Exactly right Allan. Keynes actually proposed, at the onset of the Great Depression, that the government run a deficit only when needed to stimulate the economy, and then to run a surplus during prosperity to “pay it back”. Deficits during good times and bad over the course of business cycles was not in his playbook. Today’s big government advocates like Krugman use Keynes as intellectual justification to push permanent increases in government. If Keynes were alive today he would not approve.
