More "proof" Keynes was wrong?

Here in the USA, the Great Recession of 2007–2009 ended years ago. Things could be better, but remember that in 2008 job losses were rapidly rising and we were hemorrhaging nearly 800,000 jobs a month by the time Obama took office in January of 2009. Remember that right after the stimulus passed, the job loss curve turned around. We’ve now had a run of 38 straight months of private sector job growth. In right-wing newspeak, that translates into “The stimulus didn’t work.”

Europe didn’t try a stimulus. Against the advice of Keynes and Keynesian economists, they tried the austerity our right-wing advocates. Europe is now in the longest recession they have ever had. Of course, in right-wing newspeak, that translates into “Austerity works.”

It’s just like their claim that FDR made the Depression last longer by government spending, and it only ended because of WWII. 1—The premise is completely wrong, because GDP recovered fully before Pearl Harbor. 2—WWII was government spending on a scale never before seen in the USA. So once more, in right-wing talk, wrong = right, down = up. Newspeak rules in an ideologue’s world.

By the way, this has nothing to do with right or left. Communist far-left ideologues like Mao Zedong and Pol Pot were every bit as immune to facts and driven by their left-wing ideology as Tea Party Republicans and the US extreme right is driven by right-wing beliefs. How do you hold a meaningful discussion with people who live in an ideology based world where facts have no bearing and everything is interpreted by their belief system? If the case of WWII spending doesn’t do the trick, if they see austerity failing and still think it works, how can you ever prove to them that Keynes was right?

More importantly, how can you prove anything they don’t already believe? Is this an example of The God Complex run amok? Tim Hartford explains The God COmplex in the TED talk linked here. Bear with Tim for a bit. It takes 5 minutes or so for him to set up a story that illustrates what The God Complex is, but it’s well worth waiting for. In fact, the talk is 18 minutes long and listening to it end to end is a very worthwhile endeavor.