tk421;730335 wrote:That's right, we forgot that living within ones means is only for us lowly common peons. The mighty government clearly needs to spend way more money than they take in. God forbid the government has a balanced budget.
You're speaking in this rhetorical manner that is devoid of economic relevance. It is generally agreed upon that GDP is essentially the gross national income. That is to say that GDP is a good indicator of standard of living. In the great recession, millions of people lost their jobs and had to "tighten their belts." Consequently conservatives are saying, "that means gubment has to tighten their belt to!" But, this is the exact time when the government should not tighten their belt and should borrow money to spend in place of the private loss in spending because that is the only way to preserve the GDP and theoretically the standard of living.
3 trillion in government outlays is a large amount of are GDP and is necessary to make up for the loss in output caused by the great recession.
The government should not be worried about running a surplus or a balanced budget yet! Those concerns are nearing on the horizon but if you don't do enough to make up for lost GDP we're going to end up like Japan and lose an entire decade because conservatives think deficits don't matter during boom times and they're the only thing that matters during rough times WHEN THIS IS COMPLETELY BACKWARDS!!!! If we had ran surpluses or a balanced budget during the boom times of 2001-2007 we would not have as great of a looming debt crisis.
If tk421 had his/her way, things would undoubtedly get worse in the short term (and probably the long term as the debt would just get more burdensome as unemployment would continue to remain high).
Some folks believe this to be a good thing...that it is a necessary purge. And that is fine I suppose if you believe that...but if you're going to call for austerity at least carry with that the reality that you want people and america to experience harder times.