Is there a means to donate money to you? You’ve probably seen this question a lot, but I cannot seem to find a proper link.

We’re working on it right now.

Thanks! 🙂

You’re a fricken’ genius.

Why Haven’t You Fixed the Economy Yet?!!!!!!…

Comic…"Why Haven’t You Fixed the Economy Yet?!!!!!!"…

ha, ha, ha. Patience is not a virtue. Or can he?

Awesome! Keep up the good work. You should design a t-shirt with “ObamAsh”

Donate here http://thisishistorictimes.com/donate/

[…] This is Historic Times » Blog Archive » The Evil Dead. […]

I’m confused. This comic implies that the redemption of America is embracing policies that the majority of Americans reject? I’m sorry, I’ll drink the Kool-aid and call this democracy.

No…it’s saying the redemption of America isn’t done yet because Reaganomics did so much damage..

The man in the background is the Average American, Demanding a “fixed economy” despite doing absolutely nothing to aid in the process.

The Zombies are the Economy, and while Obama is doing his hardest to try and get it under control, it is unfeasibly difficult; especially while there is nothing but criticism surrounding him.

So, in short, it’s saying, “I really never studied anything by Milton Friedman, and believe that socialistic economics really HELP the common man.”

In short, your artwork is great, your ideals – idiotic.

Cheers,
Ghost|BOFH

Great Stuff (keep up the good work!),
The Republicants keep ranting about their ‘Budget Plan’ but we haven’t seen anything – smoke, BS, and mirrors…..
And when they realize that they have nothing more to offer than a bunch of tired-ass, worn-out, discredited ideas that originated with Reagan, they start chanting for more Reagan……
Republicans: Lead, follow, or get outa the way!!!!!

Ah yes, because the two governments that have most strongly adopted Friedman economics and de-regulated the crap out of everything(Britain and the US) currently are doing so well economically. I love the assumption that just because you disagree with the theory, people assume that you are completely ignorant about it.

Hail to the Chief, baby.

The saying goes,’careful what you wish for,All you lib’s want a “big brother”,just wait you’ve screwed us all.then what are you going to do.

No… You are a classic example of what is wrong in todays world…Reaganomics…do not get political when you have no idea what you are saying. Reagans ideals etc has nothing to do with the state this country is in, For that, look not further than G. “W” Bush, the moron that took this country from a zero deficit clock to three trilion before his first year in office was up…

BTW Love the toon!

As an apathetic centrist, I try to keep my personal convictions out of the picture when looking at politics as well as economics, attempting to look at the facts as plainly as I can to provide the most logical and well postulated mindset. That said, let’s continue.

As far as President George W. Bush’s time in office — looking at the hand he was dealt, he did a good job. He saw the September 11th attacks as a threat that had to be neutralized. This threat came from chaos within the middle east. In order to stop this chaos, we moved in to Iraq. This movement was in no way fueled by the desire for oil (pun intended) or by a greedy war mongering mindset. His desire was to squelch this middle eastern conflict and re-organize the Iraqi political system. While you may complain that he kept troops in too long, he had to. In order for it to be safe to pull troops out of Iraq, the government there had to be fully stabilized, which it hadn’t been, and he was getting very little help and cooperation from the tiny bit of Iraqi government that remained. All the roadside bombs and small arms fire served as a display of this chaos that remained in the middle east.

To pull the troops out without this conflict being settled would have made the entire war pointless. He kept the troops in because they needed to be there, and, in an effort to keep those citizens of ours which are not afraid to fight for our freedom, he had to spend money on weapons and vehicles and armor. He could have reduced this deficit, but at what cost? A price cannot be put on a human life.

To summarize, sometimes simply defending ones countries borders will not suffice and one must look to other methods of protecting ones nation. After all, there have been no repeats of September 11th, and I think that stands as a testament of what George W. Bush has accomplished. May the history books remember him as a hero.

All that said, I am excited to see what President Barack Obama will do for this country. He already has started unifying us as a country, and I look forward to what else he will do. While I may disagree with some of his economic platforms, he is my President, the leader of my country, and I will stand fully behind him and support him in his efforts to keep our borders safe, our stomachs full, and our houses comfortable.

Also, I like the cartoon too. Maybe next time you should give him a RPC — Rocket Propelled Chainsaw…if only those things really existed, they’re so badass!

I am rooting for the Reagan zombies to kick his socialist butt! Reagan fixed the sorry Carter economy by letting us keep more of our money. How is taxing the living **** out of everyone supposed to help? Tax cuts repair a bad economy. Government spending is worse than useless.

The gentleman who drew this cartoon should be arrested! It’s his fault that the economy is going so bad, of course!

How come he didn’t give Obama good enough weapons to fight the zombies? Is it because he wants America to fail? I demand answers!!!

Just kidding, actually. 😛 Great comic, I love it. Congrats. ^^

@Stephen Rang
George W. Bush and his association were a disappointment in regard to the September 11 attacks. The attacks fit the PERFECT scenario to get past NORAD defense (during an exercise that almost MATCHED that of the attacks down to the type of planes and the WTC) and yet they acted astonished when the attacks happened. Rice even said, “Who would use a commercial plane as a weapon? How could we have been ready for that?” Not to mention, countries like Brittan and France sent us warnings that there was something was going on in the Middle East and they should be ready, and yet Bush decided to go on a month long vacation! 3rd parties have done investigations on the 9-11 attacks and have found things way beyond/different than that of the 911 Commission Report. The FBI STILL has not updated their suspect lists since the attack even though at least half of the suspects are proven to be alive. Analysts say that the man in the video assumed to be that of Osama Bin Laden claiming responsibility for the attacks is NOT Osama Bin Laden as his facial features do not match. And there is STILL no evidence that Bin Laden NOR Al Qaeda was linked to the attacks other than the video. Bush’s administration failed in respect to keeping America safe and stopping those who have attacked it, other than go to war on Iraq which REALLY is a mess and could use someone like MCCAIN to shape things up in the military. Don’t even get me started on how the Bush Administration BENEFITED from the war…

“Barack Obama doesn’t care about white people.” – Mike Myers

Genius.

