G
Guns Guns Guns
Guest
Doctors used to believe that by draining a patient’s blood they could purge the evil “humors” that were thought to cause disease.
In reality, of course, all their bloodletting did was make the patient weaker, and more likely to succumb.
Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy.
Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do, and economic bloodletting isn’t just inflicting vast pain; it’s starting to undermine our long-run growth prospects.
For the past year and a half, policy discourse in the United States has been dominated by calls for fiscal austerity.
By slashing spending and reducing deficits, we were told, nations could restore confidence and drive economic revival.
In the United States, the modest federal stimulus of 2009 has faded out, while state and local governments have slashed their budgets, so that overall we’ve had a de facto move toward austerity.
Strange to say, however, confidence hasn’t surged.
Somehow, businesses and consumers seem much more concerned about the lack of customers and jobs, respectively, than they are reassured by the fiscal righteousness of their governments.
Growth seems to be stalling, while unemployment remains disastrously high.
What we really need, however, is to convince a substantial number of people with political power or influence that they’ve spent the last year and a half going in exactly the wrong direction, and that they need to make a U-turn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/opinion/economic-bleeding-cure.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
In reality, of course, all their bloodletting did was make the patient weaker, and more likely to succumb.
Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy.
Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do, and economic bloodletting isn’t just inflicting vast pain; it’s starting to undermine our long-run growth prospects.
For the past year and a half, policy discourse in the United States has been dominated by calls for fiscal austerity.
By slashing spending and reducing deficits, we were told, nations could restore confidence and drive economic revival.
In the United States, the modest federal stimulus of 2009 has faded out, while state and local governments have slashed their budgets, so that overall we’ve had a de facto move toward austerity.
Strange to say, however, confidence hasn’t surged.
Somehow, businesses and consumers seem much more concerned about the lack of customers and jobs, respectively, than they are reassured by the fiscal righteousness of their governments.
Growth seems to be stalling, while unemployment remains disastrously high.
What we really need, however, is to convince a substantial number of people with political power or influence that they’ve spent the last year and a half going in exactly the wrong direction, and that they need to make a U-turn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/opinion/economic-bleeding-cure.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB