I asked:
>> Exactly how would a debt paydown slow/shrink growth?
and Doug answered:
> Because it's fiscally contractionary, sucking up purchasing power -
> if you believe in Keynesianism - making growth slower that it would
> otherwise be. Keynes has a passage in the Treatise fantasizing about
> a lovely paradise that's spoiled by a thrift program.
Does Keynes's paradise have anything to do with Mandeville's _Fable of
the Bees_? I'm asking because a position like Mandeville's might
provide some help for those despairing of hair-shirt leftism. Any
vanguard party that would promote economic vigor through consumption,
lax morals, and tolerance would be one I'd join...
--
Curtiss