Politicians from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Dick Cheney are united in their agreement that deficits don’t matter. Of course, that’s exactly what a politician would say. Politicians score points by spending other people’s money, so naturally, they don’t want to hear anything about how prudence suggests it might be a good idea to not spend that extra 800 billion dollars they don’t have.
This summer’s budget deal, negotiated by Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump made few headlines. And that’s exactly how these power brokers wanted it.
The new law suspends the debt ceiling through July 2021, removing the threat of a default during the 2020 elections, and raises domestic and military spending by more than $320 billion compared to existing law over the next two fiscal years.
In our increasingly interconnected world, we frequently observe events and effects that result from seemingly unrelated causes and connections.
[Excerpt from chapter 3 of the Bastiat Collection.]
I wish someone would offer a prize—not of a hundred francs, but of a million, with crowns, medals and ribbons—for a good, simple and intelligible definition of the word “Government.”1
