The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018.

John Fourier

2018-06-01 07:30:00 Fri ET

The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that this ratio will surge to 96% in 2028. Although many blame the Trump tax cuts as the key root cause, the increases in health care and retirement benefits suggest a different real reason for U.S. deficit severity.

Harvard professor Martin Feldstein attributes the recent rise of U.S. budget deficit from 4% to 5% of total GDP to increases in Medicare and social security retirement benefits for middle-class older Americans. These increases in core health care and retirement benefits account for about 2.7% of total GDP. The neoclassical Sargent-Wallace thesis suggests that the central bank cannot finance incessant increases in core deficits with government bond issuance regardless of money supply growth. This money supply expansion would lead to inexorable inflationary pressures that defeat the dual mandate of both maximum employment and price stability in the suboptimal fiscal-monetary policy coordination. Inflation serves as a seigniorage tax that would in turn dampen real macroeconomic variates such as household consumption, capital investment, labor supply, and total economic output. In light of this ripple effect on sustainable financial market growth and prosperity, the law of inadvertent consequences counsels caution.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

President Trump picks David Malpass to run the World Bank to curb international multilateralism.

Rose Prince

2019-02-07 07:25:00 Thursday ET

President Trump picks David Malpass to run the World Bank to curb international multilateralism.

President Trump picks David Malpass to run the World Bank to curb international multilateralism. The Trump administration seems to prefer bilateral negotiat

+See More

Former New York Times team journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg delves into how we can change our lives for the better by mastering our habits from day to day.

Monica McNeil

2025-06-05 00:00:00 Thursday ET

Former New York Times team journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg delves into how we can change our lives for the better by mastering our habits from day to day.

Former New York Times team journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg describes, discusses, and delves into how we can change our respective lives

+See More

Larry Summers critiques that the Trump tax holiday for U.S. multinational corporations may cause inadvertent consequences.

Rose Prince

2017-01-17 12:42:00 Tuesday ET

Larry Summers critiques that the Trump tax holiday for U.S. multinational corporations may cause inadvertent consequences.

Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers critiques that the Trump administration's generous tax holiday for American multinational

+See More

Central banks in India, Thailand, and New Zealand lower their interest rates in response to the Federal Reserve rate cut.

Daisy Harvey

2019-09-11 09:31:00 Wednesday ET

Central banks in India, Thailand, and New Zealand lower their interest rates in response to the Federal Reserve rate cut.

Central banks in India, Thailand, and New Zealand lower their interest rates in a defensive response to the Federal Reserve recent rate cut. The central ban

+See More

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz proposes the primary economic priorities in lieu of neoliberalism.

Fiona Sydney

2019-06-29 17:30:00 Saturday ET

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz proposes the primary economic priorities in lieu of neoliberalism.

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz proposes the primary economic priorities in lieu of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism includes lower taxation, deregulation, socia

+See More

Basic income reforms can contribute to better health care, infrastructure, education, technology, and residential protection.

Daisy Harvey

2023-02-28 10:27:00 Tuesday ET

Basic income reforms can contribute to better health care, infrastructure, education, technology, and residential protection.

Basic income reforms can contribute to better health care, public infrastructure, education, technology, and residential protection. Philippe Van Parijs

+See More