The extent to which liberal economists are willing to obviate the most fundamental economic laws in the rush to endorse governments spending is mind-boggling.

Significantly, a good chunk of New Deal policy and regulation was also rolled back both during WWII and directly after, with the election of a Republican Congress during Truman’s term. That certainly helped, as did the fact that any industrial competition to the US was bombed to rubble (something which helped the US to the extreme detriment of the world economy, of course).

Ah, the broken window fallacy. Ignore the cost of what was destroyed. Ignore the opportunity cost of not having what was destroyed. Talk up the benefits of getting to rebuild all the really cool things that got trashed. Presto! People start believing we should always benefit from a disaster. I mean just look at what Katrina did for New Orleans.

I may have my facts wrong, and I may also be talking about oranges instead of apples.

Be that as it may, I am a firm supporter of Mayor Bing’s plans to bulldoze dozens if not hundreds of abandoned city blocks of Detroit and convert them either to greenspace, canalways or high-tech industrial parks. Nobody is ever going to move back to those ‘neighborhoods’ and it costs a (bankrupt, in this case) city a fortune to provide services to an area with such low population density, never mind the low incomes.

IIRC Rush recently criticized such plans as “giving up”; again, I’m painting with a broad brush.

I also admired the way McCain frankly told the unemployed in the Rust Belt states during the ’08 primaries “Your old jobs aren’t coming back”, in contrast to Romney for one, let alone the Dems, but now I’m really off-topic.