How did Germany go from near-worthless currency (pic related) and debt-riddled poverty to a prosperous world power in a matter of years?
No /pol/ bs, let's talk details about the economic system; what new ideas did they bring to the table, did it work, and could it work again? (This time without the military being the main economic and labor consumer)
Other urls found in this thread:
econlib.org
combinedfleet.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
Very simple. Erhardt reforms.
A fuckton of borrowing and spending on military projects, with absolutely no intention of paying it back.
That's after WWII to today. Okay.
As for so-called Nazi economics there was no miracle. Just natural post-recession recovery, mediocre but sane policy by Hjalmar Schacht undermined by Goering who supported war economy (which at least helped the unemployment). Basically it was a bubble with a significant debt ready to burst that required military actions.
Read Wages of Destruction. I swear, we could eliminate roughly 10% of threads on this board if that was mandatory before posting.
Germany was not particularly prosperous under the Nazi reign, and by many standards was poorer in the mid 30s than it was in the late 20s. But they came up with organizational tricks to make efficient war on the relative cheap; they never had material advantages over their great power adversaries, only little shitters like Poland and Belgium.
>No /pol/ bs, let's talk details about the economic system; what new ideas did they bring to the table, did it work, and could it work again?
Well, offhandedly, they
>Surreptitiously siphoned funds from peoples personal savings to borrow against.
>Created mandatory work programmes that were paid either in scrip or just not paid at all.
>Threw major industrialists who didn't want to go along with their arms programs in prison until they either agreed or signed over their companies.
>Slashed consumer shares of the government budget even further.
I mean, it can "work" if you can forestall the inevitable civilian discontent with such policies, but it's really only good for channeling most if not all of the economy into one or two sectors for some reason. It's not real growth.
Sorry, I meant between WWI and WWII. But the Erhardt reforms were basically a free market with high taxes on the rich (over 250k DM)?
Borrowing from whom? Didn't they owe insane amounts of reparations? Who would lend to them?
To recover from the American Great Depression, we had the New Deal and Second New Deal; Germany didn't have any social programs? Was their money centralized? Did the switch to the Reichsmark do anything?
>Read Wages of Destruction.
Ok, thanks.
>To recover from the American Great Depression, we had the New Deal and Second New Deal;
New Deal didn't help and it's not a secret to anyone. And btw WWII didn't do it either. What successfully help the recovery from the depression was the fact that after the war United States was basically the last man standing.
>If everyone else is even poorer, I'm not living in a shit-house, I'm rich!
Not to mention that the U.S. had the largest economy on earth even in the depths of the Great Depression before WW2.
It's not exactly like this but yeah. USA didn't suffer any significant damage during WWII.
Except that's nonsense, because the U.S. was already the most powerful economy on earth even before the war. combinedfleet.com
Furthermore, the war destroying manufacturing bases doesn't make America richer, it just makes the rest of the world poorer. You are retarded.
Fucking idiot. I wasn't talking about WWII being responsible for recovery but the period immediately after it.
Right before the war US suffered another recession. That's 1937-38 which continued until the war (and the war economy which is its own thing entirely).
Basically New Deal (both Hoover's and Roosevelt's) failed big time.
Very simple, you replace their goosestep chip for the arbeit one. Don´t worry they have no souls.
>Still not getting it, and now calling other people retarded.
THE. WAR. WAS. IRRELEVANT. The U.S. was the biggest economy on earth before Hitler invaded Poland. WW2 had absolutely zero to do with U.S. economic dominance.
You haven't even managed to say anything relevant, which goes to show either you can't read, or you're an imbecile in a way that involves reading things and coming to incredibly erroneous conclusions.
Jesus you're really struggling. When WWII started the United States was still in depression. It doesn't mean that people started living in caves. Washington Naval Treaty was still a thing and the United States overtook Great Britain in terms of GDP in 1893 and never looked back regardless of economic troubles so this can't be treated as a serious proof that by 1941 USA was completely healed. And New Deal didn't have jack shit to do with it.
You're confusing many different things. There was no hyperinflation in 1930s. Your picture comes from 1923. 1924-1929 are often called the golden age for a reason. In 1928 Germany's economy was on its way to dominate Europe again.
You're the one who is somehow stating that the destruction of European infrastructure in WW2 is the cause for American prosperity in an absolute sense, and not relative prosperity over other places.
>And the New deal didn't have jack shit to do with it.
[citation seriously needed]
You're really not aware that economists don't consider the New Deal the reason for recovery? Well some even say that it prolonged it by about 7 years.
I'm aware that many economists credit it for it. I'm also certainly fucking aware that WW2's destruction of Europe and much of China had absolutely nothing to do with it. If so many economists state this, cite some. In peer reviewed academic journals, please.
"Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War"
Robert Higgs
The Independent Review
Vol. 1, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 561-590
Or just read his book. Or get a tl;dr version from youtube from economists like Stephen Davies.
Germany's economy was never in trouble, it was all a ruse to get out of paying reparations for the war they caused by pretending to be poorer than they really were and printing the money they owed.
The prosperity under Hitler was also a scam. They basically maxed out their credit card by taking massive loans from innocent bankers and international financiers which of course they would not have to pay back after declaring war on the entire world for a 2nd time.
