Comments on: Depressing

By: Roderick

Roderick — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:19:33 +0000

Bob Higgs talks about GDP in this talk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/12/higgs_on_the_gr.html

By: Black Bloke

Black Bloke — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:01:12 +0000

Richard have you never read anything from any economist debating the merit of the GDP statistic as a valid measure? I’ve read quite a few detailed criticisms of GDP measures.

By: Anon73

Anon73 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:05:02 +0000

Here’s a recent talk at Mises which discusses the New Deal:

http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/ASC2009/ASC09_02_Reed.mp3

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:05:32 +0000

I only thing the pro-New Deal brigade hang onto is the quick recovery in GDP after Roosevelt came to power. You can hurl all the anti-New Deal arguments you want against them but they’ll always bring up the GDP statistic. This needs to be addressed by the revisionists, I have yet to read a revisionist book that takes on this argument directly.

By: Soviet Onion

Soviet Onion — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:38:30 +0000

Hmm . . . well, I’m only five years out of high school and at the time my school’s US History classes were definitely teaching that the New Deal ended the Depression, and of course that Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire advocate who sat on hands instead of taking action when he should have. I’ll let other people draw conclusions from this.

By: dennis

dennis — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:33:14 +0000

I have been amazed at the backlash against New Deal revisionism. I thought the matter was more or less settled against FDR and his gang that couldn’t shoot straight a few years back, when even left leaning economists began to re-asses the effectiveness of the New Deal.