Politicians’ lack of concern stems from the fact that taxpayers, families, and businesses will bear the brunt of the next crisis.

Governments cannot issue all the debt they need to finance their deficit spending. They have three clear limits:

• The economic limit: Rising public deficits and debt cease to function as purported tools to stimulate economic growth, instead becoming a hindrance to productivity and economic development. Despite this completely false theory, most governments continue to portray themselves as engines of growth. Today, this is more evident than ever before. In the United States, every new dollar of debt brings less than 60 cents of nominal GDP growth. In France, the situation is particularly alarming, as a 6% GDP deficit results in a stagnant economy.
• The fiscal limit: Rising taxes generate lower-than-expected receipts, and debt continues to rise. Keynesianism believes in government as an engine of growth when it is a burden that does not create wealth and only consumes what has been created by the private sector. When taxes become confiscatory, tax receipts fail to rise, and debt soars regardless.
• The inflationary limit: more currency printing and government spending creates persistent annualised inflation, making citizens poorer and the real economy weaker.