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Topic:
Austerity is stupidity..... [Locked] |
Rosaria  Title: They call me Mellow Yellow, quite rightly.
Posts: 477
Registered: 2003-8-22 10:07:30
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
Sin_of_Onin posted:
A long time ago mercantilism was vilified in economics to the point that it was almost written off as worthy of discussion. Meanwhile in reality it is constantly being used to varying degrees. I just think it is very hard for an American economist to tell a President they have to be more mercantilist and that the only way to counter the mercantilist practices of nations like Germany and China is to be mercantilist as well.
The need to have these conversations increased when Europe and Asia rebounded and the US went off the gold standard.
I'm sure those conversations happen privately, and fruitlessly, but they are still more or less written off in public discourse. There is no acceptable explanation as to why that is.
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Ptilk  Title: Creepy old pirate
Posts: 2,359
Registered: 2002-2-13 14:52:58
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
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Guess you wont be looking to see why you believe in austerity then. Your choice.
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ZigmundZag Title: Grammar Nazi
Posts: 1,211
Registered: 2002-3-25 23:03:00
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
There is no quicker way for a government to drop GDP than to cut spending. You'll see a dollar for dollar drop at a minimum, and it's a near certainty that a money multiplier effect will make it even worse. That said, you can also get to a point where spending more money (or failing to take cuts) will have a worse cumulative effect than the dollar loss in GDP.
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Sin_of_Onin Posts: 1,307
Registered: 2005-6-29 08:21:12
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
ZigmundZag posted:
There is no quicker way for a government to drop GDP than to cut spending. You'll see a dollar for dollar drop at a minimum, and it's a near certainty that a money multiplier effect will make it even worse. That said, you can also get to a point where spending more money (or failing to take cuts) will have a worse cumulative effect than the dollar loss in GDP.
Borrowing money also has a negative effect with a multiplier.
So it is not just the impact of austerity that is in question but the impact of where the money came from to pay for that consumption in the first place.
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Sin_of_Onin Posts: 1,307
Registered: 2005-6-29 08:21:12
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
Ptilk posted:
Guess you wont be looking to see why you believe in austerity then. Your choice.
So circular reasoning was too hard for you so you have resorted to complete nonsense. Congrats on sinking lower.
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cabbyman Posts: 441
Registered: 2003-1-6 07:48:53
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
Austerity is great and we should do more of it.
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Tych2 Title: Obama Appointed Outpost Czar
Posts: 2,511
Registered: 2005-3-1 06:56:47
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
What happens to the people that austerity leaves behind? Do we ignore them and hope they just die or fade away?
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Ptilk Title: Creepy old pirate
Posts: 2,359
Registered: 2002-2-13 14:52:58
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
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Not sure what your problem is, but I already said using the word reasonable made no sense and was stupid. Go on with your bad self though.
The current mania for austerity in governmental budgets is based upon ignorance and/or stupidity and not based upon any factual evidence of it's success in decreasing governmental budget deficits.
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Bowlartz  Title: Offical VN Tin Foil Hat Supplier
Posts: 221
Registered: 2006-1-4 19:59:15
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
I am pretty sure that Austerity also includes things like reforming your social services so you are not, as is the case in Greece, paying 10s of thousands of dead people retirement benefits. The massive fraud and waste caused by operating such large programs through a government bureaucracy can be staggering and most certainly can help countries swimming in debt if resolved even if only to a "decent" level.
For instance, Medicare fraud, just the fraud amounts to close to 70 billion dollars a year. That is enough to put every uninsured American in top notch private health care programs and still have plenty left over.
If the US government simply cut the rate of growth in most of its spending programs and departments to 2-3% in most cases this would save 100s of billions of dollars.
Austerity is as much about simply stopping abuse/fraud/mismanagement as it is killing programs that have proven to useless and simply terrible giveaways. This includes corporate welfare.
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Scarne Title: Capo di Scientifico
Posts: 1,087
Registered: 2001-7-23 15:24:34
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Date Posted:
1/1/00 12:00am
Subject:
Austerity is stupidity..... |
Bowlartz posted:
For instance, Medicare fraud, just the fraud amounts to close to 70 billion dollars a year. That is enough to put every uninsured American in top notch private health care programs and still have plenty left over.
If the US government simply cut the rate of growth in most of its spending programs and departments to 2-3% in most cases this would save 100s of billions of dollars.
Catching the Medicare fraud will eat some portion of the money, and you will never catch all of it. The fraud prevention methods will also cause denials or delays of non-fraud cases. It is always a balancing act. There is a chance we might already be at an ideal equilibrium of such factors as there are already some anti-fraud measures in place.
Cutting growth like that can work for some services, but not all. Some programs only need to grow with inflation so that could be reasonable to keep up. A lot of other programs need to keep up with both inflation and population growth. So limiting them to 2-3% would be a year-to-year cut in services per person. I'm guessing that most of the services that have budgets big enough to matter for this are the ones that need to keep up with population. 
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