The Sources of Government Spending and Their Implications

[Editor’s note: This article is a section of Debt-funded Government Spending Destabilizes and Impoverishes African Economies. This version has been expanded.]

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Government spending can be financed through 1) taxation, 2) debt accumulation, and 3) monetary inflation (credit and currency printing). While a few countries have sizable sovereign wealth funds that could augment government spending capacity, historically and presently, governments finance their expenditures through these three methods: tax imposition, debt accumulation, and currency debasement.

Each of these three methods of financing government spending has adverse consequences for society. When used excessively and more detrimentally when applied simultaneously, their combined destructive effect is amplified, becoming insidiously destabilizing, impoverishing, and oppressive. As I pointed out in a previous essay:

Government debt accumulation, monetary inflation, and heavy taxation are individually distortive, destabilizing, and impoverishing. Combined, these policies constitute a cruel and devastating triple-barreled weapon that viciously oppresses the people, confiscates their purchasing power, drains their economic well-being, and impoverishes society. In other words, government (deficit) spending, currency debasement, and high taxes are the main policy choices that distort, destabilize, and impoverish economies in Africa and globally.

The world is burdened by heavy taxation and excessive debt levels, with most governments running persistent budget deficits. This growing debt is increasingly detrimental to economic stability, productivity, and growth. Global debt has surged to $315 trillion, which accounts for 333 percent of global GDP. According to a recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), global government debt is expected to exceed $100 trillion by the end of this year, representing 93 percent of global GDP. The United States, China, Japan, Britain, France, and other major economies hold the lion’s share of global government debt. Due to various economic, social, demographic, and geopolitical issues, government debt is expected to increase faster.

The world is grappling with debilitating debt issues because of the current fiat, debt-based monetary system and the normalization of government debt accumulation and deficit spending since the Keynesian shift in economics after World War I. This shift has transformed the discipline into a decidedly statist one, moving away from its original focus on primarily market-driven economic theories and policy recommendations.

This point is especially relevant to the present discussion because it addresses a common misconception. Most believe that the many problems afflicting the current world—such as heavy taxation, crushing debt levels, rampant (monetary, asset, and price) inflation, overregulation, trade rivalries, economic warfare, sociopolitical unrest, geopolitical conflicts, and other issues—are caused by capitalism while the reality is that existing statist systems primarily cause ongoing crises. In an earlier publication, I stated:

As first remarked in The Scale of Statism, one of our time’s most significant and detrimental misconceptions is the (scholarly and popular) view that the United States and other Western economies are capitalist systems with market economies. The West has projected itself as the stronghold of free-market capitalism while only partially adopting free-market economic principles. The United States, other Western countries, and the current global order are statist systems that lean more toward a socialist economy than a free-market capitalist one.

That is a crucial contextual fact. To most, the present statist world, with its excessive debt levels, rampant (monetary, asset, and price) inflation, heavy taxation, economic turmoil, stagnation, incessant geopolitical conflict, and other issues, is seen as a reflection of capitalism while the truth is that this ruinous situation is caused by statism. Contemporary economies are state-managed, not market-driven (capitalism). It is time to rethink the established view that Western countries and the current global order are or have been capitalist systems.

Source 1: Taxation

Governments mostly rely on taxes (including tariffs) as their primary source of revenue, although they also collect funds from fees and fines. Taxes are mandatory payments that governments impose on society, coercively requiring individuals, businesses, and other entities to pay a certain percentage of their income. Those who would object to taxes are fined, imprisoned, or worse, making taxation a violent institution that rests on the threat of state aggression. Tax revenues fund local, provincial, and national government operations, social programs, infrastructure spending, war, and other activities.

Most contemporary tax codes are complex systems that can be divided into three main categories, each with unique characteristics. The first category includes taxes based on what individuals and businesses earn, such as individual (or personal) income taxes, corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and capital gains taxes. The second category consists of taxes on goods and services purchased by members of society, including gross receipts, excise, sales, and value-added taxes. The third category covers taxes on what individuals and businesses own, including wealth, estate, and property taxes. Taxes can also be classified as direct, indirect, transfer, or hypothecation taxes, adding to the variety and complexity of tax systems.

