Quote:
Originally Posted by smc
I don't have time at this moment to respond fully, but I will make a couple of quick points.
1. It is a fallacy to analogize personal/consumer debt to government deficit spending. I am not saying you have done this, Randolph, but rather am making a general point.
2. If you truly believe that "social spending should be based on productivity of the economy" and you truly see "no justification for social spending based on debt," than you must be completely opposed to any type of government stimulus of the economy whatsoever. That would include the WPA and CCC during the Great Depression. Is that the case?
Off to hang out with Kaiti and Tiffany ... "skipping" classes, and back on line sporadically over the next couple of days.
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1- Debt is debt, regardless of who owns it. Government is different in being able to print money and inflate it's way out of debt, which is devastating to people on fixed incomes.
2- Social spending, ie. social security, medicare, etc, must be based on long term sustainable government income(taxes). Otherwise it contributes to inflation.
WPA and CCC were temporary measures to relieve human suffering during a severe depression. They did little to get us out of the depression, however.
The massive Keynesian spending during WWII (for manufacturing war materials) got us out of the depression. That created a huge amount of debt but it was resolved by economic expansion after the war.
I may sound Teapartyish here, but I am not. I am a progressive in that government must play a role in human services. That role must be based on sound economic policy, however.