• Cutting government spending frees up resources for the private sector to grow: It might do so if we were already at full employment and using all our productive capacity. However, in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, this argument holds no water whatsoever. We have plenty of idle resources, the private sector is simply choosing not to employ them. There is no need to free up something that is already in excess supply. Nor is there some web of regulations and taxes that is preventing recovery. The past thirty years has been a continuous deregulation of our economy and effective tax rates as a low as they have been since before World War Two.