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I think it is a result of the merge of articles on Balance and Deficit. The article is about budget balance, but it starts off talking about deficits and debt, and only after that talks about primary balance and sectoral balances. THEN there is an overview. Followed by more on deficits.
Unless anyone objects I propose to rearrange the sections, start with Overview, then Balances in general, then deficits. Maybe insert something on Surpluses before that. Prosopon ( talk) 02:01, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
In the real world inflation, an increase in the general level of prices, goes hand in hand with high utilization and low unemployment and dozens of other combinations of causes. So governments, or their central banks which can typically move much faster, must lean against the wind to prevent overly cyclical booms and busts. One part, among many, of this "taming of the business cycle" is what is now called quantitative easing and used to be called open market operations. Quantitative easing eighty years ago in the time of Hayek and Keynes meant open market purchases that flowed newly created money into the commercial banks to become loanable funds to encourage the expansion of jobs and production in the real economy; today quantitative easing as practiced by the Federal Reserve primarily flows money abroad and into the financial markets such that little, if any, ever reaches the real economy and that which does may not impact the real economy due to higher reserve requirements and loan requirements being imposed by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.
I agree, this article needs to be updated to include a discussion of deficits and surpluses in a sovereign fiat currency issuing nation such as the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
204.76.196.12 (
talk) 17:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC) (The preceding statement is naive and meaningless)
This entire article and the fiscal, deficit, central bank, money section of Wikipedia is grossly inaccurate and misleading about the role and impact of the various aspects of fiscal policies. It merely repeats the inaccurate common knowledge purveyed by those who have never studied macroeconomics or, if they did, studied it on the naive assumption that the theories and policies (Hayek and Keynes) that applied to the economy of the UK of eighty years ago still apply to the economy and institutions of the US today. Wikipedia should consider assembling a small group of trained macroeconomists with appropriate degrees and real world experience in business and commercial banking. And they would hopefully be worldly men and women familiar with the work of John Lindauer and the late George Stigler instead of merely idea-less "quants" trying to prove they are "scientists" by using questionable data to test the theories and policy suggestions of Hayek and Keynes for the US economy as if today on the naive premise that it is similar to the economic realities and institutions of the UK of eighty years ago that Hayek and Keynes theorized about. Alternately Wikipedia could just lift the appropriate sections from Lindauer's "The General Theories of Inflation, Unemployment, and Government Deficits." His students recently had it reissued because it seems he was right on the mark as to what would and would not work to eliminate inflation and unemployment in today's US economy under today's institutions and structures.
Here's a citation for the FY 2004 US budget deficit figure: US Treasury Department FY 2004 Budget Charts (it's a pdf file). See the deficit figure under the 2004 Actual column on page six. - Walkiped 14:28, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC) -- Here's a good set of tables on historical budget DaTa.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/pdf/hist.pdf
Ellsworth 22:08, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible for someone (preferably an economist) to post what a deficit does to an economy/what the general consequences of a prolonged deficit is?
Why this page contain information about United States?
Onesimplehuman 17:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC) I am not an economist, however, I am currently in an ECON class for my masters. During my research on "fiscal consolidation", I have been looking for a good defition on "fiscal deficit". My search lead me here. To me, the current defition on this site lacks the differences between budget and trade deficits. These are both very important topics in econ. There has to be an economist out there who would be willing to correct these.
I read this field. I could understand some thing about goverment deficits and debts. But I did not know why US can spend about 300 USD billion for strenghtenning its army instead of using one partition of this money for society actions maybe it is better than now. For example using its money to help poor people that they can work and earn money for their live by themselt in poorest or developing nations all over the world. there maybe is me in.
Thank you.
How does it feel in your little simplistic world? When you hit 18 your limited mental capacity will cancel out my vote, that makes me sad.
Yea, this isn't very clear yet. I came here trying to figure out how deficits affect GDP in the short and long run. The chart about the deficit as a plus or minus percentage sign doesn't specify what it's a percentage of either. I assume it's a change over a previous year, it would be nice if that was specified though?
71.172.174.19 06:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
The percentage is the surplus or deficit. +4% means a budget surplus of 4% whereas -25% means a budget deficit of 25% 64.230.75.40 18:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
What in the world does that mean? I came across it in the third paragraph of this article. It sounds totally incoherent. Maybe it's just me, but I can't figure it out. 190.41.20.44 23:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Appears to have been removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.200 ( talk) 04:00, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
"Increased levels of economic activity generally lead to higher tax revenues". It seems like that ought to have "ceteris paribus" after it. After all, as studies of the Laffer curve have shown, increased ecnomic activity,if caused by lowering of taxes, will not increase revenue. 74.219.149.67 ( talk) 18:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
"Monetizing debts, however, can cause rapid inflation (but does not necessarily do so)" surely if it "does not necessrily do so" then it cannot be said to "cause" rapid inflation. I think the sentence needs a bit of editing, and maybe a bit more thought. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.233.172 ( talk) 13:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Yes, it needs editing because monetizing debts does not necessarily cause rapid or any other inflation.
