6.7.1.5  Funding by Taxation or Government Borrowing

(The latest version of this page is at Pattern Descriptions.  An archived copy of this page is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition02/6715.htm)

The hardest aspect of government spending is raising the money to pay for it.  Politicians may try to choose taxes that are less visible or less unpopular (3.2.4.2), or they may try to evade hard decisions by borrowing – which delays the impact of increased levels of spending, although the debts have to be repaid with higher tax later (3.3.8.1).  There is a temptation, in democracies, to defer political pain for electoral reasons – despite the obvious unfairness of passing the pain to later generations who have not benefited and who did not participate in the decision-taking.  Some governments have even resorted to concealing the truth about deficits, as was the case with the Greek government’s decisions that ultimately precipitated the 2011 Eurozone crisis.[1]

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[1] An article in New American, on 18 February 2010, reported that:

“American banks helped Greece and possibly other governments to run massive deficits and conceal them from European Union officials and the public, according to international news reports.”

This article was available in May 2014 at http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8536-eu-trouble-us-banks-helped-hide-government-debt.  A search using the words ‘Greek’ ‘government’ ‘conceal’ retrieved many other reports on this story.