Lie, rinse, repeat. And the corporate media duly repeats.

ANd remember that WWII required sacrifice and rationing and war bonds and government controlled economy and even some rich companies doing the right thing. A vertible hot bed of socialism.

Ah, but we're talking about "print the legend"* here, and Will et al. are trying to create an instant one, based on "Forgotten Man" by Amity Thing. Like the "Democrat" party and "partial birth" abortion, you repeat the thing often enough and the likes of Tom Brokaw start to talk about it like it's a reality.

*John Ford had a newspaperman say "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". The line is often misquoted as Ford's own attitude, but the movie itself is a ruthless dissection of the legend, and the line was given to Carlton Young, one of Ford's biggest gasbags.

A quick question--if WWII helped get the thing moving because of the vast investment, how is our hundreds-of-billions investment helping ours? If we weren't at war, would we be better of economically, or worse off?

WWII was not a public works project in Iraq. It was, of course, much larger and involved employing millions of people in uniform and out.

One of the things about right-wing alternative reality is that it hardly matters what the evidence is. It is, simply, a belief system, and like all religions depends on the credulity of the person espousing the dogma. George Will is a high priest in this religion and probably knows what a sham it is. On the other hand, he is George Will. Gigs like that don't come along very often so it's a good career move to keep the faith.

If we weren't at war, would we be better of economically, or worse off?
In this case, we'd be better off. Today less than 1% of the population is in the military. WWII necessitated that a far greater percentage served. The huge expansion of labor-intensive manufacturing in WWII provided good-paying jobs for hundreds of thousands. There was an overnight need for literally tens of thousands of aircraft, guns, tanks, hundreds of ships, etc. There has been no such manufacturing boom attached to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

I think we should start by admitting that the "Current Deal" is for shit.

Wait...the electorate just did admit that.

I keep listening to Republicans answers and all I hear is double down the last 8 years. Yeh,right lets keep on doing the same things we have been doing and pray for a different result.

When George Will, the Heritage Foundation, and the rest of the Republican establishment come up with solutions that aren't based on magic I will listen, until then they should shut up.

I am not an economist but: I don't see how it can make complete sense to say the new deal did not work despite the fact it employed millions of Americans. It seems obvious that it sure as hell worked for those millions.

The plastic yellow car magnet manufacturing companies are doing very well economically. Too bad all the factories are in China and Bangladesh.

It's worth recalling that Keynes's "General Theory" wasn't published until 1936, the year FDR was elected for his second term.

Wait a sec, aren't these the same windbags who scream bloody murder about the evils of "revisionist history"* if someone so much as hints that America's wartime efforts have ever been anything less than exemplary?

*that's one pejorative term that sets this history grad's teeth on fire (to muss metaphors beyond all comprehension ;)

Didn't Paul Krugman explain this to George Will in a recent This Week? Walt is correct, George Will is espousing the conservative theology, which is never contradicted by facts.

When Will spoke that line on a previous show, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman smacked him down with actual historical fact. Yesterday it was Robert Kuttner (I may have the name wrong).

As long as ABC keeps booking libruls with spines to appear with George, I'm fine with him constantly reciting right-wing drivel and getting corrected on camera.

Paul asked:
if WWII helped get the thing moving because of the vast investment, how is our hundreds-of-billions investment helping ours? If we weren't at war, would we be better of economically, or worse off?

If you're asking, why isn't the Iraq war helping our economy, the answer is that we're spending the money differently for Iraq.

After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. pushed it's heavy industry into overdrive, building ships, tanks, trucks and planes -- by the end of the war we built almost 200,000 new planes -- for a fight in two theaters.

In Iraq, we are actually deferring the replacement of equipment. The money that's flowing out is going to politically-connected contractors like Blackwater, where we're paying their mercenaries $100K per man, and to KBR where we're paying them millions for buildings that aren't being finished and millions more in bonuses . . . just because.

So far, the $300 billion that's been spent on the "stimulus package" has been to buy pieces of paper that show ownership of other pieces of paper. We're not actually building anything and as a result we haven't put a single unemployed person to work.

