The worst thing for a country's economy is for legislators to borrow money for deficit spending during economic downturns. Too bad no one agrees, including those perhaps disposed to agree.
For background, a recent Washington Post editorial lamented that “During a three-year span of low unemployment, economic expansion, increasing revenue and no major foreign wars, the budget deficit was larger as a share of the economy than any year of the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression.” The Post’s implied point found can be found in the title of the aforementioned editorial: “Running deficits larger than during the Great Depression is reckless.” The increasingly market-oriented editorialists at the Post could perhaps be persuaded that the editorial and title mistake the cause of growth, and that’s not because deficit spending boosts it. Quite the opposite, which is the point.
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