Quick chart fight. A while back, Matt Yglesias posted this, saying that 2014 is the year American austerity came to an end:

Econ blogger Angus argued that Yglesias is trying to re-define austerity because we’re now seeing some decent growth. He posted the nominal graph and quipped, Either austerity means nominal cuts and we never had any of it, or austerity means cuts relative to trend and we are still savagely in its grasp:

Kevin Drum says that’s bogus, because you have to look at real spending per capita, like so:

So here’s my entry. I’m going to add two economic indicators to that same chart: growth in real GDP per capita, and the prime-age employment-population ratio (which I like better than unemployment):

To put growth and the E-P ratio on the same scale, I’ve arbitrarily subtracted 79%, which is about the average over the period in question. It’s the trend, not the level, that matters.

The point, as I see it, is this: to make an argument about the end of austerity and what it means, you have to look at that graph and say that the 2014 part of that chart is meaningfully different from the 2009-2013 part. If you see that, you have better eyes than I do.

This is why people don’t trust economists or economics writers. It’s why they shouldn’t. You can’t tell anything from that graph, and claiming you can means you’re at best overstating your case, and at worst lying. It can be a data point¹, but only as part of a larger analysis and I haven’t seen any that I’m particularly thrilled about or ready to bank on.