Economic Stimulus

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More traditionally, a broad term for the ways that governments step in to boost their countries' economies.

From time to time, a country's (or even the world's) economy will drive off into a ditch. Economic stimulus is a way to get it back on the road.

Prior to the 1930s, government intervention was fairly limited. Countries would pass regulation or step into particular markets, but when things went really bad, politicians tended to shrug and point to Adam Smith tomes on their bookshelves.

Widespread programs to boost economic output didn't come until the Great Depression. At that point, encouraged by skyrocketing unemployment, soup kitchens, Hoovervilles, and other real-life Grapes of Wrath stuff, leaders decided to take the advice of John Maynard Keynes, a British economist who theorized that governments should combat economic troubles with deficit spending in an effort to prime the economic pump. With this as an ideological framework, the U.S. and other countries moved whole-hog into economic stimulus.

They've been doing it ever since.

Now, it's relatively common practice for governments to step in to bolster the economic cycle. Whether they're too aggressive or not depends on your point of view. But 1932 was pretty bad, so even all these years later, no one wants to go back.