Sure, the US government currently borrows too much—and eventually we will have to bring down our debt-to-GDP ratio or face a serious crisis. Point taken.
But what strikes me as painfully ironic, even tragic, at this moment of continuing economic suffering is that federal government borrowing used to maintain or create jobs and thus revive demand (a big qualifier) should really be viewed as virtuous debt in ethical terms. Whereas the truly odious and corrosive forms of debt, the forms that blight lives and destroy livelihoods, are hardly critiqued at all by the high-minded deficit hawks within the chattering classes, let alone by any prominent American religious leaders.
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