>We're already got budget surpluses.
>We're there. We don't have to wait.
>Unfortunately, politicians in both
>parties are in the process of redefining
>deficits so that we will "have" them again.
Well those surpluses are more than all the result of Soc Sec surpluses, which are supposed to be some preposterous kind of national piggy bank. The operating budget isn't going to go into the black until 2004 or so, right?
Balancing the budget seems to have had a pretty small fiscal drag. What Keynesian would have predicted the last 5 years in the U.S. economy? High real rates and deficit reduction have come with low unemployment and rising real wages at every level of the distribution. Will this continue as the surplus grows? Can private debt continue to expand enough to counter the continuing fiscal squeeze? Or doesn't that matter anymore?
Doug