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

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggests that 5G remains a U.S. top technology priority in light of the Sprint-T-Mobile telecom merger.

Amy Hamilton

2018-05-04 06:29:00 Friday ET

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggests that 5G remains a U.S. top technology priority in light of the Sprint-T-Mobile telecom merger.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross suggests that 5G remains a U.S. top technology priority in light of the telecom merger proposal between Sprint and T-Mobile a

+See More

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios.

Fiona Sydney

2020-09-03 10:26:00 Thursday ET

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios.

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios. Christopher Worley, Thomas Willi

+See More

Steven Shavell presents his economic analysis of law in terms of the economic outcomes of both legal doctrines and institutions.

Jacob Miramar

2023-08-21 12:25:00 Monday ET

Steven Shavell presents his economic analysis of law in terms of the economic outcomes of both legal doctrines and institutions.

Steven Shavell presents his economic analysis of law in terms of the economic outcomes of both legal doctrines and institutions. Steven Shavell (2004)

+See More

Foreign majority owners offer Sprint and T-Mobile to stop using HuaWei critical technologies after the U.S. telecom merger.

Daphne Basel

2018-12-20 13:40:00 Thursday ET

Foreign majority owners offer Sprint and T-Mobile to stop using HuaWei critical technologies after the U.S. telecom merger.

T-Mobile and Sprint indicate that the U.S. is likely to approve their merger plan as they take the offer from foreign owners to stop using HuaWei telecom te

+See More

What are the mainstream legal origins of President Trump's new tariff policies?

Amy Hamilton

2025-06-13 08:23:00 Friday ET

What are the mainstream legal origins of President Trump's new tariff policies?

What are the mainstream legal origins of President Trump’s new tariff policies? We delve into the mainstream legal origins of President Trump&rsquo

+See More

President Trump meets Chinese President Xi for better economic reforms.

Rose Prince

2017-03-21 09:37:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump meets Chinese President Xi for better economic reforms.

Trump and Xi meet in the most important summit on earth this year. Trump has promised to retaliate against China's currency misalignment, steel trade

+See More