What’s so hard about this? They are BOTH right.
If the “Austerity” crowd gets its way, we’ll soon have a world wide depression.
If the “Stimulus” crowd gets its way, we’ll have one a little bit later. But a whole lot worse.
The fact of a world wide depression is now inevitable, though.
“They are BOTH right.”
And we are SO screwed.
Fiddlestix.
Governments especially can’t spend their way to our prosperity. Their spending is the equivalent of a bonfire of the currencies.
Tax increases don’t work. Arthur Laffer and experience have repeatedly shown that tax increases (at current levels of taxation) reduce treasury revenues.
Regulation doesn’t work. See IPO count after SarBox.
Protectionism doesn’t work. See Smoot Hawley.
The only things that work are government spending cuts, tax cuts, regulation cuts, and more free trade.
Europe seems to have figured out the first one. Let’s see who else can get on the Growth Train.
It’s already here.