> to show that austerity is the only option. It started widely damaging pro-cyclical austerity policy during regression
I’ve found much of the fear mongering around austerity to be pretty overblown. It’s been pretty rare to find examples of austerity except for some cases in the EU where attempts to reign in debt in countries like Greece where it was 180% (and still is today). Otherwise almost all of the advanced countries have kept it around 60-100% even almost a decade since the recession.
Moderate Keynesian and monetarist policy remains incredibly popular following the recession and in many places higher debt only became more popular even during the good times.
Even looking at the American right, besides Paul Ryan’s failed proposal 9yrs ago, there’s little evidence of the debt being lowered even during republican majorities in Congress and Senate.
Yet if you follow Krugman and the like you’d think austerity has been a giant problem in the west.
The world’s a lot more boring and moderate than the fear mongerers like to admit.
> Yet if you follow Krugman and the like you’d think austerity has been a giant problem in the west.
I don't follow Krugman closely since he is not macroeconomist, but Krugman's back of envelope calculation was correct in the retrospect.
Obama's stimulus was roughly of what needed and half of what was needed was the result. (tax benefits are not proper stimulus). According to CBO the US economy was 6.8 percent below its potential translating into $2.1 trillion of lost production. Lives were destroyed permanently due to prolonged recession.
> to show that austerity is the only option. It started widely damaging pro-cyclical austerity policy during regression
I’ve found much of the fear mongering around austerity to be pretty overblown. It’s been pretty rare to find examples of austerity except for some cases in the EU where attempts to reign in debt in countries like Greece where it was 180% (and still is today). Otherwise almost all of the advanced countries have kept it around 60-100% even almost a decade since the recession.
Moderate Keynesian and monetarist policy remains incredibly popular following the recession and in many places higher debt only became more popular even during the good times.
Even looking at the American right, besides Paul Ryan’s failed proposal 9yrs ago, there’s little evidence of the debt being lowered even during republican majorities in Congress and Senate.
Yet if you follow Krugman and the like you’d think austerity has been a giant problem in the west.
The world’s a lot more boring and moderate than the fear mongerers like to admit.