VGChartz Europeans, I need your help.

[Soleron]

Kasz216 said:

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The problem with that, is that line of thinking assumes people are dumb and buisnesses are dumb.

Which... they aren't.  People aren't that stupid, as seen in the USA.

We've had the fake recovery, and no real one has occured since... everything stays stubborn... because nobody wants to expand or hire until the stimulus disapears because they know it has to.

I don't really call what you had a stimulus. I call it indiscriminately printing money. If all that was spend 4 years ago on for example: road, rail, cycle paths, fibre rollout, applied science research, and programmes/incentives for businesses to give out of work people relevant experience on their CV and for them to get free community college at any age, I think we'd be seeing a difference now

If you look at what the stimulus money (and the printed money) was spent on, it was like 70% sitting in banks as unused capital, 20% wasted.

That Greece, Spain and the UK's budgets haven't decreased simply shows they haven't actually used austerity.

OK but it's like communism. Austerity is impossible to do right with the politicians we have. You're asking for something that cannot happen.

Additionally, GDP is a poor factor to judge the health of the economy.  It's more a political tool really.    Ideally, GDP would not include government outlays and instead only measure the private economy.

My point being that you have to grow out of a recession. Cutting your way out assumes the target is fixed.

Afterall the US could print trillions of dollars, spend trillions of dollars on a machine that burns trillions of dollars, burn those trillions of dollars used to buy the machine, and GDP would suddenly be increased multiple times over.

Non government GDP, is all that really matters.

As a European, I don't automatically see government economic activity as worthless. But it has to be doing something useful. Education and healthcare should count. State owned buses, rail, water, gas and electricity should count.

Should austerity ideally happen during good times?  Sure.  Problem is, nobody will vote for it then, and as a result, you get situations like you have currently, in Spain, Greece and the UK.  The problem isn't that they aren't putting off Austerity, the problem was, they didn't already have it.

Times up.