anna missed, i was looking for the snark feature. war as public works program?
well, it is. but still..he almost sounds like he’s promoting it (tho he wouldn’t be!). very bizarre.

Posted by: annie | Feb 16 2009 10:29 utc | 4

Krugman is rehashing a meme that has been heard a thousand times by Americans; but there is a potent passage from Lincoln’s second inaugural address to act as an antidote to such poison.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

There is something about the imperial hegemon that has a lot to do about “wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces” I bolded the scriptural quote Lincoln used:”Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”
A “public works project” that is in effect a war of choice, would surely be a project capable destroying and burying those who are responsible for starting it.

Posted by: Copeland | Feb 16 2009 11:58 utc | 6

I’m still fuzzy this morning, but I think these problems are hard to pin down because much of today’s problems are due to paying down interest on yesterday’s debt.
WW II is a strange bird. One of the reasons america benefited so much was that the rest of the industrial world had been bombed to pieces and didn’t have a capable infrastructure to produce like america could. If I remember correctly, there was a bit of an economic struggle for a couple of years after the war as the country assimilated the returning soldiers and productions was shifted back to peacetime wares.
Trying to compare today’s economic problem with the Great Depression is silly. The times are so different now, the world’s economy so interconnected that nations who are political enemies suffer the same financial fate at the hands of financiers. Wars only help the money lenders and the munitions factories. A good war might give the undertaker some extra business too, but all in all they are a losing proposition for the majority of the people. The way we benefit most from wars are from applying technological advances made during wartime to peaceful applications afterwards.
Now I might like a WWII type response to poverty in the world. Or maybe bringing running water and clean sewage practices to the furtherest reaches of the globe. One of my world traveler buddies is convinced world peace could be had for the price indoor toilets in every home. Of course he doesn’t take into account the fighting that results from members of a household locking themselves the bathroom for long periods of time when others are in dire need.
I’d support about anything rather than another war. Even building another tower of babble…

Posted by: David | Feb 16 2009 13:19 utc | 8

I have to voice a qualified objection to what you are saying on the following basis: It has long been treated as common knowledge throughout the US educational system (and particularly in the US economics discipline) that World War II brought the US out of the depression. To acknowledge that is NOT to be an advocate for war (I, for one, am a pacifist). I must say that calling WWII (and any war, for that matter) a “public works program” is a poor choice of words. It is, in my view, an acknowledgement of the true sad state of capitalism in the US at the time that a war effectively jump-started the economy (and it is equally stressed in our schools that it was due to the unique position of the US not having suffered the direct destructive effects of the war). However, I think Krugman would be the first to admit that it is not the war as such but the reconstruction that produced the desired “keynesian” effect on the economy. The term “war economy” may or may not have been coined by the left, but students of Kondratiev waves sought to tie periodic wars to the periodicity of such long waves. I must disagree with that since it leads to the inevitable conclusion that capitalism intrinsically needs war to survive. I therefore agree with you when you say:

Simply continuing FDR’s civil public works policies for a few more years would likely have had the same result with regards to private debt than the war had.

I think, however, that the civil public works programs would have likely had to be continued for many instead of a few years in order to achieve the same effect (Hey, I have no problem with that!). The bottom line for me (and I assume for you as well) is a revindication of Keynesianism, not militarism.

Posted by: D. Mathews | Feb 16 2009 13:52 utc | 10

Krugman is a mouthpiece and a shill for the Plutocracy. He has to know he’s lying about half the crap he proffers. I believe he’s there to manage the downside, meaning the Plutocracy doesn’t want the educated liberals and progressives to become radicals and challenge their status quo. Krugman plays the Good Shepherd, in this regard. He’s the cynic, but a “there’s light at the end of the long-hard tunnel” is his final message. All the while, the sheep’s wool has been sheered and will never grow back.
What Krugman fails to report is that we have been a War Economy since WWII. It never ceased. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s grown into a behemoth Military Indistrial Complex that is Ultra-National. For this reason, a war can no longer bail us out, as if it ever did, because it’s no longer an exceptional event leading to a “new” economy. It already is our economy, and it’s failing. Also, note that neither Krugman, nor any of the other mainstream economists, including Roubini who is now mainstream, are advocating austerity when it comes to defense spending. No, the austerity will come in the form of rendered entitlements and public works. Obama will accomplish what Bush never could have, and that will be the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare. We will be told there is no other choice, and the “believers” will go right along in lockstep. “Just trust him,” they will say, and so they will, and so he will….betray that trust…time and time again.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Feb 16 2009 14:15 utc | 12

