Originally posted by Doctor Hussein Doom:
It's silly to claim that World War II got us out of the Depression as a way of arguing that Government spending a la the New Deal is ineffective. World War II is nothing less than the most massive public works program in history. The logical conclusion to draw is that had FDR been facing a peacetime scenario, he should have amped up Government spending even more.
Nothing short of a monstrous infrastructure program is what is needed now. Unparallelled, staggering government investment focused on the sectors of the economy which will breed the largest multiplier effects.
My vote is for huge investment in a high speed national rail network to rival the Interstate system in its scope, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars devoted to nuclear energy and green technology development. I would also devote renewed effort to boosting public education.
Finally I'd ship anyone who still thinks Ayn Rand offers serious insight into how our world works off to Gitmo. 
who's ayn rand? yeah, i know who she is, but, honestly, i've never read her.
i can only assume that the rest of this post is a joke it's so preposterous.
it matters what government is doing restricting the free movement of capital and allowing business to operate efficiently. by propping up wages, setting prices and setting output, the government arbitrarily intervened in the market in the face of well settled economic theory. bernanke in his books blamed the Fed for restricting capital, which caused panic in the markets, but through FDR's policies of intervening and causing havoc most definitely hindered business from recovering after the panics.
for some reason, i would imagine the Keynes himself would question the wisdom of increasing government spending and adding onto our current deficits.
