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In all western societies, looking at the great lifestyle differences between the 1970s and now.


Is that growth, or does that fall under "eating the seed corn"? I agree the money supply has to expand when the economy expands, but that's not the same thing as printing a bunch of money and spending it during a recession.


In theory in a properly managed recovery from a recession bad debt is eliminated via loan restructuring and new more productive debt is created to replace it. And income insurance programs[1] are used to support demand. Austerity during a recession works poorly because instead of replacing unproductive debt with new more productive debt, austerity attempts to subsidize the owners of bad debt by taxing demand.

[1] Unemployment insurance, welfare, state run retirement, pensions, etc.




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