New York Times, April 28, 2020
By Paul Krugman. nytdirect@nytimes.com
(在這篇文章裡,Krugman再次挑戰「政府舉債是債留子孫」的說法,並指出美國保守派最不能容忍他挑戰這點,雖說共和黨政府一再大幅減富人稅,其實也是大幅增加政府赤字及債務,但這樣的舉債卻不會受到保守派的反對。顯然這是很政治性的議題。
台灣超額儲蓄極為龐大,然而「合宜的」基礎建設卻甚為滯後,例如台北捷運的建設因受制於預算而進展緩慢,同時,政府舉債受到高度限制,這意味著保守的看法在阻礙我們將自身龐大的儲蓄,運用到需要的建設上。)
I get a lot of hate mail; in fact, I worry if a column doesn’t generate a big backlash, because it suggests that I may have been off my game. But it’s interesting to see what generates the most hate. In general, writing “Donald Trump is a terrible person” gets a sort of collective shrug; who isn’t saying that these days? The real vitriol tends to come over monetary and fiscal policy.
In particular, I don’t think anything I’ve written has angered as many people as my declaration five years ago that debt is money we owe to ourselves — a point I naïvely imagined would be self-evident once people thought about it. But it turns out that challenging the notion that government borrowing imposes a burden on our children and grandchildren deeply offends many people, even though that notion makes very little sense. More »