Krugman Puts the Deficit in Perspective

From his NY Times blog, here is a posting by Paul Krugman that shows that all the doom-and-gloom about big deficits and growing debt are just a lot of hot air:

When I was on This Week yesterday, George Will tried his hand at the debt scare thing, saying that we’re in terrible shape because by 2019 the interest on the debt will be SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. (That should be read in the voice of Dr. Evil). I get that a lot — people who talk about the big numbers which are supposed to imply that things are terrible, impossible, we’re doomed, etc.
The point, of course, is that everything about the United States is big. So you have to interpret numbers accordingly. As the graphic above shows — it’s taken from an article that managed to maintain a grim tone while reporting numbers that actually weren’t all that grim — what we’re talking about is a debt-service burden roughly comparable to that under the first President Bush. How many of the people now warning about the impossible burden of currently projected debt were issuing similar warnings back in 1992? Not many, I’d guess.

And bear in mind my point about causes of deficits: the deficits of the Reagan-Bush years were essentially gratuitous, the result of a desire to cut taxes while increasing military spending, rather than a response to a temporary emergency. So that debt burden should have been more worrying than what we’re facing now.

The media doesn't take up the challenge and point out that the doom-and-gloomsters on debt are hypocrites. The media likes to push this story like they push all the doom-and-gloom stories meant to scare people into accepting lower living standards and allowing the elites to keep their choke hold on the economy and power. Tragic.