Aidan Regan: Public debt is not a moral failure, it is an investment in the future
The EU’s fiscal rules are not fit for purpose, and Europe must break out of the mindset of a balanced budget as the ultimate goal and utilise debt to its advantage
The biggest threat to the future of economic prosperity in Ireland and Europe is a return to the old fiscal orthodoxies. These conservative orthodoxies worry about inflation, call for public debt reduction, and demand balanced budgets.
Not only are they bad economic ideas – founded on poor and weak empirical evidence– they are dangerous economic ideas that lead to social destabilisation and political conflict. What Ireland and Europe need is a new fiscal consensus that ...