Austerity Versus Reality
Some important people in our government and some people on this board feel that America needs to do something about our spending problem if we’re ever going to decrease the debt and get ourselves out of this recession.
Well you know how “the states are the laboratories of democracy?”
Lets see what some austerity minded governors have been cooking up?
What’s that statistics, you say that those states that have been cutting their spending are doing worse?
How can that be?
/Well I’m not sure, but be it does!
Some key points….
Relative to national economic trends, states that increased spending enjoyed on average:
* 0.2 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate
* 1.4 percent increase in private employment
* 0.5 percent real economic growth since the start of the recession.
In contrast, states that cut spending saw on average:
* 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate
* 2.1 percent loss of private employment
* 2.9 percent real economic contraction relative to the national economic trend.
At this point how can anyone with a straight face and the best interests of America at heart first and foremost argue we need to keep digging ourselves deeper into this particular austerity hole?