We're about to hear from Republicans in the debate coming up about the end of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration that the Stimulus didn't work, and that austerity is needed.
Austerity is a remedy that will make the problem worse, not better. Put another way - Keynsian economics work, Austrian School economics do not.
In every country in Europe where they have imposed austerity, economic growth and recovery have stalled. We need long term solutions, and that is not mindless no-taxes austerity.
More than that, in the U.S. we have a badly crumbling infrastructure that needs to be addressed. Interest rates are at an all time low for recent decades. NOW is the smart time if we need to borrow money - and we DO - to fix those problems before they become far more expensive to repair or replace. We will make up a lot of the borrowing costs through the growth brought about by the spending that is multiplied as people who are hired for the repair and replacement spend the money they are paid, and as business hires people to produce the materials required. Further, that infrastructure is essential for our businesses to operate.
To his credit, Obama has done more than previous recent presidents to address our structural economic problem with diminishing manufacturing, addressing structural unemployment problems (as distinct from frictional unemployment) and turning us back into an export nation which is essential to our strength and competitiveness in global markets.
The right doesn't get it; their policies are failures, they do not work but instead make the problems worse, NOT better. We know this from our own history, we know this from what has been tried by other countries in similar recessions. There is no ambiguity, there is only opposition from those who are willfully blinded by ideology to the extreme that it prevents them from dealing with objective, factual reality.
Austerity is a remedy that will make the problem worse, not better. Put another way - Keynsian economics work, Austrian School economics do not.
In every country in Europe where they have imposed austerity, economic growth and recovery have stalled. We need long term solutions, and that is not mindless no-taxes austerity.
More than that, in the U.S. we have a badly crumbling infrastructure that needs to be addressed. Interest rates are at an all time low for recent decades. NOW is the smart time if we need to borrow money - and we DO - to fix those problems before they become far more expensive to repair or replace. We will make up a lot of the borrowing costs through the growth brought about by the spending that is multiplied as people who are hired for the repair and replacement spend the money they are paid, and as business hires people to produce the materials required. Further, that infrastructure is essential for our businesses to operate.
To his credit, Obama has done more than previous recent presidents to address our structural economic problem with diminishing manufacturing, addressing structural unemployment problems (as distinct from frictional unemployment) and turning us back into an export nation which is essential to our strength and competitiveness in global markets.
The right doesn't get it; their policies are failures, they do not work but instead make the problems worse, NOT better. We know this from our own history, we know this from what has been tried by other countries in similar recessions. There is no ambiguity, there is only opposition from those who are willfully blinded by ideology to the extreme that it prevents them from dealing with objective, factual reality.
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