Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It's not going to happen in the United States, and it's not going to happen in Europe.
Interpretation
Austerity measures do not lead to economic recovery after downturns.
Joseph Stiglitz argues that implementing austerity measures, which involve reducing government spending and budgets, has never successfully led to recovery from economic downturns in large economies. He asserts that such an approach will not bring about recovery in the United States or in Europe, suggesting that more proactive fiscal policies are necessary for economic revitalization.
In practice
This quote can be used in a conversation about government policy reforms to highlight the importance of spending during economic crises.
Free migration within Europe means that countries that have done a better job at reducing unemployment will predictably end up with more than their fair share of refugees. Workers in these countries bear the cost in depressed wages and higher unemployment, while employers benefit from cheaper labor.
I don't think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.
What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.
One of the arguments I make for the failure of the euro is that, at the time it was being constructed, there was a 'neo-liberal' ideology which said that all we need to do to make this thing work is to get deficits low, keep inflation low, and take down barriers, and then everything would be fine.
Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies - whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico - are stronger. But Trump's approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.
We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.
The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.
Some degree of inequality in income and wealth, of course, would occur even with completely equal opportunity because variations in effort, skill, and luck will produce variations in outcomes.
What drags down our entire economy is when there's an ever-widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everybody else.
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.
A healthy economy is largely a result of a reasonable balance between consumption today and consumption deferred, and it's pretty clear that balance has been ridiculously out of whack for a while.
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