I know quite a few people who are unemployed, particularly people in their 20's and 30's. I never heard any of them tell me they weren't buying stuff because of the national debt. Never heard any of them say "I better save money because I'm going to have to pay off the national debt some day." What I have heard is: "I can't buy [x, y or z] because I'm broke." They wish they could have money to save. They wish they had money to spend. They wish they had a job providing income. What they have is . . . nothin'. And that's what they're spending.

So, ian, please stop throwing statistics around to combat the evidence of your eyes and ears if you would care to pay attention to them. And, if you do love the numbers, please at least provide a citation so we can look at them too.

You are right, Ian, you easily can't predict the saving rate from within a Keynesian (or any other standard)economic model of the economy especially when unusual events change the propensity of people to save. But you can adjust government spending to make up for an increase in the savings rate. If you remember the basic equation C+I+G=GDP, if C consumption goes down because of a higher saving rate and I, business investment, we need more G, government spending. We don't need a reduction in the savings rate to increase economic grwoth.

There is little reason to think that people are increasing their savings rate because of fears about the overall debt of the country. It's much more likely that they are worried, and for good reason, about their own debt and employment prospects. But, even if they were worried about the overall debt, sufficient stimulus will over come whatever increase in savings results.

And there is absolutely no reason to think that more government borrowing will be a drag on the economy when short term interest rates are 0 and long term rates are about 2 to 2.5%.

economists will still debate them endlessly. Neither you nor I will be able to divine the truth that allegedly is enshrined in the multiple regression analyses that are economists' inscrutable tool of choice. I acknowledge that I'm just a regular citizen, not a multiple regressionist. What I believe, regardless of who's right on the growth issue, is that corporate power has taken over the government and runs it in its interests. Those interests can really be boiled down to two thing: increase corporate profits, and increase the wealth of the already super wealthy. The elites are devoted to shielding as much of this wealth as possible from taxation and regulation, thus starving governments' ability to shield the worst victims of their avarice.

That is just the evidence of my eyes. My brain tells me that since none of us will ever know for sure what works or doesn't work in creating economic growth, I should simply advocate doing the right thing. And that would be reversing the craven subservience of the public sphere to private greed, and directly attack unemployment by getting the government to hire people to provide desperately needed public goods and services.

Maybe public hiring and other public programs will create growth, maybe not. I think they will. But even if I'm wrong, the bridges, repaired roads, cleaned up environment, better educated kids, healthier families, reduced suicides, etc. will make this a better country. If your policy is followed and doesn't work, we'll not only have reduced growth, but vastly greater amounts of human misery directly caused by destroying programs that help people. This is NOT Sophie's Choice; it's pretty easy to make.