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On November 21 2016 21:25 nojok wrote: Fillon reminds me of Jospin, he was the Prime Minister of a shady President, he does seem hard working and not very sympathic. He's not been involved in any judiciary problem either. As a left voter, I won't have any problem voting for him against Le Pen in the second turn.
-110 billions of public spending, -500 000 public posts, raising the legal retirement age to 65 years (+ removing all special regimes), +2 TVA points, no more legal work time duration: as a left voter, how can you not have any problem voting for all that?
On November 21 2016 21:25 nojok wrote: Fillon reminds me of Jospin, he was the Prime Minister of a shady President, he does seem hard working and not very sympathic. He's not been involved in any judiciary problem either. As a left voter, I won't have any problem voting for him against Le Pen in the second turn.
-110 billions of public spending, -500 000 public posts, raising the legal retirement age to 65 years (+ removing all special regimes), +2 TVA points, no more legal work time duration: as a left voter, how can you not have any problem voting for all that?
Fillon is a hard line right wing à-la Thatcher, and as a leftist, I think he would be dreadful. Would still vote him over Le Pen or even Sarkozy every day and twice on Sunday.
Also, it looks to me that Fillon's ultraliberal positioning is calculated. He used to be much more centrist on the economy, and has only recently adopted this really aggressive neoliberal crap because nobody else was occupying that spot on the spectrum. I sincerely don't think that he will be that different from Juppé (that I still much prefer). In any case, I don't think you can realistically remove half a million employments in the public sector and destroying the working code so easily in France. There would be absolutely monstrous demos.
On November 21 2016 21:25 nojok wrote: Fillon reminds me of Jospin, he was the Prime Minister of a shady President, he does seem hard working and not very sympathic. He's not been involved in any judiciary problem either. As a left voter, I won't have any problem voting for him against Le Pen in the second turn.
-110 billions of public spending, -500 000 public posts, raising the legal retirement age to 65 years (+ removing all special regimes), +2 TVA points, no more legal work time duration: as a left voter, how can you not have any problem voting for all that?
As someone who self-identifies with the left (although not with intimate knowledge of French politics or socio-economical situation), I don't a priori have a problem with that. Raising retirement age to 65 is about the minimum. As a young worker, I think it should be higher. Progressively raising the retirement age til it´s 68 or even 70 seems quite reasonable.
As for the rest of the data, it really depends on the rest of the numbers. How big is France´s deficit. What are those 110billions being saved on? And -500,000 public posts: if it's like the Spanish system, we could easily do with 500,000 less government employees. Of course, they'll probably just end in unemployment and drain public funds in that way, so maybe not the best solution.
On November 21 2016 21:25 nojok wrote: Fillon reminds me of Jospin, he was the Prime Minister of a shady President, he does seem hard working and not very sympathic. He's not been involved in any judiciary problem either. As a left voter, I won't have any problem voting for him against Le Pen in the second turn.
-110 billions of public spending, -500 000 public posts, raising the legal retirement age to 65 years (+ removing all special regimes), +2 TVA points, no more legal work time duration: as a left voter, how can you not have any problem voting for all that?
As someone who self-identifies with the left (although not with intimate knowledge of French politics or socio-economical situation), I don't a priori have a problem with that. Raising retirement age to 65 is about the minimum. As a young worker, I think it should be higher. Progressively raising the retirement age til it´s 68 or even 70 seems quite reasonable.
As for the rest of the data, it really depends on the rest of the numbers. How big is France´s deficit. What are those 110billions being saved on? And -500,000 public posts: if it's like the Spanish system, we could easily do with 500,000 less government employees. Of course, they'll probably just end in unemployment and drain public funds in that way, so maybe not the best solution.
You can't endlessly raise the retirement age for many types of physical labor. Also in cognitive labor there are simply older people who cannot keep up anymore, even if they aren't senile. The job market is getting more fierce anyways, due to globalization and digitalization and socially and structurally it is a much bigger problem to have millions of young people on the streets, than older people in retirement. Not to mention that older people are much less flexible on the job market, because companies have little interest in investing into someone with no directly applicable qualification, who might retire a few years after the investment.
In my view, our society has a cultural problem dealing with unemployment and the West needs a much more socially liberal approach towards employment, financial freedom of un- and underemployed and retired people. Possibly a civil income financed by higher taxation of capital.
On November 20 2016 22:03 xM(Z wrote: [quote]i don't make them, they are that way. the evolution made them that way. i'm merely (re)categorizing them based on objective measurable <metrics>.
