REVIEW: 'The Deficit Delusion: Why Everything Left, Right, and Supply-Side Tells You About the National Debt Is Wrong' by John Tamny
John Tamny, the free-market economics commentator who edits RealClearMarkets, comes out swinging in The Deficit Delusion: Why Everything Left, Right, and Supply-Side Tells You About the National Debt Is Wrong. Perhaps this isn't surprising, given the book's title. It can feel like Tamny is a kid walking through the elementary-school playground, randomly shoving other kids—some of whom are bigger than he—as he attacks one op-ed writer after another for, allegedly, misunderstanding the national debt.
In his view, it's a bunch of panic over basically nothing. The reason the United States has so much debt is simply that we have a good economy and a lot of tax revenue, which makes investors trust they'll be paid back and thus willing to lend at low interest rates. If we couldn't handle the debt, they wouldn't lend to us. To the extent there's a real problem, in Tamny's view, it's that we're spending too much—with government spending being a problem not for its effect on the debt, but because it's a "horrid freedom- and economy-sapping tax."
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Washington Free Beacon
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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