The American Spectator

Reader Mail

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INEVITABLE -- BUT FOR REAL THIS TIME
Re: Quin Hillyer's Don't Confirm Her!

Let us remember that in February 2008 John McGadfly/McAmnesty/McBackstabber won the GOP primaries and guaranteed a Democrat in the White House. This is the result of exhaustion in the GOP. They were sent to govern according to conservative principles but they decided to behave like Democrats, (Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, Tom DeLay and various other GOP inmates). The only way to get them back to first principles is a long trek through the desert. Perhaps four years or so.

Also, it would help immensely to find some way to get rid of Arlen Specter once and for all. George made a serious mistake backing that RINO in the primary.
-- Jeff Seyfert

While I recognize the concerns of those who consider Senator Clinton to be a shrill harpy who has never successfully managed any program, public or private, in her life, and her ability to offend and alienate even staunch allies and her history of scandals make her morally, ethically and professionally unsuited to the position of Secretary of State, I would ask that those of you who wish to support the troops reconsider your objections, as it is for these reasons that we should support her nomination. With Mrs. Clinton at State, the one cabinet department that President Obama would not dare cut will be Defense. After all, somebody will have to deal with the fallout from her inability to create or sustain peaceful relations, and for a professional Soldier, that translates to job security.
-- Mike Harris
MAJ, United States Army

CONSERVATIVES FOR NATIONALIZATION
Re: Ralph R. Reiland's Out of Gas:

Instead of lending $34 billion to the "Big Three" American automakers, use the money to buy controlling interest in Honda Motor, whose share price is at an attractively low level. Then slap GM, Ford, and Chrysler badges on the Hondas. American taxpayers and shareholders would be better served.
-- David Govett
Davis, California 

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN HUFFING?
Re: Harrell Huff's letter (under "Trick Question") in Reader Mail's Defending the State From Sec. of State:

Harrell Huff asks a reasonable question: if the Depression of the 1930s ended with the massive government spending for WWII, why shouldn't massive government spending on roads and bridges end this one? 

Spending for infrastructure is probably a good thing to do on its own merits. New, restored and improved transportation systems would be a plus for economic activity beyond the immediate benefit of providing jobs. Nevertheless, such spending has been shown empirically to have a minimal benefit at best for the economy at large. Japan habitually responds with infrastructure construction in the face of its own economic troubles; but such moves do not address its recurring failures in its banking sector.

Why is this so? The first answer is that, even as large as the infrastructure "industry" is, it is simply too narrow as a part of the overall market to lift the rest of the economy. The second is a bit more detailed. It has to be remembered that the government has no money. It has to receive funds through tax revenues or by borrowing. In times such as ours, governmental building projects requires borrowing—borrowing which takes hundreds of billions out of the private sector making the private sector that much cash poor and constricts its own ability to borrow. Not a formula for economic growth.  

New jobs created in a narrow slice of economy would come at the expense of other jobs elsewhere across the rest of the economy. Money from the general economy would be transferred to a particular, individual part of the economy. And we aren't even talking about how one region of the country would benefit at the expense of others.

There are many things that can be said about the WWII war economy in terms of dollars and benefits. It is not often discussed is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. The war sucked men and women out of the workforce for military service and thereby intensely reduced unemployment.  This was a dubious benefit. A huge fraction of those men and women would never re-enter the workforce. Most of their loved ones would rather have suffered joblessness than to give up what did.
-- Mike Dooley

Harrell Huff writes, concerning the statement that the massive spending of World War II ended the Depression, "If massive government spending was successful in ending one depression, why would not massive government spending now on roads and bridges end this one?"

Mr. Huff is having difficulty wrapping his mind around the totality of the industrial mobilization undertaken by the United States in World War II. It encompassed virtually every sector of the economy, from agriculture, to steel, to automotive, to aeronautics, to electronics. The Government set prices, determined what would be built and by whom, and was simultaneously the principal customer for most industrial output. Many commodities, including food and gasoline, were strictly rationed (though this was more for purposes of focusing morale than actual need). At the same time, the mobilization of the military from roughly 150,000 men to more than 6 million men removed a significant portion of the surplus labor supply, to the point that women had to enter the industrial work force on a large scale for the first time (though less than 25% of single women worked in war industries).

The United States supplied not only itself, but most of its allies, whose industries were either prostrate or already operating at full stretch. The United States made its allies pay for their Lend Lease equipment with hard currency, in the process bankrupting them and helping to keep the U.S. economy afloat. To pay for its own wartime industrial mobilization, the government engaged in deficit spending on a scale that makes current bailout scenarios seem like chump change. This is was the reason for the ubiquitous War Bond drives, yet even then, by early 1945, the United States teetered on the brink of insolvency.