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:shrug: certainly so.
but that doesn't justify an inability to account for the failures of the other side of the coin.
Starting in early 2008, both Bush and Obama attempted to "prime the pump" "jumpstart the engine" and a thousand other stupid analogies to suggest that by having the government take money from productive sectors of the economy and funnel it to unproductive sectors, that somehow that would make the economy more efficient and productive and stave off economic pain. Bush ran up the largest deficit in our nations' history, and then Obama more than tripled it.
And what has been the result? Have our historically-proportioned expenditures given us historical success, or historical failure?
Winning!
You are ignoring the main aspect of Keynsian economics that was not followed during the Bush years. Running a surplus during the good years
Had the US government instead of running stimulative deficit during periods of economic growth (dependant as they were on the housing bubble), the boom years would have been smaller, the government fiscal situation better. Allowing the government the fiscal room to stimulate the economy during the bad years. Having consumer, corporate and government expanding debt levels during the "boom" years, provides a large temporary stimulative effect on the economy (not true economic growth/wealth creation) but debt finainced consumption). In other the words the government provided stimulus during a period of time it should be contracting its spending, not increasing.
Now in 2011, all sectors of the economy are massively in debt, and have no room to provide stimulus to the economy when it is in a contractionary period (as debt paydowns usually are
One should also note that the US, all of the US has not had such a high total debt level since the 1930's (debt to GDP) which spiked that high due to the economic contraction. Todays high debt levels are not due to economic contraction,
Overall the US has not been following Keynsian economics in full, only the easy part, deficit spending. Ignoring the equally important part, building a surplus. In other words treat government like a business, or a family. Save money for the bad times, in order to ride them out,