Here's my idea: the federal government should order a couple hundred thousand solar panel units from American manufacturers, and a couple thousand wind mill turbines. Pre-pay part of the contract -- enough to allow the manufacturers to expand their capacity and hire new workers.

An important part of solar and wind units are batteries to store the generated power. The increased demand for batteries will help offset the decreased demand for car batteries.

At the same time, hire out-of-work construction workers now and put them through training courses to learn to install the solar panels and windmills. Then put them to work doing the installation as soon as the products become available. Install the solar panels on all government buildings where solar power is viable, and when that's done, offer them to the public at 10 percent of cost and to private industry at 50 percent of cost.

There's a couple of important "facts' missing from this argument. My mother and father lived through the great depression and they recounted how many of the programs that were implemented by Roosevelt kept people alive and families together. It's easy to take the human part out of the equation as if it were just a meaningless component yet let's not forget the actual suffering that comes along with economic disaster.

Whenever Will writes anything, other than hoping the Orioles will return to greatness, or such as the Sen Shelby types speak, file it under the "But, we think we are still relevant" category.

One aside about that WWII effort; it included the first major recycling - Paper drives, tin can drives were held across the land - Funny thing, about those, including glass, following the war, many driving in their newly built and bought cars, simply threw the like from their car windows as they enjoyed driving without gas rationing.

And, following saving the economy came the stupendous GI Bill. Obama is correct concerning including education in the mix.

Gandalf,

No Republican alive has ever suffered through hard times. If any had they wouldn't be so insufferable.

I am sick to death of the Republican belief in magic.

just to reiterate what lifelong dem had to say: this is truly amazing. will already embarassed himself once this matter only several weeks ago. rather than go home and learn something, he repeats the lie.

when people ask what do the republicans need to do to rebuild their brand, the first part of the answer is: stop making shit up all the time.

A little over a year ago, Amity Schlaes made the same ridiculous assertion in a debate with Jonathan Alter at the Central Library in downtown KC. But Jonathan could have not bothered to show up and she would still have lost in that crowd of Truman Democrats.

After years of mocking Republicans who claimed that Bush was failing because he wasn't really a conservative - that conservativism hasn't failed, it's never been tried - I'm hesitant to make the same claim about a left-wing idea.

The second point in the blockquote looks relatively clear. During the Great Depression, if things got better after the New Deal until a return to fiscal responsibility and then things got worse, then post hoc just maybe ergo propter hoc. But the first claim - the infusion of government spending wasn't as big as it seems, because a tax increase matched it and because it was balanced out by a drop in state and local spending - isn't the same thing likely to happen again? 49 states have balanced budgets amendments to their constitutions.

Cyrus writes:

After years of mocking Republicans who claimed that Bush was failing because he wasn't really a conservative - that conservativism hasn't failed, it's never been tried - I'm hesitant to make the same claim about a left-wing idea.

It was tried, and it succeeded spectacularly. It was called "World War II". The spending involved in getting the US onto a war footing was many times the amount involved in the New Deal. Of course, if there weren't the threats of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, I doubt FDR would have ever gotten away with such massive spending.

Those at the top in our capitalistic system will do anything to maintain the status quo. It's that simple.

What we need is a new New Deal focused on energy for the 21st century. But we're not going to get it, I'm afraid. Instead, we're devoting all our resources to fighting the implosion of trillions and trillions of phony assets. How is it that the loss of literally nothing, the loss of that which was never there in the first place, can so cripple our economy as to cause it to sink into a deep recession?

Something is wrong when you are dependent upon a financial system that is based on phony money. And we are trying desperately to prop this system up instead of finding one that actually works.

Obama's plan should be called the New New New Deal. THIS lame duck administration is currently having the Treasury perform the New New Deal, WHICH if it doesn't work will wind up on Obama's tasks as well!!!

Without the New Deal the US does not create its huge middle class.

Last week: George Will says New Deal didn't work, Krugman smacks him around.

Yesterday: George Will says New Deal didn't work, Kuttner puts him in his place.

