Thread by @RussLamberti

Say wept.

So Germany can "boost" it's economy by the govt borrowing more scarce real savings & using them to fund MOAR govt programmes with unknown P&L/return, racking up MOAR debt & future taxes for taxpayers. 1) If you actually believe this, then you are lost in a very dense fog. 2)...

...the word "economy" actually means something: Achieving aims with as little waste/few inputs as possible. "Boosting" the "economy", if such a poor phrase must be used, should mean "getting better at economising" - that is, consuming less, allocating capital to pressing needs.

"Economic stimulus" used to mean "stimulate economising" - allow rates to adjust to mkt level, don't fix prices & wages, cut taxes, balance budgets. This worked extremely well at "stimulating economising" which led to wealth accumulation & progress. But in the interwar period...

..."economy" lost its meaning to instead refer to a consumption machine where evidence of wealth creation was more aggregate output, & using lots of resources came to mean economic progress (thank Keynes, Soviets, GDP accounting identities et al for this regress).

Once this change had taken hold, "economic stimulus" came to mean "stimulate resource use" - that is, use as many resources as possible to achieve desired ends. Economic stimulus now means "economise less" - hence do what it takes to get resources to be used up, ie consume more.

This is an intellectual error, true, but it's also a form of decay of moral character. The ability and willingness to economise is a test of the ability and willingness to accept the constraints of reality, that humans are bounded, that nature imposes limits, tradeoffs exist.

You see this decay in the opposition to economising by the claims that it's unreasonably & harmfully puritanical & austere. Liberal resource use is progressive, open, inclusive, egalitarian. Economising is stultifying, exclusive, stubborn, elitist. At record debts & record low...

...interest rates, the Progressives are well & truly in charge. That a few states that run a primary balanced budget on top of this orgy of resource waste can be called "austere" is a funny (but sick) joke. But such is the relentless moral crusade of the de-economisers.

Until the true meaning of "economy" is rediscovered, "economic stimulus" is really a programme of resource waste. If govts "stimulate" so much as to negate the natural economising behaviour of entrepreneurs & households, then a world of hardship lies ahead. Stimulus is poverty.