Is the Debt War Over? (Dispatches from Canada's Fiscal Frontline)

In the 1990s most Canadian governments vanquished their deficits, but almost all left large debts in place. Winning the deficit war gave governments back their policy flexibility - but what are the consequences of the large debts that remain? In Is the Debt War Over? eight of the country's best economists answer the following questions: How big are our debts? Where did they come from? What did we get in exchange for these debts? Do the debts matter? How much do they disrupt the capital markets? What are the economic effects of the taxes that have to be raised in order to pay interest on our debts? How should we manage our debts? Do we need new debt-reduction laws? And, finally, how aggressively should we reduce our debts?

The volume's sub-text is the question "Are the baby boomers deadbeats?" Though economists specialize in studying the "efficiency effects" of public policy - how much policy raises or lowers well-being - much of the discussion in "Is the Debt War Over?" revolves around questions of fairness. When is one generation entitled to finance its public spending by borrowing against future generations' income? Many of the baby-boomer contributors to this book argue that their parents and grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and won the Second World War, were perfectly justified in building up a large national debt that had to be paid down over the first quarter century following World War II. But they're not so sure their own generation suffered comparable hardships during the 1970s and 1980s that entitled them to load new debts onto their children and grandchildren. And most contributors argue that our debts need to be reduced further before the boomers' retirement puts new stresses on public expenditures. Is the Debt War Over? is a vital contribution to the national debate about what to do with the debt.

Contributors include Stephen Ambler, Robin Boadway, David Bolder, Paul Boothe, Jennifer Chung, Serge Coulombe, Bev Dahlby, Don Drummond, David Johnson, Ronald Kneebone, Clifford Lee-Sing, Tiff Macklem, Jack Mintz, Lars Osberg, Christopher Ragan, William B. P. Robson, Jeremy Rudin, William Scarth, Huntley Schaller, François Vaillancourt, Marc Van Audenrode, and William Watson.