How To Run a Federal Budget Surplus
From time to time, someone asks me: “What would you do about the Federal deficit?” I have this amazing answer: “End it immediately. Then run a surplus until it is paid off 100% – exactly as I would do with my own budget.”
Of course, this assumes that I was ever put in charge of the Federal government’s checkbook. That would be unlikely. It would also be revolutionary. I don’t believe in political revolutions. Revolutions make things worse. They require centralized power and violence – a point that Karl Marx’s collaborator, Frederick Engels, made clear in his 1874 essay, “On Authority.” He wrote: “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon – authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.” That is not my agenda.
When free market economist Ludwig von Mises was asked what he would do if he were put in charge of the economy, he replied with one word: “Resign.” That was the correct answer.
Harold
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