Found a post on another website today that sums up the developing economic landscape quite well (edited to be more appropriate for HN):<p>&gt;The [austerity&#x2F; free market advocates] need to quit [complain]ing and just accept that we need to stimulate the demand side of the economy. The US and Europe are currently headed down the same course that Japan went down, and they&#x27;re stuck in an inescapable stagnation. We&#x27;ve implemented the same QE and austerity policies that they did years before us, and now we&#x27;re beginning to experience the same stagnation and gradual decline they did. Just like Japan we&#x27;re propping up large, [poorly managed], decaying businesses at the expense of everything else in our economy, all while starving our economy&#x27;s consumers of money.<p>&gt;We&#x27;ve printed tons of money to fund big business, and cut back on social services so businesses won&#x27;t have to pay as many taxes, and yet we only have a worsening economy to show for it. Unless you want the stock market to be the only segment of the economy that doesn&#x27;t collapse, quit [explative] complaining and just hand people money.