They also created conspiracy theories to make Jews and international finance look like they are the bad guys in an attempt to justify their crimes. The Rothschilds were the target of most flak, in reality they were patriotic Anglo heroes who helped their country win against Nappy, another continental warmonger.
>Robert Higgs
An Austrian School 'economist' might as well get the opinion of some Marxist bastard as listen to that.
Ha I knew it. You weren't interested in a reply. Sorry I don't read Krugman.
>Austrian economist
>A literally who
Meanwhile, what makes them more prominent than say, Jonathan Case, or Michael Hiltzik, or William E. Leuchtenburg, or Anthony Badger, all of whom come to opposite conclusions?
And how the FUCK do you arrive at the conclusion that what happened over in Europe had anything to do with absolute prosperity in the U.S. Was it the destruction of the economies of all the major trade partners? The diversion of so much of the economy into armaments with little peacetime use?
So this board has more than one Keynesian? I'm quite surprised.
I'm not the user you were speaking to, and while I'm not a keynesian either Krugman is a hell of a lot more of a significant economist than that guy. Higgs is a self described "libertarian anarchist", like I say you might as well listen to a Marxist, they would give you about the same level of unbiased opinion.
And you haven't proved your point to the guy you were talking to, you implied that it was the mainstream economic consensus that the New Deal made the Great Depression last seven years longer then posted an outlier opinion from an extremist.
Then I could cite Jim Powell. The preface to his book alone is very informative and offers a quick rundown on the criticism of the New Deal. Or the interview with him done by Cato or MI or whoever that's very fair and balanced.
I could list more and all would be dismissed with the same "lel I bet he reads Hayek to hell with him".
user, not everyone who thinks you're an idiot does so because they're coming from an opposing political ideology.
You haven't cited anything. A citation includes the claims and the bases for said claims so that an independent observer can analyze both the logic employed and the facts used to support it.. You've name dropped authors.
So you can also cite someone that is not an economist who works for a libertarian think tank.
Henry Morgenthau.
>Ignoring that he defended the deficit spending at the Academy of Political Science speech in 1937, and saying that it was only now, that things started to look up, that it needed to stop
The New Deal remain fairly fiscally conservative, though, which is why Keynesians criticise it.
In 1937 you say? Sure nothing went wrong with that nothing at all.
So who the hell suports it? PBS? It's an example of economic interventionism that failed to reach its main goal and resulted in many undesirable side effects for example in agriculture.
...
You mean when Roosevelt made more attempt to balance the budget, that 1937?
When there was a depression within a depression.
So how exactly does that support your point?
That New Deal sucked ass.
I quite like Friedman's nuanced approach to it personally.
>>And the New deal didn't have jack shit to do with it.
Unemployment post 1929 never went above double digits, that is until the government stepped in, after that it never went below double digits.
You are completely inarticulate and disjointed in anything you have said.
OP here checking back, and as usual, it's devolved to ad hominem shit flinging. I shouldn't have brought up the New Deal at all, I suppose.
No. I posted actual names. And I almost regret everything. I really didn't want another Austrian-Keynesian war as I have other stuff to do but I don't blame myself. I don't turn down scholars because they don't believe what I believe. Like everyone else I first learned about depression/interventionism and New Deal from left leaning perspective and my current opinion resulted from confronting this with alternative theories. I was explosed to both perspectives. I don't know what finally convinced me but the old lie that Hoover was laissez faire might've helped. And the fact that the depression of 1920-21 is always forgotten.
Are there any "archive 4plebs" for Veeky Forums? Have a lot of bookmarked pages from ages ago...
youtube.com
Because Friedman was the man and whoever thinks he was socialist should have their NAP broken.
Desuarchive.
>And I almost regret everything. I really didn't want another Austrian-Keynesian war as I have other stuff to do
It's only plebs who know very little about economics other that Youtube clips who think the choices are Austrian School extremists or Keynesianism.
t. Marxshit
Usually people are more united in shitting on FDR. Or Wilson for that matter. But yeah. Should've talked more about the Erhard reforms. This is more positive. That's how you lead post-depression recovery you amateurs Hitlers and other EfDeeArrs.
Mainly a Monetarist, actually, face it, Austrian School nutters are not mainstream right wing economists and never will be. Next time stop getting everything you know from Youtube.
Thanks!
That was other user. It's like an internet gang war an the Austrian boy called for backup. But seriously I hope the thread won't derail into another trainwreck as much as it's tempting to lash out against Keynesians fucking shits who think they can control such a complex mechanism and then wonder why they fucked up so hard.
Name a single germanic nation with systematic poverty. It is the inherent nature of Northern Europeans to be developed and civilized, to advance all the rest of humanity in both knowledge and spirit. You cannot deny the superiority of Aryan genes and culture, merely postpone your enlightenment by relegating such thoughts to be as deviantly fascistic a la /pol/
Hey you cannot post a reply that is on topic in this thread.
Masses of the economy came from taking out massive loans that would never be repaid and arms manufacturing. cmw
Weimar purposely hyper-inflated the Deutch Mark to pay off the war reparations with worthless money.
yes, aryan genes. thats why those nordic countries rule the world.
only germany, austria and a few surrounding countries speak german
If you reworded it a bit, there'd actually be a measure of truth to the first part.
germanic doesn't mean exclusively speaking german you nonce
Nordics are above the imperialistic dickwaving of lesser species