A Fiscal Policy “Flop”: The US Gov’t Spent Hundreds Of Billions, And GDP Slowed, by Joseph Carson

The US has gone round the bend: new debt piled on old debt is exacting such a toll in debt service that it’s counterproductive, it slows the economy down. From Joe Carson at zerohedge.com:

Its now nearly two year since the Trump Administration and Congress passed major tax cuts for businesses and individuals and followed that legislative initiative up with a relatively large increase in spending for defense and discretionary non-defense programs. The economic results from these tax and spending programs are in and the overall growth numbers are disappointing to say the least, and it would not be wrong to characterize these legislative initiatives as a fiscal policy “flop”.

Over the last seven quarters real GDP growth has averaged 2.4%, which matches the 2.4% growth in 2017, the year before the entire fiscal stimulus took place. Simply put, even though the federal government spent more money (estimated to be $300 billion for various programs) and reduced taxes for businesses and individuals the underlying growth rate of the economy did not change one iota.

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