“Deficit” Is the Wrong Word and Concept

by Michael Hoexter, New Economic Perspectives The hour is late and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are attempting to shrink the social welfare state in the name of a lack of funds.  Barack Obama has made it now abundantly clear that he is no friend to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, after years of signaling overtly and covertly that cutting social programs was his intention.   Obama is as beholden as any right-wing politician, a group among which some might count him, to the notion that the government is running out of money, as if our money was still backed by a limited supply of gold bullion.  According to Obama and his fiscal advisors, the government’s supposedly limited funds must be conserved by cutting the activities of government while also raising taxes to, in the “hard-money” telling of the story, “increase...