Wit & Attitude Quote by William Vickrey

Calling budget-balancing "insane" is a deliberate slap at a moral reflex that passes for economics: the idea that a government should run like a prudent household, tightening its belt when times are tough. Vickrey, a Nobel-winning economist who taught for decades, is speaking from a mid-century Keynesian tradition that treats public finance as a tool for stabilizing a volatile economy, not a virtue contest. His word choice matters. "Insane" isn’t an insult aimed at taxpayers; it’s aimed at the ritual itself, the near-religious insistence that the ledger must always be neat even when unemployment is high and private demand is collapsing.

The subtext is that balancing the budget is often the wrong target because it confuses means with ends. A deficit can be a symptom of recession and an automatic stabilizer, not a failure of character. Trying to erase it on schedule can turn a downturn into a prolonged slump: spending cuts and tax hikes yank demand out of an already weak economy, producing the perversity of austerity politics - the cure that deepens the disease. Vickrey’s provocation also exposes a rhetorical asymmetry: "responsibility" gets defined as restraint, while the responsibility to maintain jobs, output, and long-run capacity is treated as optional.

Contextually, Vickrey is pushing back against recurring U.S. deficit panics (from postwar debates to late-20th-century budget showdowns) where balanced-budget talk becomes a political cudgel. His intent is to reframe sanity: not balanced books at any cost, but policies that keep the economy functioning.