Quotes by Joseph Stiglitz
, in The Roaring Nineties
slasher osbourne doesn't understand economics
Submitted by antarchi on October 22, 2010 - 22:46My view is we cannot afford not to stimulate the economy. So, you know, anybody that says we should go back to austerity or we should not have a second-round stimulus just doesn’t understand economics. And let me be very clear about this. If we don’t stimulate the economy, the economy is going to get weaker. When the economy gets weaker, tax revenues go down and expenditures go up. Already, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps. Number of people on Medicaid is reaching record levels. So, revenues go down, expenditures go up, deficits get worse. If you stimulate the economy, then people get jobs, they spend money, tax revenues go up. Now, if we spend the money on investments—investments in education, technology, infrastructure—you grow the economy in the short run from the stimulus, you grow the economy in the long term because of the returns that you get on these investments.
... anybody that says, "I’m going to only look at one side of the balance sheet, the liabilities; I’m not going to look at the other side, the assets," is really not understanding economics. It’s that kind of reasoning that got our country in the trouble in the first place, the people who didn’t—you know, shortsighted behavior of the banks that got our country in trouble in the first place. And to me, I just view those kinds of statements as totally irresponsible.
I’m terribly worried, not just for Britain, but for the world economy... what is going on now is, in a very large number of countries, that we’re going back to what I call Hooverite policies. I mean, we’ve tried this experiment, where you have conservatives say, "OK, the deficit has gone up, and if we’re going to restore confidence, we have to bring down the deficit by cutting back spending." This is an experiment we’ve tried over and over again. After the stock market crashed, Hoover succeeded in bringing us into the Great Depression by exactly that kind of reasoning.
output equals input
Submitted by antarchi on September 13, 2009 - 20:08GDP is supposed to measure the value of output of goods and services, [but] in one key sector – government – we typically have no way of doing it, so we often measure the output simply by the inputs. If government spends more – even if inefficiently – output goes up. In the last 60 years, the share of government output in GDP has increased from 21.4% to 38.6% in the US, from 27.6% to 52.7% in France, from 34.2% to 47.6% in the UK, and from 30.4% to 44.0% in Germany.
Cost of the UK's war in Iraq
Submitted by antarchi on July 6, 2008 - 00:23Before the war, Gordon Brown set aside £1 billion for war spending. As of late 2007, the UK had spent an estimated £7 billion in direct operating expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan (76 per cent of it in Iraq). This includes money from a supplemental “special reserve”, plus additional spending from the Ministry of Defence...
Based on assumptions set out in our book, the budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs, the total impact on the UK will exceed £20 billion.
subsidised cotton
Submitted by antarchi on July 24, 2007 - 01:23Subsidies for one crop alone, cotton, that went to 25,000 mostly very well off US farmers, exceeded in value the cotton that was produced, lowering the global price of cotton enormously. American farmers...gained at the expense of the 10 million African farmers who depended on cotton for their meagre livings. Several African countries lost between 1-2% of their entire income, an amount greater than what these countries received in foreign aid from the United States. Mali, for instance, received $37 million in aid but lost $43 million from depressed prices.
expert advice from the IMF
Submitted by antarchi on July 24, 2007 - 00:23the statistics [in Russia] were sobering: with efficient capitalism replacing moribund and decadent communism, output was supposed to soar. In fact GDP declined 40 % and poverty increased tenfold. And the results were similar in the other economies making the transition who followed the advice of the US Treasury and the IMP.
living beyond its means
Submitted by antarchi on July 24, 2007 - 01:32The only thing that keeps the system working at all is that the United States, the richest country in the world, has become the 'deficit of last resort'. As other countries strive to eliminate their deficits, as Japan and China continue to run huge surpluses, America is willing and able to run the huge deficits that make the global arithmetic add up. This is the ultimate irony. The financial system allows the US to live year after year far beyond its means, even as the US Treasury, year after year, lectures others on why they should not.