Holy hell, did that cartoonist actually compare Obama to Ash? Reaganomics work just fine. You can’t spend your way out of a depression. Obama should be depicted as the demon to be slain.

Its been approximately 4 months since Obama was sworn in. It’s going to take a little longer than 4 months to repair what has happened in the past 10 years. If his term is up and there is no end in sight from this economic crisis, then it is time to start asking questions and pointing fingers. Til then, enjoy the toon. Great job!!

If you love Reagan and hate Bush, you’re kidding yourself. Bush was just Reagan 2.0: a phony spokesperson who put a folksy face on corruption, tax cuts for the rich, the annexation of government by private corporate interests, rocketing deficits, environmental devastation, deregulation leading to stagnation of middle and lower class wages while the rich benefited, all wrapped up in a smiling cowboy package. Bush isn’t an exception to the conservative party, he represents every element of the conservative party in all its corrupt glory. For thirty years conservatives have ruled the country (Clinton was a drop in the bucket compared with the right wingers in all other branches and all the conservative presidents). This is your mess. You can keep preaching Reaganomics and decrying Keynesian economics, but it’s hard to blame liberals when conservatives got everything they’ve wanted since Reagon was elected. All your dreams became reality and it’s turned to ashes in your mouth. Now you have a choice to either face reality and admit your failures, or stick your head in the sand, parrot GOP lies (“talking points”), and claim that W wasn’t a “true” conservative. The choice is yours, but the rest of the country is moving on to common sense, with or without you.

Really? You can’t spend your way out of a depression? Maybe you should tell that to the president that got us out of the Great Depression. It’s hysterical to me that anyone still believes that Reaganomics, Milton Friedman, and really any Republican ideologies work.

Every recession since Nixon has happened during a Republican presidency. Trickle-down economics does not work. If you give rich people tax cuts, guess what they’re going to do with the extra money: keep it. They already have everything they need, they have no incentive to deplete their safety net. The only tax cuts that really stimulate the economy are those given to lower-income people, who have no choice but to spend to survive. And Milton Friedman, what a wonderful human being, exploiting any country he could sink his fangs into in order to make a few bucks. People like him are part of the reason we’ve become a service economy and the middle class is rapidly disappearing.

Then there’s the socialist name-calling. As a liberal and someone who believes that a lot of things socialists championed in this country greatly improved it (women’s suffrage, worker’s rights, unionization, improved safety standards, children’s rights, public services, the list goes on) I would love it if we could call Obama a socialist. Unfortunately, he’s about as middle of the road as they come. I do hope that his attempts at bipartisanship work, although it seems to me that every time he reaches his hand across the aisle, he’s only going to be bitten by every single brainless, rabid dog Republican who’s more concerned about his upcoming election than the welfare of those he was elected to represent. Hell, even the leader of the Socialist party of America has been in interviews and echoed my sentiments in much more diplomatic ways, basically saying that it would be wonderful to have a socialist in office somewhere, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

But that’s okay, go on believing that Republicans are actually fiscally responsible, when red states like Alaska and Arizona lead the nation in amounts of federal aid received. It’s funny how states like New York and Illinois have such little need of that money, that part of their share goes to states whose budgets are decidedly in the red… or maybe that’s just red states? Huh, maybe there are actually socialist leaders in America, just through incompetence, not through ideology.

Finally, the idea that Bush did well with the hand he was dealt is so laughable as to be beyond belief. With every disaster in his presidency, he was well-informed beforehand and simply did nothing. I could go into the long long long list of botched decisions from the “Decider President” but I think that as he and his administration were so fond of saying, history will be the judge.

Great cartoon. Obviously some people are missing the point, which is that the public (or at least the punditocracy) has a tendency to be disengaged and yet unrealistically demanding at the same time. Meanwhile, I cannot *believe* that there are people commenting who still think that the economics of Milton Friedman (much less Ronald Reagan) have anything to offer, with the contrary evidence staring them in the face from every day’s headlines. (And history shows that you certainly *can* spend your way out of a depression… in fact, it’s the only way out.)

“No” sez: “it’s saying the redemption of America isn’t done yet because Reaganomics did so much damage…” Uh-huh, the damage being that during the Reagan Adminstration America saw the beginning of the longest and largest period of economic expansion in the history of the United States. We should hope for another period of such “damage”. KM

Economist here.

Lotta dumbasses in these comments think Reagan was good for the economy.

He wasn’t and Freidman’s theories are unsatisfactory.

Economist out.

It seems that most of the people on this page don’t have a clue as to whats going on. If you think bush was bad, get ready for this neo-Marxist to finish off the constitution (finish what bush started).

YOU ALL ARE SHEEPLE!!!!!!!!

Hey economist, how exactly do unsustainable government spending increases help the economy?

“Its been approximately 4 months since Obama was sworn in.”

