Deficit spending

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Budget deficit
)

Within the

budget surplus. The term may be applied to the budget of a government, private company, or individual. Government deficit spending was first identified as a necessary economic tool by John Maynard Keynes in the wake of the Great Depression
. It is a central point of controversy in economics, as discussed below.

Controversy

Government deficit spending is a central point of controversy in economics, with prominent economists holding differing views.[1]

The

post-WWII in the 1950s.[citation needed
]

This position is attacked from both sides: Advocates of federal-level

Modern Monetary Theory—argue that deficit spending is necessary for the issuance of new money, and not only for fiscal stimulus.[citation needed
] According to most economists, during recessions, the government can stimulate the economy by intentionally running a deficit.

The deficit spending requested by John Maynard Keynes for overcoming crises is the monetary side of his economy theory. As investment equates to real saving, money assets that build up are equivalent to debt capacity. Therefore, the excess saving of money in time of crisis should correspond to increased levels of borrowing, as this generally doesn't happen - the result is intensification of the crisis, as revenues from which money could be saved decline while a higher level of debt is needed to compensate for the collapsing revenues. The state's deficit enables a correspondent buildup of money assets for the private sector and prevents the breakdown of the economy, preventing private money savings to be run down by private debt.

The monetary mechanism describing how revenue surpluses enforce corresponding expense surpluses, and how these in turn lead to economic breakdown was explained by Wolfgang Stützel much later by the means of his Balances Mechanics.

false analogy to borrowing by individuals. Current reality is almost the exact opposite. Deficits add to the net disposable income of individuals, to the extent that government disbursements that constitute income to recipients exceed that abstracted from disposable income in taxes, fees, and other charges. This added purchasing power, when spent, provides markets for private production, inducing producers to invest in additional plant capacity, which will form part of the real heritage left to the future. This is in addition to whatever public investment takes place in infrastructure, education, research, and the like. Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity. Deficits in excess of a gap growing as a result of the maximum feasible growth in real output might indeed cause problems, but we are nowhere near that level. Even the analogy itself is faulty. If General Motors, AT&T, and individual households had been required to balance their budgets in the manner being applied to the Federal government, there would be no corporate bonds, no mortgages, no bank loans, and many fewer automobiles, telephones, and houses."

— 15 Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism[2]

Fiscal conservatism

Advocates of fiscal conservatism reject Keynesianism by arguing that government should always run a

European Monetary Union
punishes government deficits of 3% of GDP or greater.

Proponents of fiscal conservatism date back to

Treasury View that government fiscal policy is ineffective.[citation needed
]

The usual argument against deficit spending is the Government-Household analogy: households should not run deficits—one should have money before one spends it, from prudence—and that what is correct for a household is correct for a nation and its government. A similar argument is that deficit spending today will require increased taxation in the future, thus burdening future generations. (See generational accounting for discussion.)

Others argue that because debt is both owed by and owed to private individuals, there is no net debt burden of government debt, just wealth transfer (redistribution) from those who owe debt (government, backed by tax payers) to those who hold debt (holders of government bonds).[3]

A related line of argument, associated with the

inflationary. Anything other than mild or moderate inflation is generally accepted in economics to be a bad thing. In practice this is argued to be because governments pay off debts by printing money, increasing the money supply and creating inflation, and is taken further by some as an argument against fiat money and in favor of hard money, especially the gold standard.[4]

Post-Keynesian economics

Some Post-Keynesian economists argue that deficit spending is necessary, either to create the money supply (Chartalism) or to satisfy demand for savings in excess of what can be satisfied by private investment.[citation needed]

Chartalists argue that deficit spending is logically necessary because, in their view, fiat money is created by deficit spending: fiat money cannot be collected in taxes before it is issued and spent; the amount of fiat money in circulation is exactly the government debt—money spent but not collected in taxes. In a quip, "fiat money governments are 'spend and tax', not 'tax and spend
'"—deficit spending comes first.

Chartalists argue that nations are fundamentally different from households. Governments in a fiat money system which only have debt in their own currency can issue other liabilities, their fiat money, to pay off their interest bearing bond debt. They cannot go bankrupt involuntarily because this fiat money is what is used in their economy to settle debts, while household liabilities are not so used. This view is summarized as:

But it is hard to understand how the concept of "budget busting" applies to a government which, as a sovereign issuer of its own currency, can always create dollars to spend. There is, in other words, no budget to "bust". A national "budget" is merely an account of national spending priorities, and does not represent an external constraint in the manner of a household budget.[5]

Continuing in this vein, Chartalists argue that a structural deficit is necessary for

credit bubble and a financial crisis.[citation needed
]

Chartalism is a small minority view in economics; while it has had advocates over the years, and influenced Keynes, who specifically credited it,

Neo-Chartalism, and advocated deficit spending in his theory of functional finance. A contemporary center of Neo-Chartalism is the Kansas City School
of economics.

