Better to cry over facile comparisons. A fair s
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Posted On: 02/01/2020 3:20:20 PM
Better to cry over facile comparisons.
A fair summary of the RW screed would be me no likey SS and Medicare. Corp and farm welfare? Not so bad.
https://www.ft.com/content/778193e4-44d8-11de...144feabdc0
A short century ago the US and Argentina were rivals. Both were riding the first wave of globalisation at the turn of the 20th century. Both were young, dynamic nations with fertile farmlands and confident exporters. Both brought the beef of the New World to the tables of their European colonial forebears. Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, Argentina was among the 10 richest economies in the world.
The millions of emigrant Italians and Irish fleeing poverty at the end of the 19th century were torn between the two: Buenos Aires or New York? The pampas or the prairie?
A hundred years later there was no choice at all. One had gone on to be among the most successful economies ever. The other was a broken husk.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected president amidst crisis and despair in 1932, took few chances. He saw that reform was needed and met the Depression head-on with the New Deal, a somewhat experimental set of policies distinctly at odds with the hands-off doctrine of the Golden Age.
It was not until the build-up to war in 1939 revived demand for factory output that the economy truly recovered. But the political impact of the federal government’s efforts was undoubtedly felt. The system was capable of absorbing new ideas.
The system could renew itself. The system did not crash. By contrast, Argentina suffered a deep crisis that ran throughout its narrow political class. With a pathological dislike of anything that smacked of socialism, it appeared paralysed by the slump.
Exports of beef and wheat were particularly hard hit – by the end of the 1920s, meat exports to continental Europe had fallen by more than two-thirds from their level in 1924. The Depression brought FDR and a more active federal government to the US. To Argentina it brought dictatorship. Nationalism and self-sufficiency became attractive; hapless democratic governments passing power ineffectually between each other did not.
The man who came to embody the new doctrine, Juan Perón, was one of the leaders of a military coup in 1943. He became president in 1946 and projected an assertive, disciplined nationalism.
He encouraged a cult of personality and urged Nazi-style economic self-sufficiency and “corporatism” – a strong government, organised labour and industrial conglomerates jointly directing and managing growth. These ideas came to the US, too, but few took them seriously.
Trump is far more like Peron than any Dem is like Stalin. And THAT'S the parallel with Argentina, the mistake we're living with.
A fair summary of the RW screed would be me no likey SS and Medicare. Corp and farm welfare? Not so bad.
https://www.ft.com/content/778193e4-44d8-11de...144feabdc0
A short century ago the US and Argentina were rivals. Both were riding the first wave of globalisation at the turn of the 20th century. Both were young, dynamic nations with fertile farmlands and confident exporters. Both brought the beef of the New World to the tables of their European colonial forebears. Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, Argentina was among the 10 richest economies in the world.
The millions of emigrant Italians and Irish fleeing poverty at the end of the 19th century were torn between the two: Buenos Aires or New York? The pampas or the prairie?
A hundred years later there was no choice at all. One had gone on to be among the most successful economies ever. The other was a broken husk.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected president amidst crisis and despair in 1932, took few chances. He saw that reform was needed and met the Depression head-on with the New Deal, a somewhat experimental set of policies distinctly at odds with the hands-off doctrine of the Golden Age.
It was not until the build-up to war in 1939 revived demand for factory output that the economy truly recovered. But the political impact of the federal government’s efforts was undoubtedly felt. The system was capable of absorbing new ideas.
The system could renew itself. The system did not crash. By contrast, Argentina suffered a deep crisis that ran throughout its narrow political class. With a pathological dislike of anything that smacked of socialism, it appeared paralysed by the slump.
Exports of beef and wheat were particularly hard hit – by the end of the 1920s, meat exports to continental Europe had fallen by more than two-thirds from their level in 1924. The Depression brought FDR and a more active federal government to the US. To Argentina it brought dictatorship. Nationalism and self-sufficiency became attractive; hapless democratic governments passing power ineffectually between each other did not.
The man who came to embody the new doctrine, Juan Perón, was one of the leaders of a military coup in 1943. He became president in 1946 and projected an assertive, disciplined nationalism.
He encouraged a cult of personality and urged Nazi-style economic self-sufficiency and “corporatism” – a strong government, organised labour and industrial conglomerates jointly directing and managing growth. These ideas came to the US, too, but few took them seriously.
Trump is far more like Peron than any Dem is like Stalin. And THAT'S the parallel with Argentina, the mistake we're living with.
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