{"title":"US Debt and Deficits: Time to Reverse the Trend","authors":"James R. Barth","doi":"10.1111/j.1468-0270.2012.02181.x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a primer on budget deficits from the creation of the federal government. Today federal government spending is 24% of GDP (compared with its historical average of 8.8%), fuelling debt of historic levels. The only effective way to reduce debt levels is to cut entitlement programmes and then set a tax rate sufficient, over the course of the business cycle, to fund government spending.","PeriodicalId":11754,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Macroeconomics: Aggregative Models (Topic)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2012-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ERN: Other Macroeconomics: Aggregative Models (Topic)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2012.02181.x","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
This article provides a primer on budget deficits from the creation of the federal government. Today federal government spending is 24% of GDP (compared with its historical average of 8.8%), fuelling debt of historic levels. The only effective way to reduce debt levels is to cut entitlement programmes and then set a tax rate sufficient, over the course of the business cycle, to fund government spending.