Chartalists, like other Keynesians, accept the paradox of thrift, which argues that identifying behavior of individual households and the nation as a whole commits the fallacy of composition; while the paradox of thrift (and thus deficit spending for fiscal stimulus) is widely accepted in economics, the Chartalist form is not.[citation needed]

An alternative argument for the necessity of deficits was given by U.S. economist William Vickrey, who argued that deficits were necessary to satisfy demand for savings in excess of what can be satisfied by private investment.

Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity.[7]

Government deficits

When the outlay of a government (i.e., the total of its purchases of goods and services, transfers in grants to individuals and corporations, and its net interest payments) exceeds its tax

cash accounting) the budget balance is calculated using only spending on current operations, with expenditure on new capital assets excluded.[8]
: 114–116 

Governments usually issue

GDP, depending on the level of GDP growth.[citation needed
]

The opposite of a budget deficit is a

budget surplus
; in this case, tax revenues exceed government purchases and transfer payments. For the public sector to be in deficit implies that the private sector (domestic and foreign) is in surplus. An increase in public indebtedness must necessarily therefore correspond to an equal decrease in private sector net indebtedness. In other words, deficit spending permits the private sector to accumulate net worth.

On average, through the economic cycle, most governments have tended to run budget deficits, as can be seen from the

large debt balances accumulated by governments across the world
.

Keynesian effect

Following John Maynard Keynes, many economists recommend deficit spending to moderate or end a recession, especially a severe one. When the economy has high unemployment, an increase in government purchases creates a market for business output, creating income and encouraging increases in consumer spending, which creates further increases in the demand for business output. (This is the multiplier effect.) This raises the real gross domestic product (GDP) and the employment of labour, and if all else is constant, lowers the unemployment rate. (The connection between demand for GDP and unemployment is called Okun's law.)

The increased size of the market, due to government deficits, can further stimulate the economy by raising business profitability and spurring optimism, which encourages private fixed investment in factories, machines, and the like to rise. This accelerator effect stimulates demand further and encourages rising employment.

Similarly, running a government surplus or reducing its deficit reduces consumer and business spending and raises unemployment. This can lower the inflation rate. Any use of the government deficit to steer the macro-economy is called fiscal policy.

A deficit does not simply stimulate demand. If private investment is stimulated, that increases the ability of the economy to supply output in the long run. Also, if the government's deficit is spent on such things as infrastructure, basic research, public health, and education, that can also increase potential output in the long run. Finally, the high demand that a government deficit provides may actually allow greater growth of potential supply, following Verdoorn's law.

Deficit spending may create

price/wage spiral
).

If equilibrium is located on the classical range of the supply graph, an increase in government spending will lead to inflation without affecting unemployment. There must also be enough money circulating in the system to allow inflation to persist, so that inflation depends on monetary policy.[citation needed]

Loanable funds

Many economists believe government deficits influence the economy through the

loanable funds market
, whose existence Chartalists and other Post-Keynesians dispute. Government borrowing in this market increases the demand for loanable funds and thus (ignoring other changes) pushes up interest rates. Rising interest rates can crowd out, or discourage, fixed private investment spending, canceling out some or even all of the demand stimulus arising from the deficit—and perhaps hurting long-term supply-side growth.

Increased deficits also raise the amount of total income received, which raises the amount of saving done by individuals and corporations and thus the supply of loanable funds, lowering interest rates. Thus, crowding out is a problem only when the economy is already close to full employment (say, at about 4% unemployment) and the scope for increasing income and saving is blocked by resource constraints (potential output).

Despite a government debt that exceeded GDP in 1945, the U.S. saw the long prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. The growth of the

supply side, it seems, was not hurt by the large deficits and debts.[citation needed
]

A government deficit increases government debt. In many countries the government borrows by selling bonds rather than borrowing from banks. The most important burden of this debt is the interest that must be paid to bond-holders, which restricts a government's ability to raise its outlays or cut taxes to attain other goals.

