[Voice of Reason]

"Inappropriate spending cuts could "strangle" growth prospects, the head of the IMF has warned."

"There is a risk that every disappointment in growth will be met with an austerity that will feed the decline, and that is a cycle you have to arrest to solve financial crises," Mr Geithner said."

"Financier George Soros told the BBC that the fiscal cuts, which Germany supports, could even lead to a "lost decade" of economic stagnation in Europe.

"This German insistence on austerity could destroy the European Union," he said."


It is now four years since the Bush Republicans wrecked the US economy, which took the global economy with it. After four years of spending cuts and austerity measures, backed by pretending that debt caused the financial collapse even though it didn't, the world economy is still stagnant. Could it be that cutting spending simply does not work?

Logically, I see very little reason why it should. The 'cut spending' brigade seem to think that money being spent just vanishes into a black hole, but they are wrong. One mans spending is the next man's income, who will go on to spend his income thus providing somebody else with an income, and so on down the line. Those ranting for 'cut spending' are effectively saying "Lets reduce a whole load of incomes - that should increase the economy!" which is logical nonsense. An oxymoron even.

Is it time to stop messing about trying to fix the wrong problem, with spending cuts that don't work?

[Invictus2001]

what spending cuts?

Our national debt grew more the past 3 years then the past 200 years combined.

need to stay off that weed. It kills brain cells

[Voice of Reason]

Quote:

what spending cuts?

The ones in UK, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Germany, etc. that you apparently didn't know about.

Quote:

Our national debt grew more the past 3 years then the past 200 years combined.

Explain, using specifics and facts instead of little kiddy soundbites copied from a wingnut blog, exactly why that is a problem. After all, the US debt level in 1945 was much higher than it is now, but the world didn't end.

Let me try to teach you something. Imagine you earn $10,000 a year. Imagine you have a debt of $1,000. Your debt level is 10%. Now imagine that your income falls to $5,000 a year because, say, a bunch of Republicans cause a recession. Now your debt level is 20% even though the debt itself hasn't changed, but that will not stop a bunch of people like you from dancing around screeching that the debt has doubled...

The lessons from this are obvious:

1) In a recession, debt as a % of GDP *always* rises - because the GDP shrinks. It is normal and predictable.

2) High debt doesn't destroy an economy. That is just wingnut scaremongering.

3) The obvious way to shrink it is to make the GDP bigger, AKA stimulate the economy. What, exactly, do you have against that?

4) As growing the economy is the answer, shrinking the economy by cutting spending is precisely the wrong thing to do.

Quote:

need to stay off that weed. It kills brain cells

Yet I still destroy your arguments with ease...

[Gotterdammerung]

Originally Posted by Invictus2001:

need to stay off that weed. It kills brain cells

There's no weed in Singapore.