Far-left, Anti-Austerity Party Triumphs in Greek Election.

[pErvinalia]

By way of example, raising the minimum wage causes low-income entry-level workers to lose their jobs or not be hired in the first place

Raising the minimum wage means I as a tax payer don't have to subsidise corporations to pay to keep these people alive.

Good point.

Raising the minimum wage also causes low-income entry-level workers to spend more money.

9 Months On, Koch Fears Realized After Town Raised Minimum Wage To $15
Author: Nathaniel Downes September 14, 2014 5:16 pm

In January, the town of Seatac, Washington, put in to effect a new $15 per hour Minimum Wage. No ramp ups, no tiered implementation. One day it was the state standard, the next, the highest minimum wage in the nation. The Koch Brothers sank a fortune to fight this measure, which fell on deaf ears as the town rejected their trickle-down theories and instead voted for the measure. The result is that for one town, they became a test bed, to put the theories behind trickle-down economics to the test.

Now, nine months on, we are witnessing one of the most dramatic recoveries in the Pacific Northwest.

Last July, business owner Scott Ostrander claimed that the increased wage would force him to lay off staff, if not shut down his businesses.

• I am shaking here tonight because I am going to be forced to lay people off. I’m going to take away their livelihood. That hurts. It really, really hurts. . . . And what I am going to have to do on Jan. 1 is to eliminate jobs, reduce hours — and as soon as hours are reduced, benefits are reduced.

Instead, his business, the Cedarbrook Lodge hotel, is expanding, adding 63 more beds to meet demand. Instead of layoffs, he needs to hire more people. And his story is not the only one.

Tom Douglas, who runs fifteen restaurants in the Seattle area, warned that a higher minimum wage law being considered by Seattle would force the shutdown of a quarter of his restaurants. Instead, after the results in Seatac, he is opening five new restaurants to meet demand. And this story is being repeated, over and over again, throughout the region.

Well paid employees pump money in to the local economies. This is basic economics, dating back to Adam Smith.

(Continued here.)

They're all going to be fucked when the inertia of the economy swings the pendulum the other way and their costs skyrocket because of the minimum wage and they have to raise prices and fire employees, who will then be...well...unemployed.

"Oh, look at the pretty sparkles from that long string-thingy attached to that barrel full of gunpowder."

Can you say "petard?"

Can you say "delusional", Nostradamus?

[Seth]

Can you say "delusional", Nostradamus?

Why yes, yes I can rEv. You're delusional.

[Seth]

You can't argue with facts and reality, Lak. You can't cut your way out of recession. You have to restore spending. Everyone but the extreme 'free marketeer' economists understand this. As unpalatable as it sounds, the only way to restore spending is to borrow money and raise taxes.

"Austerity is a seductive idea because of the simplicity of its core claim -- that you can’t cure debt with more debt. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Three less obvious factors undermine the simple argument that countries in the red need to stop spending. The first factor is distributional, since the effects of austerity are felt differently across different levels of society. Those at the bottom of the income distribution lose proportionately more than those at the top, because they rely far more on government services and have little wealth with which to cushion the blows.

Why yes, this is true. And that's precisely why government should not permit people to become dependent on government services by extending welfare benefits to those who are unwilling to work.

The 400 richest Americans own more assets than the poorest 150 million;

So what? This is a Marxist class-warfare egalitarianism fallacy. The fact that 400 people have more than 150 million others is meaningless unless wealth is finite and the poor are denied all opportunity to become wealth. The argument made here is nothing more than an example of Marxist "fairness doctrine" propaganda that falsely maintains that the economy is finite and the distribution of wealth is a zero-sum game in which possession of wealth by one person comes at the expense of everyone else, which is of course completely and utterly false.

Therefore this statement is a red herring argument.

The second factor is compositional; everybody cannot cut their way to growth at the same time.

Sure they can, they just have to prune the correct hydra, which in every case is government.

To put this in the European context, although it makes sense for any one state to reduce its debt, if all states in the currency union, which are one another’s major trading partners, cut their spending simultaneously, the result can only be a contraction of the regional economy as a whole.

Interesting and subtle propagandistic lie here. The key is WHAT the states cut spending FOR. The key is to cut GOVERNMENT spending, thus reducing the need for taxation, thus freeing up capital in the markets that would otherwise be reserved for paying taxes, which results in increased production and spending without harming anyone but government bureaucrats, who need to be out of jobs anyway.

