We’ve spent decades sanctifying expedients as if they were worthy substitutes for restraint, discipline, justice or common sense.
The debt of G. W. Bush and dishonest Republicans:
2008 $ 10,024,724,896,912.49
2007 $ 9,007,653,372,262.48
2006 $ 8,506,973,899,215.23
2005 $ 7,932,709,661,723.50
2004 $ 7,379,052,696,330.32
2003 $ 6,783,231,062,743.62
2002 $ 6,228,235,965,597.16
2001 $ 5,807,463,412,200.06
2000 $ 5,674,178,209,886.86
Government spending has accounted for about 20% of US GDP. More spending may boost the economy in the short term. Reducing debt is important in the medium term. But fiscal and monetary policy are not universally potent tools, and politically motivated austerity could be an abject failure.
70% of our economy is consumption and 30% is debt and finance. In the aftermath of crisis there’s revulsion to both, but the result might be permanent sluggishness and unemployment. How do we shift from one kind of economy to another?
Steve Ludlum:
Work is the activity that generates the return from capital.
Without work the value of capital by itself is zero.
This is the real hazard of the current world-wide rise in unemployment.
Workers are getting poorer and cannot afford high prices.
The productive work of each wage earner is worth less than the oil each worker requires to do the work.
The only way out of the ongoing economic/energy crisis is for nations to revalue labor upward – by increasing worker productive capacity, skill and capability – and by going off oil as they went off gold 70+ years ago.
The only alternative is to find four or so extra Saudi Arabias.