If you are so sure about the bullshit your wrote, why would you have to push for that, if it happens anyways? It's the old lie of the extreme right that they are merely doing what happens anyways that you are rehasing, when in fact things happen because people - in this case extremist right-wingers - make them happen.
That is what liberalism and the European Union stand to fight against at their core.
i don't know what your point is(what would "happen anyway"?+ Show Spoiler +
i'll argue that if confined, the sides will alternate but not unify until a very long time passes, time in which they'll all be miserable(history based assumption)
) so if you want to make one with an immediate practicability, i'm all ears. from where i'm sitting your point looks like this: if one speaks english then he must be american or british. EX: you take a polish dude+ Show Spoiler +
sorry, but it happened to be about poles
, send him to US, teach him the language, the culture(what ever you think that is) and by your logic he is an american. by my logic, i don't care how he calls himself, he will carry the genetic predispositions of his ancestry not those of americans.
i give no value to nurture, subscribe to the principle of least resistance/of least effort and believe that mathematical and theoretical biology will give an answer to ... well, let's call them peoples deterministic inclinations.
That's the problem with the side you are taking. You are not grabbing the concept of the side I am taking, which is that I am not perceiving the creation or continuation of a human beings identity, be it a national identity, a political identity, a religious identity or any other identity, as the business of an entity of power like a state. Which is why liberty throughout the ages has always found an end, since it allows its opponent's the room to live out their identitary fantasies. Yet, in the ages that it started, spread and dominated it created more wealth and technological advances than any other form of social ruling. I would prefer, if I could live in such times, not the ones, that political unions of identitarian mindsets have created, which were times of international blockades, war, supression and revolutions only to have a bit of extra pathos.
The bolded part could also have a lot to do with the fact that nuclear weapons (and conventional weapons past WWII for that matter) made war unviable, which allowed the most developed nations in the world (US, UK, Germany, France) to focus harder on economy. Less developed nations of any political alignment fared significantly worse than more developed nations of the same. You can look to Greece to see how well the "more wealth and technological advancement than ever before" narrative really works. The reality is just that those who are successful mistake their success for providence rather than fortune.
Greece failed because its corrupt politicians used "more wealth and technological advancement then ever before" to keep their cushy jobs and give the people their unreasonable demands for re-elections rather then spend it on improving their country and preparing for the future. Its not 'good fortune' that has made Germany successful but pragmatism and the acceptance that you cant have everything you ever dreamed of right now.
(for the context of this response, Russia is considered to be separate from "Europe" to avoid any potential ambiguity, in case it may come up)
Greek leadership certainly deserves its fair share of scrutiny for the way it has conducted itself over the past decades, that much is true. Yet perhaps it is quite telling that the nations in Europe that were most dominant before the coming of the post-WWII era remained so afterward. Since its unification up to the present day, Germany was basically always the most powerful nation in Europe, both in terms of military and economy, except when it chose to cripple its military after WWII for its own reasons. That was through quite a few different iterations of its political alignment over the past century and a half (this includes East Germany being one of the most advanced and successful powers within the Soviet Union despite being horribly battered by the brutal Eastern Front wars). And after that come France and Britain, who were for the past two centuries before WWII the predominant imperial powers.
It seems that prosperity is basically dispersed along the economic lines that you could have expected them to be based on the fundamental strengths of each of the nations before the "more wealth and technological advancement then ever before" even came up. The fundamentals played quite a larger role than some would wish to acknowledge.
Incidentally, most of the less fundamentally obvious "success stories" come in nations more towards the East - which are reasonably far removed from Western-style democracy and often the result of a far more authoritarian development. There's little to suggest that the democratic style is a result, rather than a cause, of "unprecedented growth" to the extent that that story is actually even true.
Certainly, even if they tried their hardest Greece would not have passed Germany economically. Nor is Democracy required for growth, tho I do believe it is a more stable system for improving a country since there is more incentive to raise the standard of living for the common people rather then just the elite. But its far from foolproof (see again, Greece).
My reply was mostly meant against the notion that Greece got unlucky and not for the notion then liberalism is the basis for economic prosperity, because I agree it probably isn't.
I suppose my original statement was a wee bit open to interpretation in that regard. I suppose I should have said "don't mistake circumstance for causality." That was really my point.
