The nominal budget is a poor indicator of the impact of government outlays and revenues.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.

There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government.

... often analysis seems to be based on the assumption that future economic output is almost entirely determined by inexorable economic forces independently of government policy so that devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another.

If unemployment could be brought down to say 2 percent at the cost of an assured steady rate of inflation of 10 percent per year, or even 20 percent, this would be a good bargain.

Practically, the desirable situation ought to be one in which any reasonably responsible person willing to accept available employment can find a job paying a living wage within 48 hours.