Friends of mine on the right had told me that the left seemed to be trying to re-enact the Great Depression. Some part of my brain apparently wanted to believe it was just a small contingent until I happened across a column demanding exactly that by Joe Conason via Politico.com. (I had been living in denial -- having already judged Paul Krugman's most recent book -- "The Return of Depression Economics" -- by its cover. I'd guessed he was in favor of said return.)

Getting back to Conason:

[Obama's] first priority should be immediate, substantial financial aid to the states and cities that are now laying off thousands of public employees and preparing to fire thousands more. Rapid, generous assistance to localities would not only keep hundreds of thousands of workers employed, but would simultaneously advance national priorities in health, education, infrastructure, and energy efficiency.

Because, you know, nothing helps the country get back on its feet like keeping our government bureaucracies large and well-fed. Government, is, after all, the entity which grows most our food, builds our cars, homes, and furniture, invents new technologies and services, and creates our software and electronics.

That vicious spiral is gaining speed now across the country, with budget shortfalls in almost 40 states, and deficits exceeding a billion dollars in more than a dozen. In Ohio, whose economic downturn preceded the rest of the nation, the state predicts the most dramatic shortfall in revenues in more than four decades.

Inefficient companies should go bankrupt, of course, but inefficient government (and government employees who tend to vote you-know-how!) should never have to do likewise! To the contrary, if we just spend more and more on government services, we'll find ourselves wealthy again in no time! (That's how they did it during the industrial revolution, right?)

The folly of this approach was first explained, as far as I'm aware, by a Frenchman named Frederick Bastiat, who argued: Yes, we can have the government create a job by hiring a soldier to stand guard in the town square. But the soldier is taken away from wealth-producing activities (such as making pottery, building houses, growing food, etc) -- and his salary similarly comes at the cost of taxpayer expenditure or investment.

Similarly, we could argue that government could create "health jobs" by hiring people to talk about "AIDS awareness" -- or create "green jobs" by hiring people to, um, (just guessing here) teach people about composting, or have them construct composting bins. But "AIDS awareness" doesn't put gas in your tank, and compost doesn't put food on the table (well, not for many years, until it becomes mulch).

In short, more government spending means less wealth production -- and wealth, boys and girls, is what made all the difference between the Great Depression and the boom years of the 1950s -- or 1980s and 90s.

Once upon a time, there was a country where everything was run by the government, and everyone worked for the government. Government expenditures there were thus far, far higher, as a percentage of GDP, than here in the USA. If Conason's reasoning made sense, you'd have expected that nation to be the wealthiest in the world! Instead, it was one of the poorest, and was frequently beset by depression, alcoholism, corrupt government, technological backwardness, and mass starvation.

That nation was called "The USSR", and Conason and his friends appear to have learned nothing from it. Nor have they asked: If "Depression Economics" worked so well, why did we continued to have a deeper and deeper depression until FDR finally kicked over?

I am utterly amazed at the left's inability to learn.

What are the odds of Obama turning out to be to the right of Conason and Krugman? One can only hope.