By Pavlina R. Tcherneva
The Peter G. Peterson foundation held its ‘fiscal summit’
yesterday to address the looming government debt and deficit ‘problem’. According to a TRNN journalist who attended the summit, the conference began with “we know what the problem is, the federal government debt and deficits have become unsustainably large, we need to make hard choices, cut government spending, including on Social Security and Medicare…”
Any sensible person should be scandalized by this purely ideological stance. When it is necessary to go into war, the deficit is never a problem; when we bail out the financial sector, deficit spending is a ‘requirement’, when we build prisons and pack more people in our jails, oh well… But when it comes to paying for the retired and the sick, surely the government can’t afford to do that! Grandma better pull herself by her bootstraps and take responsibility for her retirement or healthcare needs. But even if we get past the propaganda, Peterson and all the deficit hawks are making one fundamental mistake: they are confusing sustainability with solvency.