Democracy or a democratic-like system of government has its strengths and its weaknesses. It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all model, and it very much fails in cases where there is internal instability or a foreign power which can for all intents and purposes decide those elections in its favor. Nevertheless it has a lot of well-acknowledged strengths and there is a good reason why it is pretty popular these days. But it certainly isn't the cause of the success of nations because there are plenty of counterexamples of both kinds (unsuccessful democratic nations, successful undemocratic nations) that really make that statement contrary-to-fact.
On November 21 2016 06:55 RvB wrote: Why can't a country like Greece surpass a country like Germany economically? There are plenty of examples of countries developing from the 3rd to the 1st world.
Would developing to the first world be enough to surpass Germany? On absolute terms, not per capita.
The only difference would be population. There's nothing stopping a country from developing the same strong fundamentals as rich countries. It's obviously not an easy process but possible.
Democracy is actually linked to higher growth. You're right in that it's not the only factor in economic development but it's still pretty significant.
Our baseline results use a dynamic panel model for GDP, and show that democratizations increase GDP per capita by about 20% in the long run. We find similar results when we estimate the effect of democratizations on annual GDP, controlling for the GDP dynamics linearly or using the estimated propensity to democratize based on past GDP dynamics
Our results suggest that democracy increases future GDP by encouraging investment, increasing schooling, inducing economic reforms, improving public goods provision, and reducing social unrest. We find little support for the view that democracy is a constraint on economic growth for less developed economies.
It's difficult to deny that under the proper circumstances, democratic institutions can be helpful. Yet that paper has a really annoying clickbait title because what they actually show is much more nuanced than what they state in the abstract and title. They admit that the literature is pretty conflicted on this issue, and they only spare a cursory glance at confounding factors such as stability and the like. Their statistical models show a pretty effective correlation, yes, but I would have liked to see some more analysis to actually tie the results to circumstances that arise in those countries. That sort of analysis is notably minimalist. It's a decent study, although it has a hell of a clickbait intro that makes you think they have more than they do.
Indeed, what is likely a better statement is, "under certain conditions, democratic institutions are effective for encouraging economic development." Hardly surprising, doesn't really contradict my point, but at the same time really makes it questionable to say that "unprecedented growth and technological innovation" made everything better when those conditions are mostly present in the nations that were already most conducive to high growth. Indeed, "in the absence of large-scale military conflicts, well-developed economies benefited from democratic institutions" is more fair but also far less dreamy and idealistic than the "Democracy so good, everyone should use it" crowd would make you believe.
On November 21 2016 22:22 Biff The Understudy wrote: In any case, I don't think you can realistically remove half a million employments in the public sector and destroying the working code so easily in France. There would be absolutely monstrous demos.
If he wins 65:35 or 60:40 vs Le Pen, he'll consider himself very legitimate and will act quickly, before he's unpopular and before opposition has time to build up. He'll have a servile majority to do the big stuff as soon as possible (he'll never repeat Hollande's mistake, waiting his fourth year and a 15% approval rating before attacking workers' rights), and after that it'll be too late. Even if monstruous demos do take place, nothing guarantees they'll win: we lost in 2010, and we lost again in 2016. Syndicates are experts in manufacturing defeats even with a massive popular support.
Obviously I expect a huge social backlash at one point or another, especially as his program would make unemployment explode + the next big crisis should happen during his mandate; but he may have enough time before to destroy a lot of stuff.
On November 21 2016 21:25 nojok wrote: Fillon reminds me of Jospin, he was the Prime Minister of a shady President, he does seem hard working and not very sympathic. He's not been involved in any judiciary problem either. As a left voter, I won't have any problem voting for him against Le Pen in the second turn.
-110 billions of public spending, -500 000 public posts, raising the legal retirement age to 65 years (+ removing all special regimes), +2 TVA points, no more legal work time duration: as a left voter, how can you not have any problem voting for all that?
As someone who self-identifies with the left (although not with intimate knowledge of French politics or socio-economical situation), I don't a priori have a problem with that. Raising retirement age to 65 is about the minimum. As a young worker, I think it should be higher. Progressively raising the retirement age til it´s 68 or even 70 seems quite reasonable.
As for the rest of the data, it really depends on the rest of the numbers. How big is France´s deficit. What are those 110billions being saved on? And -500,000 public posts: if it's like the Spanish system, we could easily do with 500,000 less government employees. Of course, they'll probably just end in unemployment and drain public funds in that way, so maybe not the best solution.
Don't know what's the debate within the Spanish left regarding those issues, but in France most of the left is opposed to those kind of measures (except Hollande's blairist line).