...so typical of this site. I’m trying to find out what “budget deficit” means. I enter this common term in the search field and what do I find? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.168.116.92 ( talk) 18:03, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
The first section "Primary deficit, total deficit, and debt" needs to clarify right up front that "deficit" is a rate of money per unit time, not an absolute amount of money. For example, it makes no sense to say (as Gwen Ifill did on tonight's PBS NewsHour) taht Michigan's deficit is $2 billion, because that makes no sense, it's the wrong units. Michigan's deficit would be $2 billion *per*year*, or Michigan's *yearly* deficit would be $2 billion.
This is analagous to the distinction between distance and speed. For example, the speed of light isn't one foot, or 186000 miles, it's (appx.) one foot per nanosecond, or (appx.) 186000 miles per second. Or a light-nanosecond is (appx.) one foot.
Note that GNP (Gross National Product), GDP (Gross Domestic Product), are likewise money per unit time. Thus deficit can be expressed as a percentage of GNP or GDP since they are in the same units.
198.144.192.45 ( talk) 06:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)
198.144.192.45 ( talk) 06:39, 4 January 2011 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)
In Economics, the distinction you're trying to make here is the distinction between stock and flow amounts. Benuel ( talk) 14:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
In the chapter "Primary deficit, total deficit, and debt" there are simple equations that connect deficit and debt. It seems they are too simple. If you look e.g. at Eurostat document "Provision of deficit and debt data for 2010 - first notification" http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-26042011-AP/EN/2-26042011-AP-EN.PDF it is easy to see that the simple equation doesn't hold. Something missing? I cannot explain. Sivullinen ( talk) 14:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
I would like to move this article to Government budget balance. GB deficit is just one way the balance can turn out, thus negative. The article could just as well be termed GB surplus, just that this is a bit less common in reality. What this article is actually talking about is the GB balance.
This misnomer - as I would call it - calls then for awkward definitions such as "negative deficit is a positive surplus" or "negative surplus is a positive deficit". After all, the term GB surplus must be mentioned and explained as well, as it is equivalent simply being its inverse. This approach is far from elegant. Conversely, starting with the term balance defined as revenues minus spending, a deficit is simply a negative balance and a surplus a positive balance. This is generally understood with common language and without scratching heads.
Currently, Government budget balance redirects to Government budget, which makes absolutely no sense. The latter article is focused on the budget as such (how the bill is passed, its constituents, etc) but not at all how revenues and expenses balance. So I think this redirect (for GB balance) should at least change to here, if we do not agree on even moving the present article to GB balance.
Let me know what you think. Tomeasy T C 00:07, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
As part of turning the Government budget balance article into an overall article, covering all sorts of concepts and terms related to the Government budget balance, I today filed a proposal also to completely merge the current sub-articles in this field into the main article. The sub-articles are IMHO so closely related to the main article, that they can easily be integrated into the main article. In fact they are already partly covered. And currently the sub-articles only have a "stub size", which in my opinion doesnt justify they should be covered by seperate spinoff articles. Please let me know if you agree/disagree? The 4 subarticles I propose to merge into the "Government budget balance" main article are:
Danish Expert ( talk) 13:09, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
![]() | The contents of the Primary balance (statistical term) page were merged into Government budget balance on 20 June 2016. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
If you have a surplus then you can lend it out and make interest. Lending businesses do not want government to have a surplus so that government can not compete with them. In addition if government has a surplus it will have no need to borrow money from them. Even though a government surplus would allow individuals and corporations to pay lower taxes many business based political groups would rather have the income from deficit spending by lending government money on which they can collect interest while complaining about high taxes. The ideal position for government and citizens however is a government surplus these groups want to deny. -- Budgetstudiesforum ( talk) 10:00, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Ricardian equivalence is based on a UK member of parliment. Which is very UK based. It's economic merits are questionable. It's fiscal policy merits are small an only specific to speculation of UK fiscal policy. If anything on a minor basis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.200 ( talk) 04:08, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. Community Tech bot ( talk) 05:54, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I think it is a result of the merge of articles on Balance and Deficit. The article is about budget balance, but it starts off talking about deficits and debt, and only after that talks about primary balance and sectoral balances. THEN there is an overview. Followed by more on deficits.
