August 30, 2014
Folks who are not DC insiders might think it would take courage to stand up to the rich people who have done so well (and caused so much harm) over the last three decades. Or, we might think it would take courage to standup to nonsense about budget deficits to point out that we need larger deficits now to create the demand necessary to bring the economy back to full employment. (Yes, we all love the private sector, but the private sector doesn’t create jobs for love.) Taking those positions might seem to require courage, but in DC insider circles real courage is demanding that we cut Social Security and Medicare; and that is independent of any of the facts.
Hence we see Dana Milbank telling us that new CBO projections, showing that deficits will be lower over the next decade than in the prior set of projections,”threw cold water on my tranquility.” He went on to say the new report was “downright bone-chilling” and that the “top-line conclusions were grim enough, if not catastrophic.” It’s scary to think what his reaction would have been if the new projections showed a worsening picture.
But his real horror story is that the debt to GDP ratio will be over 77 percent in a decade. Wow, and this means what? Milbank was on vacation so he probably missed the collapse of the housing bubble and the worst downturn since the Great Depression. That really was (and is) bone-chilling and catastrophic, but apparently not the sort of thing that worries DC insider types.
Just for purposes of comparison, just about every country in the euro zone has debt to GDP ratios well above 77 percent and many are borrowing at lower interest rates than the United States. Japan has a debt to GDP ratio more than three times as high and borrows long-term at less than a one percent interest rate. So, these debt numbers might make good scare stories for the DC insider crowd, but they have nothing to do with real world economics.
There are of course things we should be worried about, like continued slow growth and high unemployment, but the best remedy for that would be a higher budget deficit or a lower valued dollar that would reduce the trade deficit. We should also worry about the fact that we pay twice as much for our health care per person than people in other wealthy countries with nothing to show for it in terms of outcomes. If we fixed health care that would also take care of the budget deficit, shifting the projected deficits to surpluses.
But fixing health care would mean taking money away from drug companies, doctors, medical equipment suppliers and insurers. The Post doesn’t pay people to push taking away money from those interest groups,, just seniors.
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