Memo to George Bush
You do not fight recessions by giving away tax and running a budget deficit in an attempt to try and sustain consumer spending. In that direction lies inflation and a growing balance of payments deficit.
If you want to run a budget deficit, and it should only be a temporary thing, it should be spent on infrastructure so that there is something to show at the end of it which adds to the nation's stock of wealth.
The railway here was electrified in the 1930s as part of a series of measures designed to alleviate mass unemployment. This was a permanent addition to Britain's wealth, and a tangible one as it resulted in enhanced land values.
The same principle was applied by your predecessor F D Roosevelt, in the policy known as the New Deal.
I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
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