One of us is insane, because I tried adding up and by my calculations, January 20th is only two months ago.

Socialism is great until you run out of other peoples money.

And to the idiot that said he was sworn in 4 months ago, come out of the freaking time warp… It’s been 67 days. That isn’t 4 months.

The first budget your ‘boy’ signed quadrupled the Bush deficit. By 4 years from now according to your boy’s own figures he will have it up to about 7.3 Trillion.

The President coming out of the great depression did not spend his way out of it. He had the benefit of WW II. The massive build up of the war machine cured the depression. Idiot.

Obama can’t even speak without reading the teleprompter and ‘you people’ continue to think he is god. The U.S.A is screwed royal until he is gone and a true president can repair the damage he is doing to the country and our constitution.

Lame.
We all know that Obama has the full authority to stop this madness.
And even though he has been in office for less than 5 months he ca
totally stop it.
Giving him excuses won’t help. He does not WANT to fix the economy.

If he did……his priority would be on the economy.
Instead of helping build roads…..giving more money to schools….
blah,blah…..

Obama has so far…..been a failuer.

Truth hurts. Tough love.

Fellow Liberal

Ah, another thread on the Internet gone to hell because a few people think they know something about politics and that what they know entitles them to be annoying, know-it-all bullies. Sure, you’re wasting time here while they’re all out there writing public policy, but yeah, you know so much better than they do. You’ve got it all figured out. Why, the only thing stopping this economy from completely repairing is the fact that *you* aren’t in public office! But instead of writing your local politician about it or finding an effective way to circulate your opinions, you choose to bitch and whine on the comments section of a website! You’ve all sure proved your superiority.

Ten bucks says MOST of you are just regurgitating whatever you’ve heard some news pundits say…people just vomit up what they’ve heard from everyone else instead of doing their research and formulating independent opinions on their own. I’m willing to bet most of you are still surfing on mental auto pilot and only wake up long enough to start mouthing off like a smarmy brat to “prove” how much smarter you are than everyone else.

unfounded and ridiculous view portrayed here. the real zombies are the ones that chant ‘yes we can’ and blindly follow obama like he is a god. i will enjoy seeing obama fail and seeing all of his kiss-ass supporters scramble for excuses. clearly this cartoon is one more example of diverting attention away from the pressing concerns at hand.

Wow, I think Holly’s the only one I’ve seen so far make a completely justifiable point. >.>

rr: Basically it creates economic activity that creates jobs and puts money in the hands of firms, consumers, contractors and the like who in turn keep that money going. In addition, stimulus spending often takes the form of investing in some kind of infrastructure, whether literal infrastructure like highways or social infrastructure like healthcare. These are important because they provide the foundation for further economic success.

You know what doesn’t help the economy? Tax cuts. It turns out people just horde the money they save. Lol!

Also, y’all are using the term socialism wrong. Stop it.

To clarify: What you mean is Welfare Liberalism, which arrose out of the realization that capitalism is neither socially optimal nor meritocratic. Socialism actually /means/ something.

Words. Mean. Things. People. If you can’t be bothered to understand what they mean, then you probably aren’t educated or intelligent enough to have a worthwhile opinion.

OK, just to throw my name in the ring here and add some flair to the discussion….

First, pink, you spelled “failure” wrong. Fail.

Second, Troy, you are correct, WW II did get us out of the great depression. most of the new deal projects were created, like the American Rebuilding and Reinvestment act, to give people work so they could pay bills and eat and not think about how badly the republicans screwed them, so the democrats and screw them a little differently over a longer period of time.

But those who said that spending is the only way to fix a recession are also correct. The only way an economy gets moving is to push money into it, and if consumers aren’t going to do it, well let’s face it, someone has to.

One of the problems is that they gave the first stimulus bill to the completely wrong demographic of Americans. they should not have given it to middle class working people, they needed to give it to college students and the fiscally irresponsible. what good is “economic stimulus money” when it sits in your savings account or pays off a credit card? give it to people like me – 18-25 year olds who love beer and video games. i would’ve torn through that money on a 30 pack of Milwaukee’s Best, a carton of cigarettes, and a PS 3, thus stimulating the crap out of the economy.

Oh, also, the cartoon was awesome.

this cartoon really speaks to me.

they’re totally right, they got every thing correct.

the time is perfect for a zombie apocalypse. think about it:

1. the economy: the living dead don’t need money, just brains. and you, the survivor will loot everything you need, and pay for your salvation in bullets.

2.health care crisis: millions are uninsured, making people travel to the hospital less often. this leads to epidemics. epidemics like brain-eating death walkers.

3. geopolitical tension: Iran wants nukes. Russia, France, China, The United States and North Korea have nukes. The Zombie Virus needs a jump start.

If I were you guys, i would stockpile easy-to-carry foods, blunt objects and brush up on your map reading skills and face shooting abilities.

but I’m not like you guys: I’m prepared.

President who got us out of the Great Depression? FDR? HA!

Seven years of the “New Deal” and unemployment was STILL near 17%!
How the h#ll is THAT coming out of a depression?

WWII brought the U.S. out of those bad times, not FDR

NotGodot is correct about words meaning things, capitalism means exploitation. However, his judgmental comments regarding the intelligence & worthiness of others, seem to say more about him than those he chooses to demean.
The prosperity in America (remember, over 50% of the world’s population is deficient in at least 1 of the 3 necessities of life; food, clothing & shelter from the elements), seems to have made us so independent as individuals, that we no longer depend on our fellow man. Since we no longer NEED our neighbor, we feel free to attack them at random. This incivility to one another, IMHO, is what is destroying America, not the economic turmoil.

