Good scholars, when faced with evidence they did not have previously, often should and sometimes do change their minds — publicly.
That’s the case with GMU economics professor Don Boudreaux, who, in this AIER article, explains why he no longer thinks that the “starve the beast” approach to the governmental Leviathan works.
He writes, “It’s now obvious to me that as long as the government can finance its current expenditures with borrowed funds, a policy of refusing to allow taxes to be raised in order to meet expenditures doesn’t starve the beast; that policy engorges the beast.”
Why? In short, trying to reduce taxes to slow or stop the growth of government just leads the politicians to borrow more.
Boudreaux continues,
For anyone who prefers to keep government small and limited, this case for a balanced-budget rule is very strong even if we could be 100 percent assured that no amount of deficit financing would ever lead to a fiscal crisis, or lead even to higher rates of interest. Yet in fact no such assurance is possible even in the best of all possible circumstances, and less so when today’s taxpayers-citizens can live at the partial expense of tomorrow’s taxpayers-citizens. If Sam can easily borrow from Sarah and then shift onto Tom the obligation to repay the debt, Sam will – you can bet on it – spend and borrow beyond his means to repay.
My own view is that we won’t be able to stop the growth of government as long as a large percentage of the population thinks that it’s appropriate to use the power of the state to get what they want.