Atheist Ethicist: Debt and Fiscal Policy

Atheist Ethicist: Debt and Fiscal Policy

I don't feel like responding to this directly since I am not in strong agreement or disagreement. What I thought is that I should give my thoughts on the subject of whether or not government debt constitutes theft from future generations.

I don't think that it really is theft any more than any other kind of government spending. The future generations are not compelled to live in this country. Given that this is the case, it seems that they are not being compelled to pay taxes in order to pay off the debt any more than in any other situation in which people are asked to pay taxes in return for living in the country. You either regard it as legitimate to collect taxes or you don't.

It is possible to look at the collection of taxes as being inherently immoral. I have taken this position in the past, but in this I am clearly in the minority. I believe it would be better to hold the government to the same moral and ethical standards that other people are held to in this regard. Just as it is wrong for me to forcibly deprive my neighbor of resources so as to fund whatever charitable activity I should choose to support, the government should rely on voluntary means to fund its activities. If it finds that it cannot do so after giving this the best effort that it can, it should apologize to the people for collecting taxes and try to minimize the damage.

If we view taxes as being inherently immoral, then how should we view debt. Investors have voluntarily elected to purchase bonds. That is they have lent money to the government. They do so because they expect the government to be able to pay off that debt. Now if the government should fail to pay off that debt, that is a moral issue, but it is different from theft. What we need to examine here is why they believed that the government would be able to pay off the debt. I would say that people generally lend money to the government with the expectation that the government will collect taxes in the future in order to pay off the debt. If the government is not justified in collecting taxes, then they are expecting that the government will do something immoral in the future in order to be able to pay off the debt.

This would be the same situation as if you lent money to a professional thief in the expectation that after a big heist that he would be able to pay back the debt. The first moral obligation of the thief is to stop stealing money. His next obligation is to pay restitution to his victims. Paying back his creditors is a lower priority than this. They are not morally justified in expecting him to continue his theft. His victims are justified in expecting him to stop robbing them and to compensate them for the injury that he has inflicted on them.

Now if, like most people, you believe instead that the government is justified in collecting taxes, then it is perfectly moral for the government to borrow money. I find it odd that some people have a moral problem with this on the basis that the government would be robbing future generations. Taking money from one generation and giving it to another is something that the government openly does by maintaining a Social Security system, and that enjoys overwhelming, widespread support.

People support taxes on the basis that they are part of a social contract. Agreement to this contract is supposedly given by voluntarily continuing to live here. So long as the government doesn't force future generations to live here against their will, incurring debt does nothing to change the validity of this argument.