Letter to the editor: Government- to- family-budget comparison doesn’t translate in argument

Just a quick explanation for Linda Stanton (letters, Jan. 30): a family budget is not like a government budget. A family does not respond to mounting debt by reducing its income, yet that is exactly what government austerity would do. When the government stops spending in a recession, people lose their jobs, further deepening and prolonging the recession; that is exactly what happened in Britain, for example, as a result of Cameron’s austerity measures.

The fact is, much of our recent deficit spending is directly attributable to the worst recession since the Great Depression; people are out of work, reducing tax revenues and requiring a spike in spending for programs such as unemployment benefits and food stamps. Government spending on those programs is an investment in the economy, returning much more stimulus “bang” for each “buck” spent, and that stimulus “bang for the buck” helps raise GDP thereby reducing our debt as a percentage of GDP (the most significant way to measure debt).

Stimulus programs work; our deficit spending is already decreasing as the economy slowly recovers. Governmental “belt tightening” at this time would stall out or reverse that fragile recovery, sending us into a double dip recession.

Joyce Denn - Woodbury

Tags: letters to the editor, opinion