There appears to be a deal on the shutdown and (phony) debt ceiling crisis. Now, we need to get back to addressing the recovery. Republicans insist on saying that this recession has taken longerto recover from than all others since the Great Depression ended. Thats true, but two points: 1) Its not a fair comparison, since as a recession caused by a financial crisis, it was more like the Great Depression itself than all the recessions since the Great Depression; 2) Given point number 1, there were things we learned during the Great Depression that were applied to all the recessions since that one until the Great Recession/Lesser Depression (as the recent unpleasantness is varyingly referred to by economists), like when aggregate demand drops, the government must fill-in by increasing its infrastructure (taking advantage of the lower costs that accompany recessions), increasing government purchases (with the same benefits to the public as infrastructure investment), and investing in higher or continuing education for unemployed workers, so that theyre ready and more productive when the recession ends. We did all that in previous recessions - we did little of that this time. So, yes, the recovery is slower because of the austerity policy inflicted by the people whose laissez-faire economic policies put us into the soup in the first place. This is an example of the saying that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 03:07:30 +0000
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