Austerity Budget Means More Unemployment

Dean Baker: Obama is arguing on the Republican's turf, he's lost control of the debate

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Austerity
• Budget
• Unemployment
• Stimulus
• Economy
• President
• Obama
• Democrat
• Republican

[jopalo31675]

Thats wonderful Obama, let's continue endless wars with ambigious enemies(war on drugs, Terror etc..) Let us not invest in our own economy, infrastructure, and education. Here's an idea, the Warsaw pact is dead...end NATO. Let's stop policing the world and we'll save trillions. Stop U.S. hand outs to all nations i.e., Pakistan, Egypt, Isreal etc... Stop the global welfare and we'll reduce our $60+ trillion deficit in half in ten years. Who am I kidding; what the hell, implode the dollar!!!

[roseagain2]

No foreign aid cuts?? No wallstreet cuts?? No war spending cuts?? WTF??

[RetroTheSkywalker]

How Can You Help The Economy By Getting RID Of Jobs!!!...And How Can You Help The Economy When You Spend $2 Billion Dollars Of Money We DON'T Have On WAR....And Give Tax Cuts To The RICH...How Will This Budget Do Anything But Ruin Lives...

[pilkingtonphil]

@MetalDetroit That's not the argument. You don't know what you're talking about...

[pilkingtonphil]

@periechontology Hyperinflation can only take place under exceptional circumstances. Usually it requires a severe physical loss of productive capacity (in Weimar Germany: the occupation of the Ruhr Valley - in Zimbabwe the seizure of the farms and their distribution to incompetents). Without this you won't get hyperinflation - simple as.

Anyway, people have been predicting hyperinflation for years. And they're ALWAYS wrong. This goes back to after WW2 - 115% debt... no hyperinflation. Duh!

[periechontology]

@pilkingtonphil O.k. you invest assuming that hyperinflation isn't coming and we'll see where you are in a few years. :)

[jopalo31675]

@SamDeRe81 :We live on debt, its the way of our reality. But, it can't last forever.

[MetalDetroit]

@sirellyn I always love that analogy - you can have 0% unemployment - just pay half the unemployed to dig a trench and when it is done pay them to fill it back in and repeat......Of course you end up with 0% productivity !

Dumbest thing I ever heard a politician say is Nancy Pelosi stating that every $1.00 spent on unemployment adds $1.29 to the economy ! What a brilliant plan!!!  let's all go on unemployment !!

[MetalDetroit]

"The scariest word's in the world are: I'm from the government, I'm here to help"

Ronald Reagan - the Great

[pilkingtonphil]

@sirellyn You REALLY have no idea about modern Keynesianism works. Modern Keynesians DO argue that giving people tax-breaks is effective. The 'shovel ready jobs' thing is a strawman - I'm not responding to that.

As for deficit spending projects that worked: WWII in the US; the Marshall Plan; the German Rentenmark program prior to the '29 collapse; Hitler's deficits for rearmament and building the Autobahns... shall I go on?

[pilkingtonphil]

@sirellyn You have a very hard time listening to what other people say, you know that?

As I already said, the stats on that site don't indicate that inflation is rising any faster than in the standard CPI. Also, the author is an apocolyptic crazy who said there would be hyperinflation in 2010. He's the economic equivalent of a Christian who believes the four horsemen are coming - he was also entirely wrong in his batshit predictions.

[sirellyn]

@pilkingtonphil I was talking about stimulus in particular. or "Shovel ready jobs". The assumption is simply by creating work (dig a hole, fill it back in again, repeat) it will provide the needed "cash-go-round" to give the economy a jump start.

If simply having people have more money worked, why wouldn't you give people a tax break or write a bunch of checks? It doesn't work of course. In fact I can't find a single historical example of this EVER working.

Once the money runs out, it stops