The third factor is logical; the notion that slashing government spending boosts investor confidence does not stand up to scrutiny.

Sure it does. It's just that Keynesians are too fucking stupid to understand it.

As the economist Paul Krugman

Krugman is the essence of a devoted Marxist Progressive who has no compunctions about repeating a Big Lie ad nauseam.

and others have argued, this claim assumes that consumers anticipate and incorporate all government policy changes into their lifetime budget calculations. When the government signals that it plans to cut its expenditures dramatically, the argument goes, consumers realize that their future tax burdens will decrease. This leads them to spend more today than they would have done without the cuts, thereby ending the recession despite the collapse of the economy going on all around them. The assumption that this behavior will actually be exhibited by financially illiterate, real-world consumers who are terrified of losing their jobs in the midst of a policy-induced recession is heroic at best and foolish at worst.

Well, this is just beyond stupidity. People change their spending habits as their disposable income changes. "Government signals" aren't going to change anything, only cutting government spending is going to free up spendable income. Sheesh. What fucking moron wrote this claptrap?

Austerity, then, is a dangerous idea, because it ignores the externalities it generates, the impact of one person’s choices on another’s, and the low probability that people will actually behave in the way that the theory requires.

[/quote]

What a load of, well, to be kind, bollocks.

According to this idiot the government can spend its way to economic success. Problem is, government creates nothing other than increasingly-devalued paper notes, so it has to obtain the wealth it spends from somewhere, which is the economy. Subtracting wealth from the economy doesn't add wealth to the economy, it merely shuffles deck chairs on the Titanic.

[pErvinalia]

You can't argue with facts and reality, Lak. You can't cut your way out of recession. You have to restore spending. Everyone but the extreme 'free marketeer' economists understand this. As unpalatable as it sounds, the only way to restore spending is to borrow money and raise taxes.

"Austerity is a seductive idea because of the simplicity of its core claim -- that you can’t cure debt with more debt. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Three less obvious factors undermine the simple argument that countries in the red need to stop spending. The first factor is distributional, since the effects of austerity are felt differently across different levels of society. Those at the bottom of the income distribution lose proportionately more than those at the top, because they rely far more on government services and have little wealth with which to cushion the blows.

Why yes, this is true. And that's precisely why government should not permit people to become dependent on government services by extending welfare benefits to those who are unwilling to work.

There's far more unemployed than there are job vacancies. You really are fucking clueless.

The 400 richest Americans own more assets than the poorest 150 million;

So what? This is a Marxist class-warfare egalitarianism fallacy. The fact that 400 people have more than 150 million others is meaningless unless wealth is finite and the poor are denied all opportunity to become wealth. The argument made here is nothing more than an example of Marxist "fairness doctrine" propaganda that falsely maintains that the economy is finite and the distribution of wealth is a zero-sum game in which possession of wealth by one person comes at the expense of everyone else, which is of course completely and utterly false.

Therefore this statement is a red herring argument.

It's not, given that greater inequality at the levels we are at leads to lower economic growth. - http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... ?CMP=fb_gu

And putting aside the growth argument, you have to deal with the social argument. Call it envy, class warfare, whatever you like. I don't believe it is either of those things, but it doesn't matter. The reality is that heads roll when inequality gets too high. That's why "Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes, should widening inequality fuel civil unrest. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway." " . You can whinge all you like about it, Seth, but the reality is that society will collapse if inequality gets too high. Whinging won't help you much then.

The third factor is logical; the notion that slashing government spending boosts investor confidence does not stand up to scrutiny.

Sure it does. It's just that Keynesians are too fucking stupid to understand it.

No it doesn't, Seth. There's tonnes of data which shows that it doesn't. Greece is the perfect example. It's economy collapsed massively after the imposition of austerity and collapsed even more after further impositions. Argentina was the same. You can have your own paranoid delusions, but you can't have your own facts, Seth.

As the economist Paul Krugman

Krugman is the essence of a devoted Marxist Progressive who has no compunctions about repeating a Big Lie ad nauseam.

