The Financial Times has this morning produced a blinding set of graphs which highlight how fiscal austerity has negatively impacted on the GDP of various European economies.
The Financial Times (£) has this morning produced a blinding set of graphs which highlight how fiscal austerity has had a negative impacted on the GDP of various European economies.
Essentially, the greater each government’s austerity drive the larger the drop in GDP. Are you listening, Mr Osborne? The third graph (furthest to the right) is the important one (the horizontal line depicts the level of austerity from 2009-2012 and the vertical line shows the fall in GDP.
The coup de grace is delivered, however, by Paul Krugman of The New York Times:
“Austerity was costly for the afflicted economies: the greater the tightening between 2009 and 2012, according to the International Monetary Fund, the bigger the fall in output.”
Thus, FT journalist Martin Wolf adds, “the panic that justified the UK coalition government’s turn to a long-term programme of austerity was a mistake“.
“In the long run, the fiscal deficit must close. In the short run, the UK has the chance to push growth. It should take it. So should the US.”
62 Responses to “FT pulls apart austerity economics”
henrytinsley
Don’t be so silly. The Japanese Liberal Party are not Liberal just because of their name. Hitler became chancellor in 1933 in coalition with conservatives. He and his mates went around murdering left-wingers (and Jews), not conservatives. As did Mussolini and Franco.
Anyone who thinks Hitler was a lefty is an idiot.
LB
National “Socialist”
Clues in the name.
So put some numbers.
Mussolini? Moot, I can argue either way. Franco – Tend to agree, right winger.
So how many did they kill?
National socialists? 7 million
Stalin – Communist so that’s left wing socialism. 20 million
Mao – 50 million
Pol Pot, …
If you want to play top trumps as to whether its the left that kills or the right, its the left that tops the list.
Socialists.
Small signs here. Liverpool Care Pathway where socialized medicine is bumping people off for cost reasons, without telling the patients or their families.
henrytinsley
You didn’t answer my point.
Hitler would have bumped you off if you’d accused him of being a left winger. He hated lefties, endlessly ranted about them, and had them killed.
I don’t know where you get your figures from. Some nutty website? Many more that 7 million were killed in World War 2, and no-one really knows how many millions Stalin had murdered. And so on.
Why you can’t accept that both far left and far right have behaved vilely – and still do? When it comes to mass murder, it’s extremism that the problem, not left or right.
henrytinsley
So your point about lefties and eugenics is rubbish, so you change the subject.
LB
Yes, but there is a difference of scale. Orders of magnitude.
National socialsts (hint is in the name) killed lots of people. They killed people, Jews, as a scapegoat. They killed anyone who opposed them. As did Stalin. Still Socialists.
7 million were killed in the concentration camps. Denying it?
So how many did the national socialist kill compared to Franco? As one example.
What about Mao?
What about Stalin?
Whose top of the non-Socialist killers then?