Unless anyone objects I propose to rearrange the sections, start with Overview, then Balances in general, then deficits. Maybe insert something on Surpluses before that. Prosopon ( talk) 02:01, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
In the real world inflation, an increase in the general level of prices, goes hand in hand with high utilization and low unemployment and dozens of other combinations of causes. So governments, or their central banks which can typically move much faster, must lean against the wind to prevent overly cyclical booms and busts. One part, among many, of this "taming of the business cycle" is what is now called quantitative easing and used to be called open market operations. Quantitative easing eighty years ago in the time of Hayek and Keynes meant open market purchases that flowed newly created money into the commercial banks to become loanable funds to encourage the expansion of jobs and production in the real economy; today quantitative easing as practiced by the Federal Reserve primarily flows money abroad and into the financial markets such that little, if any, ever reaches the real economy and that which does may not impact the real economy due to higher reserve requirements and loan requirements being imposed by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.
I agree, this article needs to be updated to include a discussion of deficits and surpluses in a sovereign fiat currency issuing nation such as the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
204.76.196.12 (
talk) 17:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC) (The preceding statement is naive and meaningless)
This entire article and the fiscal, deficit, central bank, money section of Wikipedia is grossly inaccurate and misleading about the role and impact of the various aspects of fiscal policies. It merely repeats the inaccurate common knowledge purveyed by those who have never studied macroeconomics or, if they did, studied it on the naive assumption that the theories and policies (Hayek and Keynes) that applied to the economy of the UK of eighty years ago still apply to the economy and institutions of the US today. Wikipedia should consider assembling a small group of trained macroeconomists with appropriate degrees and real world experience in business and commercial banking. And they would hopefully be worldly men and women familiar with the work of John Lindauer and the late George Stigler instead of merely idea-less "quants" trying to prove they are "scientists" by using questionable data to test the theories and policy suggestions of Hayek and Keynes for the US economy as if today on the naive premise that it is similar to the economic realities and institutions of the UK of eighty years ago that Hayek and Keynes theorized about. Alternately Wikipedia could just lift the appropriate sections from Lindauer's "The General Theories of Inflation, Unemployment, and Government Deficits." His students recently had it reissued because it seems he was right on the mark as to what would and would not work to eliminate inflation and unemployment in today's US economy under today's institutions and structures.
Here's a citation for the FY 2004 US budget deficit figure: US Treasury Department FY 2004 Budget Charts (it's a pdf file). See the deficit figure under the 2004 Actual column on page six. - Walkiped 14:28, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC) -- Here's a good set of tables on historical budget DaTa.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/pdf/hist.pdf
Ellsworth 22:08, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible for someone (preferably an economist) to post what a deficit does to an economy/what the general consequences of a prolonged deficit is?
Why this page contain information about United States?
Onesimplehuman 17:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC) I am not an economist, however, I am currently in an ECON class for my masters. During my research on "fiscal consolidation", I have been looking for a good defition on "fiscal deficit". My search lead me here. To me, the current defition on this site lacks the differences between budget and trade deficits. These are both very important topics in econ. There has to be an economist out there who would be willing to correct these.
I read this field. I could understand some thing about goverment deficits and debts. But I did not know why US can spend about 300 USD billion for strenghtenning its army instead of using one partition of this money for society actions maybe it is better than now. For example using its money to help poor people that they can work and earn money for their live by themselt in poorest or developing nations all over the world. there maybe is me in.
Thank you.
How does it feel in your little simplistic world? When you hit 18 your limited mental capacity will cancel out my vote, that makes me sad.
Yea, this isn't very clear yet. I came here trying to figure out how deficits affect GDP in the short and long run. The chart about the deficit as a plus or minus percentage sign doesn't specify what it's a percentage of either. I assume it's a change over a previous year, it would be nice if that was specified though?
71.172.174.19 06:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
The percentage is the surplus or deficit. +4% means a budget surplus of 4% whereas -25% means a budget deficit of 25% 64.230.75.40 18:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
What in the world does that mean? I came across it in the third paragraph of this article. It sounds totally incoherent. Maybe it's just me, but I can't figure it out. 190.41.20.44 23:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Appears to have been removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.200 ( talk) 04:00, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
"Increased levels of economic activity generally lead to higher tax revenues". It seems like that ought to have "ceteris paribus" after it. After all, as studies of the Laffer curve have shown, increased ecnomic activity,if caused by lowering of taxes, will not increase revenue. 74.219.149.67 ( talk) 18:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
"Monetizing debts, however, can cause rapid inflation (but does not necessarily do so)" surely if it "does not necessrily do so" then it cannot be said to "cause" rapid inflation. I think the sentence needs a bit of editing, and maybe a bit more thought. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.233.172 ( talk) 13:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Yes, it needs editing because monetizing debts does not necessarily cause rapid or any other inflation.
