Don't think for a minute

Mike Kimel's Graph with Kimel's 2011 Data (upper part) and the Current 2014 Data (lower part)

Don't think for a minute that the change in Kimel's graph is due to a "revision" of the data. There was obviously something wrong with his Federal deficit numbers from the start.

Surely you know that US economic growth was good in the 1960s -- very good, at that. It was so good, it is the kind of thing people know without stopping to look it up.

And surely you know of the "full employment budgets" and of "potential output" and of policy attempting to push output up in the 1960s by means of deficit spending.

Surely you know of these things, no?

And yet, it seems Mike Kimel overlooked those things when he made his graph. Did he stop to wonder why his numbers show balanced budgets in the 1960s?

If you read his post when it was new, didn't you wonder?

This has nothing to do with the revision of data. It has to do with paying attention to things we know, and making sure new information fits with what we know.

Hey -- Kimel's balanced budgets in the 1960s could have been correct. But then, we would have had to take something else we thought we knew, and toss it.