Comments for Rewriting History: James Buchanan and the National Debt at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 10 out of 10 comments http://www.cepr.net Fri, 24 May 2013 04:37:48 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21226 @MichiganMitch: I believe you are correct. Thank you. (Took a course on infographics last summer, and this is the kind of thing that would drive the instructor up a tree.) - Lex Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:34:57 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21190 The blue bars mark the years of of the time frames of the occurences in gray print to the left of each set of bars. - Michiganmitch Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:54:47 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21189 I think the blue is just the periods that have a label (Civil War, World War I, ..., W., The Great Recession). - David Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:54:16 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21184 @ Lex FYI: It's purple not red. But anyway, I couldn't find any statement of the significance. However I did find this: http://qz.com/26062/one-chart-that-tells-the-story-of-us-debt-from-1790-to-2011/ Scroll down to the portion headed "Civil War" and look at that chart and what's written underneath about the time period about "debt surge". I think blue is perhaps marking the time in which the debt was actively being added to? That's the best explanation I could find. - watermelonpunch Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:23:56 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21182 Ritchie's piece is good, but it is wrong in implying that the increase of debt during the Depression was due to New Deal spending. Even in the Great Depression, deficits were caused primarily by reduced revenue, not increased spending. Deficits reached a maximum of about 5% of GDP by fiscal 1932, and stayed at this level through 1936, then dropped to zero by 1938. There was basically very little deliberate Keynesian spending in the New Deal. Big deficits and resulting debt have come historically from wars (mostly) and from decreased revenue in major recessions, not from wild socialistic welfare spending programs. Of course since 1981 taxes have been cut so revenue does not match expenditure, but this was a result of supply-side Reaganomics, not Keynesianism. - skeptonomist Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:00:27 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21180 Thanks to Roger Vance for the article link. Also, Ritchie King looks like a talented guy: http://ritchiesking.com/ - medgeek Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:15:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21178 While James Buchanan did miss the mark on macro-economics and Keynes, he should not be forgotten in regard to essential contributions in public choice theory. Indeed, Dean Baker implicitly appeals to this this field every time he reminds us how the rich benefit from the nanny state. From Wikipedia, [quote]Crucial to understanding Buchanan's system of thought is the distinction he made between politics and policy. Politics is about the rules of the game, where policy is focused on strategies that players adopt within a given set of rules. “Questions about what are good rules of the game are in the domain of social philosophy, whereas questions about the strategies that players will adopt given those rules is the domain of economics, and it is the play between the rules (social philosophy) and the strategies (economics) that constitutes what Buchanan refers to as constitutional political economy”.[/quote] - Last Mover Thu, 10 Jan 2013 06:14:41 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21177 I couldn't figure out the significance of red v. blue in this chart. It apparently doesn't have to do with which party holds the White House or Congress, it doesn't have to do with war or peace, it doesn't have to do with surplus or deficit year-to-year and it doesn't have to do with upward or downward trends in debt as % of GDP. Obviously I'm missing something; could someone please tell me what it is? Thanks. - Lex Thu, 10 Jan 2013 05:44:01 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21174 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-long-story-of-us-debt-from-1790-to-2011-in-1-little-chart/265185/ - Roger Vance Thu, 10 Jan 2013 04:55:00 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting-history-james-buchanan-and-the-national-debt#comment-21172 Like the chart, is that part of a larger report / anyone have link to it? - jerry Thu, 10 Jan 2013 04:27:23 +0100