Collective Conscious

Deficits, both at the fed­eral and state lev­els, are not some­thing to be afraid of. In fact, they are evi­dence that our sys­tem of social insur­ance is work­ing. Auto­matic sta­bi­liz­ers include wel­fare pro­grams such as food stamps, COBRA insur­ance, and unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, and they’re designed to pro­tect cit­i­zens from the worst blows of reces­sions such as this one. Unfor­tu­nately, all those things become polit­i­cally unpop­u­lar when they mat­ter most (right now), which is why they need to be put into place in advance. Let’s not get let our deficit wor­ries get out of control.

Update: In the “Mak­ing Things Worse” col­umn, you can always count on Repub­li­cans.