To Feed Or Not To Feed. That Is The Question.

There are two schools of thought. Those who believe that you starve a recession and those who believe you feed a recession, in order to regain a strong economy. If you believe we must starve the recession, you want to cut everything. Cut spending and taxes for business and shrink government. In order to cut spending, the government must curtail or eliminate spending for social services, which is a very small part of the national budget, but maintain defense spending. The only other area available is Social Security and Medicare-Medicaid. It takes up a substantial portion of the budget as does defense. The reason for this is in order to reduce our debt and deficit. If, on the other hand, you believe in feeding the recession, you believe in increased spending in order to spur economic growth which would then pay down the debt and deficit through the increase in revenue from taxes. So what's happening in America. Well like it or not, we're doing a bit of both. Okay, we're doing a lot of both. We had bailouts and we had stimulus. We had cutbacks and we had spending cuts. So, how's that working? Well, the starvers claim we'd have been better off without the stimulus and the feeders claim that the cutbacks slow our economic growth. Okay, who's right? Well it depends on which you are, a starver or a feeder. What do I think? I hate to see our debt increased, but I can't figure out how laying more people off in order to shrink government and placing them in the unemployment lines which increases unemployment compensation costs, which means they have less money to spend, will help our economy to grow. The claim is that by shrinking government it will encourage investment and spending in the private sector. If I just got laid off, or my neighbor did, I don't think I'd be encouraged to spend more. And if I was in business, and fewer people were spending, I don't think I'd be encouraged to invest in more jobs and facilities. I think I'd do just the opposite. But then, I'm not big on starvation.