The practice of counter-cyclical public spending on public works in order to protect the real economy, the status of citizens and the institutions of society, goes back, as does so much else these days, to Athens.
Unless I have missed something, am I now bound to support all manner of make-work public spending?
Public spending, American style, has worked best in good times, when people have jobs and executives are eager to invest.
Cuts in public spending put them out of work.
A strategy of controlling public spending and boosting money could work.
The budget, to be debated in Parliament next month, cuts foreign aid and public works spending by about 10percentt but expands spending for the elderly and job-training.
And though Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has promised to cut public works spending that drained government coffers under prior administrations, he has struggled to keep spending in check.
In the short run this policy works: in the first half of 1999, powered by a burst of public works spending, the Japanese economy grew fairly rapidly.
Public works spending peaked in 1998.
A big part of that will be public works spending.
