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Vorsicht vor Amerikas steigenden Staatsschulden

Jun 23, 2021 Michael J. Boskin

STANFORD – Amerika muss seine ausufernden öffentlichen Schulden in den Griff bekommen. Aber US-Präsident Joe Biden scheint genau das Gegenteil tun zu wollen. Die Gefahren sind zu groß, um ignoriert zu werden.

Nach der Finanzkrise von 2008 nahm Präsident Barack Obama das größte Haushaltsdefizit aller Präsidenten seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Kauf (bereinigt um die automatischen Einkommens- und Kosteneffekte des Unternehmenszyklus). Sein Nachfolger Donald Trump hat ihn dann noch übertroffen.

Und Biden will dabei sogar noch weiter gehen. Obwohl die Bruttostaatsverschuldung der USA bereits bei einem Nachkriegsrekord von 107% des BIP liegt, steht das Land laut dem Haushalt der Biden-Regierung von 2022 nun vor dem mit Abstand größten Defizit, dass es in Friedenszeiten jemals gegeben hat.

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Michael J. Boskin

Writing for PS since 2009
82 Commentaries

Michael J. Boskin is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was Chairman of George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1993, and headed the so-called Boskin Commission, a congressional advisory body that highlighted errors in official US inflation estimates.

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Per Kurowski Jul 4, 2021

1988, when bank regulators decreed a 0% risk-weight for US public debt, its debt was $2.6 trillion, 50% GDP.
Now over $28 trillion, about 130% GDP and it still has a 0% risk weight.
When do you think its risk weight should increase to 0.01%?
http://unsustainabledebtsustainability.blogspot.com/2019/01/borrowing-capacity-is-asset-that-could.html
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David Wright Jul 2, 2021

If you look back at Mr. Boskin's past essays, you will see that he's been predicting disaster from every Democratic spending proposal, but not from Republican proposals. He's been wrong without exception. But what could you expect from an individual funded by the Hoover Institute, an extreme right propaganda producer since the 1950s.
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Ralph Musgrave Jun 26, 2021

I nearly died of laughter at Boskin's claim that "Historically, huge debt buildups have usually been followed by serious problems: sluggish growth, an uptick in inflation...". The UK debt / GDP ratio reached a record all time high of 250% in 1945 and steadily declined thereafter without any "sluggish growth" or "uptick inflation". Growth was good in the 1950s and 60s. Inflation was well under control in those decades and didn't get serious till the 1970s. But inflation was bad the World over in the 70s, so that presumably had nothing to do with the high 1945 debt.
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Fred Carstensen Jun 23, 2021

What would we expect from a "conservative" economist at Hoover? There is nothing here that really speaks to the core problem: America has disinvested in itself for forty years. The relevant question (as it would be for a major corporation) is whether these expenditures are investments that have a measurable rate of return. And, failing to make them, what is the competitive consequence?

America once led the world in human capital and infrastructure. No more. As President Biden has emphasized, we have cut our public R&D investments 70% as nearly all our competitors, from China to Europe, have ramped up their investments (they learned from the America 'model;' only America forgot its own lessons). On one critical measure, publicly funded university-based research, America now ranks 28th, behind Slovenia. Think about that.

Here is another one--in college graduation, America was #1 in 1993; it is now 20th and sinking lower almost annually. And the ranking is much worse on critical STEM graduates; some countries are near 50% while America is in the low 20s. On numerous metrics, American education underperforms; on worker training, America probably ranks dead last among advanced economies.

And let's look at infrastructure, where we were once #1 and are now #13--only because it doesn't wear out faster. But America has by far the largest "infrastructure deficit" of any advanced economy and pays a monumental annual "tax" of perhaps $700 billion because of our rotting infrastructure.

IF Biden's effort is to address this deep deficiencies (it is in large measure), then they are investments we must make to restore our economic dynamism and global competitiveness.

America decided to stop being great decades ago; America decided it no longer wanted to invest in itself to compete for global leadership. I gather Boskin is perfectly content to accept American decline.
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Emanuel Müller Jun 23, 2021

According to this set of presidents (Ob-Tru-Bi) debt is proportional to age. There is nothing troubling there as the older they get the more they ought to cherish and embellish the time they got left to live (last wish syndrome), while disregarding the long term consequences. If the US want to start decreasing there debt to gdp ratio they should set a maximum age for presidents at around 14-15 years old which will also help regarding climate change mitigating or even reversing measures.
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Ray McVay Jun 23, 2021

Hmm. Given the "debt bad" tone of this post I thought, "let's see how this guy must have ravaged the Republican tax fiasco of 2017". Yeah. He's been consistently wrong.
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