positions on Faurisson and Pol Pot as a coordinated attempt to undermine his credibility and thereby sabotage his powerful critique of policies on Indochina:

The major international campaign orchestrated against Chomsky on completely false pretexts was only part ­ though perhaps a crucial part ­ of the ambitious campaign launched in the late 70s with the hope of reconstructing the ideology of power and domination which had been partially exposed during the Indochina war. The magnitude of the insane attack against Chomsky, which aimed at silencing him and robbing him of his moral stature and his prestige and influence, is of course one more tribute to the impact of his writings and his actions ­ not for nothing he was the only one singled out. (310)

Such commentary assigns to the ruling elite a uniformity that is based on the values shared by its members. Evidence for this may be found in the heavy media coverage given to the Lukes camp and the general reluctance to allow Chomsky space for rebuttal (particularly in France)."

QM - yeah, atheists dig their own graves.
How?


The audacity to call a religion self delusion.


Most people have a religion, be it christianity, a kind of cosmic idea of evolution (which in my idea is ten times worse than christianity) or a kind of panhumanist 'look at us', we are Man.
At least some of the christianw KNOW what they believe in.


http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/universalism-postwar-progressivism-as.html

Tags changed from "postwar, propaganda, social guidance" to "postwar, propaganda, social guidance,40s" by gold star member swampgirl.

An epic and incredible documentary - possibly the best political/historical one I've seen:

Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions

The American Documentary Grand Jury Prize was given to WHY WE FIGHT, written and directed by Eugene Jarecki. http://festival.sundance.org/2005/docs/05Awards.pdf

What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.

He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning "military industrial complex," foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.

Deploying the general's farewell address as his strategic ground zero, Eugene Jarecki launches a full-frontal autopsy of how the will of a people has become an accessory to the Pentagon. Surveying the scorched landscape of a half-century's military misadventures and misguided missions, Jarecki asks how--and tells why--a nation ostensibly of, by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant war.

Jarecki, whose previous film, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, took such an unblinking look at our ex-secretary of state, might have delivered his film in time for the last presidential election, but its timing is also its point: It does not matter who is in charge as long as the system remains immune from the checks and balances of a peace-seeking electorate. Brisk, intelligent, and often very, very human, Why We Fight is one of the more powerful films in this year's Festival, and certainly among the most shattering.— Diane Weyermann