The war recovery?

[Phantasee]

The war recovery?
David S. Broder
Sunday, October 31, 2010

When the midterm election cycle began, the prevailing opinion was that Barack Obama was cleverer and more inspirational than anyone else on the scene. As it ends, nothing appears to have changed.

OH, YES, I know that Democrats have fallen into a peck of trouble and may lose control of Congress. But even if they do, Obama can still storm back to win a second term in 2012. He is that much better than the competition.

In what respects is he enduringly superior? Let's start with the basics. He is much smarter than his challengers in either party, better able to read the evidence and come to the right conclusions.

Over time, his conclusions are likely to stand scrutiny better than those of other politicians.

The crucial case in point is his analysis of economic forces. No one would pretend that this is anything but a daunting situation. The nation is suffering simultaneously from high and persistent unemployment, lagging investment, massive public and private debt, and a highly inefficient tax system.

The steps that have been ordered so far in Washington have done nothing more than put the brakes on the runaway decline. They have not spurred new growth.

But if Obama cannot spur that growth by 2012, he is unlikely to be reelected. The lingering effects of the recession that accompanied him to the White House will probably doom him.

Can Obama harness the forces that might spur new growth? This is the key question for the next two years.

What are those forces? Essentially, there are two. One is the power of the business cycle, the tidal force that throughout history has dictated when the economy expands and when it contracts.

Economists struggle to analyze this, but they almost inevitably conclude that it cannot be rushed and almost resists political command. As the saying goes, the market will go where it is going to go.

In this regard, Obama has no advantage over any other pol. Even in analyzing the tidal force correctly, he cannot control it.

What else might affect the economy? The answer is obvious, but its implications are frightening. War and peace influence the economy.

Look back at FDR and the Great Depression. What finally resolved that economic crisis? World War II.

Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran's ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.

I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

davidbroder@washpost.com

This was published on Halloween. Response in the same paper:

Mr. Broder's war and economic myths
Wednesday, November 3, 2010; 5:51 PM

In his Oct. 31 op-ed, "The war recovery?," David S. Broder piled error on error to reach a ghoulish conclusion.

Item: Economists do not "inevitably conclude" that the "business cycle cannot be rushed." The issue is disputed; indeed, Mr. Broder himself credits the stimulus package with having "put the brakes on the runaway decline."

Item: At the time, the phrase "Great Depression" applied to the years 1929-33. By 1936, the United States had experienced rapid growth for four years; unemployment (once you count those working for the New Deal) had fallen from 25 to below 10 percent; and FDR was reelected, carrying all but two states. World War II remained years away.

Item: Preparations for war on Iran would not resemble those for World War II. They would roughly resemble those for the war on Iraq, whose effect on economic growth was exhausted by 2004.

Any suggestion that President Obama turn to war to boost the economy is obscene, and it leaves one to wonder: Did Mr. Broder write this for Halloween - or April Fools' Day?

James K. Galbraith, Austin

The writer is chairman of Economists for Peace and Security.

l

I was baffled by David S. Broder's Oct. 31 column. The United States is already mired in two wars, yet the economy is sputtering and the president is unpopular. If public opinion polls are to be believed, what support remains for the president comes despite his escalation in Afghanistan, not because of it. So why does Mr. Broder think opening a third front would be economically helpful or politically expedient? And even if it were, how dare he suggest these are good reasons to risk thousands of lives?

Brenton Kenkel, Rochester, N.Y.

---

Baffled is a good word to use. Angry would be a bit more accurate, for me. How can anyone seriously look at Afghanistan and Iraq, and think a third war in between would be a good idea? Does he think there would be 'synergies' and cost savings to be found in a war zone stretching between Pakistan and Syria? Hey, all that equipment is already in the area, that's a sunk cost, right?

[CaptainChewbacca]

The problem with 'war recoveries' is we would have to BUILD a phenomenal amount of new miliatary hardware we don't need. During WWII the factories were putting people to work on tanks, planes, and ammo. Now that wouldn't be the case, because there's no need for that much hardware unless we plan on invading and occupying a large country like Mexico.

[Chaotic Neutral]

If you are hell bent on wasting money on things you don't need, how about instead of throwing money in the drain, you build roads and power plants instead?

Besides, military today relys far to much on quality and is far too expensive to do anything other than cause a depression.

[Ryan Thunder]

The problem with 'war recoveries' is we would have to BUILD a phenomenal amount of new miliatary hardware we don't need. During WWII the factories were putting people to work on tanks, planes, and ammo. Now that wouldn't be the case, because there's no need for that much hardware unless we plan on invading and occupying a large country like Mexico.

Maybe you should.

[DrMckay]

Curses! If only all of our corporations hadn't been moved offshore!

Then good ol' american workers could crank out masses of Jeeps and Sherman tanks to defeat the accursed terrerists!

and then companies like HP and IBM could make lots of guns and bombsights, and we could rally the country through the clever use of propaganda in newsreels, papers, and fireside chats, while each good blue-collar factory worker, (Becasue they totally still exist,) will be able to have a good life again!

/Sarcasm Rant done.

Boder's seventy years out of date and massively off on the ammount of national will it would take, as well as the fact that the Repubs won't help Obama raise tensions b/c that would make him look good. Instead they'll condemn his "Reckless politics that will get american boys and girls killed somewhere over there"

They don't want consensus, and they won't even reach across the aisles for a war against the "heathen moslems" if there is the slightest possibility it will boost Obama's ratings-that's if Obama's stupid enough to get involved with this in the first place...