Troy Says: Obama can’t even speak without reading the teleprompter and ‘you people’ continue to think he is god.
______________________

Troy, you’re obviously a collector of fine bullshit. You make ignorant statements like the one above, but conveniently forget that your boy Bush had to wear a fucking wire in his ear so someone with a brain could feed him his answers.

And, with regard to socialism, the Republican’s ‘special’ brand of Democracy hasn’t worked so god-damned well either.

So much for your true president theory.

2012

Zeke: What`s destroying America is that people have shitty opinions. This isn’t their fault. It’s the fault of deficient public education. People don’t know what socialism means, or that its policies genuinely leader to higher quality of life (Although a lower GDP per capita. But hte GDP is frankly a shit measure anyways because it measures economic activity, not the extent to which an economy is socially optimal). As a result, they can’t meaningfully understand what’s going on and cling to lies slung by pundits.

@ Wadysseus

That has to be one of the most intelligent and carefully worded replies ever posted on the internet.

WTF is wrong with you? How dare you post something intelligent? This is the internets, you are supposed to post pictures of cats eating bacon, pr0n or just call people names!

@ Steve

Yeah, you’re right. WWII brought us out of the Great Depression. But how? Simple, rampant government spending on the war effort. The war created jobs. Jobs for soldiers. Jobs for people to build tanks, planes, ships, bullets… The war itself wasn’t necessary. They could have just built the tanks, planes ships and bullets and tossed them all in the ocean. None of those things are sold, they aren’t a commodity. They are built for one purpose, to be used and then left.

As for your number of 17% unemployment, I’d like to know where you got that. If you go here: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html you will see that unemployment hit a height of 23.6% in 1932 and continued downward until 1944 when unemployment hit 1.2%. 1.2%!!!! Do you know what happens when unemployment hits 1.2%? Cats have jobs!!!

So take your TalkingPoints memo and shove it up Rush Limbaugh’s bloated, drug-addled ass.

You can also find the same statistics here, albeit not as simple to read.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt

My two all-time favorite political comics are by you, and this one is one of them.

Forgot to add, everyone who believes in Reaganomics is part of the same group that honestly believes that the poor are just lazy and need to try harder, and that your wealth is directly proportional to the effort you put into your work.

Holy hell indeed.

Give the man a chance to dig out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression. And understand that without sufficient regulation and control greed will always destroy (S&L scandal, Tech bubble, and now this mini depression).

I think he will lead us out of this

ps great toon – I like the multiple interpretations !

So then I say “that’s not a wookie…that’s my wife!”

Of course, the traditional economic theory sqays a massive deficit will lead to massive inflation. In the past eight years, we have run $5,000,000,000,000 in deficits (5T National Debt in 2000, 10T national debt now debt now, no mater what figures the liars gave you during that period), but the problem is deflation. No one knows what’s going on, least of all the sorcerer’s apprentices (the Disney version) who continue to run this show and who so far have not recognized that that everything they thought they knew about economics is wrong. (Perhaps a clue. It may be that economics in a Depression has laws as different from normal economics as Newtonian physics is from sub-atomic physics.)

It doesn’t help the fact that he has deployed troops Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and many other places we didn’t occupy during the Bush administration while hiding behind his “taking troops out of Iraq” hype. Many of his secretaries have ties with socialist organizations, and we’ve seen their names pulled from the websites of some of these organizations almost overnight. Obama is not a saviour. Bush did the dirty work so that Obama could have a clean slate as he slowly transformed this country into a dictatorship. Why do I say this, you ask? There are many ridiculous, totalitarian methods of ‘security’ being established, most recently a law being passed that allows the search and seizure of your personal computer. This is all hidden under the guise of preventing piracy, but it’s hard to believe that anyone would somehow not smell the mounds of bullshit behind that excuse. You don’t make downloading MP3’s a criminal offense. I swear, if they could somehow make a convincing claim that oxygen could potentially be used as a weapon, they’d start jailing everyone caught breathing. Don’t complain about my lack of cites, you’re perfectly capable of googling (for now, I’m not so sure about the future).

Umm… Persephone? I hope you’re aware that socialism is not directly linked to dictatorship. In fact, having a dictator in a socialist country is a contradiction, seeing as socialism depends on the economic equality of everyone, and if someone were to have control of that, it would destroy the foundation of socialist ideals.
Don’t listen to the intolerant bullshit your fellow republicans spew at you, especially when it comes to socialism. Over fifty years of ignorant demonization would make anyone look bad, and being able to associate it with an evil human being, ie: Stalin, makes it all the more convenient.
hitler was Christian. Christians have been involved in some enormous atrocities. Does that make it OK to demonize and bash Christians?
I think not.

You’re all arguing like a bunch of preteen girls.

The comic strip is cool. Ash is cool. I hope Obama does a swell job, and even though I also don’t agree with all of his methods of governing, I think we can all do our parts and stay as lawful as we can and just try to make this economic downturn into a positive thing that brought us all closer together.

Ok NotGodot you are right people don’t understand socialism but that includes the socialist. Socialist works only in concept and there it still falls apart fast in reality. Different version of socialism has been tried all over the world and has yet to succeed. Where as Capitalism has succeed all over the world. If it wasn’t for capitalism we most likely still have kings and queens and be working on farms for the local lord. Though you are right about the state of the schools because most like from the studies I have seen it wasn’t WWII or New Deal that got us out of the depression. Both of these prolong the depression and slowed the growth out it. They took resources that could have grown the economy and used them for war and unneeded projects.

