This is what I’m on about.
David Cameron says Britain is practicing austerity, cutting the budget left and right.
Economists and hackey op-ed writers write about how Cameron’s austerity is hurting the the British economy.
But meanwhile the Brits are running the third highest deficit in the world. ~8.8% of GDP, smaller than only Egypt and Greece. If that is our working definition of austerity, then words have lost all meaning.
I suppose some Keynesians work backward, if there is a demand problem it must, ipso facto, be due to lack of fiscal stimulus. If the deficit is third largest in the world, it should have been second largest, or first largest.
A slightly more respectable argument is that the current deficit is slightly smaller than in 2010 (when it was 10.1% of GDP.) But that shouldn’t cause a recession. Think about the Keynesian model you studied in school. If you are three years into a recession, and you slightly reduce the deficit to still astronomical levels, is that supposed to cause another recession? That’s not the model I studied. Deficits were supposed to provide a temporary boost to get you out of a recession. At worst, you’d expect a slowdown in growth.
To get a sense of just how expansionary UK fiscal policy really is, compare it to France (5.8% of GDP), Germany (1.0% of GDP), or Italy (4.0% of GDP). Lots of people blame ECB policies for the recession, but Britain is not in the eurozone. Outside the eurozone you have Denmark (3.9% of GDP), Sweden (zero), Switzerland (1% surplus).