Given you're the master of fallacies, I'm pretty sure you can identify the fallacy here. Krugman backs all his stuff up with data. The person delivering the data is meaningless to the veracity of the data.

and others have argued, this claim assumes that consumers anticipate and incorporate all government policy changes into their lifetime budget calculations. When the government signals that it plans to cut its expenditures dramatically, the argument goes, consumers realize that their future tax burdens will decrease. This leads them to spend more today than they would have done without the cuts, thereby ending the recession despite the collapse of the economy going on all around them. The assumption that this behavior will actually be exhibited by financially illiterate, real-world consumers who are terrified of losing their jobs in the midst of a policy-induced recession is heroic at best and foolish at worst.

Well, this is just beyond stupidity. People change their spending habits as their disposable income changes. "Government signals" aren't going to change anything, only cutting government spending is going to free up spendable income. Sheesh. What fucking moron wrote this claptrap?

The point you seemed to have missed is that cutting spending and taxes can't theoretically help an economy until it actually happens (i.e. that's why it is a "signal"). But by that time, the individuals circumstances are worse off, so the effect isn't realised. That's the problem he is talking about. It's only a signal, and one that never works.

Austerity, then, is a dangerous idea, because it ignores the externalities it generates, the impact of one person’s choices on another’s, and the low probability that people will actually behave in the way that the theory requires.

What a load of, well, to be kind, bollocks.

According to this idiot the government can spend its way to economic success. Problem is, government creates nothing other than increasingly-devalued paper notes, so it has to obtain the wealth it spends from somewhere, which is the economy. Subtracting wealth from the economy doesn't add wealth to the economy, it merely shuffles deck chairs on the Titanic.

You can't cut your way out of recession. It's never happened and it never will. You need to spend your way out (or with large sovereign currencies you can do monetary policy to help as well). As I keep telling you, that's why Australia's economy is in the shape it is in (near enough to the strongest in the world). We didn't even go into recession once in the GFC. The UK double-dipped and were perilously close to triple-dipping all because they adopted austerity. It's simply an ideological policy designed to further enrich the elites at the expense of the non-elites. Like I said, the 1% did great out of the GFC. Their rate of wealth growth increased! Obama is a pretty hopeless Marxist, eh Seth?

[mistermack]

Some expert said on a politics program the other day that Greece is going to run out of money far sooner than forecast, because people have stopped paying the taxes that the new government promised to scrap.
Instead of waiting, they have stopped paying now.

He reckoned they would be skint in early March, instead of the predicted June/July.
And the people are steadily emptying their bank accounts.
It's a great time to be a burglar in Greece.

I predict it will soon be the number one industry.

[pErvinalia]

I hope they've got an x-ray scanner at the airport to detect all the Euros stuffed down underpants in the departure lounge...

[Seth]

You can't argue with facts and reality, Lak. You can't cut your way out of recession. You have to restore spending. Everyone but the extreme 'free marketeer' economists understand this. As unpalatable as it sounds, the only way to restore spending is to borrow money and raise taxes.

"Austerity is a seductive idea because of the simplicity of its core claim -- that you can’t cure debt with more debt. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Three less obvious factors undermine the simple argument that countries in the red need to stop spending. The first factor is distributional, since the effects of austerity are felt differently across different levels of society. Those at the bottom of the income distribution lose proportionately more than those at the top, because they rely far more on government services and have little wealth with which to cushion the blows.

Why yes, this is true. And that's precisely why government should not permit people to become dependent on government services by extending welfare benefits to those who are unwilling to work.

There's far more unemployed than there are job vacancies. You really are fucking clueless.

Not true. First, there are plenty of jobs out there that the unemployed will not demean themselves to do, particularly while they are being paid not to work by the unemployment system. Second, there are about 12 million jobs out there currently occupied by illegal aliens, all of which should be occupied by American citizens, with the illegal aliens being deported back to their home countries.

So, you're wrong.

And putting aside the growth argument, you have to deal with the social argument. Call it envy, class warfare, whatever you like. I don't believe it is either of those things, but it doesn't matter. The reality is that heads roll when inequality gets too high. That's why "Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes, should widening inequality fuel civil unrest. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway." " . You can whinge all you like about it, Seth, but the reality is that society will collapse if inequality gets too high. Whinging won't help you much then.

Then let it collapse. Until then mind your own business.

The third factor is logical; the notion that slashing government spending boosts investor confidence does not stand up to scrutiny.

Sure it does. It's just that Keynesians are too fucking stupid to understand it.

