One of the latest talking points of numbnut Republicans (who have a hard time grasping economic lessons from 70 years ago, much less 7 years ago) goes something like this piece of sophistry on Greece by the very- desperate- for- attention Louisiana Gov. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (a.k.a., "Kenneth"):
The way of Greece is where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will take us. It’s simple math: You can’t spend more than you take in. You can’t make it impossible for business to thrive and expect the economy to grow.Actually, Piyush, you can spend more than you take in; it's called running a deficit, and sometimes it's a good thing (see Keynes, John Maynard). It's one way we got out of the Great Depression and what your hero St. Ronnie of Hollywood tripled in his administration. But let's let Prof. Krugman handle the history of the current Greek debt crisis and how a certain group of knuckle-draggers would, indeed, bring policies that led to the Greek disaster here to America:
... Greece’s formula for disaster, in other words, didn’t just involve austerity; it involved the toxic combination of austerity with hard money.
So who wants to impose that kind of toxic policy mix on America? The answer is, most of the Republican Party.
On one side, just about everyone in the G.O.P. demands that we reduce government spending, especially aid to lower-income families. (They also, of course, want to reduce taxes on the rich — but that wouldn’t do much to boost demand for U.S. products.)
On the other side, leading Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan incessantly attack the Federal Reserve for its efforts to boost the economy, delivering solemn lectures on the evils of “debasing” the dollar — when the main difference between the effects of austerity in Canada and in Greece was precisely that Canada could “debase” its currency, while Greece couldn’t. Oh, and many Republicans hanker for a return to the gold standard, which would effectively put us into a euro-like straitjacket.
As we've seen in the Greek experience, austerity and hard money only advantage one group -- the wealthy -- while driving everyone else, but especially the poor, into even more dire economic straits. Sounds like a Republican dream world.The point is that if you really worry that the U.S. might turn into Greece, you should focus your concern on America’s right. Because if the right gets its way on economic policy — slashing spending while blocking any offsetting monetary easing — it will, in effect, bring the policies behind the Greek disaster to America. (our emphasis)