[aerius]

Both articles are completely full of shit. Let's start with the 2nd, unemployment never fell below 10% until well after WWII had started, you can look this up on any of a million charts. The 1st article is just so stupid that I'm not even going to bother.

WWII worked to "fix" America because it destroyed manufacturing and labour everywhere else, after the war was over everyone else had to buy stuff from America because they were the only ones left with manufacturing capacity and labour so the US got fucking rich and had low unemployment. If you want to do the same thing again you gotta start with nuking China, India and most of Asia (might as well nuke Mexico while we're at it) then bombing the shit out of Europe again, a Mid-East war will do jack shit. It would definitely fix global warming and resource shortages since half the world's population's been wiped out, but I don't think you want to do it that way.

[Uraniun235]

WWII worked to "fix" America because it destroyed manufacturing and labour everywhere else, after the war was over everyone else had to buy stuff from America because they were the only ones left with manufacturing capacity and labour so the US got fucking rich and had low unemployment. If you want to do the same thing again you gotta start with nuking China, India and most of Asia (might as well nuke Mexico while we're at it) then bombing the shit out of Europe again, a Mid-East war will do jack shit. It would definitely fix global warming and resource shortages since half the world's population's been wiped out, but I don't think you want to do it that way.

Out of curiosity, since I've seen WW2 mentioned as being the fix to the Depression in that it annihilated so much manpower and material, what would have happened if WW2 had somehow been averted? Would there have likely been an eventual recovery, or would there have just been a permanent stagnation until a major catastrophe/war actually occurred?

[LaCroix]

Probably a slow recovery just like in the years before the war.

And America wouldn't be in the position it is now, since all other countries wouldn't be in ruins, so no head-start.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Look back at FDR and the Great Depression. What finally resolved that economic crisis? World War II.

Even if we take this statement as true, for the sake of argument, what d'you think WW2 was? It was the biggest government economic intervention in history up until that point. There's no difference between the government buying concrete and steel to build dams and roads, and the government buying concrete and steel to build aircraft carriers and bunkers. Sorry, I lie; the former has lasting economic value, the latter might as well just be dumped into the sea.

If your statement here is correct, it's basically saying 'the only reason the New Deal wasn't completely successful is because it wasn't big enough'.

[Alphawolf55]

But wouldn't the difference between the New Deal and WW2 be that the New Deal was us investing money into ourselves while WW2 involved foreign countries buying shit from us?

[Chaotic Neutral]

Only if by "buying shit from us" you mean "eating bullets" then yeah.

[Alphawolf55]

What about countries that bought weapons and equipment from the US before the US entered the war?

[Chaotic Neutral]

They would have bought weather or not we entered. Besides, I'm sure the cost of that is less that the wasted money for the US to build up its military.

[Bakustra]

Besides, if you're talking WWII, most of that gear was Lend-Lease, and the majority of Lend-Lease equipment was never paid for or paid for years after the fact. (I think that the Dutch were one of the only Allied nations to pay for all the equipment they bought.)

[Phantasee]

Such reliable people, the Dutch.

So you're telling me that ww2 saved America because it destroyed supply side capacity everywhere but the US? And that another war would be useless unless it destroyed production capacity in China and India? But that is two billion consumers you want to mostly eliminate.

[LaCroix]

In a nutshell, yes. Everyone was badly damaged, the US had suffered barely any damage to infrastructure, was the good guy, and the only one who could mass produce stuff to rebuild and consumer goods at that point.

And most of these two billion do not consume that much. They are cheap labor, which means they lack the funds to consume.
But the difficulty of that approach is that the US doesn't have any 'notable' production capacity anymore, as they moved all their production out (right there were they would need to drop the bombs, coincidentally). They would need to bomb the rest of the world so far into the stone age that they would need to rebuild their whole infrastructure first (which the US would need to improve, themselves, before they could increase their industrial capacity), to gain an advantage.

This would also take away about all potential customers of goods, most of all because no one would buy from the US anymore.

It would be far easier, respectively, to make outsourced production illegal in order to bring it back home than to increase economy by another war.

[Phantasee]

Well, I imagine that most people look at those two billion people as the next big growth market, seeing as there's not much chance of anyone else buying cars and televisions en masse anytime soon.

[LaCroix]

The problem is that those two billion are a growing market is that other states move their labor there. Including the US. If the stated goal of the attacks is to increase economy in the US, you would need to do something to get that outsourced labor back.

So at first, you need to completely destroy all those countries eligible for globalized production. This means your companies would need years to rebuild infrastructure and stuff, so to recover quickly, they need to build elsewhere. Europe is too expensive in comparison to the US, so this might force companies to move production back to the US.

This destruction of outsourced capacity would also cause some European companies to maybe move production to the US.

It also eliminates the market in those emerging countries.

Coincidentally, if you were to force the companies to 'INsource' by law, it would destroy those markets as quickly, as these countries only grow by "leeching" off investment.

Either way, those two billion are screwed.

[aerius]

Well, I imagine that most people look at those two billion people as the next big growth market, seeing as there's not much chance of anyone else buying cars and televisions en masse anytime soon.

Most people are retards, they will not be a growth market for 1st world OECD countries until they modernize to something that's close to 1st world levels. The problem is this, outside of some specialized machine tools and high-tech stuff, we've exported most of our manufacturing to them already. They have no need or reason to buy stuff from us when they can make it themselves for 5% of the cost. In fact they can't buy all that much from us since their wages are so low, the average person in Canada can buy an iPhone for around 3 days worth of wages, in China it's closer to 2 months. Our stuff is hideously expensive for their wages, and until their wages go up they'll be buying from themselves or their low cost trading partners, not us.