Recognize that some taxes can result in double or even triple taxation. For instance, capital gains taxes are applied to the profit earned from selling an asset, such as shares of a company stock, which often leads to double taxation. Sales taxes also exemplify double taxation, as they are charged to consumers who are using income that has already been taxed. Additionally, tariffs represent another form of double taxation since businesses usually pass the cost of these tariffs onto customers. Consequently, customers purchase imported goods and services subject to tariffs with income that has already been taxed.

Taxes discourage savings and investment, stifling production, innovation, and productivity growth. This ultimately undermines economic development and prosperity. The inverse relationship between economic output and taxation is relatively well-documented. As the tax burden on the economy increases, it adversely impacts productive investment, economic productivity, and overall growth. In addition to detrimental economic effects, a heavy taxation policy also leads to adverse sociological and demographic issues, although these are often less visible and harder to measure. One way overtaxation impoverishes society is by hindering economic growth and reducing national output and income, as it encourages immediate consumption rather than fostering productive domestic investment and attracting foreign capital.

Taxes also create various distortions in the economy, forcing individuals to alter their choices, preferences, and activities in ways that hinder economic productivity, growth, and prosperity to varying degrees and forms. Taxation involves the coercive transfer of capital from its rightful owners to the government. It forcibly reallocates resources from the productive, innovative, and wealth-generating segments of society to the government/political sector, whose activities are typically plagued by debilitating bureaucracy, corruption, fraud, and, more alarmingly, wasteful spending. The misuse and waste of resources usually associated with government spending undermines stability, growth, and overall prosperity to a significant extent.

With tariffs, subsidies, bailouts, exemptions, licenses, and other measures, governments choose winners and losers, undermine living standards, and exacerbate wealth disparities. Most government programs—including those presented as altruistic, such as food stamps or unemployment benefits—are driven by political motives, leading to impoverishing consequences and net harm to society. Examples such as roads to nowhere and vacant apartment blocks highlight government waste and the destruction of valuable resources. A fundamental problem with government spending is that it is frequently plagued by fraud, wasteful spending, embezzlement, kickbacks, overcharging, and other corrupt practices. Much of government spending is ultimately wasteful and harmful to society.

Figure 1: Heavy taxation is confiscatory, oppressive, and destructive, differing only in the form and extent of its detrimental effects.

Source: Tax Foundation

A heavy taxation policy is confiscatory and oppressive for several reasons. Firstly, people and businesses incur direct economic dispossession through the various taxes they are forcibly obligated to pay, which reduces their income, savings, purchasing power, and investment capacity. Secondly, heavy taxation leads to indirect economic dispossession and hardship, as it causes overall economic impoverishment that detrimentally affects middle and lower-income households (most of society). A third-order harmful effect of a heavy taxation policy is the loss of time, distress, and additional costs associated with navigating and complying with complex tax codes. A heavy taxation policy is viciously confiscatory and oppressive, constituting a structural injustice in statist societies.

The heavier the tax burden imposed, the more confiscatory, distortive, oppressive, and detrimental it becomes to society. In addition to its harmful economic effects—such as undermining investment, production, growth, and the overall economy—heavy taxation adversely impacts society by reducing capital and disposable incomes for households and businesses, the innovative, productive, and wealth-creating sector. This decline in investment, production, and economic growth results in stagnation and a gradual impoverishment of society, with detrimental effects that also reach a nation’s social/sociological and demographic aspects.

For instance, taxes reduce disposable household income and purchasing power while putting upward pressure on the cost of living. This creates instability and shrinks the country’s economic wealth—the pool of available goods and services that society can access to meet its needs and wants. Consequently, heavy taxation disincentivizes childbearing, negatively affecting the demographic outlook of nations. Many countries face a grim demographic situation, particularly in the West and East Asia. Additionally, increasing tax burdens tend to repel, rather than attract, foreign investment and talent, leading to the migration of high-net-worth individuals and capital out of the country. These factors further exacerbate the damaging effects of heavy taxation, contributing to economic deterioration, social strife, and demographic decline.

It is pertinent to reiterate that in addition to confiscating a significant portion of individuals’ and businesses’ income, the injustice of direct and indirect economic dispossession, heavy taxation, and the resulting complex tax code further strain society due to its oppressive nature, leading to additional time, money, and stress spent on tax compliance. While many detrimental effects of high taxes are noticeable and measurable, others are less apparent but still harmful to individuals, families, and society. Some examples of these, as noted, include distress, lowered income, savings, credit, investment, reduced access to goods and services, and hampered ability to attract foreign capital and talent to the country.

