Dealing with Long-Term Deficits

Martin Feldstein

American Economic Review, 2016, vol. 106, issue 5, 35-38

Abstract: The United States faces a rising future ratio of debt to GDP that, if allowed to continue, would have serious adverse consequences for the American economy. Fortunately, policy changes can increase the size of the future GDP and shrink the future budget deficits. Relatively small reductions in future annual deficits could reverse the increasing ratio of national debt to GDP. Those annual deficit reductions could be best achieved by slowing the growth of Social Security and Medicare and by raising revenue by limiting tax expenditures or increasing the tax on gasoline.

JEL-codes: E23 E62 H50 H62 H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161004 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10605/P2016_1004_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:5:p:35-38

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().