Austerity Now!

"Obama's out of control SPENDING is what's killing our economy!" / CUTS!! 
 -- click here for other posts with info/links on economy --

• Dave Johnson: Austeridiocy: Budget Cuts Take Money Out Of The Economy (8/12/2011)- http://goo.gl/qZqTx
• Cuts Only Shift Costs, They Don’t Cut Costs: The things government does have to be done, and cutting government doesn’t get rid of the need, it just shifts the costs. Cutting government budgets only shifts the cost away from the wealthier taxpayers who were asked to pitch in and give back to the system that enabled their wealth. It removes the “take care of and watch out for each other” concept of democracy and puts the costs on the backs of vulnerable individuals. Cutting government doesn’t remove the costs from the larger economy, and often increases the costs to the larger economy.
• Adios Austerity! E.U. Admits Right Wing Policy Of Punishing The Poor Has Failed (VIDEO) | Addicting Info (1/31/2012) 
• Paul Krugman - Truthout "Changing Minds, But Not Policy" (Aug 28, 2012) http://bit.ly/OnZvth 
• "Many of the British economists who called for austerity in 2010 now think the UK needs a stimulus. If only they'd admit austerity was a bad idea from day one, says Paul Krugman."
• The New Statesman magazine had a good idea this month — it went to 20 British economists who had all signed a letter in early 2010 calling for immediate austerity and asked them whether they still supported George Osborne's policies now that Britain is in a double-dip recession. Only one of those who replied said yes, while nine urged Mr. Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, to reconsider his opposition to stimulus. Good on them."
• "...Mr. Laffer's extraordinary assertion [in WSJ] that Estonia and Ireland are the leading examples of failed stimulus [THEY'RE NOT: THEY"RE LEADING EXAMPLES OF FAILED AUSTERITY]: "Of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, those with the largest spending spurts from 2007 to 2009 saw the least growth in G.D.P. rates before and after the stimulus," he wrote. "The four nations — Estonia, Ireland, the Slovak Republic and Finland — with the biggest stimulus programs had the steepest declines in growth." Weren't Estonia and Ireland supposed to be heroes of austerity? How incompetent do you have to be not to get that story straight? But then, it's become clear that The Wall Street Journal and the right in general have spent so long prioritizing loyalty over competence that they don't even notice when they're using people known for being wrong as supposed experts."
• Krugman blog: Ireland the Model - NYTimes.com (Dec 2010) http://nyti.ms/hKZRaC
• Quotes from 2006: Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking [AUSTERITY].
• Krugman - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com  ( What we're sacrificing for the top 2% - Aug '10) 
• Krugman (column) - The Austerity Debacle. - NYTimes.com (1/30/2012)  
• Krugman - Austerity Memories - NYTimes.com (1/28/2012) -- as MarKos writes, "Oh those funny economists who said austerity would lead to recession! Of course, they were right"

• Paul Krugman - Destructive Austerity, USA - NYTimes.com (1/29/2012) 
• The Austerity Delusion: The IMF's latest forecast: Perverse austerity | The Economist (IMF finds austerity could be making European crisis worse) (1/24/2012) 
• wonkronk: Poll: Americans Favor Social Security, Medicare Over Deficit Reduction (July 2011) 
• Deficit Solution: Get Americans Back To Work : NPR (May 9, 2011) 
• ThinkProgress » House Republican Spending Cuts Target Programs For Children And Pregnant Women (2/2011) 
• Goldman Sachs: Republican Budget Cuts to Slow Economy | Politically Illustrated (2/2011) 

• Krugman, Austerity Delusion, 3/2011 
• Why not slash deficits immediately? Bc tax increases and cuts in government spending would depress economies further, worsening unemployment. And cutting spending in a deeply depressed economy is largely self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms: any savings achieved at the front end are partly offset by lower revenue, as the economy shrinks. 
• So jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has been abandoned in the face of phantom risks and delusional hopes. http://nyti.ms/hKt7sx 
• "Cutting government creates jobs, the way cutting taxes increases revenue" [IT DOESN'T] (3/2011) 
• The GOP's Absurd Plan for the Economy: Lowering YOUR Wages AlterNet:  Earlier this month, House Republicans laid out a perverse plan to lower working Americans' wages, supposedly in a bid to get employers to hire more of them. (3/2011) 
• "How is the GOP planing to create jobs, again?" Ezra Klein, 2/28/2011
• Goldman Sachs says that if the GOP's spending cuts pass, "the drag on GDP growth from federal fiscal policy would increase by 1.5pp to 2pp in Q2 and Q3." That is to say, GDP growth would fall by 1.5 to 2 percentage points on an annual basis. That's horrifying. 
• More than 300 Economists Repudiate Right-Wing "So Be It" Economics | OurFuture.org (3/2011)
• Krugman, The Forgotten Millions - NYTimes.com (3/2011)
•   >3 years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, Washington has lost interest in the unemployed.
• How Government Budget Cuts Significantly Reduced U.S. GDP Last Year | ThinkProgress (1/30/2012) 
• Ryan dings tea partiers on cuts - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com 3/2011: You can't balance the budget w/ cutting NPR and foreign aid 
• Except, he's cut spending. (Analysis: Newsweek/DailyBeast, 2/7/2011) 
• Also: cutting spending in Q4 of 2010 slowed the economy. 2/28/2011 / AP (State spending cuts slow US economic growth in Q4 -Yahoo! Finance
• "How to Kill a Recovery" Krugman, 3/2011
• The danger to recovery comes from politics — specifically, the demand from House Republicans that the government immediately slash spending on infant nutrition, disease control, clean water and more. ..these cuts would lead to the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs — and  short-circuit the virtuous circle of rising incomes and improving finances.
• Krugman - We Don’t Need No Education - NYTimes.com (6/15/2012) http://goo.gl/BVF37
• Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush.And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people.

The issue of Austerity is inextricably linked to STIMULUS, so I've added a whole other thread for Stimulus talk:

• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus, turns 3 this week. Did it work? Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, answers that question in a new video by looking at three broad but important indicators for the American economy. All three were in bad shape before the stimulus began, and all three turned around at almost exactly the moment the stimulus started. Coincidence? Video: Did the Stimulus Work?