The GOP Has Invoked The Ideas That Prolonged Great Depression

President Hoover offered an explanation for some of the problems that he had during the Great Depression. He blamed it on his Secretary of the Treasury Mellon who viewed depressions as a moral force. Depressions were a way to clear out all of the bad things that led to depression. In a sense they made us pay for our sins. The GOP is taking advantage of this recession by making similar arguments. They argue that creating more unemployment will help to create jobs. The unemployed government employees
will compete for jobs with private workers which will drive down the cost of labor. This will improve business confidence
and encourage it to employee more workers. It also has the unstated advantage of eliminating public employee unions which tend to vote for democrats. The price that we pay for this is deflation, which raises the real debt of households because they must pay back their debt with more valuable dollars.