What austerity preachers do not get

6 Mar, 2018 at 08:42 | Posted in Economics | 3 Comments

We are not going to get out of the economic doldrums as long as we continue to be obsessed with the unreasoned ideological goal of reducing the so-called deficit. The “deficit” is not an economic sin but an economic necessity …

austerity22The administration is trying to bring the Titanic into harbor with a canoe paddle, while Congress is arguing over whether to use an oar or a paddle, and the Perot’s and budget balancers seem eager to lash the helm hard-a-starboard towards the iceberg. Some of the argument seems to be over which foot is the better one to shoot ourselves in. We have the resources in terms of idle manpower and idle plants to do so much, while the preachers of austerity, most of whom are in little danger of themselves suffering any serious consequences, keep telling us to tighten our belts and refrain from using the resources that lay idle all around us.

Alexander Hamilton once wrote “A national debt, if it be not excessive, would be for us a national treasure.” William Jennings Bryan used to declaim, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Today’s cross is not made of gold, but is concocted of a web of obfuscatory financial rectitude from which human values have been expunged.

William Vickrey

3 Comments

  1. The best Nobel awardist!

    Comment by Jan Milch— 9 Mar, 2018 #

  2. Vickrey’s 15 fatal fallacies essay tells it like it is. Sound finance is just plain obsolete for a modern economy prone to demand deficiency.

    Comment by Bob— 7 Mar, 2018 #

  3. Much depends on the basis for the deficit. Workfare, austerity, and Brexit are examples of the rejection of public spending on persons who are unemployed, or who have children and then need financial aid. Governmental systems have been limiting economic aid to women and increasing judicial processes against men in order to increase their employability, to motivate them to work. This has produced an acceptance of open borders or immigration to take up the slack where natives do not want to work. Another example of this pressurizing of the population to work is the increase in college tuition and the resulting college loan debt: to reduce time wasting in college and force the students to focus on their employability in relation to coursework.

    Comment by Fredrick Welfare— 7 Mar, 2018 #


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