Reply #3: the economy isn't a 'pump' to be primed

[orangeapple]

It is innumerable individual decisions between production and consumption, that must ultimately balance in favor of production exceeding consumption for wealth to grow. Government directed 'pumping' up of consumption only exacerbates the lack of real savings that a recession simply reveals (not causes).

It needs to be acknowledged by the 'pump priming' crowd that Federal spending is higher than anytime since WW2 as a percentage of the economy, and yet we're recovering jobs more slowly than any recession since WW2.

The 'pump priming' metaphor has no basis in theory or reality.

The common sense of a mere generation ago that you can't consume more than your produce is ridiculed as a preposterous 'austerity' that brings with it the seeds of doom, when the fact is the ever growing levels of debt are what are really choking off the future.