One way “The Northwood Idea” remains vibrant is by examining it in contrast to a variety of divergent philosophies. Where We Stand presents the viewpoint of a respected author on a given topic, alongside the perspective of a supporter of “The Northwood Idea.” It provides an opportunity to understand how our views differ from those of others, and why it is so vital that we continue to stand steadfast in the defense of liberty. Our first two essays provide perspective on the economic recovery and the national debt. Northwood University’s Dr. Tim Nash provides a response to Josh Bivens’s belief that the country should massively increase the federal debt. Content from the Economic Policy Institute is used with permission by the author.
Recovering fully from the coronavirus shock will require large increases in federal debt – and there’s nothing wrong with that
This essay first appeared July 16, 2020, on the Institute’s website.
Josh Bivens, Director of Research at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The economic shock of the coronavirus has been as sudden and jarring as any in U.S. history. Even if policymakers did nothing to respond to it, the income losses generated by the shock and the automatic expansion of some safety net programs would have led to large increases in the federal budget deficit. But the correct policy response to a shock like the coronavirus is to push deficits even larger than they would go on their own by providing expansions to relief and recovery efforts.
As always, there are some who seem more concerned about the rise in federal budget deficits and public debt than by the rise in joblessness and losses of income generated by the shock. But prioritizing the restraint of debt in coming years over the restoration of pre-crisis unemployment rates is bad economics.
We must prioritize the restoration of pre-crisis unemployment rates over restraint of debt. Anything else is bad economics.
Joblessness and income losses in the wake of the coronavirus shock really are large enough to spark an economic depression that lasts for years. A rising ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP), on the other hand, will be mostly meaningless to living standards in the next few years. If baseless fears about the effects of adding to debt block this effective response, then it will cause catastrophic economic losses and human misery. It is often said that economics is about making optimal decisions in the face of scarcity. But we need to be clear what is and what is not scarce in the U.S. economy. The federal government’s fiscal resources—its ability to spend more and finance the spending with either taxes or debt—are not scarce at all. What is scarce is private demand for spending more on goods and services. We need to use policy to address what is scarce—private spending—with what is not.
In this blog post I attempt to answer a few of the many questions I hear about the deficit and debt in light of the current economic crisis. We have created an ongoing web feature here to answer these questions and new questions that come up. A common root to the answers of many questions about the effects of deficits and debt concerns whether the economy’s growth is demand-constrained or whether it is supply-constrained (i.e., at full employment). Because this distinction is so important to so many questions about deficits and debt, we provide this background first.
What is the one thing I need to understand first about debt before I can gauge whether it is a threat?
A distinction that you need to make in pretty much every single question about the economic effects of public debt is whether the economy’s growth is constrained by demand or by supply.
When the economy has resources—particularly willing workers—that are unemployed simply because firms do not expect enough paying customers to justify putting more resources into producing goods and services, then the economy’s growth is constrained by demand. In such a demand-constrained economy, an increase in aggregate demand (i.e., spending by households, businesses, or governments) means more workers will be hired and more output will be produced. Anytime joblessness can be reduced and economic output can be increased simply by boosting aggregate demand, the economy is demand-constrained, and it is not at full employment.
When instead all the economy’s available resources—particularly willing workers—are already employed, a boost to aggregate demand does not cause output to increase or workers to be hired because all potential workers are already employed and hence no additional output can be created. In this case, aggregate demand is rising faster than the economy’s supply side (the labor force and capital stock) can deliver output to satisfy it, and this excess demand pushes up prices, leading to inflation.
When an economy is at a point where faster aggregate demand growth spills over into inflationary pressures rather than output growth, then the economy is supply-constrained. In such an economy, growth can only accelerate if each worker becomes more productive.
Additions to debt affect the economy very differently depending on whether growth is demand- or supply-constrained. As we’ll see below, the U.S. economy in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic is severely demand-constrained and in urgent need of a boost to demand.
Why are we so sure that debt-financed relief and recovery is the answer to the economic shock of the coronavirus?
The economic shock of the coronavirus and the public health measures undertaken to combat it are unique in their specifics, but not actually all that different from the general cause of all other recessions: They constitute a mammoth negative shock to aggregate demand. Basically, all at once, tens of millions of Americans stopped spending money on a whole range of economic outputs (restaurants, hotels, air travel, brick-and-mortar retail, etc.). Because one person’s spending is another person’s income, this type of shock almost inevitably leads to another spending pullback as, say, restaurant workers lose their income and cut back on spending even in sectors still open during the lockdown period.
The proper response to this sudden and mammoth negative shock to demand is straightforward, if daunting. First, maintain spending power (income and wealth) during the lockdown period by providing relief (unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, etc.) to those who have lost jobs and incomes. Second, foster a rapid recovery by boosting aggregate demand as public health indicators allow a phased “reopening” of economic activity. We have already provided some relief during the lockdown, but we need to provide more. If we don’t expand and extend this relief—if we allow this relief to run out while the economy remains profoundly damaged—tens of millions of families will run down savings and take on debt, making them much less likely to spend robustly once the economy returns to closer-to-normal. This depressed spending will drag on overall recovery.
Because the goal is to maintain spending during the lockdown and boost it during the recovery, we want to finance these relief and recovery measures with debt instead of taxes. Taxes reduce disposable income and spending in the short run (although tax increases for high-income households drag on spending less than tax increases for other households). Given the crucial importance of ending the coronavirus-driven recession as quickly as possible with overwhelming force, it is best to finance relief and recovery efforts with debt instead of taxes.
