To get just about anything done anymore, Uncle Sam must go hat in hand to the behemoth private companies that now rule much of our lives.

The federal government is not only often unwilling to help, but seemingly incapable of it. The coronavirus is spreading, the economy is crumbling, society is fragmenting, our infrastructure is falling apart, health care is inadequate and costly, child care is impossible, and life expectancy is declining.

In the last few years, and especially in the hellish last couple of months, the United States has come to feel like a failed state. Together, they suggest a compelling political, moral and economic case for the federal government to begin to do, again, what it once saw as its duty - to make big, bold and even expensive investments to improve the lives of Americans, and perhaps of people around the world. I’m on record as a doomer, but in different ways, these tomes sparked the first real note of optimism I’ve felt about America’s future in quite a while. The second was “ The Deficit Myth,” in which the economist Stephanie Kelton convincingly overturns the conventional wisdom that federal budget deficits are somehow bad for the nation. The first book was “ The Price of Peace,” Zachary Carter’s incisive biography of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, which illustrates the awesome power of economic theory to alter the fates of nations and the lives of millions of people. Wait, don’t leave! I promise this isn’t as dry as it sounds. While the kids cannonballed into the saltwater pool and my wife sped through several novels, I spent my time in the sun doing exactly the sort of thing you’d imagine an opinion columnist might do on summer vacation: I read two hot new books about macroeconomics.

Īs a respite from a chaotic spring spent under quarantine, my family booked a weeklong vacation last month in a cozy, remote house in the California desert.

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The deficit myth book