Raising the retirement age to 70 is folly, the energy and health of the human body aren't extensible ad infinitum. Past the age of 50, some jobs kill your health super quickly (and even before actually...); senior are already very underemployed, and people past 55 have a lot of troubles finding jobs again; and we have a high employment rate, so better send people to retirement earlier so that they get replaced by young(er) workers instead of making them work until they die, or ruin their health doing so, while companies don't even want them anyway for various reasons.
We are already lacking teachers, nurses and cops (all those professions are protesting against the effects of austerity, very recently for the last two), so no, we cannot afford to remove 500 000 extra posts, especially with a rising population. It's insane, even Juppé criticized it lol. Fillon justifies it by saying that he'll make every public employee work more to compensate. (It's funny, because the right keeps repeating that reducing working time doesn't create jobs, but apparently increasing it allows to replace/reduce jobs!)
On November 21 2016 22:22 Biff The Understudy wrote: In any case, I don't think you can realistically remove half a million employments in the public sector and destroying the working code so easily in France. There would be absolutely monstrous demos.
If he wins 65:35 or 60:40 vs Le Pen, he'll consider himself very legitimate and will act quickly, before he's unpopular and before opposition has time to build up. He'll have a servile majority to do the big stuff as soon as possible (he'll never repeat Hollande's mistake, waiting his fourth year and a 15% approval rating before attacking workers' rights), and after that it'll be too late. Even if monstruous demos do take place, nothing guarantees they'll win: we lost in 2010, and we lost again in 2016. Syndicates are experts in manufacturing defeats even with a massive popular support.
Obviously I expect a huge social backlash at one point or another, especially as his program would make unemployment explode + the next big crisis should happen during his mandate; but he may have enough time before to destroy a lot of stuff.
On November 21 2016 21:25 nojok wrote: Fillon reminds me of Jospin, he was the Prime Minister of a shady President, he does seem hard working and not very sympathic. He's not been involved in any judiciary problem either. As a left voter, I won't have any problem voting for him against Le Pen in the second turn.
-110 billions of public spending, -500 000 public posts, raising the legal retirement age to 65 years (+ removing all special regimes), +2 TVA points, no more legal work time duration: as a left voter, how can you not have any problem voting for all that?
As someone who self-identifies with the left (although not with intimate knowledge of French politics or socio-economical situation), I don't a priori have a problem with that. Raising retirement age to 65 is about the minimum. As a young worker, I think it should be higher. Progressively raising the retirement age til it´s 68 or even 70 seems quite reasonable.
As for the rest of the data, it really depends on the rest of the numbers. How big is France´s deficit. What are those 110billions being saved on? And -500,000 public posts: if it's like the Spanish system, we could easily do with 500,000 less government employees. Of course, they'll probably just end in unemployment and drain public funds in that way, so maybe not the best solution.
Don't know what's the debate within the Spanish left regarding those issues, but in France most of the left is opposed to those kind of measures (except Hollande's blairist line).
Raising the retirement age to 70 is folly, the energy and health of the human body aren't extensible ad infinitum. Past the age of 50, some jobs kill your health super quickly (and even before actually...); senior are already very underemployed, and people past 55 have a lot of troubles finding jobs again; and we have a high employment rate, so better send people to retirement earlier so that they get replaced by young(er) workers instead of making them work until they die, or ruin their health doing so, while companies don't even want them anyway for various reasons.
We are already lacking teachers, nurses and cops (all those professions are protesting against the effects of austerity, very recently for the last two), so no, we cannot afford to remove 500 000 extra posts, especially with a rising population. It's insane, even Juppé criticized it lol. Fillon justifies it by saying that he'll make every public employee work more to compensate. (It's funny, because the right keeps repeating that reducing working time doesn't create jobs, but apparently increasing it allows to replace/reduce jobs!)
Seniors are underemployed in France for the same reason they are underemployed in Belgium: wage increases tied purely to seniority right up until retirement. Employers basically end up having to pay older employees more year on year even though their productivity increases have stagnated years ago.
The idea that sending people in early retirement makes room for younger people to replace them starts from the wrong premise that there is a fixed number of jobs available at any given time in any given company. What is increasingly happening, however, is that retiring employees are simply not replaced. They're allowed to keep working their jobs until retirement, but as soon as they retire their function ceases to exist. Why replace two retirees if the current employees can easily take over their jobs without this adding too much to their already existing workload? Computerisation is making all of that happen.
Yeah, I'm a nurse and the quality of the work environment (and thus the quality of the care given) is a serious issue. It's just impossible to keep doing this job at a certain point.
