How low can the Washington Post go? When I taught intro econ we would pound the distinction between a debt and deficit into our students. Those who got it wrong were brought to the front of the class for public humiliation. The Washington Post got it wrong today, so they now face public humiliation. An Outlook piece by visiting scholar Michael Zielenziger tells readers that Japan’s “fiscal deficit tops 170 percent of gross domestic product.” Actually Japan’s fiscal deficit is less than 2 percent of GDP. It’s a bit larger than the U.S. budget deficit if you exclude the money borrowed from Social Security and somewhat lower than the U.S. budget deficit if you include this borrowing. Obviously Mr. Zielensiger was referring to Japan’s government debt, the accumulation of all prior deficits, which is more than 170 percent of GDP. This is considerably larger than the gross U.S. debt, which stands at close to 67 percent of GDP, but because interest rates are so low in Japan, the interest burden on government debt is actually smaller in Japan than in the United States. But leaving the comparisons aside, how can a Washington Post “visiting scholar” make such a basic mistake? How can the Washington Post editors fail to catch the mistake before it appeared in print? It is worth noting that the mistake is consistent with the demographic crisis story that is a regular feature of the Washington Post editorial and news pages. In deriding Japan’s prospects the column comments on its aging population that will soon “make South Florida look like a youth hostel.” I would ask whether the Post is as careless when printing columns that disagree with its editorial position on the impact of aging populations, but there really isn’t any basis for making such an assessment.
--Dean Baker
