Miscellaneous 149

1) One piece of evidence that's often given to bolster the claim that WW2 got us out of the Depression (and, yes, this is a topic that I've written on before - http://paranoiacstoogetalk.blogspot.com/2011/04/conventional-thinking-possibly-wrong.html) is the seemingly burgeoning rate of GDP that climbed throughout that conflict. Of course, what these Keynesians fail to point out is that approximately 40% of that increase was government spending and that a significant portion of THAT was military spending. A much more careful analysis of the data reveals that consumer spending actually went DOWN during the war years (guns clearly superseding butter) and that, if it wasn't for the war, GDP would have actually gone down with unemployment remaining high (conscription and the making of weaponry were solely responsible for the decreased unemployment rate). This whole notion that war and other calamities (Pelosi actually said that the earthquake in Haiti might ultimately be beneficial - she obviously never read Bastiat's "The Broken Window Fallacy") having a positive effect on the economy are every bit as ludicrous as they are sick.............2) Allowing the Bush tax-cuts to lapse on people making over $200,000 a year and on families making over $250,000 a year would ultimately net the treasury $70 billion a year (assuming that there isn't a negative effect on the economy for doing so). Mr. Obama's latest proposal claims to raise more than double that; approximately $160 billion a year. I guess what my question is is, where, pray tell, does the other 90 billion come from? Is he strictly going to hit the wealthy again by closing some loopholes, or is he going to get it by hitting the middle-class somehow? I also kind of want to know why he went from advocating a 4:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenues to what is essentially a 1:4 ratio. I mean, is it simply the fact that he won the damned election?............3) Reflecting later on her 1972 trip to communist China, actress Shirley MacLaine referred to the country as "serene"....Hm, must have gotten the guided tour.