Justin Wolfers

Look, here's the simple logic of budgets.

What you want to do is stash some extra money away during good times so you can have a cash splash, help people out when times are bad.

If you thought times were really, really, really bad right now, you might think it's okay to have a deficit as big as we do.

if you thought that things were kind of okay, maybe we should be at roundabout neutral.

Um, we're miles from that.

And so what we have is a huge amount of money, government money supporting what at the moment is, you know, a B minus economy.

You know, when I say B minus, let me be clear to those of you who earned your degrees years or decades ago, a B minus wasn't a bad grade for some of us.

I've got kids in the American school system right now.

Um, everyone gets an A. It's just lovely.

Um,

When I say B minus, I mean, taking full account of American grade inflation and the fact that we're all special today.

I was never special.

You guys would all be straight A students these days.

Is that fair to say?

I don't know your age.

In your age, you might have called it the Gentleman's Sea.

But we called it the Gentleman's Sea because gentlemen got them.

Sure.

It was sort of like coasting and...

Yeah.