Senator Warren is Exactly Right [View all]

[Kid Berwyn]

"Warren is determined to talk about the substance of the issue, whether or not the reporters want to hear it.

by Dean Baker

EXCERPT...

For a larger context, consider how the budget is reported. Reporters routinely highlight the budget deficit and the accumulated debt, as though this is the most important feature of the budget. It is at least implicit in nearly all reporting that the country would be better off with a lower budget deficit.

This is also indicated in their choice of sources. An incredibly high percentage of budget stories in leading news outlets (i.e. the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio) feature comments from Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an organization committed to lower deficits and debt.

News stories on the budget almost never present the countervailing view, which is endorsed by a growing number of economists, that the budget deficit has generally been too small in the years following the Great Recession. The result has been that growth has been slower than it otherwise would have been, causing workers to be needlessly unemployed.

Furthermore, there is now considerable research on the concept of "hysteresis," which means that there are lasting effects of a period of slow growth and high unemployment. The logic is that many of the people who go unemployed for long periods of time lose skills and may end up being permanently unemployed. In addition, less growth will typically mean less investment. This lost investment means the economy will be less productive in the future. Furthermore, there is even a generational impact, since we know the children of unemployed parent(s) are likely to have poorer educational prospects and therefore worse labor market prospects when they grow up.

Instead of the debt and deficit posing a generational burden on our children, as the conventional story has it, the opposite is true. The failure to run deficits that are large enough to push the economy to full employment leaves the country, and our children, poorer than they otherwise would be.

CONTINUES...

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/10/26/senator-warren-exactly-right