Stuffing The Goose June 30, 2025 From The Economist: Last year America ran a budget deficit of 7% of GDP. It may soon be even bigger. . . . Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a bureaucrat under Louis XIV, remarked that the essence of tax policy involved “plucking as many feathers from the goose with the least hissing”. Today’s governments do not pluck the goose. Like producers of foie gras, they stuff it. . . . [A] government can simultaneously borrow money and become less indebted, if the economy grows faster than debt accumulates. What is happening today, however, is unprecedented. . . . A demographic crunch and free-spending fiscal policies are . . . about to interact in unpleasant ways. No one can predict if or when investors will lose patience, forcing interest rates much higher. Yet there must be a limit to the debt binge. As any lover of foie gras knows, overfeeding even the greediest goose can cause its liver to explode. Trump’s big ugly bill is horrible in so many ways — why are we doing this to ourselves? Michael M.: “Yesterday you said we should call Trump’s executive orders ‘decrees.’ I have a better word: ‘edict.’ It has more bite — perhaps because it includes the first four letters of ‘dictator.'” BONUS We know Trump wants to have the final word on what kids and their parents and doctors can decide about their health care; but I think it’s worth hearing what the kids themselves think, young though they are: Five Trans Youth Speak Out as SCOTUS Upholds Health Care Ban.