Daniel Altman: Don’t Fear the Debt. The Responsible Way to Grow the Economy

The U.S. economy added only 80,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate remains stuck at 8.2 percent. Worse yet, many economic forecasters see “tepid” growth for the rest of the year.

It doesn’t have to be this way, says Daniel Altman in the video below, as more robust government spending could provide the necessary stimulus to reverse this trend. So what is the holdup? Congress has been unwilling to increase spending, pointing to concerns about budget deficits. And yet, according to Altman, the U.S. debt is “not an unreasonable amount,” given that it is much less than many other countries “proportional to our GDP.”

In other words, the U.S. government has no problems borrowing money. Therefore, the most responsible way to end the recession, Altman says, is to “spend in a way that stimulates our economy in the short term, but also helps us to grow in the long term.”

Watch the video here:

Image courtesy of Shutterstock