Kilo_302 said:
but are you suggesting we privatize healthcare, the roads the our educational system?
The Swiss don't have public healthcare and it is far superior to ours, ranked #2 of all OECD countries I believe. Australia hasn't made private healthcare impossible like we have, and they spend far less on healthcare with a superior end state than ours, ranked #4 I think.
Canada ranks #11, just below the #10 United States.
It'd be interesting to see how a private healthcare system would look in today's age of technology. Unfortunately the closest we've got is Switzerland, its doing pretty damn good.
Kilo_302 said:
Any and all post-war growth you say? Please expand. Sources?
Well I don't see any sources for your claim that Keynesian theory has been successfully implemented on several occasions, but I am sure that you would not have a hard time finding occurrences where the government increased spending and the GDP grew. However, that means nothing. GDP growth =/= growth in production or gains in efficiency of production. GDP just measures consumption. If you inflate the currency and artificially lower the cost of money (interest) below what its market value would be, of course you will see an increase in consumption. That doesn't mean jacks**t.
I have no "sources," only a lot of reading on my own. I only have an explanation of how an economy actually grows and a comparison. First a better definition of economic growth, which would be an increase in production for the same cost, or producing the same for lower cost. This only occurs through an improvement in technology. We often think of technology as computer widgets and whatnot, but that is a very narrow view of technology. An otter using a rock to break a shell open is technology. The creation of assembly lines to produce massive amounts of goods at a low cost was technology. Flooding the market with money and decreasing interest rates to encourage consumption does not achieve this.
The greatest economic expansion to ever occur was a 200 year period in about the 1700s to early 1900, and it occurred in an area of the world with low taxes, open borders, and very very limited regulation, if any at all. In this 200 year period, money deflated every year. This means it became more valuable, because economic growth was occurring and goods became cheaper, and cheaper, and cheaper, and so your dollar that could only buy you bread a year ago could now buy you three loaves of bread. This was all before central banking, when interest rates were relatively high (because money was a real scarce thing (gold), not just paper that the central bank prints, so people didn't lend it for cheap) encouraging savings (under-consumption... quite the opposite from today's theme, and something Keynes followers swear would break an economy), and people could literally save up money and buy a house. The definition of middle class meant being able to afford to eat meat once a day to be able to afford leisure, shopping, amusement parks, stadium sports, movies and recreation.
Fast forward to the end of this period and the creation of the Federal Reserve system. Money has devalued ever since and debt for both people and governments is at an all-time high. Yet, we still think we can over-consume and spend our way into economic growth again.
