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[...] Until now, of course, longer-term growth rates have been falling together with peak tax rates, and so has the average tax take of rich democracies. Worse still, in parallel with the declining taxability of firms, their claims for national and regional infrastructure have become more demanding…

the premise that growth of the ‘economy’, and with it of state revenue, can be obtained only by tax concessions big enough to attract investment: more taxes through lower taxes – the Laffer illusion as the last hope of economic policy

[...] Buying Time treats state debt as a phenomenon of political economy: not merely one of democracy but also one of capitalism. Capitalism is about the expansion of expandable capital in the form of private property; this entails the danger of a withdrawal of cooperation by those who are needed…

Instead of reifying this process as an expression of eternal standard-economic laws, I treat it as the outcome of distributional conflict between classes.

[...] three processes running in parallel and mutually interlocked (a ‘triple helix’, if you like): the sequence of economic crises of inflation, public debt and private debt (today followed by dramatically expanding balance sheets of central banks, and a corresponding expansion of the money supply…