Regarding the time and money costs related to tax compliance, Scott Hodge and Claire Rock of the Tax Foundation point out that tax complexity costs the U.S. economy over $546 billion annually. Hodge and Rock observe:

The federal tax code imposes many costs on the US economy. The most direct costs, of course, are the roughly $4.9 trillion in federal taxes that consume 17 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP). Our tax system is heavily reliant on individual and corporate income taxes, which economists at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have determined are the most harmful for economic growth. A less direct cost is the precious time taken out of our lives to comply with a Byzantine tax code that requires billions of hours completing mountains of IRS paperwork and tax returns. In 2023, Americans filed 271.5 million tax returns. Of these, nearly 71 percent, or 192.3 million, were individual and corporate income tax returns, while another 36.3 million were employment tax returns.

According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend more than 7.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2024. This is equal to 3.8 million full-time workers doing nothing but tax return paperwork—roughly equal to the population of Los Angeles—and nearly 46 times the workforce at the IRS. If we assume a reasonable hourly wage, the 7.9 billion hours Americans spend complying with the tax code costs the economy roughly $413 billion in lost productivity. In addition, the IRS estimates that Americans spend roughly $133 billion annually in out-of-pocket costs to comply with the tax code. This brings the total compliance costs to $546 billion, or nearly 2 percent of GDP.

For perspective, the South African economy, currently Africa’s largest economy, has a GDP of $373 billion. Nigeria and Ethiopia, the fourth and fifth largest economies on the continent, stand at $252 billion and $205 billion, respectively. Tax compliance alone cost the United States economy $546 billion in 2023, significantly more than the combined GDP of $457 billion for Nigeria and Ethiopia. Heavy taxation is one of the central policies perpetuating economic stagnation, widespread deprivation, and avoidable hardship in Africa and elsewhere.

Moreover, the ethical implications of taxation must be addressed. Due to the “value-free,” meaning ethics-free (utilitarian, positivist) philosophical frameworks prevailing in Western economics, the ethical dimensions of taxation are typically overlooked in economics and other social sciences. Africonomics takes a different, distinctly principled approach rooted in a natural-moral law philosophical framework, recognizing the existence of universal moral principles. Unlike utilitarian and positivist approaches, ethical standards and justice considerations are central in Africonomics.

Thus, Africonomics maintains that taxation, particularly excessive taxation, is unethical and morally unacceptable, as it is based on coercion and enforced through state aggression. Taxes are unethical because they rely on thuggish methods of intimidation, coercion, and, at their core, violence. Africonomics maintains that taxation is inherently coercive, confiscatory, distortive, and oppressive—therefore, unjust and morally unacceptable. Taxation must be minimal to nonexistent to minimize dispossession, oppression, and injustice and to foster economic prosperity, peaceful relations within and among societies, and human civilization.

In a more extended analysis, Heavy Taxation Distorts, Destabilizes, and Impoverishes African Economies, I discuss how excessive taxation is a destructive policy that causes instability, deters investment, hinders growth, weakens the economy, and harms lives. A paragraph reads:

It is tyrannical of African governments to increase the tax burden on struggling and long-tormented economies beset with rampant inflation, arbitrary currency devaluations, mass unemployment, stunted development, and other woes. Heavy taxation distorts, destabilizes, and impoverishes the economy, harming lives and undermining social peace. African policymakers should avoid heavy taxation, a confiscatory and oppressive policy that worsens economic conditions.

The conclusion notes:

The concept of “tax haven” was introduced to stigmatize and undermine low-tax jurisdictions, given that much of humanity is tyrannically taxed. In truth, countries labeled as tax havens should be viewed as less- or non-tyrannical-tax countries. If relatively low-tax countries are tax havens, “normal” tax countries must be tax hells.

Heavy taxation is an unjust, distortive, destabilizing, and impoverishing policy. African policymakers should avoid taxing African economies into prosperity because a heavy taxation policy will invariably worsen economic conditions and hardship, increasing the risk of sociopolitical instability. African economies will not be the first to develop and prosper while maintaining government debt accumulation, currency debasement, and heavy taxation as policies. African policymakers must reconsider their tax policies and adopt minimal taxation to facilitate economic development and prosperity.

