Austerity must go

As a governmental policy, austerity is proving to be a bad idea.    Just as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, both Nobel Prize winning economists, have been telling us.

Now it turns out that the book that conservatives have been championing as their authority on austerity is badly flawed.   The flaws in the argument of this book, which was written by academic economists, were exposed by a graduate student.

In addition, the economies of European countries -- which embraced austerity even more than the U.S. did -- have continued to decline, while the U. S., with more limited austerity, has done a little better.

But now a study from the Brookings Institute has been released that says that, in the 46 months since our current recession officially ended in 2009, federal, state, and local governments have cut 500,000 jobs.

In contrast, in all other recessions since 1970, governments have added, on average, 1.7 million jobs.   Get it?   Usually we add lots of jobs -- the opposite of austerity.   But this time we have cut jobs instead.

So they figure, if we had done what is usual, 2.2 million more Americans would have jobs now than do.   That would put the unemployment at 6.1% instead of 7.5%.

So . . . now will you conservatives listen?   Here is evidence that austerity is exactly the wrong way to go in a recession.  Start doing something about jobs;  stop beating the drums to cut the deficit. 

Ralph