Absent huge relief and recovery measures, the economic future looks grim, with unemployment potentially peaking at 25% or more, and remaining in double digits for years. Further, the experience of the Great Recession shows us beyond dispute that trying too hard to rein in deficits and public spending while the economy remains weak (i.e., inappropriately contractionary fiscal policy) makes recovery slower and more painful than it has to be.
Does fast-growing debt ever pose a danger to economic growth?
It is certainly possible in theory for larger deficits and debt to harm economic growth. But the chain of economic effects that leads from higher deficits to slower economic growth only comes into play when the economy is supply-constrained (i.e., is at full employment). And we know when fast-rising debt is harming economic growth because this situation has a clear “data signature”—a noticeable rise in either interest rates or inflation.
Here’s how the chain of effects works.
If federal spending rises faster than taxes (i.e., if the federal budget deficit grows), economywide aggregate demand gets a boost. Federal spending boosts aggregate demand either directly, say, by spending to build a road, or indirectly, by transferring resources to households that use the funds (from, say, Social Security checks) to purchase goods and services. Taxes reduce aggregate demand, all else equal, but as long as spending grows more rapidly than taxes (budget deficits are increased), then large deficits spur aggregate demand.
If the deficit rises when the economy is supply-constrained, then the boost to aggregate demand translates into upward pressure on interest rates and inflation. Take a hotel, for example. If the hotel is already fully booked and then a boost to aggregate demand from an increase in the federal budget deficit sends even more customers looking to book rooms, the hotel owner might want to expand the hotel’s capacity. Tangible business investment like this often requires borrowing, so the hotel owner will try to borrow money in capital markets to finance this investment.
In a supply-constrained economy, if the increased public spending were financed by borrowing rather than raising taxes, the hotel owner would find that they are competing with the federal government for available savings to borrow to finance their desired new investment. This competition for savings would push up interest rates (the “price” of savings) and these higher interest rates would “crowd out” some private-sector investment projects that might otherwise have happened. For example, maybe the hotel owner decides not to build a new wing. Or other businesses likewise take a pass on potentially productivity-enhancing
investments.
Remember that in a supply-constrained economy, growth can only accelerate if each worker becomes more productive—i.e., if each worker has a greater store of capital (plants, equipment, and research and development spending) to use to increase the amount of income and production generated in the average hour of work. So rising debt in a supply-constrained economy can hurt economic growth in the long run if it pushes interest rates higher and this in turn reduces the pace of productivity-enhancing private-sector investment.
It is important to note that right now, and for the foreseeable future, we are in a demand-constrained economy, not a supply-constrained economy.
What this means is that for now and into the next year, there is next to no reason to think that higher debt used to finance relief and recovery will put enough upward pressure on interest rates or overall inflation to hamper economic growth. In summary, in a demand-constrained economy like the U.S. economy during the coronavirus pandemic, debt provides no countervailing drag on growth.
Massive Deficits Would Create a Long-Term Burden on Americans
Timothy Nash, Director of the McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
The Economic Policy Institute’s Working Economics blog by Josh Bivens was a thoughtful piece and presented an interesting case for additional government intervention in the economy to greatly mitigate the negative impact of the coronavirus on the U.S. economy. (Read the full blog at the end of this commentary.) Early in the article, Bivens submits, “Prioritizing the restraint of debt in the coming years over the restoration of pre-crisis unemployment rates is bad economics.” Mr. Bivens goes on to state, “it is often said that economics is about making optimal decisions in the face of scarcity…the federal government’s fiscal resources – its ability to spend more and finance the spending with either taxes or debt – are not scarce at all.” Finally, Bivens suggests, “absent huge relief and recovery measures, the economic future looks grim, with unemployment potentially peaking at 25% or more and remaining in double digits for years.”
At the time Mr. Bivens’s blog was published, I was writing an analysis of the economy that was published in The Detroit News on July 27, 2020. In it, I noted the Trump Administration’s regulatory reform and tax cuts had helped the U.S. economy, realizing three years of impressive economic growth with the lowest overall unemployment numbers in more than 60 years before the pandemic began. Regulatory reform was an important factor in preventing the dire unemployment rates many experts predicted for March of 2020. In fact, more than five months after Mr. Bivens’s blog was published, the U.S. unemployment rate is down to 6.7 percent with the pre-COVID unemployment rate in February 2020 having been among the best in U.S. history at 3.5 percent. We have much progress to make, yet most would say the economic recovery in employment in less than nine months has been nothing short of miraculous. As this is being written, the U.S. Congress is voting to pass a second stimulus package worth $900 billion, which some say is too little too late and others argue is not needed if correlation between the control of the coronavirus and business closures were better understood and taken into consideration.
The U.S. economy realized extraordinary GDP growth of 33.1 percent for the third quarter with a number of forecasters predicting double-digit growth for Q4. The U.S. economy has shown great strength and vibrancy in the second half 2020, something no economist predicted in March. However, deficit spending is out of control in the U.S. and should not be considered an unlimited resource. It took the United States 205 years – or until October of 1981 – to tally a total National debt $1 trillion. At the end of 1981, the total U.S. National debt was roughly 32.74 percent of U.S. GDP. By most estimates, the U.S. GDP for 2020 will decline to $19.8 trillion, down from roughly $21.42 trillion in 2019. If the U.S. National debt ends the year at an estimated $27.5 trillion, it means the National debt of the U.S. will stand at 139 percent of U.S. GDP. In layman’s terms, the debt is equivalent to more than $183,000 per U.S. citizen, or a debt per U.S. taxpayer of just over $220,000.
If the United States is to remain flexible and the dominant global economic power, it cannot do so with a national debt-to-GDP ratio approaching that of a third-world country.
