{"id":708,"date":"2008-10-16T15:33:57","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T19:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=708"},"modified":"2008-10-22T10:14:39","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T14:14:39","slug":"balancing-the-federal-budget-during-a-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2008\/10\/16\/balancing-the-federal-budget-during-a-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"Balancing the Federal Budget During a Recession"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Follow<strong> <\/strong><a title=\"McCain Political Ad\" href=\"http:\/\/link.brightcove.com\/services\/link\/bcpid1649964978\/bctid1861199122\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>this link<\/strong><\/a> to see the McCain ad that prompts this comment.<\/p>\n<p>McCain still doesn&#8217;t get it.\u00a0 Normally you do not cut federal spending when the economy goes into a recession.\u00a0 Cutting spending does not create jobs, it kills them. Cutting spending was part of the Hoover plan during the depression.\u00a0 Even Roosevelt was unaware, at the beginning of his term, of the problem that budget cutting causes.\u00a0 It took the economist John Maynard Keynes to explain it.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with the current economy is that business and consumers are too afraid to spend money, and rightfully so.\u00a0 This behavior creates a downward spiral for the economy.\u00a0 If you give people money in tax breaks, it goes right to savings if they can afford to save.\u00a0 They want to set aside money for a rainy day. The banks don&#8217;t want to lend the money that people are depositing due to the same fear. Money not circulating causes the economy to contract.<\/p>\n<p>When things get really bad, the only way to get money circulating is for the government to spend it to buy things. If the government buys things that are investments in economic growth, then so much the better.<\/p>\n<p>This is how we got so much infrastructure built during the depression of the 1930s.\u00a0 We are still benefiting from the dams and other items that were built back then.<\/p>\n<p>Such investments could be roads, public transportation, airports, water treatment facilities, schools, funding of science and engineering research and development.\u00a0 Blowing up the money in Iraq is not such an investment.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, if the rich get too fearful to spend their money, then the government may have to tax some of\u00a0 it and spend it.\u00a0 Otherwise, its trickle down is not even a trickle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Follow this link to see the McCain ad that prompts this comment. McCain still doesn&#8217;t get it.\u00a0 Normally you do not cut federal spending when the economy goes into a recession.\u00a0 Cutting spending does not create jobs, it kills them. Cutting spending was part of the Hoover plan during the depression.\u00a0 Even Roosevelt was unaware, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,166],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-periodic-posts","category-stevegsposts","tag-economy","czr-hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}