No it doesn't, Seth. There's tonnes of data which shows that it doesn't. Greece is the perfect example. It's economy collapsed massively after the imposition of austerity and collapsed even more after further impositions. Argentina was the same. You can have your own paranoid delusions, but you can't have your own facts, Seth.

Greece was collapsing BEFORE austerity. Austerity was imposed BECAUSE Greece was collapsing economically, primarily due to government overspending and a bloated government bureaucracy that inhibited business rather than enhancing it.

As the economist Paul Krugman

Krugman is the essence of a devoted Marxist Progressive who has no compunctions about repeating a Big Lie ad nauseam.

Given you're the master of fallacies, I'm pretty sure you can identify the fallacy here. Krugman backs all his stuff up with data. The person delivering the data is meaningless to the veracity of the data.

Like all Marxist Progressives he backs up his stuff with cherry-picked data that supports his pre-determined conclusions.

and others have argued, this claim assumes that consumers anticipate and incorporate all government policy changes into their lifetime budget calculations. When the government signals that it plans to cut its expenditures dramatically, the argument goes, consumers realize that their future tax burdens will decrease. This leads them to spend more today than they would have done without the cuts, thereby ending the recession despite the collapse of the economy going on all around them. The assumption that this behavior will actually be exhibited by financially illiterate, real-world consumers who are terrified of losing their jobs in the midst of a policy-induced recession is heroic at best and foolish at worst.

Well, this is just beyond stupidity. People change their spending habits as their disposable income changes. "Government signals" aren't going to change anything, only cutting government spending is going to free up spendable income. Sheesh. What fucking moron wrote this claptrap?

The point you seemed to have missed is that cutting spending and taxes can't theoretically help an economy until it actually happens (i.e. that's why it is a "signal"). But by that time, the individuals circumstances are worse off, so the effect isn't realised. That's the problem he is talking about. It's only a signal, and one that never works.

Yes, they have to actually CUT taxes for tax cuts to work. But that means cutting government spending, which is something that no Marxist Progressive can tolerate, so they keep on spending and the deficit gets bigger and bigger and the economy gets farther and farther underwater.

Austerity, then, is a dangerous idea, because it ignores the externalities it generates, the impact of one person’s choices on another’s, and the low probability that people will actually behave in the way that the theory requires.

What a load of, well, to be kind, bollocks.

According to this idiot the government can spend its way to economic success. Problem is, government creates nothing other than increasingly-devalued paper notes, so it has to obtain the wealth it spends from somewhere, which is the economy. Subtracting wealth from the economy doesn't add wealth to the economy, it merely shuffles deck chairs on the Titanic.

You can't cut your way out of recession. It's never happened and it never will. You need to spend your way out (or with large sovereign currencies you can do monetary policy to help as well). As I keep telling you, that's why Australia's economy is in the shape it is in (near enough to the strongest in the world). We didn't even go into recession once in the GFC. The UK double-dipped and were perilously close to triple-dipping all because they adopted austerity. It's simply an ideological policy designed to further enrich the elites at the expense of the non-elites. Like I said, the 1% did great out of the GFC. Their rate of wealth growth increased! Obama is a pretty hopeless Marxist, eh Seth?

Sure you can, you just have to cut the right stuff. The problem is that politicians are incapable of making the cuts needed in the areas required because that will lose them votes from the affected segments of the population...like the dependent class.

Outside of military spending, entitlement spending is the biggest drain on the economy, but it's "untouchable" because the government has successfully bound the dependent class to the federal tit and the uproar of cutting them off and telling them to move to California and pick onions instead of having illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala do it would be fatal to their political careers.

But that's exactly what needs to happen.

That's how you get out of a recession.

[Seth]

Some expert said on a politics program the other day that Greece is going to run out of money far sooner than forecast, because people have stopped paying the taxes that the new government promised to scrap.
Instead of waiting, they have stopped paying now.

He reckoned they would be skint in early March, instead of the predicted June/July.
And the people are steadily emptying their bank accounts.
It's a great time to be a burglar in Greece.

I predict it will soon be the number one industry.

Time to arm the citizenry. Past time actually, by a couple of thousand years.

[MrJonno]

Is the benefit system different in the US to other countries

If you get £/$100 for being unemployed you may well get a £/$ 1000 in benefits if you are in a low paid job which the extra £/$ 900 coming out taxpayers (my) wallet. Basically I'm economically better of with that person being unemployed than in a low paid job.