Next week: George Will says New Deal didn't work, this time there is no progressive economist on the show, Cokie Roberts agrees with Will. Will wins.

Help me out here. In what sense did the New Deal work? Unemployment in 1933 was 25%. Unemployment in 1939 was 17% (or 10 million unemployed). As far as I can see, we were still in a depression in 1939.

We're still awaiting the coming of the One-Armed Economist for final judgement.

I think George Will has jumped the shark.

Put down TWICE on this recently, I should think ABC will quickly become embarrassed by his presence.

Or perhaps they can't find another "conservative" columnist who is less clueless than Will and THAT's why they keep having him back.

Remember George Will is the guy who praised Reagan as "a thoroughbred” after the first Carter-Reagan debate, some how neglecting to mention he had stolen a copy of Carter’s briefing papers and given them to Reagan. Not only a thief, but a liar too, and not a particularly bright one at that.

Sweating theough fog @ 1:25 PM posted:
"...Unemployment was at 25% in 1933. Unemployment in 1939 was 17% (or 10 million unemployed)..."
Three things: in 1933 there was little or no unemployment insurance. That 25% unemployment rate meant no income at all (except for charity, if available). There were millions more under-employed workers (less than 40 hours a week). You might also want to check into the various reports published during the 1920's about the very low levels of pay for workers; there may have been a boom in the '20's, but most workers weren't part of it. And farmers definitely not.
Second: 10% unemployment in 1939 would have been closer to 4-6 million, not 17 million. The US population in the 1930's was between 120-130 million; the total population of the US didn't reach 170 million until well after WWII. Subtracting half the total as minors/retired/housewives would leave a pool of 60 million people hunting for jobs - 10% of that is 6 million.
Fnally, unemployment started dropping in 1934 as government spending starting flowing through the economy. It continued to drop until 1937, when FDR cut Federal spending to prove his fiscal bone fides. The recession that followed lasted until 1939 and wasn't fully ended until the Federal Government started the massive spending required for rearmament/supplying the Allies in late 1940.
No, the New Deal didn't end the Great Depression. To be honest, I don't think it was ever designed to do so. The aim of the New Deal was to put enough people back to work at fair wages to "prime" the economy into starting back up. Until the Federal spending cuts of 1937, that was what was happening, although slowly.
What the New Deal did show however, was that the Federal Government, if allowed, could have a major positive impact on the economy during recessions/depressions. And the right will tie itself into all sorts of knots rather than admit that. Had the Federal Government actually implemented Keynesian policies, which were being talked about even if the book didn't reach print until 1936, the economic results produced on the home front during WWII could have begun earlier.

What Krugman ignored was the federal government set up cartels to force prices higher and thus, used up wages and espeically higher wages.

The economic boom of WWII was the value of America's capital resources grew as the U.S. bomb the capital resources of most of the rest of the world out of existence.

What Krugman is also not mentioning is that in the 1930's the U.S. had both closed borders and a domesitc consumer goods industry. In 2008 the U.S., has open borders, the economy is globalized, and the U.S. does not have much of a consumer goods manufacturing base.

Hiring people for make work programs will result in illegal aliens building things that are funded with money borrwed from China. The wages paid to the illegal aliens will be spent on consumer goods manufactured in China and sent to Mexico and Central America as remitances.

Keynesian policies will have a much harder time working with open borders, international flow of funds, and no manufacturing base.

Doug,

On your first point, you seem to be making that people were, in general, better off in 1936 - at the peak of the New Deal, then they were in 1928. I'm sure that all the millions of still-unemployed in 1936 would happily have one of those low-wage 1928 jobs.

On your second point, I wasn't saying that the unemployment rate in 1939 was 10%. I was saying it was 17%. And it was. Check the figures.

You say Roosevelt's New Deal efforts were abandoned in 1937. Yet at that majestic peak of Roosevelt's New Deal programs - 1936, unemployment had plummeted all the way from the 1933 peak of 25% to ... 16.9%. Not 6.9% but 16.9% Roosevelt was known for trying one thing, then another until he found something that worked. It seems by the end of 1936 he himself had concluded that the New Deal hadn't worked.