It’s very tough to make a painful sacrifice if you see little chance that it will lead to something good for yourself or someone you care about.

That’s the position Greece is in. The European Union is hellbent on making Greece reduce its debt as a proportion of gross domestic product and forcing it to slash spending. The trouble is, these cuts throw people out of work and interrupt the flow of money that supports economic activity, thus reducing the GDP. So although the amount of national debt goes down — Greek bondholders just took a big “haircut” in the recently negotiated round of bailout loans — so does the GDP. And it’s the proportion of debt to GDP that serves as a critical indicator of financial health. So Greece winds up chasing its tail and remains unstable both financially and socially.

The fiscal affairs of Greece have been handled recklessly for a decade. Many share the blame, including the larger European states that knew it was happening but blithely looked the other way.

Now it’s workout and rescue time. Workouts include debt restructuring and big cuts in budgets and social benefits. But where’s the rescue part of the package?

It would be easy for Europe to accompany all the pain with a smart investment program, much as the United States did for them with the Marshall Plan in the years following World War II. That would give Greek citizens and businesses a tangible incentive to get their house in order. Right now the only thing on the menu every day is pain and more pain. Seen from the streets of Athens, it’s not clear there’s anything to work for at all.

There’s an interesting counterexample that often is cited: that of Argentina a decade ago. The International Monetary Fund had forced stringent spending cuts on Argentina as a condition of financial assistance; the economy buckled, unemployment rose and violence ensued. In December 2001, the government resigned, and the new leaders decided to default on the country’s loans rather than continue the harsh austerity imposed by the IMF. As the new minister of the economy at the time, Roberto Lavagna, has described it: “We decided to save the people rather than the banks.”

The IMF had warned of long-lasting and severe consequences from default. But three months later, investment started up again and the Argentine economy began to grow.

The analogy with Greece is far from perfect. Argentina produces basic commodities, like food, that the world was ready to buy. Greece produces vacations, which people won’t take if there are riots. The Argentine government also unlinked the peso from the dollar and “managed” the peso downward so it did not fluctuate wildly, which would have made it impossible for business to trade overseas. Greece, at least for now, is chained to the euro.

What’s the lesson of all this? For Greece? For Portugal, Spain and Italy, who are next in line outside the operating theater in which Greece currently is being disemboweled? For the United States itself?

The lesson is that reliance solely on cuts might wind up killing the patient. Like treating illness with leeches in the old days, prescribing cuts alone sucks nutrients from the body and in return puts in . . . nothing. If you’ve been eating potato chips and soda, it’s good to go on a diet. But switch to vegetables, grains and fruits — don’t stop eating altogether.

When budgets blow up, we do need to cut and resize programs so they don’t outstrip the financial base — but we need as well to clean up and invigorate the investment and spending cycles, not eliminate them completely.

That’s why those, whether in Europe or in our own ribald election campaign, who say that all you have to do is cut government expenditures are dead wrong.

Peter Goldmark is a former publisher of the International Herald Tribune. He wrote this for Newsday.