Robert Reich: Public Debt and Economic Growth
Public Debt and Economic Growth
Monday, April 29, 2013
In the election of 1952 my father voted for Dwight Eisenhower. When I asked him why he explained that FDRs debt was still burdening the economy and that I and my children and my grandchildren would be paying it down for as long as we lived.
I was only six years old and had no idea what a debt was, let alone FDRs. But I had nightmares about it for weeks.
Yet as the years went by my father stopped talking about FDRs debt, and since I was old enough to know something about economics I never worried about it. My children have never once mentioned FDRs debt. My four-year-old grandchild hasnt uttered a single word about it.
By the end of World War II, the national debt was 120 percent of the entire economy. But by the mid-1950s, it was half that. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://robertreich.org/post/49186529038