That's why their has to be a higher minimum wage because it reduces the welfare budget even if Seth was right (which at the right level he isnt) and it cost job it still reduces middle income taxes

[mistermack]

Time to arm the citizenry. Past time actually, by a couple of thousand years.

With the inevitable result, of course, of arming the burglars.

That way, like in America, everybody is safer.

[piscator]

They've been armed all along, mate. Do you think the Italians have the market cornered?

[JimC]

Eat the rich!

Smothered in garlic, with a fetta and olive salad on the side, and a bottle of retsina...

[pErvinalia]

You can't argue with facts and reality, Lak. You can't cut your way out of recession. You have to restore spending. Everyone but the extreme 'free marketeer' economists understand this. As unpalatable as it sounds, the only way to restore spending is to borrow money and raise taxes.

"Austerity is a seductive idea because of the simplicity of its core claim -- that you can’t cure debt with more debt. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Three less obvious factors undermine the simple argument that countries in the red need to stop spending. The first factor is distributional, since the effects of austerity are felt differently across different levels of society. Those at the bottom of the income distribution lose proportionately more than those at the top, because they rely far more on government services and have little wealth with which to cushion the blows.

Why yes, this is true. And that's precisely why government should not permit people to become dependent on government services by extending welfare benefits to those who are unwilling to work.

There's far more unemployed than there are job vacancies. You really are fucking clueless.

Not true. First, there are plenty of jobs out there that the unemployed will not demean themselves to do, particularly while they are being paid not to work by the unemployment system.

You really are biased and blinkered. Reality has no effect on you, does it? There are currently 8.7 million people unemployed in the US (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... yment-rate). There are only 4.5 million job vacancies (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... -vacancies).

Second, there are about 12 million jobs out there currently occupied by illegal aliens, all of which should be occupied by American citizens, with the illegal aliens being deported back to their home countries.

So, you're wrong.

Um, no I'm not. How in the fuck does an illegal alien in a job = a job vacancy?

And putting aside the growth argument, you have to deal with the social argument. Call it envy, class warfare, whatever you like. I don't believe it is either of those things, but it doesn't matter. The reality is that heads roll when inequality gets too high. That's why "Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes, should widening inequality fuel civil unrest. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway." " . You can whinge all you like about it, Seth, but the reality is that society will collapse if inequality gets too high. Whinging won't help you much then.

Then let it collapse. Until then mind your own business.

No. Society doesn't exist to collapse. It exists for the exact opposite of that. If you don't like it, go live on a farm in Somalia.

The third factor is logical; the notion that slashing government spending boosts investor confidence does not stand up to scrutiny.

Sure it does. It's just that Keynesians are too fucking stupid to understand it.

No it doesn't, Seth. There's tonnes of data which shows that it doesn't. Greece is the perfect example. It's economy collapsed massively after the imposition of austerity and collapsed even more after further impositions. Argentina was the same. You can have your own paranoid delusions, but you can't have your own facts, Seth.

Greece was collapsing BEFORE austerity. Austerity was imposed BECAUSE Greece was collapsing economically, primarily due to government overspending and a bloated government bureaucracy that inhibited business rather than enhancing it.

Shit logic, as usual. The point isn't qualitative, it's quantitative. The economic collapse sped up markedly with each imposition of austerity. Same as in the UK.

As the economist Paul Krugman

Krugman is the essence of a devoted Marxist Progressive who has no compunctions about repeating a Big Lie ad nauseam.

Given you're the master of fallacies, I'm pretty sure you can identify the fallacy here. Krugman backs all his stuff up with data. The person delivering the data is meaningless to the veracity of the data.

Like all Marxist Progressives he backs up his stuff with cherry-picked data that supports his pre-determined conclusions.

You really are an embarrassment to rationality.

and others have argued, this claim assumes that consumers anticipate and incorporate all government policy changes into their lifetime budget calculations. When the government signals that it plans to cut its expenditures dramatically, the argument goes, consumers realize that their future tax burdens will decrease. This leads them to spend more today than they would have done without the cuts, thereby ending the recession despite the collapse of the economy going on all around them. The assumption that this behavior will actually be exhibited by financially illiterate, real-world consumers who are terrified of losing their jobs in the midst of a policy-induced recession is heroic at best and foolish at worst.

Well, this is just beyond stupidity. People change their spending habits as their disposable income changes. "Government signals" aren't going to change anything, only cutting government spending is going to free up spendable income. Sheesh. What fucking moron wrote this claptrap?