As for Bush being Reagan 2.0 Bush increased Government Reagan cut government. And it’s Reagan economics that is said to be the problem. Umm people Reagan was president lets see 21 years ago. Neither Bush were followers of Reagan economics and neither was Nixon. In fact since 1960 we have had three Presidental terms that embraced conservative ideals in government economics. (Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton)

The problems with this economy isn’t the government or the private sector. The problems are with the actual people. If you invested in the stock market you should have known the risk. It is sad people lost their retirement but they either accepted the company retirement plan as offered or chose to invest the way they did. If you lost your home because you bought too much house, lost your job or didn’t read your morage fully that’s your doing to. Who is responsible to make sure you pay your bills? IF you lost your job that does suck, but first there many safe guards in place like unemployment insurance etc and Second it’s your job as a person buying the home to figure in you might lose your job at some point. I am tired of people acting like little kids running to there mommies when the other kids were mean or you broke something and want them to fix it.

News Flash the government isn’t you mommy and second it doesn’t have you best interest at heart. The government grows because both parties only interest is to keep power. The way to keep power is to make you feel you need government to protect you and fix all your mistakes. It’s time to grow up kiddies and get into the real world. Who is responsible for what you do and who needs to fix the mess and mistakes you do. You do it’s called being an adult.

As for my background I have degrees in Economics and Mathematics. I have read and studied on my own Marx and other socialist writers along with other schools of thought in economics.

PS As for the cartoon it’s cute but off point. It shows another problem embracing both sides kool aid with out actually digging deeper yourself. No one has your best interest at heart and if they say so you better check your wallet. Humans are selfish because in truth our wants and need will always come before the good of the general public.

Economic booms happen because of industry. New (or revitalized) industries create booms, not government or politicians.

There was tech. There was telecom. There was energy. There was banking. There was housing.. everyone got involved in that one. Therein lies the problem. Not everyone can prosper: it’s basic economics.

But everyone did… for awhile. Now we are house rich and cash poor. Everyone has sweet, remodeled houses and nobody can afford to buy them or pay rent for them.

What will fix it?

Probably the rich guys that everyone on this post seems to hate, investing in businesses (taking a capitalistic chance) and new industries will rise from the ashes.

The government cannot do this and history shows any attempts to do this have failed miserably.

Our world is going to hell and right quick too. It’s not anyone’s fault, hell, even bush and crew were just a bunch of punks trying to make a quick buck. I can respect that. It isn’t even Reagan’s fault, really, he was just a poor dumb bastard, and I feel bad for him. But regardless, we’re screwed. So stop pointing fingers, stop being such obnoxious pricks. Live and love and hopefully we’ll all die nice natural deaths before the bombs start falling.

I see the economists with the gov’t sponsored education believe gov’t spending cures depressions. The typical broken window fallacy. As the gov’t does not produce anything, it can only take resources from those who do.
Hoover, FDR, The New Deal, and WWII turned a recession into The Great Depression. The Depression ended only after the rest of the world’s means of production laid in ruins and the U.S. gov’t shrunk dramatically. Of course we have all been told the opposite by the Keynesians.
If you feel you must blame someone, blame Greenspan, Bernanke, and The Federal Reserve. The Fed is the “lender of last resort” who inflated the tech bubble then the housing bubble with printed money.

@Another Economist

Um, what part of socialism falls apart in theory? Worker/Government ownership? Because last time I checked, collectives had a better shot of survival than single-owner businesses and America’s only state-owned bank is making, well, bank.

Or is it hte social welfare state, which is often conflated with socialism? I suppose you’re right that it’s not as economically efficient as letting the poor starve, but maybe when you take a second year course, they’ll explain the difference between efficient and Socially Optimal.

@Jason

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Stop swallowing talking points and look at the data. The “Great Depression” began for most people after the end of the first world war, it’s just that the upper-middle class and upper class in America didn’t notice until all their capital seized up. The New Deal might not have ended the recession, but that’s missing the point. It was a salve for the worst excesses of fucking astonishing poverty that had been going on for a decade amongst the poorer classes.

In conclusion, neoclassical economists can suck my dick, this current crisis proves that deregulation is retarded.

Economist Out

HAHAHAHAHA you think Reagon cut the size of government? You ignorant tool, you have no clue what you’re talking about.

benny’s right a ny thing else said is a waste of breath
stock pile alot of food and ammo….. your all gonna need it.. unless you believe big brotha’s gonna save ya.. yeah right!! he’s gonna f@ck ya

[…] yeah, This was cool: Even in the economy it always comes back to ZOMBIES! (I think any candidate that had a Chainsaw Hand would get my […]