It's time for our countries to focus more on spreading wealth rather than increasing it. It means an entire change of our current model and certainly an overall decrease of individual wealth. We can really cut a lot of expenses, which would reduce our wealth but not really our life quality. For exemple we barely need to eat meat, built-in obsolescence should not even exist, we own so many machines we use only a few times a year and that could be rent (lawnmower and those kind of stuff), it should be even easier with cars automation to get a national fleet instead of individual cars.
80% of the world population share 5.5% of the world wealth and the wealthiest 1% owns 48% of world wealth. Saying that we have to work more and longer when the automation is reaching some new fields is just stupid, drivers should disappear in less than a few decades, that's like hundreds of thousands of jobs disappearing in France only without losing productivity and we should have to work more? If anything we have to work less and get less, besides all of this would greatly help to reduce the global warming which should be our top priority right now.
I posted this on reddit (/r/europe) and it got removed in minutes:
I dislike echo-chambers. I constantly look to see my views challenged and picked apart by people I disagree with. I can't believe that a site as influential as reddit is barring discussion on such an important and difficult topic such as austerity and why it exists in the first place. So I guess I can post this video here and have people discuss it here?
I think it explains very well the issues and challenges the European Union faces. I think that it particularly shows that what Europe needs to survive is a common fiscal policy, or at least guidelines for countries to have similar policies.
I dislike echo-chambers. I constantly look to see my views challenged and picked apart by people I disagree with. I can't believe that a site as influential as reddit is barring discussion on such an important and difficult topic such as austerity and why it exists in the first place. So I guess I can post this video here and have people discuss it here?
I think it explains very well the issues and challenges the European Union faces. I think that it particularly shows that what Europe needs to survive is a common fiscal policy, or at least guidelines for countries to have similar policies.
He's not wrong. He's just a giant dick about it. The way he depicts Greeks as only lying on the beach and drinking grappa is pretty stupid. But his overall analysis is right (and obvious). There's just no political will anywhere for a joint fiscal policy.
I think the video was removed since it was a third party hosting a video, thus breaking copyright. It also repeats its content 1.5 times.
As for the actual video. Seems reasonable if simplified to explain everything. It also continues highlighting stereotypes between nations which aren't always true.
It explains stuff well for beginners. Nevertheless it's clearly propagandizing and pushing an "ever closer union" agenda. Not sure I like it all that much.
This video of debt is so dumb, but I guess people who have no knowledge on really basic economic mechanism buy into this kind of arguments. Like "there's war, and then we make a common trade area with no trade barriers and a common currency and it's great". Do you even know that there were fixed exchange rate and rather low barriers in western europe before WW1 ? There are so many things that are just plain false in this video if you look at them closely.
But more seriously, the austerity mesures were made in Greece : can we at least have the decency to look at the result ?
There is only one argument for austerity, it's that some people refuse inflation.
On November 22 2016 06:45 WhiteDog wrote: This video of debt is so dumb, but I guess people who have no knowledge on really basic economic mechanism buy into this kind of arguments. Like "there's war, and then we make a common trade area with no trade barriers and a common currency and it's great". Do you even know that there were fixed exchange rate and rather low barriers in western europe before WW1 ? There are so many things that are just plain false in this video if you look at them closely.
But more seriously, the austerity mesures were made in Greece : can we at least have the decency to look at the result ?
What are your biggest issues with it?
Economics wise. Not the start with the war stuff and creation of the euro.
3) The ECB policy kind of does that, since the ECB buys national debts, while being financed by all EURO states; hence, we kind of have a common liability for some national debts through the backdoor, as far as I understand.
So in general, a fiscal union does exist and has been tightened throughout the years. The general big problem that remains - but I believe that is a general problem of all political entities that hold other political entities in itself (think: countries and cities or state enterprises) - is the question what you do against countries that step out of line? I mean, they have no money and now you want to punish them how? Obviously making them pay penalty when their problem is that they have no money is stupid. You'd have to take away sovereignty, which is politically not that easy.
Since the video has such a rough tone on Greece and portraits Germany as the good guy I want to note that Germany's and France's deficits in the early 2000s that exceeded the Maastrich criteria, and which had no EU-consequences for Germany and France ("too big to fail") were probably also partly responsible, why the other countries of Europe also did not take Maastrich that seriously anymore.
