No, and the government should drastically reduce spending during recessions

According to Modern Monetary Theory, as a sovereign currency we can print and pay for as much as we like, so we should not cut spending that helps people in need. Inflation is mostly caused by business owners undemocratically raising prices. Hyper-inflation has historically always been caused by either large amounts of foreign debt, or a collapse in productive capacity in the real economy. Hyper-inflation is not caused by printing money. Japan and the US are excellent examples of this. "Balancing the budget" is a hypocritical myth used to dissuade spending on social causes that woul…  Read mored improve the lives of citizens (and often save money), but "how will we pay for it" is conveniently never mentioned when protecting upper-class interests such as military spending and corporate welfare. It takes advantage of the collective misunderstanding that nations with sovereign currency collect taxes to pay for things when in truth they first print and pay THEN collect taxes to destroy the excess. Furthermore, austerity measures actually HURT the economy and exposes us to foreign interests and capital penetration; as is plain to see with most countries with debt to the world bank and IMF.