Sweet broken window fallacy reference Jason; ahthankyou Hazlitt. NotGodot, If we indeed do live in a consumer based economy (as much as that goes against your socialist economic views) than it would be wise to keep more money in the consumer’s pocket to spend it. I propose cutting the income tax. Let’s face it, only you know what is good for you, the government doesn’t and putting more money in government will see it wasted on new projects they think we need. This “deregulation” you speak of, i assume in the housing market, began well over a decade ago; not under the current or last administration. What we need to do, as has been stated already, is correct the problem of the bubble and burst cycle. We could start by auditing the federal reserve (a bill being proposed in congress right now). The fact is that they pump money into the economy to keep it going when it really shouldn’t, thus creating inflation, thus devaluing the dollar by the time it reaches middle and lower classes, thus continuing to destroy what should be the base of our economy: the working man who produces a product; not a service or merely shuffling money around. Real economic growth doesn’t need to “burst” as it is an organic need of the free market. Oversight is important, however real economists look deeper than what they see on CNBC. I am obviously a supporter of small government and a libertarian at heart. Also, socialism is the absolute abomination of liberty. True liberty is not equality but the availability of you to live every aspect of your life the way you want as long as you do not take that right from someone else. That is the essence for which the Republic of the United States was created. Socialism fails for many reasons, but especially selfishness. In a free market, man is able to decide what he wants qua man. I hardly think bigger government intervention will help. Taxes come from my pocket and yours, e.g. “public works means taxes.” The idea that government should pay you to dig a hole and then pay you to fill it up is ludicrous and cannot persist. After all, he is paying you with your own money! Fiscal sanity in government must be brought about by not giving it any more money.

@Jason
“As the gov’t does not produce anything, it can only take resources from those who do.”

A very nice little line. Completely meaningless, but still pithy. Does the government not produce schools? Highways? Airports? Bridges? Hospitals? Universities? Sewage Treatment Facilities?

If you want to look at organizations that produce nothing but take resources from those who do, try Enron, AIG, Lehmann Bros., Goldman Sachs.

ps.

I like commenters who will claim that the slightest move to the left by Obama is rank socialism of the highest order and that socialism has been a complete failure where ever it is tried. It is not just that these people don’t have a clue what socialism actually means, they have two different definitions of it. When talking about America they define socialism as using taxpayer money for wasteful social programs, (You know, medicare, welfare, antiflood levys, volcano monitoring and other useless crap.) But then when they say Socialism failed everywhere it has been tried they must have a new definition, because Sweden, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, France, (Most of Europe actually) are all “socialist” according to how they define it. So now they suddenly mean “Communist Dictatorship” when they say “socialism failed everywhere it has been tried”

P.P.S. @Jason “In a free market, man is able to decide what he wants qua(?) man. I hardly think bigger government intervention will help.”
Compare the Red River flood story in Fargo to the Red River flood story in Winnipeg. Fargo residents have always been proud of their independent, go it alone, “we don’t need government messin’ with our shit” attitude towards flood control. So their city has been deluged by the flood of the century twice in the last 12 years as they frantically pile up sandbags. Winnipeg, (with the help of Satan and Big Government) undertook a massive project in the 50s to build a floodway that channels the water around the city. They have not suffered a major flood since (and no doubt regret their reliance on a government solution)

That stuff about the flood comparison actually sounds like it might be an interesting thing to mine for a cartoon, actually. Thanks for the tip.

Any other related info you can provide or direct me to on the subject?

@linus bern,
It is a fact that the only means of creation by government is by taking from the people. Indeed public works projects benefit every member of the community they are being used in. (Hospitals are not specifically a government program, that is why you get hospital bills…) I guess you must be from Canada? You compared flood situations in cities in different countries. Public works are a necessary part of life and they require taxes. Hence, the state or local government, hopefully not federal, is needed to raise and appropriate funds to construct the public works necessary to prevent flooding situations. It benefits everyone as a public work. However, there are numerous programs (including the epitome of failure; the department of education) that are not only unconstitutional but also filled with bureaucracy and simply waste tax payers dollars. So yes, indeed planning is part of state and local government duties and that includes public works. However to think that public works projects are what the government is required to do to raise an economy out of recession doesn’t make sense. Again, they are paying you with your own money. I’d just like to add that i have nothing against public works. I’m sure Canada has plenty of money to spend on them without immense strains on their budget such as the hegemony that is U.S. foreign policy.

Public works are not established until the government decides they’re needed. People are in general selfish. It does not matter if they are giving your money back to you- if you had that money you would not spend it on public works.

Which means no libraries, no public schools, no all of that stuff that makes America the great country you believe it is.

Shut up.

Teenage girl with common sense OUT.

To Wadysseus,

As a product of the IL. policies, I have to respectively decline your assertions about Republicans. Yes, republican politics are idiots and are only looking out on how to win re-election. However, the same can be said about your own left-sided peeps.

Face it, then men on capital hill are only looking for power, and they try to garner as much support from certain demographics to achieve the goal.

On to regards of socialism. I, personally, have never been fond of any governmental aid to anyone. This includes welfare for the poor and tax breaks for the rich. We (should) all know from economics 101 that economies are usually better off without and governmental aid (until a market failure occurs). In this case, what is there to do but try to spur the economy by shoving money down its over-inflated mouth?

Simply put, I take a very libertarian view on issues dealing with the economy. (Go look it up if you don’t know what it is.) The problem being with that is if the government stops all programs established from the new deal and onwards, this country will fall apart and implode (metaphorically).

No, socialism will not help the economy. Ok, yea it will, but at the cost that we owe pretty much everything to Big Brother.

1st off…love the comic, just had to say it.

2nd…doesn’t the constitution give the people the right to overthrow the government if they feel the government is failing? I mean it is late as I type this and my mind stopped working an hour ago, but I remember as a child reading the constitution and remember that part.

Amazing! One small drawing==So much to say==I think the web just may bring us, kicking and screaming, to the truth=to a better, more human understanding of our possibilities= our potential. I don’t pretend to understand the dynamics of life, but I am aware we are all in this together and should have as our first priority the peaceful, loving accommodation of each other, and a reasonably intelligent engagement with our mutual problems. Capitalism is not a satisfactory answer= nor socialism nor Communism nor Nazism nor Catholicism nor Buddhism==etc etc. All these isisms are just short sited half (or less) truths that give some small comfort but no real solution. Where is the TRUTH hiding? in the heart of you all.

