This is a question I've been thinking a lot about. I know the federal government can continue to borrow money to fund the stimulus we need right now, but eventually we'll need to increase tax fairness. The federal government will need to increase revenue. You have public sector workers at all levels who have seen this game play out before, and they're all afraid of the coming austerity. They're all worried about the eventual story we're going to hear, that we all need to tighten our belts and that governments are like households, which they aren't. A government budget is completely different from a household budget.
We should absolutely not be worried about going into deficit, but we need to think about inequality in terms of the way our tax system fosters increased inequality and changes the decisions corporations make on where they're spending their money. We've seen a bunch of corporations take money from the federal government, continue to pay out dividends and have huge share buybacks, because what they want to do right now is to boost their share prices, which boosts executive compensation. In the middle of this crisis, which is already hitting low-income workers and small businesses the hardest, our tax system is structured in such a way that the biggest and the wealthiest can leverage that and make even more money.
We need to start changing the legislation in the system so we can both improve the structures that create inequality—so that we'll reduce it—and fund the types of things Mariam and I were both talking about to create a more equal and more prosperous economy going forward.