Countries are neither corporations nor families struggling to pay back a mortgage loan. Unfortunately the ‘deciders’ of the western world seem to be totally ignorant of this fact and continue to press on with policies based on precisely these false premises.
In his article in the NYT today Paul Krugman has again endeavored to point this simple fact out. I hope he meets with greater success.
It ought to be self evident that a country in great debt should not have stringent austerity imposed on it to reduce its deficit. And yet No! Dogmatic policies carry on as usual, for all the adverse ill effects they have already achieved.
Here in Greece we have been told flat out that after two years of stringent austerity, almost four years of growing recession, we are closer to bankruptcy than before. You’d expect that should tell ‘them’ something about the quality of the recession inducing policies they have been imposing. But no. The medicine being prescribed, nay, being force fed down our gullets rather, is MORE even WORSE of the same recession exacerbating policies to, and I quote, ‘plug the hole’ of the growing deficit.
Every new tax imposed leads to a reduction in revenue, however, rather than the reverse. As people who used to study economics some thirty odd years ago know very well is what happens. But no, Dogma insists that this is the right way to go.
So how can we help wringing our hands in utter despair and contemplating suicide when the choice is between going bankrupt through a default on outstanding debt, or going bankrupt through galloping recession and over taxation. Not much to chose from there.
But Krugman is right (yet again, like Keynes) but this time not through explaining how the economy actually works, but because he tells us that we can go blue in the face trying to knock it into the ‘deciders’ thick well fed heads that this is not the way to go, but without ever achieving our purpose because we live in a global era of ‘post modern fact free politics’!
It goes without saying that The Frau is the very epitome of the mentality driving this outlandish, nightmare ‘post modern’ world.