I wish we worked like that... it'd be a dirty word if our government organizations turned a profit.

Consider this article:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/04/lay-off-the-layoffs.html

What do you do about industries, in their collective wisdom, decide to end up trashing their employee base to maximize profits?  Also, answer how exactly in doing this, customer service has improved.  When you call in for tech support to get equipment fixed, is the service better now or worse, because they offload the tech support to people in India who speak with thick accents, and you can't understand what they have to say?  Currently, I am looking at a printer here that stopped working with my laptop, and I get NO help for it.  It is do it myself.  Is this your idea of improved quality?  And consider Walmart.  How is customer service when you go into Walmart?  Walmart has entered into pay the least amount of money, and cutting costs, quality be damned.

Then customer service gets bad, and the company takes a hit from massive losses of subscribers. Look at AOL and Sprint. Both have had major tech support problems for a few years running, and have been decimated by their better-perfoming rivals. Wal-Mart actually has improved their customer service significantly in the past few years, as evidenced by approval/disapproval ratings for their CS versus other companies.

And let's look at health care.  Do you know where America ranks for quality of health care among industrialized nations?  Near the bottom in life expectency and other things that show a signs of people taking good care of themselves.  Oh yes, emergency response is excellent in America.  So yes, America is great at jumping on one crisis to another but sucks at preventative health care.  It alos shows it is great at manifesting obesity, diabetes and so on.  All these signs of people taking their collective freedom and running it into the ground. To this, you want to argue that America needs MORE freedom here?  Whe people can't handle the freedom they have now, why the heck would there be even more given them?

So every time someone is irresponsible, we should remove all freedoms from them? At what point do we give the power over to someone else to decide if we are being irresponsible or not? There was a point that a governing body was allowed to make choices for its people, based on if they were deemed irresponsible. It was called the dark ages, and the Catholic Church. Still today, they do it in heavily Muslim countries that decide the government needs to step in when someone is doing something wrong...Like a woman showing her face in public.

The key problem is that companies will not hire until they see consumers return to spending en masse, without the need for big discounts, right now that isn't there, spending has increased, but consumers are still being careful with their expenditures and demanding big discounts for their business, for businesses, this means that they are going to be hesitant to invest, or hire, and any money they get through tax breaks, etc. will just go into shoring up their financials, can't really blame them, because they want to make sure that if the economy slides again, they can weather the storm, but if they don't hire, then people are going to remain hesitant with their spending, kind of a catch 22 type deal, which is why government expenditure is needed until companies start hiring and people get back to spending.

That’s one perspective ...

China (in many ways) acts sort-of like a crack dealer because their currency manipulation saps the health of the American economy while giving Americans the short-term high of low interest rates, low inflation, and deficit financed government spending. The damage to the health of the American economy can be seen in the (repeated) creation of asset bubbles, and the steady loss of jobs to developing nations. The Americans have two choices in front of them, they can "Go to rehab" and get their spending under control and work towards rebuilding their economy, or they can follow the Keynesian approach and "take another hit" to ease the withdrawal symptoms; the long and difficult "rehab" path will lead to the return to a healthy economy, while the Keynesian approach will eventually kill the economy.

Or to put it another way, how much longer can the US continue building debt at its current rate before it looks like Greece or the Weimar Republic?

The key problem is that companies will not hire until they see consumers return to spending en masse, without the need for big discounts, right now that isn't there, spending has increased, but consumers are still being careful with their expenditures and demanding big discounts for their business, for businesses, this means that they are going to be hesitant to invest, or hire, and any money they get through tax breaks, etc. will just go into shoring up their financials, can't really blame them, because they want to make sure that if the economy slides again, they can weather the storm, but if they don't hire, then people are going to remain hesitant with their spending, kind of a catch 22 type deal, which is why government expenditure is needed until companies start hiring and people get back to spending.

You're worried about hyperinflation, when the problem is actually deflation happy, your way right now would have us looking like we did in the 1930's, you don't do it in a recession, you do it when you are in a period of growth, Bush and the GOP squandered that chance during the last expansion with Tax cuts and wars and other spending along with low interest rates.

Right now if people pull spending, there won't be any rebuilding of the economy, let me explain it to you, companies if they can't sell their goods and services, won't hire, wont invest and won't buy from other companies, in fact they'll cut more jobs and trim back production, those people out of work won't buy and companies will further trim back, you'll get a vicious cycle downwards.