Is this not cherrypicking statistics? I’m sure I can find countries where growth is down amidst government stimulus (ahem, the US) and then I could draw the opposite conclusion.

And didn’t we already have a stimulus in the UK as the credit crisis hit? And isn’t government spending still rising in the UK? And why should taxpayers underwrite borrowing from bondholders for “stimulus spending”? What happens when these bondholders turn against us (as they have done against much of the rest of Europe)? The policies advocated by yourself and this website, and echoed by Labour, worry me intensely. More and more and more debt.

Belgium is in the euro. Its businesses don’t have to pay the enormous extra cost burden of having a basket case currency to make itself feel important.

Nonsense!

I live in Belgium and there is no way the Belgian economy is in a healthy state.

The so-called stability of the Belgian economy testifies to the ability of Belgians to lie to themselves about the truly disastrous state of its economy and to convince others that the lies are true.

#tbm. No doubt you perceive problems in Belgium, and I’m sure they are there. But the fact is that, unless the statistics are outright lies, then Belgium is doing eleven times better than UK.

This is a most extraordinary and useful post. Thanks for pointing it out.
The bankruptcy of mainstream conventional economics & government policy on this is just staggering.
Belgium’s 2.2% could have been us if the LibDem members had not been blackmailed into approving a cuts first & foremost Tory-led coalition by the Quislings Clegg & David Laws. They in turn were probably blackmailed by Gus O’Donnell. A sorry sorry tale. Osborne and the LibDems must be made to pay for this catastrophe – and so should the top of officialdom.

#tbm. No doubt you perceive problems in Belgium, and I’m sure they are there. But the fact is that, unless the statistics are outright lies, then Belgium is doing eleven times better than UK.

This is a most extraordinary and useful post. Thanks for pointing it out. The bankruptcy of mainstream conventional economics & government policy on this is just staggering.

Belgium’s 2.2% could have been us if the LibDem members had not been blackmailed into approving a cuts first & foremost Tory-led coalition by the Quislings Clegg & David Laws. They in turn were probably blackmailed by Gus O’Donnell. A sorry sorry tale. Osborne and the LibDems must be made to pay for this catastrophe – and so should the top of officialdom.

@AnotherTom – I fear this is going to have be said many times over, but the US is not an example of a country practising stimulus, but a country practising austerity. The Obama stimulus – though quite effective on its own merits – barely even cancelled out the impact of shrinking state budgets across the country which has seen state and local government resorting to such pathetic measures as closing police stations, switching off street lighting and digging up paved roads in some parts of the country.

This year, as the federal stimulus has started to end, and predictably, growth – which never recovered sufficiently – has begun to wither again.

It is simply not true that the US has avoided the austerity route.

So i guess the libertarians will just have to wait a few more years before opening the champagne then.

I have friends who live and work in Belgium. I visited some of them two weeks ago, as London burned and seethed. Compared to the UK, Belgium is a veritable paradise on earth and a testament to what you can do when you effectively abolish the government – though not the state, as such.

They are growing their way out of their deficit, which is exactly what we should be doing. We are re-learning the lesson of the 1930s that you can’t cut your way out of a deficit.

They also have a highly efficient, mutualised health service consisting mainly of a mix of non-profit providers, funded through taxation. On the down side, their police are even worse than ours, but in many other ways, we should be copying Belgium.