Crowding out

Usually when economists use the term "crowding out" they are referring to the government spending using up financial and other resources that would otherwise be used by private enterprise. However, some commentators use "crowding out" to refer to government providing a service or good that would otherwise be a business opportunity for private industry.[citation needed]

Unintentional deficits

National government deficits may be intentional, a result of policy decisions, or unintentional. When an economy goes into a recession, deficits usually rise in the more affluent countries. Revenue from progressive taxes based on economic activity (income, expenditure, or transactions) falls. Other sources of tax revenue such as wealth taxes, notably property taxes, are not subject to recessions, though they are subject to asset price bubbles. Transfer payments due to increased unemployment and reduced household income rise.

Automatic vs. active deficit policies

Most economists favor the use of automatic stabilization over active or discretionary use of deficits to fight mild recessions (or surpluses to combat inflation). Active policy-making takes too long for politicians to institute and too long to affect the economy. Often, the medicine ends up affecting the economy only after its disease has been cured, leaving the economy with side-effects such as inflation. For example, President John F. Kennedy proposed tax cuts in response to the high unemployment of 1960, but these were instituted only in 1964 and impacted the economy only in 1965 or 1966 and the increased debt encouraged inflation, reinforcing the effect of Vietnam war deficit spending.[citation needed]

Structural and cyclical deficit

Structural (blue) and cyclical (green) components are summed to give the headline deficit/surplus (red) for a hypothetical economy

Structural and cyclical deficits are two components of deficit spending. These terms are especially applied to public sector spending which contributes to the budget balance of the overall economy of a country. The total budget deficit, or headline deficit, is equal to the sum of the structural deficit and the cyclical deficit (or surplus/es).

Cyclical deficit

A cyclical (temporary) deficit is a deficit that is related to the

contraction, until it begins to expand again. This cycle can last anywhere from several months to many years, and does not follow a predictable pattern.[9]

The cyclical deficit is the deficit experienced at the low point of this cycle when there are lower levels of business activity and higher levels of

social security
, which may cause the economy to go into deficit. While the cyclical component is affected by government decisions, it is mainly influenced by national and international economic conditions which can be significantly beyond government control.

Structural deficit

A structural (permanent) deficit differs from a cyclical deficit in that it exists regardless of the point in the business cycle due to an underlying imbalance in government revenues and expenditures. Thus, even at the high point of the business cycle when revenues are high the country's economy may still be in deficit.[10]

The structural component of the budget is used by some economists as an indication of a government's financial management, as it indicates the underlying balance between long-term government revenues and expenditure, while removing factors that are mainly attributable to the business cycle. Other economists see the structural deficit as simply a reflection of the implied discretionary fiscal stance of the government, that is, a structural deficit would be an expansionary fiscal stance that promotes at least nominal economic growth.

Where deficits are being funded by borrowing, a structural deficit is seen by some economists as an issue for a government as even at the high points of the business cycle the government may need to continue to borrow and thus continue to accumulate debt. According to them, this would lead to continued "deterioration" of the debt-to-GDP ratio, a basic measure of the health of an economy and an indication of the country's ability to pay off its debts.[10]

Other economists believe that provided the debt is issued in the country's own currency, and provided that currency 'floats' freely against other currencies, and provided the overall level of the deficit is not so large as to cause excessive inflation, then structural deficits are harmless. Those economists who believe that structural deficits need to be reduced argue that structural deficit issues can only be addressed by explicit and direct

taxation
.

An alternative in countries which have

monetising the debt, essentially creating more money to be used to pay off the debt. Monetising the debt can lead to high levels of inflation, but with proper fiscal control this can be minimised or even avoided[citation needed]. Both it and the final option of defaulting on the debt are thought to be poor results for investors.[10] There having been recent incidents involving quantitative easing in the UK, the U.S. and the Eurozone following the 2008 global financial crisis. These are the first instances of either since the dropping of the gold standard.[citation needed
]

Structural deficits may be planned, or may be unintentional due to poor economic management or a fundamental lack of economic capacity in a country. In a planned structural deficit, the government may commit to spending money on the future of the country in order to improve the productive potential of the economy, for example investing in infrastructure, education, or transport, with the intention that this investment will yield long-term economic gains. If these investments work out as planned the structural deficit will be dealt with over the long-term due to the returns on investment. However, if expenditures continue to exceed revenues, the structural deficit will worsen.

A government may also knowingly plan the budget to be in deficit in order to sustain the country's

Spanish financial crises.[10]

Structural and cyclical surplus

Structural and cyclical

surpluses
are the opposite of the deficits described above. With a cyclical surplus, at the high point of the business cycle government revenue will be expected to be higher and government expenditure lower, meaning revenue exceeds expenditure and the government experiences a surplus. Likewise, a structural surplus is when the government budget is fundamentally operating at a surplus regardless of its point in the business cycle.

