To the editor,
Re: Debt is as out of control as virus, Letters, May 5.
The idea that current government spending is creating a “fiscal albatross” around the necks of Canadians is wrong.
Government creates the currency so is not constrained by overspending like you or I. It can always pay its bills. The late Paul Samuelson, Nobel Prize winner in economics, compared the fear of deficits and debt to old-time religion, one of whose functions was to scare people with myths designed to make them behave in a certain way. Our own notable Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out many years ago that “the study of money above all the other fields in economics is one in which complexity is used to disguise the truth or to evade the truth not to reveal it. The process by which banks (and government) create money is so simple the mind is repelled.”
More recently Stephanie Kelton’s book The Deficit Myth further debunks the idea that budgets must be balanced, with a lucid explanation of how money works and why we should not fear that our current debt will “destroy the lives of our children and grandchildren.”
Of course, there are limits to how much money should be created by government, and on what it should be spent, but in a democracy that should be the job of an informed electorate, not fear-mongering.
Liz Fox, Lantzville
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To the editor,
Re: Debt is as out of control as virus, Letters, May 5.
I think that this letter is misleading and full of conjecture. The letter writer says in short that with so many deadly variants flying around, the prime minister’s dream of herd immunity may be elusive as the balanced budget. So many politicians are against the wall and trying to do the best they can while so many virus virologists are still trying to figure it out in the mix with so many opportunistic actors and players in the background.
I would never vote for the Liberal party as I’m too old-fashioned and I come with a belief in fiscal responsibility. It is a sin to pass on debt to our future generations and that supposed debt is illegitimate morally. The biggest problem is universities too often teach morality is only subjective and you are now free to make up your own rules according to your self-interest.
Holden Southward, Nanaimo
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