4 Comments
author

Thanks for the links. The issue of the New Deal is complicated by the subsequent history. The Nazis saw it as capitalism managed for the benefit of the already powerful. FDR sold it as a necessary accommodation by capital for the sake of maintaining the illusion of democracy in the US.

However, by listing its accomplishments in terms of 1) employing people who need employment and 2) paying them to build needed infrastructure, you point in the right direction. Although I would argue that MMT has no bearing on current inflation--- it is a product of corporate pricing power and predictable dislocations from unnecessary wars, it will be a hard sell for a while because of the myth of the financial basis of inflation.

But how great would it be if 'we' took the US to where everyone who wants a job has one at a living wage doing what the nation needs done? The impediments to doing so are political.

So thanks again for the links.

Expand full comment
author

You are correct. The phrase should have read 'the US' with Wilson left out. That is how I have written it in the past. According to Karl Bracher's The German Dictatorship, the Nazis had placed Party loyalists in key positions across what are now Austria and Germany by the mid-1920s. Bracher gives details that give the argument plausibility. The Indian Wars are generally claimed to have ended in the mid-1920s, providing an historical overlap. The point is as I made it in the piece: the German fascists didn't arise in a vacuum. There was historical precedent in the US for much of their program.

Expand full comment

-You have nailed it ! I just started grinning while reading here in Detroit .

Oh… there’s an ‘impending’ threat to our system, and it might even get ugly ?! (Geeezus.)

Not to mention this morning’s kindly PSA , warning Gazans to flee immediately lest they expose themselves to the grave humanitarian catastrophe approaching …

Just a weather advisory, folks !

- Joslin ( Detroit near Canadian border )

Expand full comment

"Wilson was still prosecuting the Indian Wars in the US when the German fascists came to power."

Timeline doesn't make sense: Wilson left office in 1921 (and his mind well before) and German fascists came to power eleven years later. Wilson even died (1924) while fascism was still crystallizing in Italy.

Expand full comment