Taxation was minimal to nonexistent in most of precolonial Africa. Tragically, unlike most African kings and chiefs, postcolonial African governments have doubled down on the practice of permanent and oppressive taxation imposed by colonial governments, resulting in tyrannically taxed contemporary African economies. The confiscatory and oppressive tax codes of most African countries are a structural injustice in existing statist socioeconomic systems and have been a significant impediment to economic development.

Source 2: Debt Accumulation

Debt crises and the resulting economic turmoil and harm have become increasingly frequent in the current statist world. Debt distress is widespread, and most governments thread a destabilizing and ruinous fiscal path. For instance, the fiscal situation and outlook for the United States are deteriorating at an accelerated pace. U.S. government debt, often called public or national debt, is rapidly increasing, surpassing $36 trillion.

Interest payments on this debt amount to $1.1 trillion, which accounts for 23 percent of U.S. tax revenue. Given the enormous size of the U.S. economy—still the leading and most consequential globally—and the central role played by the dollar and U.S. government debt securities in the global economy, a U.S. sovereign debt crisis and the burst of the government debt bubble would have devastating effects on the United States and the world.

Figure 2: Interest payments on U.S. government debt are rapidly increasing, illustrating the dangerous and harmful effects of debt-funded government spending.

Source: Independent Institute

For comparison, Africa’s GDP currently stands at $2.8 trillion. The top five African economies—South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Ethiopia—have a combined GDP of $1.4 trillion. If current spending trends continue, interest on U.S. government debt will soon reach $1.4 trillion, equivalent to half of Africa’s total GDP. Since the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession (2007-09), government debt accumulation and deficit spending have noticeably increased worldwide. Despite this, economic stability, growth, and social peace continue to decline in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Canada, the UK, and many other countries despite continuous monetary and fiscal stimulus measures.

The economic situation in the United Kingdom appears more precarious than that of the United States and Canada. Statista reports, “With two-quarters of negative growth at the end of 2023, the UK economy is in recession and has grown only slightly compared to its pre-pandemic size.” As a result of persistent inflation and other issues, real wages and household disposable income have declined in the UK and many other countries, leading to a decrease in living standards and a rise in the cost of living. Similarly, economic and political turmoil in France is worsening, with French government debt, deficits, and overall fiscal outlook becoming increasingly grim and debilitating.

A significant indicator of deteriorating conditions is that the UK, traditionally a leading economy with a long history of attracting wealthy individuals and capital, is expected to experience an unprecedented net loss of 9,500 millionaires in 2024, according to Henley & Partners’ Private Wealth Migration Report 2024. This figure is more than double the net loss recorded in the previous year. The UK is currently experiencing the second-largest outflow of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in the world, following China, which is facing a multifaceted economic crisis and is anticipated to lose 15,200 HNWIs. This migration pattern of wealthy individuals highlights a notable exodus of affluent people and their capital due to the deteriorating conditions in several countries, including some major economies.

The eurozone is showing signs of approaching another sovereign debt crisis, which may be even more severe than previous ones. This situation is expected to have significant economic and sociopolitical consequences, as the European Central Bank (ECB) recently warned. Japan, China, and other major economies face dire fiscal situations marked by declining financial stability, economic downturns, and demographic challenges.

Although the developing world has lower average levels of government debt, it is affected more quickly and severely by rising debt servicing costs and the adverse effects of government debt accumulation and deficit spending. Meanwhile, political turmoil, bureaucratic dysfunction, economic instability, stagnation, and social strife are becoming increasingly apparent in the United States, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, other European nations, Japan, China, and many others.

The deteriorating fiscal and economic situations in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and many other economies worldwide are primarily due to ongoing government deficit spending. The accumulation of government debt is destabilizing and detrimental to economic stability, growth, and prosperity. This policy usually results in higher taxes, redirecting limited capital from the productive, wealth-generating private sector to the characteristically bureaucratic and wasteful government sector.

As remarked, most government spending initiatives and programs are politically driven, and they are usually mired in embezzlement, kickbacks, overcharging, fraud, and other corrupt practices that squander valuable resources with alternative uses, resulting in net harm to society. Additionally, government debt accumulation leads to monetary inflation, which causes economic distortions, instability, and further impoverishment, aggravating the detrimental effects of deficit spending.

