There has been a lot of hand-wringing lately due to the now three COVID-19 relief packages Congress has passed, which have triggered the printing of trillions of dollars. It’s a common sentiment that printing large amounts of money is a bad thing because it causes inflation. The government can never run out of money because it’s a currency issuer: It alone has the power to create dollars whenever it wants. I was skeptical when I heard the book’s premise that our government doesn’t actually have to balance its budget the way a household does. Kelton proposes a jobs program, advocates for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - and that we actually fund them in perpetuity - and explains how the government’s debt is actually the public’s surplus. While “The Deficit Myth” may seem like an economics book - and there were parts I had to reread to understand - this is actually the ultimate social work text as a current MSW student myself, I want to see this book on the curriculum of either our required policy or poverty and inequality courses. In “The Deficit Myth,” Stephanie Kelton explains how politicians toss the national debt from one side of the aisle to the other as a bargaining tool to advocate for cutting the essential programs and social supports that keep millions of Americans, including children, single women who are heads of their households and people with disabilities, out of absolute poverty.

Whatever your personal relationship with the federal government’s ever-increasing debt, that it is ballooning seemingly out of control actually does affect you … but not in the way you might think. The national debt is either a big scary number you believe is going to burden future generations if we don’t get our spending under control - or you don’t think about it very much.

The deficit myth stephanie kelton