DeLong is shrill.

JONATHAN CHAIT HITS ONE OUT OF THE PARK: WASHINGTON D.C. MASQUE OF THE UNEMPLOYED EDITION by DeLong

Makes me think of the compelling idea - new to me - put forward by Steve Randy Waldman in his latest post: that World War II was sort of a "reset button" on the inequality of the preceding decades.

Why did World War II, one of the most destructive events in the history of world, engender an era of near-full employment and broad-based prosperity, both in the US where capital and infrastructure were mostly preserved, and in Europe where resources were obliterated? People have lots of explanations, and I’m sure there’s truth in many of them. But I think an underrated factor is the degree to which the war “reset” the inequalities that had developed over prior decades. Suddenly nearly everyone was poor in much of Europe. In the US, income inequality declined during the war. Military pay and the GI Bill and rationing and war bonds helped shore up the broad public’s balance sheet, reducing indebtedness and overall wealth dispersion. World War II was so large an event, organized and motivated by concerns so far from economic calculation, that squabbles between rich and poor, creditor and debtor, were put aside. The financial effect of the war, in terms of the distribution of claims in the US, was not very different from what would occur under Keen’s jubilee.