27 June

Genuinely curious how many still believe that governments need to ‘balance the books’? Comparing governments to households and business was a political trick to stop them paying for public things, by screaming hysterically every day about governments ‘going broke’. Except when they pay for tax cuts and other goodies for the people screaming hysterically. A government can ‘print’ as much money as it likes. It doesn’t have to pay it back to anybody, who would it need to pay it back to? A government deficit is a surplus for citizens, and a government surplus is you paying for everything yourself instead. Governments don’t need to tax or borrow, to pay for things. Government is us, all of us, not a separate business with a balance sheet.