The point you seemed to have missed is that cutting spending and taxes can't theoretically help an economy until it actually happens (i.e. that's why it is a "signal"). But by that time, the individuals circumstances are worse off, so the effect isn't realised. That's the problem he is talking about. It's only a signal, and one that never works.

Yes, they have to actually CUT taxes for tax cuts to work. But that means cutting government spending, which is something that no Marxist Progressive can tolerate, so they keep on spending and the deficit gets bigger and bigger and the economy gets farther and farther underwater.

Ah, non-sequitur. The point is that price signals like that don't work. Plenty of places have cut government spending while in recessions, and they have all suffered because of it.

Austerity, then, is a dangerous idea, because it ignores the externalities it generates, the impact of one person’s choices on another’s, and the low probability that people will actually behave in the way that the theory requires.

What a load of, well, to be kind, bollocks.

According to this idiot the government can spend its way to economic success. Problem is, government creates nothing other than increasingly-devalued paper notes, so it has to obtain the wealth it spends from somewhere, which is the economy. Subtracting wealth from the economy doesn't add wealth to the economy, it merely shuffles deck chairs on the Titanic.

You can't cut your way out of recession. It's never happened and it never will. You need to spend your way out (or with large sovereign currencies you can do monetary policy to help as well). As I keep telling you, that's why Australia's economy is in the shape it is in (near enough to the strongest in the world). We didn't even go into recession once in the GFC. The UK double-dipped and were perilously close to triple-dipping all because they adopted austerity. It's simply an ideological policy designed to further enrich the elites at the expense of the non-elites. Like I said, the 1% did great out of the GFC. Their rate of wealth growth increased! Obama is a pretty hopeless Marxist, eh Seth?

Sure you can, you just have to cut the right stuff. The problem is that politicians are incapable of making the cuts needed in the areas required because that will lose them votes from the affected segments of the population...like the dependent class.

Like this dependent class?

Outside of military spending, entitlement spending is the biggest drain on the economy, but it's "untouchable" because the government has successfully bound the dependent class to the federal tit and the uproar of cutting them off and telling them to move to California and pick onions instead of having illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala do it would be fatal to their political careers.

But that's exactly what needs to happen.

Oh really, genius? How do you propose corporations pick onions?? Oh wait, did you forget that corporate welfare MASSIVELY outweighs social welfare?

That's how you get out of a recession.

That's exactly what the UK and Greece and Argentina did. And they all suffered terribly (and didn't get out of recession for much longer than if they spent their way out). That's why Australia DIDN'T GO INTO RECESSION IN THE FIRST PLACE.

[Seth]

You can't argue with facts and reality, Lak. You can't cut your way out of recession. You have to restore spending. Everyone but the extreme 'free marketeer' economists understand this. As unpalatable as it sounds, the only way to restore spending is to borrow money and raise taxes.

"Austerity is a seductive idea because of the simplicity of its core claim -- that you can’t cure debt with more debt. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Three less obvious factors undermine the simple argument that countries in the red need to stop spending. The first factor is distributional, since the effects of austerity are felt differently across different levels of society. Those at the bottom of the income distribution lose proportionately more than those at the top, because they rely far more on government services and have little wealth with which to cushion the blows.

Why yes, this is true. And that's precisely why government should not permit people to become dependent on government services by extending welfare benefits to those who are unwilling to work.

There's far more unemployed than there are job vacancies. You really are fucking clueless.

Not true. First, there are plenty of jobs out there that the unemployed will not demean themselves to do, particularly while they are being paid not to work by the unemployment system.

You really are biased and blinkered. Reality has no effect on you, does it? There are currently 8.7 million people unemployed in the US (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... yment-rate). There are only 4.5 million job vacancies (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... -vacancies).

Wrong, there's more than 17 million jobs available, its just that 12 million of them are occupied by illegal aliens.

Second, there are about 12 million jobs out there currently occupied by illegal aliens, all of which should be occupied by American citizens, with the illegal aliens being deported back to their home countries.

So, you're wrong.

Um, no I'm not. How in the fuck does an illegal alien in a job = a job vacancy?

Check the employee's immigration and citizenship status, and if the employee is illegal, bingo, job opening! Easy-peasy.

[pErvinalia]

And this is the job of unemployed people to do??