Public Debt as a Form of Public Finance
Overcoming a Category Mistake and its Vices

The language of public debt is an ideological language, not a scientific language that clarifies the practice of public finance.

Richard E. Wagner (Author)

9781108735896, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 May 2019

75 pages, 4 b/w illus.
15.2 x 22.9 x 0.5 cm, 0.3 kg

Economists commit a category mistake when they treat democratic governments as indebted. Monarchs can be indebted, as can individuals. In contrast, democracies can't truly be indebted. They are financial intermediaries that form a bridge between what are often willing borrowers and forced lenders. The language of public debt is an ideological language that promotes politically expressed desires and is not a scientific language that clarifies the practice of public finance. Economists have gone astray by assuming that a government is just another person whose impulses toward prudent action will restrict recourse to public debt and induce rational political action.

1. Monarchies, democracies, and indebtedness
2. Political presuppositions and the theory of public finance
3. Taxes as prices – a useful but corruptible simile
4. From public pricing to fiscal policy – the Keynesian detour
5. Ecologies, not machines – analytical failures of Macro theories
6. Calculation and coordination within a political economy
7. Public debt, systemic lying, and the corruption of contract
8. From liberal to feudal democracy – Henry Maine reversed
9. Liberalism and Collectivism – an easily toxic mix.

Subject Areas: Public finance [KFFD], Economic theory & philosophy [KCA]