This government is indeed "bleeding the patient" and only making the economy sicker (Ed Balls is right on the money, 7 December) but it is optimistic to state that a blood transfusion in the form of a Keynesian economic stimulus will necessarily work.
The coalition spent most of its first year telling us how sick the economy was in order to ensure blame for the deficit fell squarely with the last government: good politics but very bad economics. (A happy coincidence too that the deficit reduction imperative coalesced with its ideological desire for a smaller state.) Not surprisingly, businesses and consumers were already investing and spending less; the economy was slowing down from the healthier growth bequeathed by the late Labour stimulus even before the cuts began to bite.
Without the coalition's dire threats of doom and the impending cuts we would still be enjoying growth, rising tax revenues and an enhanced ability to pay down the deficit. But now the super-tanker has turned and is heading in the wrong direction. A weakened economy, surrounded by weakness, may not respond to a transfusion. A European, and wider, stimulus may be what's required for the patient(s) to recover and there's little sign of that.
Ed Balls needs to convince his critics about the accuracy of his diagnosis but must also do some more work on his prescription, which is not such a simple one as Jonathan Freedland suggests.
Neil Wallis
Banbury, Oxfordshire
• Jonathan Freedland failed to address the principal economic issues. We had a 20-year boom. The rich got incredibly richer, the middle went into debt and the poor were unsustainably supported by the state. The principal issues are the massively unequal distribution of national income and far too little financially relevant employment. Stimulated growth in these circumstances would only ensure that everyone but the rich would go on getting poorer. Advocating a Keynesian economic recovery is simply a means of not talking about the fundamental problems.
In political terms, while the squeezed middle remain concerned with retaining their own financial credibility and suspect Labour expects them to pay the bills for Labour's social conscience, Labour can forget about getting elected. The party has first to agree with the business community how the nation constructs a viable economic future.
Martin London
Henllan, Denbighshire
• After Gordon Brown resigned in 2010, Labour wasted two-and-a-half months electing a new leader, allowing the coalition to recite over and over its mantras about reducing the deficit, implanting its austerity plans into popular myth as the solution of choice.
A further concern is the time it has taken Balls to inch his arguments away from his own previous administration towards an acceptance of Keynesian solutions. Do not forget the Blair-Brown governments presided over much of that period when, as Jared Bernstein (Britain risks catching the 'US disease', Society, 7 December) identified, "the bottom half of British society has seen its share of prosperity drop from 16% to 12% of national income since 1977. During the same time, the tiny elite – the 1% composed of bankers and entrepreneurs – have seen their share of the economy double from 2% to more than 4%".
In Ecuador, Argentina, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Italy and the UK, neocon economists advocating austerity, austerity, austerity have bled and are bleeding these countries dry. It is time to listen to economists like Steve Keen, Ann Pettifor and David Blanchflower who at least saw the debt crisis coming.
David Murray
Wallington, Surrey
• Jonathan Freedland has misread the likely direction of government economic policy. The Tories will change to the Keynesian plan B: borrow and invest. They will have little choice; those burdened by too much debt will start to demand a debt jubilee. Given the choice between a debt jubilee and plan B, the Tories will choose plan B. George Osborne will reason that at least with plan B, the lenders may have some return on their capital rather than nothing.
Debt write-offs were the basis of the Jubilee Debt campaign in the 1990s for poverty relief in developing countries. People in the United States associated with the Occupy movement are already discussing whether a debt write-off is the way forward from them too.
Andrew Wood
Oxford
• The only thing that is missing from Jonathan Freedland's piece is an analysis of how the coalition's view of the way we should deal with our economic crisis has been promoted and peddled at every opportunity, not only by Cameron, Osborne et al but also by most of the media. So it's hardly surprising that the public is not convinced that the way to deal with our debt is to borrow more.
The trouble with the Keynesian view is that it seems to be counterintuitive and the government has exploited this to the extent that it's currently politically impossible to change from plan A without being thought to be reckless. More commentators, respected organisations and so on need to promote the Keynesian view – people won't change their opinions as things are at the moment.
Jan Hill
London
• The running of household finances, which is often quoted in support of the government's plan A – ie when in debt, belts have to be tightened so the debts are repaid as quickly as possible, thus enabling the household to get back on an even keel – does not seem to be really comparable. Surely it would be more appropriate to use the analogy of the owner of a market garden who finds herself or himself heavily in debt.
The market gardener can either (a) decide to settle all the debts as quickly as possible even though this means there is not enough money to buy seeds, fertilisers etc for the next season, or (b) come to an arrangement with the creditors to settle the debts more gradually, leaving enough money to invest in seeds, fertiliser etc for a successful next season and thus hopefully a gentle return to balancing the books. It does not take a genius to decide which is the best option.
Tina Wright
Bourne End, Buckinghamshire
• Jonathan Freedland suggests that the public can never be persuaded that a suitable strategy to reduce borrowing is to increase borrowing. Clearly when presented in that way it sounds nonsensical. However, it obviously depends on what the borrowing is for, and, like the "bleeding" metaphor, it cannot be difficult to produce an appropriate analogy to explain this. For example, a window cleaner who is in debt but borrows more money to buy a ladder to work to clear his debt is quite different to one who borrows to survive during his unemployment. The former – borrowing for growth – appears to be Labour's position, while the latter – borrowing to pay for the unemployment and diminished tax revenues their austerity programme has created – appears to be the policy of this government.
Pat Gillam
Ipswich, Suffolk
• The issue with public understanding of national economics is that we have been sold the metaphor that the country is like a household that has to cut its spending to balance the budget. Labour needs to offer the alternative comparison that it is like a business that has overspent on expense accounts and must therefore be leaner – but also has underinvested in the things that will make it competitive for the future, euch as education (of the workforce) and new product development (smart and green products and services).
Ben Reason
London