As we have seen, how this problem has been addressed has changed repeatedly – and quite radically – over time. Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the conversion to quantitative rules of some of the world’s leading central banks was the instrument through which they overcame post-oil-shock inflation.
Choices regarding Medicare, Social Security, and other spending programs cannot be made in a vacuum but must be combined with decisions about how much revenue the government will raise and how it will raise it.