History forgotten

Greece is in the news because of its new left-wing government, which is responding to the people’s demand for an end to the austerity that has devastated their lives.

We forget history. World War II was hard on our economy, which was still suffering from the Great Depression. If we had followed the same policies of austerity after the war, the Great Depression would have hit again with even greater force, especially when the now unemployed former soldiers were dumped on the labor market.

Instead, we sent the former soldiers to college with the GI Bill, rebuilt our former enemies with the Marshall Plan, and built a very expensive system of nationwide freeways. In addition, we never paid off the huge debt from the war. We simply made our economy bigger by more spending.

What followed were probably the most prosperous few decades since the founding of our land. We can learn from what worked before and is not working now.

We forget history.

Allan deLaubenfels

Spokane Valley