One upon a time poor people were called "the working class" now "the lazy class"

once upon a time the rich worked hard, now they sit on their ass and trade all day looking at a stupid screen while eating a turkey sandwich, complaining that their checks aren't big enough

 

he needs all the protection he can get. every despot pays the army and police 1st.

remember the republicans are also voting for extended unemployment benefits

 

What was it about WW II that lifted the country out of the Depression? Why did that help?

 

it could have been a coincidence. maybe the economy was making a cyclical recovery. (see below)
another possibility is that gov't action worked because the government was not a major part of the economy and the debt levels were nowhere near as high in relation to output as they are today.

War Does NOT Lift An Economy Out of Economic Distress

Posted by Jeff Carter on November 23rd, 2010
There is a wives’ tale that has been passed through the ages. It goes like this, America had a bunch of greedy speculators in the Roaring 20′s. They caused the entire financial system to collapse, and we had the Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President, put in place a bunch of government programs that made it slightly better, and then World War 2 lifted us out of our economic morass.

Conclusion, “Wars are good for economies.”

That line of logic is so frought with poor reasoning it is tough to take seriously. Disabuse yourself of the notion that war is good for an economy. War is never good for an economy. There are tremendous opportunity costs to war.

First off, productive human capital that could be used to further improve the standard of living at home gets shipped off to the infantry. Then, they have a high probability of being killed or wounded. This is not economically a positive development-and one of the reasons that going to war is the toughest decision a President makes. If a total all out war like World War Two happens, all economic production is transferred from producing to raise the lifestyle of the country to protecting it. Ford making tanks instead of innovative cars is the trade off, not guns or butter. Because in a war, we will need guns and butter.


The people of the United States sacrificed tremendously during World War Two. Can you imagine living on 4 gallons of gas a week? Can you imagine living off of 40 oz of meat a month? That’s what people did during World War Two. The unemployment rate in WW2 remained high. War is not good for an economy.

War blows up structural capital. Buildings are blown up. Cultural treasures are lost. Entire cities are flattened. Markets are dislocated. Goods become more expensive. If war was so great at spurring economic activity, when GDP slips we ought to just blow up some stuff and rebuild it.

War kills humans. Not only soldiers fighting die, but civilians too. World War 2 killed 60 million people worldwide, and that includes all the innocents that lost their lives in Nazi death camps. While we fight “more humanely” today, innocent civilians still lose lives. If not by an inadvertent act by the US, but by a direct act from the enemy. Terrorists have killed or injured the bulk of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, not the US soldier.

Recall what happened after the wars that we have fought. Post WW2, we went into a recession. Post Korea, a recession. Post Vietnam, inflation and recession.

Wars create debt. Lots of it. The alternative to a country when fighting is debt or loss. Loss is untenable, so might as well pile on debt. In the case of the Gulf War, it hasn’t been expensive on a war/GDP ratio as other wars. Most of the debt in the last 10 years was created by government programs and uncontrolled spending, not the war. However, an all out war similar to WW2 would increase the war debt/GDP ratio tremendously.

No, it was the business cycle that brought us out of the Depression. FDR’s programs, the actions of the FED, the fiscal actions of the Congress actually stalled our recovery.

WW2 did not bring us out of economic duress, and a world wide war today on two fronts in the Gulf and Korea will not mend our economic troubles today.

 

Deficit spending by the government pumping money into the economy creating jobs for war material production plus opening the available jobs of men going into war.

 

I agree 100% actually had an issue like this myself with a small business. We were building it on the side for about 3 or 4 years and as soon as we went full force (i.e. paving, increase inventory, building updates) town came down on us re zoning. Our location was vacant for 10 yrs or more before we opened up producing NOTHING. Because we are in the auto sales industry we were indirectly creating sales and revenue for other businesses and sales tax for the state (i.e gas, mechanics, autoparts, auction fees, tolls and much more). Now we have to basically liquidate all of our inventory all because one person complained.

I told the town that there are so many vacant buildings and said why would they want another one, but they basically told me that there is nothing they can do because its the law. We can fight it but we know that it is a lost cause so we are planning on converting it over to a new business hopefully for the better.