Subject: Re: Paying off National Debt
You say this after seeing Japan? We aren't even close to them, and they manage it. - Lapsody

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BHM: Yep, Let's go for it.

Me: Nope. Ain't going there. Keynes wrote to even out the economic cycles the Government should spend to support the economy, whereas Hayek the Austrian school preferred austerity and to do nothing. During the GFC the papers were full of articles about shrinking the US Gov, drowning it in a bathtub, and industry leaders and bankers were "job creators", etc. Then Lehman went down, we teetered, and out of the woodwork came the Keynsian economists and talk of a "soft landing" abounded. We discovered the great bankers had screwed us, and I forget the piece of legislation we did away with that would have helped prevent it. We got saved by Keyns, but were supposed to pay back during the good times and we never do that.

So our pattern seems to be we recognize a crisis, erect a legislative solution, then over the years tear down that legislative solution, then another crisis. And the crisis are different each time and no one wants to deal with the pain so we spend to get a soft landing, etc.