To Liz,
Not only were your thoughts poorly structured but they made no sense in that you argued the very point i made. I guess teenage girl with common sense out rivals centuries of philosophic and economic wisdom though. Like i said, countless times, certain public works are needed to benefit the people. I would not wish to talk down at you, yet you speak as if people who earn money only do so to line their pockets with it. Incorrect. They do so to buy goods to improve their lives; which in turn stimulates the economy and perhaps (depending on the origin of the good) their own community. Also, are you equating libraries and public schools (which are financed by state and local governments) to the need for massive federal expenditures that should cure the entire country of economic woes? If so, please present your argument with more depth than what you have.

-Twenty something with a moderate understanding of government and economics who is pursuing an even better understanding, OUT.

To Liz,
Oh, also, it does matter that government pays you with your own money. Why? Because there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything, and i mean everything is paid for by someone. Money doesn’t appear out of thin air (as much as the fed would like it to), it is earned through work. So, when the government gives you money in recessions, it takes it from you in economic booms. Thereby restricting your ability to prosper, thereby encouraging recession. Read a fucking book. (preferably ‘sound money’ Austrian theory, and not Keynesian which i guess is your position on economics…if you even know what that is)

Aghhhh ZOMBIES!

No boomers or smokers???

Can you please please please work this into a t-shirt??

Perhaps without the text (no one wants to wear an editorial), but the image of Obama slashing through throngs of Zombie Reagans, or even just zombies, is one of the best I’ve seen in a long, long time. I love it, and would buy it in a second!

Perhaps this website could help sustain itself with cafepress sales, or similar?

ObamAsh has two weapons. The shotgun “boomstick”- targeted government spending, and the Chainsaw- cutting taxes and reducing the government drag on the economy.

He’s rained lead like a mofo, but since he is just waving the tool that can do us all some good in the air while it runs out of gas, we are all f&%ed.

Oops, just took a closer look at the cartoon. I had thought rrrreagonomics was the sound the chainsaw made.

Aw well I liked it better the first way.

I am not fond of President Oboma, it seems to me he is following the advice of many of former President (democrat in name only)Clinton advisors.

The banking/insurance have been bailed out and Big business has been given a big hand out. What is that but corporate socialism.

I believe our current (less than 3 months) president is missing a golden opportunitie to redirect our country away from its dependence on the car as transportation and oil in general.

If the USA had continued policies inacted by Pres. Carter(the last true democrat) maybe much of what happened since would not have happened.

Pres. Regan 1st campaigned on how bad 300 billion deficit was but by the next election was stating how the economy could easliy handle a 1.2 trillion debt. Pres. Carter inherited double digit inflation because President Nixon took the USA off the Gold/metal standard ,because foreign investors/ wanted thier money and the US tax payers didn’t want thier taxes raised to pay for the Vietnam war.

While Regan use to say “Well there they go again, Tax and spend” at least the democrats have the common sense to tax first then spend , while the republicans are tax cut and spend.

Those of you who say it is your money, the debt for the wars is your debt. You say freedom isn’t free, so pay your taxes and don’t cry about paying more as a % of income if you make more. You still bring home more after taxes/fees.

I hope this pisses off you republican neo nazi types who spout tax cuts, tax cuts are the only thing that will help. I’m a conspiracy nut because I beleive there is no way that the twin towers fell because of the impact and fire of those aircraft . Think about it for a moment. There is no way that those aircraft distroyed either tower equally through an entire floor in such a manner that the whole floor would at the same instance give way instantaneously, let alone both towers. If it was as the pancake failure scenario people say then the top of each tower would have remained semi intact on top of the rubble. Also it defies physics , as the top collapsed onto the lower floor the lower floor would have wanted to remain where it was and absorbed some of the energy while the top of the tower would want to take the path of least resistance and not push down equally around the entire building producing the pancake collapse.
Just because I believe in conspiracies doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I realise this is just ranting but writing to the paper or senator(s)/congressman seems sometimes just as fruitless.

I must admit I haven’t investigated many services for prints and the like, though I probably should.

Reworking the illustration in the cartoon you’re talking about so it didn’t include the yelling guy and would fit nicely on a shirt would take some thought, because then there’d be a big empty gap in the picture. So, I’ll think about it and see what I can come up with.

Brittan…

An interesting post by a bloger made me ……

TopDog…

I am So Lucky That I found your blog and great articles. I will come to your blog often for finding new great articles from your blog.I am adding your rss feed in my reader Thank you…

interesting article… was just talking with friends at http://www.affluence.org about very similar subject

I’m sorry if this this seems like a blanket assumption, but as a Brit I am well aware of the huge ramifications the 9/11 attacks, which were, by my unqualified standards a simple lack of, or ignorance to, appreciate decent intelligence, and an unwillingness to act on that intelligence.

We acted, quite properly, as an ally with a debt of gratitude should do, to mobilise troops into that particular quarter, ie: Afghanistan, where we continue to have a sizeable and immensely effective presence to this day, (despite what faux news tells you about a unilateral superman world saving super force ). Point is, we bugged the fuck outta there in ’19 that is 1919, when they slaughtered and raped the fuck out of our settlers. We recognised it was a completely unruleable and savage forefront, much as the soviets also recognised when they shat brix & GTFO 70 years later..

