canndo
Well-Known Member
The presumption here is that America is somehow like a middle class family, where mom and pop sit around the breakfast table late at night trying to figure out how to manage their paychecks. The news is that government is nothing like mom and pop. Now we could liken it to a business but a government is not a business and the Federal Government has never been mandated to break even or turn a profit, it is mandated to guarantee rights of the individual and to promote or provide order. Austerity may work for the average family (although I could argue that it really does not) but it does not work in general practice. We do not reduce spending in order to thrive, we increase income. Now I will use a business as example even after I said that government is not a business.
In the sort term business may reduce spending as a way to cope with temporary fiscal troubles but any good business does not shy away from spending or borrowing if the point is to anticipate increased demand for its products (for whatever reason). No business (nor individual) pares it's way to sovlvency or sucess, it grows its way into it. A contracting company is never long a successful one. A contracting family is never very long solvent.
Of course expansion for its own sake, spending for its own sake is rarely good policy, especially in government but to be so reductionist as to claim that the cure for all of our ills is to spend less is a sure fire way to an ultimate crash.
