Israel’s Civil Service May Be Necessary, but in a Democracy the Legislature Is Truly Indispensable

The American reader of Haviv Gur’s gripping essay will be impressed by the foresight of the Israeli government’s dogged adherence to budget discipline in recent decades. That, in tandem with the strong growth of the private economy, had reduced its public debt to less than 60 percent of GDP when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

The purpose of maintaining low levels of public debt, one should say, is not to mollify treasury accountants: it is to be prepared to borrow heavily against big national emergencies or bad economic times, which were powerfully combined in the pandemic and the measures to contain it. Public debt of 60 percent of the GDP is too high by my lights, but the 100-150 percent levels of the 1990s would have left Israel in extremely grim circumstances.

America, by contrast, has unique borrowing capacity, but our national debt, measured properly, was way more than 100 percent of GDP last spring. It is now much higher and heading even higher still, leaving the U.S. with serious political and economic vulnerabilities that no one in our political class has the slightest idea what to do about.