On November 22 2016 06:45 WhiteDog wrote: This video of debt is so dumb, but I guess people who have no knowledge on really basic economic mechanism buy into this kind of arguments. Like "there's war, and then we make a common trade area with no trade barriers and a common currency and it's great". Do you even know that there were fixed exchange rate and rather low barriers in western europe before WW1 ? There are so many things that are just plain false in this video if you look at them closely.
But more seriously, the austerity mesures were made in Greece : can we at least have the decency to look at the result ?
What are your biggest issues with it?
Economics wise. Not the start with the war stuff and creation of the euro.
It just does understand the basic economic principle ... I don't know what to say more than that : 1. ovestate the benefit of economic liberalism ; 2. Fiscal policy and monetary policy are supposed to go hand in hand (what is called policy mix). One of the key component to good economic policy is the importance of contra cyclical policies meant to smooth down economic fluctuation : so in period of low growth you need to spend, and in a period of high growth you need to accumulate reserve and pay off your debt (so the core of the problem of the european debt is, in this regard, not the spending, but the lack of growth) - the video oppose the two kinda stupidly ; 3. Make it seem like living in the euro is great because you have germany's credit card, while understating the opposite effect (Germany living with a underevaluated currency that give them an edge towards their opponents) ; 4. The idea that the euro is responsible for the high debt level is ridiculous considering debt is high everywhere in the world (see Japan or the US of A - the real problem is that the euro does not deal well with high level debt, not that it favor such debt) and that Germany had one of the highest debt level in the eurozone before the crisis (never respecting the maastricht treaty) ; 5. No understand of debt cycle (Hyman Minsky's work) ; 6. Greeks workers works more than any other kind of workers in the eurozone ; This valorization of germans is also dumb, the core reason for their success is their old and efficient industry, not their working ethics. Overall, it does not seems to know anything about the situation before the crisis because the greeks had the highest growth and was viewed as a good exemple of the success of the euro ; 7. Understate (or does not even talk about) the negative effect (which are PROCYCLICAL) of austerity measures, and the fact that the single greatest economies in the world (see the US of A again) are HEAVILY CONTRA CYCLICAL (they never push for procyclical policies, cauz they're not dumb). 8. Does not discuss the role of inflation (which has been low in europe - and in the world - for years) in the high debt level we have today and in paying back that debt, nor does it seem to understand that a federal state in europe would come with a common fiscal policy (true) but also fiscal flow (the real fix to the euro would be, in this regard, the fact that german just finance the necessary infrastructure in Greece).
We're living in a time where we need gov spending, more than ever. The proof for that is that the interest rates are still low on public debt : private agents are not ready to spend in private investments (because they don't see growth) and prefer public spending because the world has bad anticipations on the future - it's a "nervous depression" (Keynes). The high level of debt could just disappear in ten years with a good enough growth / inflation (like it did after the 2nd world war, where the debt level was at 100 - 150 % of GDP ...). Austerity would basically push us into years of low growth and low inflation (like we had since the crisis) - the european lost decade. Not to mention that we need key spending in specific infrastructure (green energy). If we go for austerity measure, we would definitly cut in everything that does not touch the population first to prevent global discontent (those needed infrastructures).
You're buying a discourse that just does not work. Look at the result of austerity measure in Greece : it increased debt level ... despite absurd austerity.
If you want to cut the weight of the government (reasonable objective, why not), you need first to spend to facilitate growth and let the private sector do the investment, then you cut when you have growth. That's contra cyclical policies : in a situation of growth, the money that the gov does not spend is then used by the private sector and thus cutting down the weight of the government does not have as bad an effect on the economy. Doing that in a situation of low growth and lowflation is suicide because the depressed private sector does not take the money not used by the state for private investment : it's just lost and the GDP drop down.
Problem is we don't really have huge amounts of growth anywhere and many countries seem to be trapped in secular stagnation where even expansive monetary policy doesn't help to push inflation over zero. Classical anti-cyclical policies only work if you actually have cycles
The most developped countries (France, Germany) have some difficulties to achieve gain in productivity ; don't tell me the eurozone is in this case : there's ton of growth potential in portugal, greece, southern italy, and the north could very well benefit from it, but we don't want to invest there. Also, we just need to invest in clean energy. Debt does not mean much, you can force the central bank to pay the debt itself if needed. Greece debt is 2 % of europe's debt.
Also you know there are two explanation for secular stagnation : lack of demand and investment or the dynamics of modern innovation (that are low on job creation and do not really benefit the economy like the old one did). Let's split : the two explanations are right to a certain degree.
EPT