I think most economists would agree that defense spending is not an investment in productive capacity. As such, it is a poor substitue for sound investments in infrastructure, which is required for increases in GDP. You wouldn’t know that from Faux News, of course, which is pushing more defense spending–“it’s as good as any other spending. And DOD has lots of needs.”
Further, I think Krugman would argue that the economy did not fully recover before WWII because Roosevelt did not apply enough stimulus in the 1930s. His efforts in this regard were blocked by Republican budget balancers.
However, Krugman should quickly dispel any misinterpretations of his position to avoid being trapped in the right wing spin machine.

Posted by: JohnH | Feb 16 2009 15:15 utc | 14

What unfortunate wording, really horrible.
Why did WWII “work”? on TPM café, answer by Krugman.here ..
Examining the direct spending of the Stimulus package:
here, from this site which also tracks TARP, it seems to me that Obama is not inspired by a ‘war’ economy (although defense gets 12 billion, it is mostly building infrastructure, see a breakdown by Departments here) nor by Roosevelt, or only vestiges thereof; so all the comparisons are lame.
Roosevelt reformed the system – he created the SEC and FDIC, Social Security and the National labor Relations Board. The times were right for that. He dealt with 25% unemployment. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money, he said in his inauguration address, 1933. Obama?
Then, a war economy, with its push to manufacture and sacrifice. A different beast .. Obama cannot muster that kind of drive… (Btw, Krugman forgets that the US is at war, if undeclared..)
The Stimulus P is reads like regular Gvmt. spending, just extra tacked on in billions of dollars, often in plain round numbers. Very unwise, most imprudent.
It is a democratic jamboree…huge amounts for education and health etc., the only ‘growth sectors’ in the US at present… Deficits don’t mata, heh.
I read 13 billion for Education for the Disadvantaged. Insane. The Educ system as is is inefficient, hopeless, does not create social advancement at all, – not its fault one might say… Nevertheless, it is a racket, built on hopes of the poor.
Obama is deeply conservative, he is a mid 20th-century man using outdated recipes. A creature of Wall Street. In cahoots with the Predator class. The rest is tinsel thrown up to keep the ppl quiet.

Posted by: Tangerine | Feb 16 2009 16:08 utc | 16

Even if Krugman is right in saying that WWII helped steer us out of depression, he’s wrong in assuming that any kind of war has the power to do this. In yesterday’s war against nazi-fascism, unlike today’s war against Islamic terrorism, our enemy was more clearly defined, thus making it a more winnable kind of war for us. And unlike those who were conducting the war against nazi-fascism, those who are conducting the war against Islamic fascism are profiting mightily by not winning this war, but by keeping it alive and well.
So it’s my opinion that accelerating the war against Islamic terrorism is more likely to steer us into a depression than out of one. I think that once Krugman realizes that the war on terror is the engine behind the military industrial complex, just as the war on drugs in the engine behind the prison industrial complex, he’ll quickly come to the realization that today’s wars, unlike the one from the past, do more harm than good to the rest of the economy.

Posted by: Cynthia | Feb 16 2009 16:35 utc | 18

The problem here is, there is no such thing such as Islamic fascism. There is medieval regimes controlled by Western world. In reality and by the very facts there is Zionist fascism/apartheid regime, institutionalized in client-state of Israel and supported by every US administration.
Just as Neslon Mandela said:
US threatens world peace, says Mandela
This article is from 2002, but it hasn’t lost a bit in accuracy.
So Cynthia you opinion despite lot of words and efforts to obfuscate situation, is way of real state of things.

