Is austerity or spending best for the UK economy?

tripled

In the long term we need to balance the books so austerity. In the short term making some exceptions, such as investing in infrastructure projects and giving tax breaks to manufacturing, may help boost employment.

To a certain extent though we will always be at the mercy of the world economy, but if we don't start balancing the books at some point we will have to keep "printing" currency and endure rampant inflation. Standards of living will continue to fall in this country though, there's no doubt about that.

The_Thrilla

What we have is an economy that wants to go into recession, and a government that inflates the currency to prevent the recession from happening. They have tried stimulus package after stimulus package, and it is just not working. What few seem to realise is that because of inflation, the amount of money that is injected into the economy has to increase every time. They are now stimulating the economy just enough to kick the can down the road. If they had left the economy alone it would have righted itself sooner. The recession is going to happen anyway. The recession is not the disease; it is the cure. How long the recession will last is anyone's guess, but printing money will only make it last longer. Austerity is the best thing to do, the sooner the better. It will also clean the economy. We need to sling out at least 95% of the civil service, ditto for the town hall white collar staff. The Ponzi state pension scheme will have to go. And the NHS will have to dismantled. There is no other way. In the old days people could be shovelled out of the public sector into the private sector. But since Thatcher dismantled British industry, and Tory Blur has been quietly augmenting fascism into Britain, there is nowhere for the unemployed to go.
Krugman just shows that they are handing out Nobel prizes to anyone who can fog a mirror. The Austrian economists were right all along.