April 26, 2015
The Washington Post has long been known for its willingness to ignore the distinction between news and editorial pages in pushing the case for deficit reduction in the United States. Today it took its drive for austerity overseas. In an article on public attitudes on the eve of national elections in the United Kingdom it discussed the likelihood that military spending would be cut to “pay down a still-burdensome deficit.”
The Post doesn’t explain how it has determined that the deficit [it may mean “debt,” since countries can’t really pay down an annual deficit] is burdensome. The usual signs of a debt being burdensome are not present. The interest rate on 10-year government bonds is just 1.65 percent, much lower than at any point in the four decades before the collapse of the U.K.’s prior housing bubble in 2007. Its overall inflation rate over the last year has been virtually zero.
Given that it has extremely low interest rates and zero inflation, it would seem that neither the deficit or debt in the U.K. is now burdensome. A real newspaper would have referred to a deficit that “politicians claim is burdensome.”
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