Interplay of structural and cyclical components

The overall government budget balance is determined by the sum of the cyclical deficit or surplus and the structural deficit or surplus (refer to chart). Therefore, for example, a cyclical surplus could mask an underlying structural deficit, as the overall budget may appear to be in surplus if the cyclical surplus is greater than the structural deficit. In this case, as economic conditions deteriorated and the budget went into cyclical deficit, the structural and cyclical deficits would then compound leading to higher deficits and more dire economic conditions.[11][12]

An example of this occurred in Australia during the later years of the

GDP.[11]

This structural deficit was caused by a

Global Financial Crisis unexpectedly starting in 2007, revenues quickly and significantly declined and the underlying structural deficit was exposed and exacerbated, which then had to be dealt with by later governments.[12][13] By 2008–2009 when the budget had a headline deficit of $32 billion, the structural deficit was out to around $50 billion.[11] In 2013 it was estimated the structural deficit remained at about $40 billion, or 2.5% of GDP.[12]

Criticism

Bruce Yandle writing for Reason stated in 2022 as a result of rising inflation that, "[It would be prudent to] Blame Washington, Not Moscow, for Surging Inflation; Few politicians are willing to admit deficit spending is the larger cause."[14]

political
purposes than analytical purposes.

The piece largely centred on the UK Labour government 1997–2010 of which Chris Dillow was a strong supporter and criticism that they ran a large structural deficit. Economic representatives of that government acknowledge that, unbeknownst to them at the time, they were running a structural deficit.[16]

Economist, Professor Bill Mitchell has also questioned the misuse of the term 'structural deficit', particularly in the Australian context.[17]

Martin Wolf, in his book "The Shifts and the Shocks",[18] argues that nobody knows what the 'structural' or cyclically adjusted balance is and that it is least knowable precisely when such knowledge is most essential, namely, when the economy is experiencing a boom. He provides two examples of widely divergent IMF estimates of the average structural fiscal balance of Ireland and Spain, for the period 2000–2007. The estimates were made in 2008 and in 2012 and Wolf stresses that they were post-fact estimates and not predictions.

Specifically, in 2008, the IMF declared that Ireland had run an average structural surplus of 1.3% of GDP, per year, between 2000 and 2007, and Spain an average structural surplus of 0.5% of GDP, per year, over the same period. Then, four years later, the IMF decided that, for this same 8-year period, Ireland's annual average structural balance was four percentage points worse than it had thought in April 2008, estimating that Ireland had been running an average structural fiscal deficit of 2.7% of GDP. For Spain, the 2012 IMF estimate differed by 1.7 percentage points, estimating this time that Spain had been running and average structural fiscal deficit of 1.2% of GDP, in the years 2000–2007.

See also

References

  1. ^ In "Britain’s Deficit", February 16, 2010, Paul Krugman cites two opposing groups of economists, one arguing that Britain should cut its deficit immediately, the other arguing that the deficit provides useful or necessary fiscal stimulus.
  2. ^ "Vickrey, William. 1996. 15 Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism". www.columbia.edu.
  3. ^ "Beat the Press". www.prospect.org. Archived from the original on 2011-10-12. Retrieved 2010-09-18.
  4. ^ James Rickards, Currency Wars
  5. ^ Spain and the EU: Deficit Terrorism in Action, 01/8/2010, New Deal 2.0, Marshall Auerback
  6. ^ See references at Chartalism for the influence on Keynes.
  7. ^ (Vickrey 1996, Fallacy 1)
  8. ISSN 1608-7143
    .
  9. ^ "Business cycle". Financial Times Lexicon. The Financial Times Limited. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
  10. ^ a b c d "Structural deficit". Financial Times Lexicon. The Financial Times Limited. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
  11. ^
    Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media
    . Retrieved 20 May 2013.
  12. ^ a b c Janda, Michael (26 April 2013). "Howard and Rudd responsible for budget black hole: economist". The World Today. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 20 May 2013.
  13. News Limited
    . Retrieved 20 May 2013.
  14. ^ Yandle, Bruce (11 March 2022). "Blame Washington, Not Moscow, for Surging Inflation". reason.com. Reason. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
  15. ^ Dillow, Chris (15 February 2010). "The myth of the structural deficit". Investors Chronicle. The Financial Times Limited. Archived from the original on 31 May 2014. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
  16. ^ Kirkup, James (25 October 2012). "Ed Balls: Labour ran a structural deficit in 2007" – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  17. ^ "Structural deficits – the great con job!". economicoutlook.net. 15 May 2009.

Further reading