Quote from: bitcoinbitcoin113 on November 14, 2012, 04:58:13 AM

1) Perhaps it was the war weakening the competition that lead to america"s rise
2) What happened afterward? Did they stop "injecting money"?

If the answer to #2 is yes, I would like to know how you measure this. If it is no, then that is not an example of what you said earlier.

1) It surely helped, without any doubt.
2) The war effort ended, so, in a way, they stopped subsidize this war industry and what was related around it. But at that point, people had more skills and qualifications that were acquired during the war. That they continued to inject money or not is irrelevant, since what is important is the capacity of the population to produce something. It's not that hard to measure, since the baby-boom is the best symptom of that era. People had now the capacity to make new things that weren't possible before the war, because they didn't had the skills, assets and investments at that point.

Jobs are created using a mix of knowledge and investments. You can't make a business if you are missing:
-the knowledge or capacity of doing it
-having the basic investments to start it up

If you're lacking jobs, the best thing to do is to teach your population so they can learn and think new things, while providing them the basic investments possibilities. Those two things needs a social intervention, usually provided by a government. In the case of WW2, factories were popping up left and right for the war, and people working in those also learned these jobs. When the war ended, you had many production lines available for any businesses that were subsidized by the government during the war. People had new opportunities that created crazy growth.

When people don't have money, they can't create the investment needed for education or businesses. If the state also cut at the same time, I don't see how you can encourage growth and education. Back in 2008, we were also affected by the economic crisis, and some people had difficulties finding jobs. What happened? Since school fees are really really low (lowest in North America! Cheesy

), many people went back to school. When the economy started to recover, the same people had now more knowledge and qualifications, and were doing more valuable work.

Quote from: Miles Bennett Dyson on November 14, 2012, 08:10:53 AM

Quote from: Brunic on November 13, 2012, 10:08:59 PM

Quote from: Nolo on November 13, 2012, 09:54:54 PM

I'll back you up and say I agree completely with your austerity post. It's a horrible idea. That's the problem that I have with what happened in the 2000s in the U.S. After the country was showing a surplus, and unemployment was so low, and the economy was booming in the late 90s, that's when the spending should have been cut, and taxes on the wealthy raised. Instead we accelerated the increase in debt by massively increasing spending and massively cutting taxes on the wealthy. Then the complete lack of financial regulation led to the collapse of the worldwide financial industry and the housing debacle we find ourselves digging out of now.

So basically what happened was we kept spending and low taxes when things were going great, and when they collapsed we had magnified the debt so badly that there wasn't the ability (or will) to massively spend by the government to end the recession (depression?) quickly.

Bingo!

You're making money and your people is making easy money. Pay those debts and save some money for when the country is going down. Bush trashed all this money in I-don't-know-what and now, you're stuck with a guy trying to repair all the damages.

I love the Norwegian model exactly for that. They found oil and easy money. What do they do? They build one of the biggest fund around here and save money for worst days. Last time I checked, their fund was estimated to 500 billion$. The day they go in crisis, they can simply subsidize their population for a couple of years, waiting for the economy to get better. This country is almost immune to any economic crisis.

You are right, Norway just surpassed the Arabic oil funds and is now the biggest fund in the world. It is growing by investments alone by 850$ per second or more. As of July 2012 it was 634,753,952,831$.

Edited typo.

This is crazy. We're talking about a country of like 5 millions people. You have to learn from the best, and IMHO, Norway is easily the top country in the world. You don't top the chart of the Human Development Index by accident.

Quote from: fornit on November 14, 2012, 02:17:10 PM

also, spending money is not always a bad strategy. but very often governments fight depression by spending money rather randomly, for example just giving the ok to every infrastructure project any community presents, no matter how useless it is. having a sound long term plan to spend your extra money is always a good idea.

I agree that spending for spending is not a good strategy. My call is free education and providing assets for start-up and small businesses. The best way to solve a job problem is not to find one, it is to create one for yourself.