Government debt accumulation reduces the availability of capital and talent for productive investments, stifles economic growth by crowding out the private sector, raises borrowing costs, and leads to rampant (monetary, asset, and price) inflation and heavier tax burdens. This policy dispossesses and hams present generations and loots and hams future generations. It also bloats the state bureaucracy, which has detrimental consequences for society, breeds corruption and tyranny, undermines innovation and productivity, depresses wages, exacerbates wealth disparity, and hinders economic prosperity and social peace.

A policy of government debt accumulation and deficit spending leads to many economic distortions, destabilizes economic activities, and insidiously impoverishes society, detrimentally impacting lives. This policy aggravates the dispossession, oppression, and structural injustices in existing statist socioeconomic systems, resulting in unstable, repressed, distressed, and stagnating economies.

In Debt-funded Government Spending Destabilizes and Impoverishes African Economies, I describe how the accumulation of government debt and ongoing deficit spending constitute the central policy distorting, destabilizing, and impoverishing economies worldwide, especially in Africa and other developing regions. I outline ten ways government debt accumulation and deficit spending detrimentally impact these economies. A part reads:

The longstanding policy of government debt accumulation due to persistent deficit spending has been causing many problems for economies around the world. The adverse effects of government deficit spending and debt accumulation impact economies differently, with developing economies being particularly and more quickly affected by this statist approach. Government debt accumulation and deficit spending continue to lead to debilitating inflation, debt crises, economic instability, and other detrimental issues that severely hinder capital formation, economic development, and prosperity in Africa and other regions.

Government deficit spending is a central economic issue that politicians should not continue to overlook. This policy destabilizes and impoverishes the economy, ruining lives. Even a large and advanced economy like the United States cannot maintain a policy of government debt accumulation and deficit spending without facing its ruinous consequences. The detrimental nature of debt-fueled government spending is increasingly evident in many countries worldwide.

Government debt accumulation and deficit spending constitute an egregious form of corruption, giving rise to various other corrupt practices that debilitate and impoverish society. The most unjust, destabilizing, and destructive consequence of government overspending is rampant (monetary, asset, and price) inflation, which creates many economic distortions that further dispossess, impoverish, and oppress the population.

Source 3: Monetary Inflation

Monetary inflation, commonly referred to as currency debasement or, in contemporary terms, money printing, is a fundamental characteristic of the current statist global order established by Western imperial states. While monetary inflation, known initially as simply inflation—the artificial expansion of the money supply—has been practiced by banks and governments long before the rise of the current United States-led Western global order, the fiat monetary practices of credit and currency printing were institutionalized and normalized globally with the establishment of the fiat dollar standard in 1971. This shift occurred when the Nixon administration severed the remaining link between the U.S. dollar and gold.

With monetary inflation institutionalized and normalized, contemporary governments have attained an additional and seemingly unlimited source of funds to increase their spending capacity. This is accomplished primarily through government debt monetization in Western and most other countries. In more openly autocratic systems where central banks are seen as an integral part of the state apparatus, this process is often done directly (without buying and selling government debt securities in the open market), as the government can order the central bank to issue more currency.

Government spending financed through monetary inflation (credit and currency printing) is destabilizing and detrimental to the economy. Fiat monetary practices cause far-reaching economic distortions, resulting in rampant (monetary, asset, and price) inflation. This process debases the nation’s currency, defrauds people’s purchasing power, and dispossesses the population’s economic well-being. Additionally, the fiat monetary practices of artificial credit expansion and interest rate manipulations lead to economic bubbles and recurring boom and bust cycles. These cycles are marked by economic fluctuations, which can manifest as financial crises, recessions, or even depressions, with severe economic and sociopolitical consequences. Fiat monetary systems invariably create an unstable, distorted, and troubled economy.

Also, continuous currency printing to accommodate government deficit spending has historically resulted in hyperinflation, and the current situation is no exception. Historical cases like revolutionary France, Weimar Germany, China, Hungary, Greece, Argentina, Angola, Zimbabwe (on two occasions), and more recently, Venezuela, among others, illustrate that government overspending not only distorts and destabilizes the economy but can also be catastrophic, leading to hyperinflation that severely devastates the economy and impoverishes the population. Persistent government deficit spending has been the cause of every instance of hyperinflation, which is the most severe form of economic instability and destruction.

