One fellow commenting anonymously (I'm pretty sure I know this rogue) got it right.
His economics were something of a Ponzi scheme where he had to keep taking over other countries to fund his spending on guns & butter.aon guessed Hitler as well with some others thrown in. Here were some other answers with my responses.
Dean and Paul both suggested FDR. While FDR managed to pupate our current bloated government, I'm not sure how much this example fits him. aon suggested a range of dictators including Stalin and Mao and made some typically prescient points about each. Then, just as typically, he went off the deep end regarding President Bush.
Mind you, GWB did pretty much everything the exact opposite of what you've described. External inflation is allowed to the extend that the $US is worth about 1/2 what it was when he was elected. Roads, bridges and levees are allowed to decompose while the unemployment rate is around 5%...Hating don't make it so, amigo. President Bush has pretty much done exactly the same as the example, spending wildly on domestic programs. External inflation is pretty much meaningless. If it doesn't translate into a local effect, then it doesn't much matter. 5% unemployment is called full employment and is the thing most countries aim for. We've had it for about 8 years. As for infrastructure crumbling, that's a pretty complex matter and whatever blame needs to go around seems to be equally spread. Here in San Diego, our water system is falling apart while our public education industry waxes fat and prosperous. California is deep in debt, San Diego is deep in debt and the public school system budgets hit another record level in real dollars every year.
Funny, I'd never realised until you pointed it out that Bush is actually worse than Mao, Stalin AND Hitler.
I'll leave it to you to amplify your point about President Bush being the equal of such catastrophic economic morons as Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Be sure to show your work and include a comparison to Mr. Misery Index himself, President Carter.
Paul went with FDR as well and suggested he was the worst president ever. I'm going with President Carter on that one, at least in the modern era. Whatever his economic failings, FDR had the Nazis and Tojo right all along while the Republican isolationists had it dead wrong. Carter got it all wrong.
In a post scheduled later today, I'm going to reveal something I discovered while doing a little research yesterday that stunned me and has a direct impact on this discussion. What I found out explained how Hitler and other economic populist demagogues have managed to win the endorsement of voters time after time.
Thanks to everyone who participated!
You know, I kind of suspected, even without researching, that it was going to turn out to be Hitler. It's gotten to where everyone expects the answer to anything of the form "Who said (somethinng like what current politicians are saying)?" to be "Hitler!".
ReplyDeleteJust to mess with people, you should do something like this, and then when you give the answer, say "I bet you thought it was going to be Hitler, didn't you? Ha! It was actually James II! Fooled you!"
Yeah, I know using Hitler is a cliche, but it just started to hit me that hearing all of the people railing against Exxon sounded like Hitler railing against the profiteers in Germany. Both are examples of economic ignorance leading to stupid decisions.
ReplyDeleteUnmasked I see, what do I win?
ReplyDeleteI also disagree with the posturing against oil profits, but you have taken a very big hammer to a very small nail.
I shall just let Paul wallow in his egregious wrongness on FDR.
Brian
Well, I guess that 5% unemployment is a perfectly acceptable figure.
ReplyDeleteUnless, of course, you are one of those 1 in 20 people that feature in that statistic.
Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt and started my own business.
Of course, you are right, the devaluation of the $US is meaningless, unless of course you have to spend that dollar overseas on such things as, oh I don't know, oil or the debt to China. Then, of course, it would be handy to have a currency that was worth more than 1/2 a Swahili Juju bean to the Euro.
Finally, I don't hate GWB. Just because he's incompetent, lazy, enthralled to Big Oil and started, then escalated, a war against a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world while being captivated by Big Oil doesn't mean I hate him.
It just means that George W Bush is incompetent, lazy, enthralled to Big Oil and started, then escalated, a war against a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world while being captivated by Big Oil.
I would be prepared to bet real money that when Obama becomes president, should he remove all troops from Iraq and let them resolve their civil war amongst themselves, that the oil price will halve within 2 years.
Bets will not currently be taken in US currency.
Any takers?