Paul Samuelson: "There must be discipline in the allocation of resources or you will have anarchistic chaos and inefficiency. And one of the functions of old fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that the long-run civilized life requires."
Lars P. Syll's Blog
Paul Samuelson on the necessity of scaring people with the balanced budget myth
Lars P. Syll
This was quoted by Randy Wray in April 2010 in Paul Samuelson On Deficit Myths: Time To Drop That Old-Time Religion. Bears repeating on a regular basis. Same applies to many other economics myths such as those debunked in Steve Keen's Debunking Economics and Warren Mosler's The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy.
1 comment:
It's the truth that sets one free (cf. John 8:31-33 ), not lies. In fact, those who practice lying will end up in the Lake of Fire (cf. Revelation 21:8).
But if Samuelson is afraid that the truth will lead to too much "free spending" then the solution is implied from Matthew 22:16-22 - coexisting government and (genuine) private money supplies. Then if government overspent relative to taxation and real economic growth then only government and its payees would suffer the resulting price inflation in fiat. Those using private currencies (acceptable for private debts only) would actually benefit (since taxes would be cheaper in real terms) if the government created too much fiat.
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