When the COVID-19 pandemic eventually recedes, its global costs will become clearer. Paradoxically, that accounting begins with hardships that cannot be calculated: the suffering of so many families, communities, nations.
Those human losses are paramount. Yet they aren’t the pandemic’s only lethal legacies. National governments worldwide – ours in the forefront – have fought the pandemic and its side effects with borrowed money. Much of this new debt will fall not only on today’s children and grandchildren, but also on our descendants not yet born.
So we were concerned if not surprised by a Wall Street Journal news story headlined “Governments world-wide gorge on record debt, testing news limits.” The Journal reports: “The pandemic has pushed global government debt to the highest level since World War II, surpassing the world’s annual economic output … The U.S. government is on course for a budget deficit of $3 trillion for the second year in a row.”
We mention this as our government’s Internal Revenue Service delivers the first of several child tax credit payments to single parents earning up to $95,000, and to couples earning up to $170,000. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats say they intend to pass a sweeping social, educational and environmental package they price at $3.5 trillion. That’s not to be confused with previous COVID-19 relief spending, or a separate and not yet approved outlay on infrastructure.
A MILLION MILLIONS