...so typical of this site. I’m trying to find out what “budget deficit” means. I enter this common term in the search field and what do I find? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.168.116.92 ( talk) 18:03, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
The first section "Primary deficit, total deficit, and debt" needs to clarify right up front that "deficit" is a rate of money per unit time, not an absolute amount of money. For example, it makes no sense to say (as Gwen Ifill did on tonight's PBS NewsHour) taht Michigan's deficit is $2 billion, because that makes no sense, it's the wrong units. Michigan's deficit would be $2 billion *per*year*, or Michigan's *yearly* deficit would be $2 billion.
This is analagous to the distinction between distance and speed. For example, the speed of light isn't one foot, or 186000 miles, it's (appx.) one foot per nanosecond, or (appx.) 186000 miles per second. Or a light-nanosecond is (appx.) one foot.
Note that GNP (Gross National Product), GDP (Gross Domestic Product), are likewise money per unit time. Thus deficit can be expressed as a percentage of GNP or GDP since they are in the same units.
198.144.192.45 ( talk) 06:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)
198.144.192.45 ( talk) 06:39, 4 January 2011 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)
In Economics, the distinction you're trying to make here is the distinction between stock and flow amounts. Benuel ( talk) 14:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
In the chapter "Primary deficit, total deficit, and debt" there are simple equations that connect deficit and debt. It seems they are too simple. If you look e.g. at Eurostat document "Provision of deficit and debt data for 2010 - first notification" http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-26042011-AP/EN/2-26042011-AP-EN.PDF it is easy to see that the simple equation doesn't hold. Something missing? I cannot explain. Sivullinen ( talk) 14:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
I would like to move this article to Government budget balance. GB deficit is just one way the balance can turn out, thus negative. The article could just as well be termed GB surplus, just that this is a bit less common in reality. What this article is actually talking about is the GB balance.
This misnomer - as I would call it - calls then for awkward definitions such as "negative deficit is a positive surplus" or "negative surplus is a positive deficit". After all, the term GB surplus must be mentioned and explained as well, as it is equivalent simply being its inverse. This approach is far from elegant. Conversely, starting with the term balance defined as revenues minus spending, a deficit is simply a negative balance and a surplus a positive balance. This is generally understood with common language and without scratching heads.
Currently, Government budget balance redirects to Government budget, which makes absolutely no sense. The latter article is focused on the budget as such (how the bill is passed, its constituents, etc) but not at all how revenues and expenses balance. So I think this redirect (for GB balance) should at least change to here, if we do not agree on even moving the present article to GB balance.
Let me know what you think. Tomeasy T C 00:07, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
As part of turning the Government budget balance article into an overall article, covering all sorts of concepts and terms related to the Government budget balance, I today filed a proposal also to completely merge the current sub-articles in this field into the main article. The sub-articles are IMHO so closely related to the main article, that they can easily be integrated into the main article. In fact they are already partly covered. And currently the sub-articles only have a "stub size", which in my opinion doesnt justify they should be covered by seperate spinoff articles. Please let me know if you agree/disagree? The 4 subarticles I propose to merge into the "Government budget balance" main article are:
Danish Expert ( talk) 13:09, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
![]() | The contents of the Primary balance (statistical term) page were merged into Government budget balance on 20 June 2016. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
If you have a surplus then you can lend it out and make interest. Lending businesses do not want government to have a surplus so that government can not compete with them. In addition if government has a surplus it will have no need to borrow money from them. Even though a government surplus would allow individuals and corporations to pay lower taxes many business based political groups would rather have the income from deficit spending by lending government money on which they can collect interest while complaining about high taxes. The ideal position for government and citizens however is a government surplus these groups want to deny. -- Budgetstudiesforum ( talk) 10:00, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Ricardian equivalence is based on a UK member of parliment. Which is very UK based. It's economic merits are questionable. It's fiscal policy merits are small an only specific to speculation of UK fiscal policy. If anything on a minor basis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.200 ( talk) 04:08, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. Community Tech bot ( talk) 05:54, 25 July 2018 (UTC)