Monday, March 12, 2012

A Government is not Like a Family.

Krugman:
"you could view Greece as being like a family that overspent, got itself into debt, and whose members now have to do all the things families do when they get in that position: slash spending on inessentials, postpone medical care and other big expenses, quit their jobs and reduce their incomes — oh, wait.
That’s the key point, of course. When a family tightens its belt it doesn’t put itself out of a job. When a government tightens its belt in a depressed economy, it puts lots of people out of jobs; and this is a negative even from the government’s own, narrowly fiscal point of view, since a shrinking economy means less revenue."

1 comment:

  1. I like this post a lot. I think this is a good retort to the "simplified" budget where you "lop off the zeros" and pretend it is a family budget in the U.S. Followed, of course, by blaming Obama, this drives me crazy.

    This a good starting point though - I'll have to bookmark his post.

    ReplyDelete