Posted by: Balkanac | Feb 16 2009 20:51 utc | 20

The underlying idea of the quote cited is that the US can not escape this crisis without a serious external impetus. WWII offered an excuse to transform the US economy into a centralized planned economy. Resources were allocated efficiently and intelligently for the purpose with relatively little profiteering.
I’d cut Krugman some slack because even though he is full of himself and too glib most of the time, I don’t think he does it to support the current setup. He’s an academic at heart and does better than most in using his celebrity status to push the discussion into areas not usually discussed in polite company. I don’t agree with much of what he says, but I think he writes well. Reading between his lines, I believe he is pacing his expositions to the ability of most people’s gradual acceptance of how bad a situation they are in.
Anyway, he’s not advocating WWII.2
The prospects of Russia (Putin), China and other countries which have central control of their economies look a lot better than the US in dealing with the banks and industry. I think that you could probably plot a fairly smooth curve of countries problems and the sacredness of their free-market for bankers and capitalists. The fact that nationalization is deemed too foreign to even discuss (until recently) shows how infantile the level of discourse is.
I don’t think that Krugman can come out and say that we should have a planned economy. This is of course the problem with capitalist economists- Only private planning for the future offers them employment. The academics only argue about the past. If there is only one instance of a time as bad as this one, focus only on that instance instead of realizing how many ways this is nothing like the past.

Posted by: biklett | Feb 16 2009 21:32 utc | 22

The US role in WWII fell into two distinct parts: in the first, from Sept ’39 to Dec 41, the US economy simply hoovered up orders, cash paid until it ran out, from Britain and its allies. Most importantly it poured its production through Canada and invested heavily in Canadian branch plants. This period gave the economy a tremendous boost which was matched by ‘preparedness’ contracts for US Defense.
Among the additional advantages of this arrangement were the transfer, at no cost, of such advanced technologies as the jet engine and the Tube Alloys project which was the groundwork for the atom bomb.
Then there were the advantages gained in negotiations with Britain, these included dictating terms of both the postwar financial system and Free Trade. Themn there was the Cold War…

Posted by: ellis | Feb 17 2009 3:35 utc | 24

The profiteering is also a serious liability in any situation.
I’ve never seen the profit motive improve efficiency.
I wish Americans would stop confounding greed with innovation.

Posted by: crasmane | Feb 17 2009 12:31 utc | 26

I find Krugman’s thoughts to be shallow in general. One doesn’t need war to bring about good economic environments and policies. It was after WWII that America’s middle class grew by leaps and bounds and this was in a large part because of the strong union movement that pushed up wages for not only union members, but politically, the unions also pushed for a high minimum wage for non-union workers. If wages are relatively high for non-union workers, then, as was their thinking, there would be less reluctance for employers to hire higher paid union workers. (I remember that my initial wages and raises as a beginning salaried engineer were based relative to the union wages from the workers in the plant.) The rural areas were never that prosperous before the great depression so those people didn’t suffer that much more during the depression. And the rural independent farmers were never organized except as coops for feed and fuel though they did often share expensive machinery amongst them on a local level. The farmers prided themselves on their independence. As a result, with such independence, the Americans saw the small independent farmer become almost an extinct species. And as time progressed, there was a general shift to the south by manufacturing corporations and other corporations/firms that had a large number of employees/workers due to lower wages there and the availability of non-union workers. Same with foreign investment, trade, and manufacturing. And with President Reagan on since, America’s economic policies have been a disaster for the American worker. It has been quite clear that the FIRE elite (those few elite from the financial, insurance and Real Estate sectors) now rule America.
There was a good documentary about our current melt-down by PBS Frontline which aired last night and is available here. Krugman was featured in a few clips of course. He is what I would call the darling of the young left. He is often featured on Rachel Maddow’s new show on MSNBC, and the way she swoons over him one would think twice if she is/was really a lesbian. Where I once enjoyed Olbermann/Maddow criticizing the Bush regime, I now find these shows disgusting in the same/opposite way I find Rush Limbaugh disgusting, that is this ‘Obama can do no wrong’ attitude.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 18 2009 13:45 utc | 28

biklett,
Yeah, perhaps good is not the right adjective here. The show was only 1 hour and incomplete for sure, but it did (indirectly) illustrate the stupidity and dictatorial power of our financial elites in government. I didn’t see it try and portray anyone as a hero though.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 18 2009 22:04 utc | 30