Government Debt

Government debt in developed countries has climbed to levels not seen outside wartime. In the UK, official projections made at the start of the pandemic put future debt at around 400 per cent of GDP. Japan has carried debt above 200 per cent of GDP for over a decade. Yet while the Catholic Church has spoken out about the debts of poorer nations, it has said almost nothing about the borrowing of rich ones.

In this publication, Philip Booth, Kaetana Numa, Stephen Nakrosis and Richard Turnbull argue that this silence needs to end. Borrowing today means asking future taxpayers to pay for what we consume now. Add the unfunded promises of state pensions and health care, the “implicit debt” that may be several times larger than the official figures, and the burden on the next generation grows heavier still.

Drawing on Scripture, papal teaching from Rerum novarum to Laudato si’, and Protestant thinkers including Calvin, Kuyper and Chalmers, the authors set out a Christian case for intergenerational justice in public finance. Human dignity doesn’t belong to one generation alone.

History shows what is at stake. Debt crises helped bring down Bourbon France, cost Scotland and Newfoundland their independence, and fuelled hyperinflation in interwar Germany and Argentina. In the eurozone crisis, elected governments gave way to creditors’ demands.

The authors don’t rule out all borrowing: war, catastrophe and sound investment can justify it. But they conclude that excessive government debt sits ill with Christian teaching, and that the Church should apply the same concern for future generations to fiscal policy that it already applies to the environment.