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Originally Posted by tablemtn
Normally yes. But it's worth remembering that the deficit spending also, by definition, drove UP the rate of GDP growth. That's because the simple version of the GDP formula is "C + I + G + (X – M)", where "G" literally means "government spending." That includes deficit spending. It's an open question whether there would have been much GDP "growth" at all without all that accumulated government debt.
I think the hope was that the debt could act as a sort of stimulus that would spark a more broadly-based private sector GDP expansion, but the results are underwhelming.
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Yes, that's the HOPE, but in reality it's just robbing peter to pay paul. Stimulus spending like that can work if the economy is doing really poorly and you're bringing people out of unemployment and into the labor market, but if unemployment is already <4% it doesn't really make sense.