Joseph Stiglitz: The right has got it wrong on how to boost growth

Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world - over the course of this ideology's 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case.

On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven as always by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy.

In the US, this right-wing resurgence, whose adherents evidently seek to repeal the laws of math and economics, is threatening to force a default on the national debt.

If Congress mandates expenditures that exceed revenues, there will be a deficit, and that has to be financed. Rather than carefully balancing the benefits of each government expenditure programme with the costs of raising taxes to finance those benefits, the right seeks to use a sledgehammer - not allowing the national debt to increase forces expenditures to be limited to taxes.

This leaves open the question of which expenditures get priority - if paying interest on the national debt does not, a default is inevitable.

A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the US faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. But unaffordable tax cuts and wars, a major recession, and soaring health-care costs quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits.

The remedies to the US deficit follow immediately from this diagnosis: put America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich. But the right will have none of this, and instead is pushing for even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, together with expenditure cuts in investments and social protection that put the future of the US economy in peril and shred what remains of the social contract.

Meanwhile, the US financial sector has been lobbying hard to free itself of regulations, so that it can return to its previous, disastrously carefree, ways.

But matters are little better in Europe.As Greece and others face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatisation, measures which will leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, and has already failed in Ireland, Latvia and Greece.

There is an alternative: an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Growth would restore confidence that Greece could repay its debts, causing interest rates to fall and leaving more fiscal room for further growth-enhancing investments. Growth increases tax revenues and reduces the need for social expenditures, such as unemployment benefits. And the confidence this engenders leads to still further growth.

Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backwards: they believe austerity produces confidence, and confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion.

A failure of either Europe or the US to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. A failure in both would be disastrous - even if the major emerging-market countries have attained self-sustaining growth. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.

• Joseph Stiglitz is a professor of finance and business at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in economics.