More than thirty years ago—in 1928, to be precise— H. G. Wells published a minor propagandistic novel called "The Open Conspiracy." Though I reviewed it at the time, I've forgotten now exactly what that open conspiracy was. But the description seems to fit with peculiar aptness something that is happening in the United States today. Our politicians, and most of our commentators, seem to be engaged in an open conspiracy not to pay the national debt—certainly not in dollars of the same purchasing power that were borrowed, and apparently not even in dollars of the present purchasing power.
There is of course no explicit avowal of this intention. The conspiracy is, rather, a conspiracy of silence. Very few of us even mention the problem of substantially reducing the national debt. The most that even the conservatives dare to ask for is that we stop piling up deficits so that we do not have to increase the debt and raise the debt ceiling still further. But anyone with a serious intention of eventually paying off the national debt would have to advocate overbalancing the budget, year in, year out, by a sizable annual sum.
Today one never sees nor hears a serious discussion of this problem. We see hundreds of articles and hear hundreds of speeches in which we are told how we can or should increase Federal expenditures or Federal tax revenues in proportion to the increase in our "gross national product." But I have yet to see an article that discusses how we could begin and increase an annual repayment of the debt in proportion to the increase in our gross national product*......Read more
There is of course no explicit avowal of this intention. The conspiracy is, rather, a conspiracy of silence. Very few of us even mention the problem of substantially reducing the national debt. The most that even the conservatives dare to ask for is that we stop piling up deficits so that we do not have to increase the debt and raise the debt ceiling still further. But anyone with a serious intention of eventually paying off the national debt would have to advocate overbalancing the budget, year in, year out, by a sizable annual sum.
Today one never sees nor hears a serious discussion of this problem. We see hundreds of articles and hear hundreds of speeches in which we are told how we can or should increase Federal expenditures or Federal tax revenues in proportion to the increase in our "gross national product." But I have yet to see an article that discusses how we could begin and increase an annual repayment of the debt in proportion to the increase in our gross national product*......Read more
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