RE: what to do to get out of this mess

[Leftofcentresalterego]

Sorry for referring across threads.

Celetina, nothing personal - but it is not helpfull for us to oppose the stimulus package.

I understand your concerns about future debt but economic stimuli are a tried and proven way of reducing the deletrious effects of a severe downturn in the economic cycle.

Pre-WW2, the recieved wisdom was that governments should not interfere in downturns, that the only thing to do was to let it run it's course, indeed to tighten governments belt while waiting for better times to return. The result was that they usually made the downturn worse or allowed it to get worse than it otherwise would have been.

That period in history was marked by savage cycles of boom and bust where millions of jobs and livelyhoods were routinely lost. So uncertain were times for the working class, that it prompted a certain Karl Marx to call for social revolution.

Eventually, JM Keynes figured out that the awfull effects of the economic cycle (on the working class in particular) could be greatly reduced by government stepping into the breach and filling in for private sector spending when it became deficient enough to threaten economic stability. This is the situation we are on the brink of right now. As Rupert Murdoch pointed out last week (not that I have any time for that fluffy bunny), Australia is one of the last places in the developed world for the effects of the crisis to reach.

The stimulus package will not fix the core problem - that is outside the control of any Australian government - but it will help buy us some time and help offset the jobs that will be lost.

[Jovial Monk]

Copied to Politics-second stimulus package--discuss there please.