text: I offer the counter-example of Japan. Japan, with the highest debt burden of any modern nation — debt at 182 percent of GNP — has little money for m ore programs for the elderly, for example.
  We’re not aging as rapidly as Japan is, but, we would be at zero population growth without immigration, at best.
  Ignoring typical conservative diatribes about the imperiled future of Social Security, treating a $1 trillion deficit cavalierly isn’t advised.
  Yes, FDR pushed us back into deeper economic malaise when he tried to be a budget-cutter in his second term.
  That said, his deliverance from both a strong depression AND from monstrous deficits was found in World War II.
  And, if we were a Third World country pulling this crap, the IMF would be beating down our collective national door with a battering ram.
  Other critics of the Krugman column are right — it’s a blank-check license to spend without doing some analysis of what a bottom line should be.
  First, steroids aside, and lifelong Cardinal blood aside, Big Mac is NOT a Hall of Famer. McGwire couldn’t even get 2,000 hits.