Re: June 30, 2025 (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2025 05:55:31 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 > blame Grover

I was curious about how long 8% GDP spending lasted.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States

It was just about one decade.  Spending was even lower before 1918.

And, interestingly, there wasn't a single event which precipitated the
Great Depression -- it may have just been random.  However, I see that
there wasn't extra spending during the 1896 depression (Keynes wasn't
around then), so things might have just been building up.  Which makes me
doubt that there would be another Great Depression any time soon, unless
spending is cut substantially for a while -- more than a decade.

The Republicans have a lot of incentive to increase the national debt and
deficits in the short term since the problems (e.g., higher interest
rates) will only come long after they've left office or those same
Republicans have died.

I was surprised that, from the Wikipedia article, if the Department of
Defense were successfully audited, it could save $1.6 trillion per year
(deficit spending) without changing any other policy.  I think this was
the very argument that Elizabeth Warren had made.

Any Norquist plan to shrink the government further would definitely
require reductions in defense spending, and I'm not sure any Republican,
and certainly not any Democrat, would be willing to do that.

 >  > From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American
 >  > Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2025 05:47:15 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > View this post on the web at 
 >  > https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-30-2025