Moreover, in addition to its destabilizing and destructive effects, monetary inflation—credit and currency printing—is unethical and fraudulent. This has been demonstrated in the papers Fractional Reserve Banking Is Fraudulent and Ruinous and The Fraudulent and Ruinous Nature of Fiat Monetary Systems. By maintaining fiat monetary systems, governments impose a fraudulent, destabilizing, and destructive monetary system that leads to structural injustices, economic turmoil, and impoverishment. A paragraph in the latter paper observes:

Existing monetary systems feature a fiat national currency and fractional reserve commercial banking. Fiat currencies are an unsound form of money with an unlimited supply typically issued by a government. Fiat monetary systems involve artificially expanding the money and credit supply (monetary inflation) by the central bank and fractional reserve commercial banks. This practice is unethical and fraudulent because it deceives, distorts, defrauds, [dispossesses, destablizes,] and destroys. Fiat monetary systems violate the universal moral principles of truth, justice, and nonaggression.

Unsurprisingly, Africa is one of the regions most severely impacted by the current era of fiat currency systems. In Fiat Monetary Policy Destabilizes and Impoverishes African Economies, I remark:

The monetary history of post-neocolonial Africa can be summarized in three words: turmoil and impoverishment. The current era of central bank-managed fiat monetary systems, or fiat monetary policy, continues to devastate economies worldwide, but it has been notably destabilizing and ruinous to African economies. Decades of currency printing, rampant price inflation, arbitrary devaluations, and forex volatility have had an immeasurably detrimental impact on the continent, severely hindering African capital formation, economic development, and prosperity.

I further point out:

A stable, reliable, and uncorrupted currency is crucial for economic stability and prosperity. Coupled with property rights, minimal taxation, the rule of law, and economic freedom, a stable and honest currency, such as a commodity-linked currency system, encourages local capital accumulation and investment, fostering sound economic growth, prosperity, and other societal benefits.

In contrast, fiat currency systems are inflationary and destabilize the economy, leading to injustice, instability, and impoverishment. They cause boom-bust cycles, rampant price inflation, and other detrimental issues that undermine economic development, prosperity, peace, and human civilization. Fiat monetary practices are an odious form of corruption institutionalized worldwide by the West, led by the United States under the fiat dollar standard. Fiat monetary policy undermines capital formation, investment attraction, and productive, market-driven enterprise, which are crucial for economic development and prosperity. Economic development is significantly stunted in nations with such currency systems. The more inflationary and erratic a national currency is, the more detrimental it is to economic development, prosperity, and social peace.

Conclusion

The sources of funds that finance government spending have inherent limits, and the limits to government spending are universal and irremovable. Government officials, politicians, and statist economists are encouraged to recognize the fundamental economic fact that there are inherent and immutable limits to the sources of funds for government spending. Each funding source—whether through heavy taxation, debt accumulation, or monetary inflation—has distortive, destabilizing, and destructive consequences that no society or government can avoid. Even the United States government, which issues the world’s reserve currency and manages the largest economy with the most attractive capital markets, cannot circumvent the inherent limits on sources of government spending and their harmful effects.

Whether financed through heavy taxes, debt accumulation, or monetary inflation, government spending distorts, destabilizes, and impoverishes the economy—though the degree and pace of its detrimental effects vary based on the economy’s structure, strength, and competitiveness. Each source has its set of distortive, destabilizing, and destructive consequences, especially when applied inordinately. When used simultaneously, the combined destructive effect of heavy taxation, debt accumulation, and monetary inflation is amplified, becoming more viciously confiscatory, oppressive, destabilizing, and impoverishing.

Tragically, in the current statist global order, most governments simultaneously maintain heavy taxation, debt accumulation, and monetary inflation as policy, compounding the unjust, distorting, destabilizing, and impoverishing nature of government spending. Continuous government deficit spending is economically, sociologically, politically, and demographically destructive and, thus, morally unacceptable.

Government debt accumulation, monetary inflation, and heavy taxation are individually harmful, destabilizing, and impoverishing policies. When combined, these policies form a cruel and destructive triple-barreled weapon that oppresses the population, confiscates their purchasing power, dispossesses them of economic well-being—both directly and indirectly—and insidiously impoverishes society. Government deficit spending, currency debasement, and high taxes are the primary policy choices that distort, destabilize, and impoverish economies in Africa and worldwide.