The Tea Party is wrong: The U.S. will never be Greece

Comparing the two countries betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the global economy

Bank of Greece
(Image credit: (REUTERS/John Kolesidis))

In a post at The New York Times, Jared Bernstein argues that the United States is not, in fact, "spending like a drunken sailor," noting that federal spending has fallen to $3.45 trillion a year, down from $3.91 trillion in 2009, when adjusted for inflation and population growth. He then concludes that this means that the U.S. will not be "doomed to Grecian levels of insolvency."

Kudos to Bernstein for underscoring that the U.S. is actually cutting the deficit, a point that is consistently lost in the debate over the size of government. But in so doing, he unintentionally bolsters the fallacy that the U.S. could ever become Greece in the first place.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion.