I'm Elise Hu, you're listening to TED Talks Daily. We've all heard a lot about deficits,

mainly that we shouldn't run deficits or let them get bigger. But economist Stephanie Kelton says

they've gotten a bad rap. In her talk from Ted Monterey in 2021, she says deficits sound ominous,

but they're not. She offers a way to think of government deficit as a surplus instead. When things break, we have an opportunity. We can pick up

the pieces and put them back together the old way, or we can look for better ways to build.

COVID broke everything.

It put a spotlight on the many deficits in our economy,

in employment, education, health care, housing,

and it showed how inequality made it all worse.

Here in the U.S. and around the world, governments did some extraordinary things.

They sent money to people directly to help them buy food and pay rent. They provided free COVID testing and expanded health care to cover more of the population. They gave money to businesses

to help keep them afloat while much of the economy was temporarily shut down. They offered debt relief to millions of people

who borrowed money to go to college.

They did all of this and more

without raising taxes

or having a prolonged battle

over the usual question of how to pay for it. To me, this was exciting, and I'm an economist,

so I don't say that a lot. But as someone who's been trying to change the way we think

about deficits and government spending,

I saw this as an opportunity to show why government budgets don't work like household budgets,

why all of their red ink is really our black ink, and why our nation can afford to keep investing in the things we need,

even after spending trillions to fight the pandemic. For a while, it looked like the U.S. and other

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