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.

To stick to the present situation would be something like a man who was observed in Times Square looking earnestly along the pavement. He was asked what he was looking for. He said "I lost my watch."

The supply-side effect of a restrictive monetary policy, moreover, is likely to be perverse. High interest rates enter into costs and thus exert inflationary pressure, as well as inhibiting the expansion of capacity or the introduction of cost -reducing capital improvements.

... 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.

The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt.

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.

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