Our forces are, in all practical senses, cut off from the pentagon now completely, mission creep has set in hard and were just basically pwning Helmand province, burning the poppy fields and keeping the skag outta Europe.

Cheers to a political genius!

Not gonna pretend I read all the replies, but seriously, if you want to have a president that is under no public scrutiny whatsoever then better get to work finding a dictator.

And honestly, I’ve never in my life seen more people happily follow a president blindly than the current one. Regardless of how effective of a president he turns out to be when all is said and done, he is everyone’s hero still. They are still making children’s books about how awesome he is and selling them at Wal Mart for God’s sake. When in recent memory has a president been loved so much that he’s gotten this much leeway in his pursuits? His critics are hardly a hoard of zombies, more a swarm of flies buzzing in your ear and causing minor annoyance. When you are being bashed on every HBO series and Spencer Gifts shop then you can talk about being under heavy scrutiny (not that Bush didn’t deserve it, but I’m just being realistic here).

“When in recent memory has a president been loved so much that he’s gotten this much leeway in his pursuits?”

Ronald Reagan?

I’m not sure if you’re responding to one of the replies or to me, but I think you may have missed the point of this cartoon. If you look again, you’ll notice it doesn’t cast Obama’s critics as a horde of zombies, it casts them as the guy in the background who’s oblivious to the horde of zombies. The zombies themselves represent the failed economic policies of the Reagan administration, as well as similar policies promoted since then, which were complete nonsense and are largely to blame for the current economic crisis.

Furthermore, if you look at some of my other recent cartoons you’ll notice I’m no blind follower of Obama.

I really wish it were at all possible to sort through all the bs. I don’t know much about politics, and the reason for that is that I’ve chosen to remain ignorant. FACT: It is impossible to know what, or who, to believe. All this ranting and raving is ridiculous, and quite useless I might add. I’d bet anything the ones who b*tch the most are the folks who are most likely not going to do anything to control or change what is going on in the world around them. I would also like to say that I very much agree with the individual who stated that most people just regurgitate what they hear. Be it from the news, their friends, their parents, or anyone who has previously voiced an opinion within earshot.

Let’s reduce to microeconomics:If Reaganomics worked so well why don’t we use it now? Or why isn’t there more of a public outcry for it? If we disdain the use of revolving debt credit cards and then take out cash advances to their spending limit-then burn the credit cards! Look,! It freed up lots of capital for us to use! Then we think we are rich because of all the cash in our hands. That’s the perception of the great economic “prosperity” unleashed from Reaganonomics. What is the net result twenty years later when we only make the minimum payments or leave out a few?

I’m not going to pretend to know everything, but I do know how to look for and find answers from various resources. This is one resource I found that was most striking in that it does portray what is going on in America today. She is a wonderful lady worth listening to. Look up her article on electing Obama President.
Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University ‘s Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.
She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer’s television series, “A World of Ideas.” The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of “The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness” which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.
She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

I was wondering if you had this cartoon published in any newspapers in the past. If so, what paper and what date?

None that I’m aware of, though if anybody else saw it in print anywhere I’d appreciate knowing and getting a copy (for records and awards-submission purposes).

Haha you guys really think Obama is actually doing anything?

The republicans and the democrats work together to have non-issues to fight about. Why do you think NOTHING ever gets done? Obama’s just another puppet, just like Bush… and if you disagree you have a looooot of reading to catch up on 🙂

I don’t care about the Regan-ites or the fact that it’s Obama, not Ashley J. Williams.

This picture kicks major ass. Greatest political cartoon ever. Of all time.

Well, it’s been over a year and a half since this was published, and he still hasn’t fixed the economy yet, nor is he instilling any confidence that he can. He seems like he’s in waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over his head. There’s a difference between leading a campaign, and leading a country.

Hey political faggots, I have a suggestion.

If you are so keen on fixing the fucking economy, why don’t you start arguing how to fix it instead of arguing which party has the better economic ideals?

@ Republicans: Stop being stupid. Trickle-down economics never works, and if you disagree you have suffered from the propaganda of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly’s theories of bullshit. If you believe in “smaller government”, why the hell do you believe that governments need to define pathetic cases such as marriage?

@ Democrats: Although you only require half a brain instead of a whole one (unlike the Republicans), there are still some political planks you need to fix. For example, social security reform.

Now instead of arguing the dumber issues (such as Obama is a socialist muslim), start talking sense. And unity.

holy balls, people are dumber n nails. im a senior in highschool and i know more about economics than any comment i read. government spending and transfer payments (stimulus) are the only ways to solve a recessionary gap, by greatly increasing the money supply through jobs and increased GDP. the only real problem is that state and local governments have cut back spending so much that its cancelling out federal spending and really just screwing everybody, also due to the impact lag, there was no expectation for the recession to be affected by now. some dumbasses need to stop watching fox news and all the other bullshit out there and start paying attention to some of the top guys at the Fed, who are there for this sole fucking purpose.

It hasn’t fixed the economy because Clinton fucked it all up. It worked. Clinton took credit for it. Then he fucked us over by allowing banks to lend money to people who couldn’t pay their loans back causing the real estate crash several years later when it caught up to us, while Arabs raised the price of gas because Bush put us in back in the middle east, where they didn’t want us to be. He also made it so that our currency is no longer backed by anything, causing inflation. Now our currency is worth shit.

Don’t blame Reagan. His shit worked.

“Don’t blame Reagan. His shit worked.”

No, it didn’t.