The real issue, argues Steve Conover in this AEI piece, ought to be how we can resume strong economic growth. The talk about the debt ceiling is just a distraction. He’s right.

One camp, the statists, contends that we’ll get back to strong growth via more government spending to “stimulate” the economy. They also say that draining more money away from America’s “millionaires and billionaires” won’t hurt and might even help. Listening to them is like taking advice from the North Koreans on economic policy.

The approach that would work is to eliminate the heavy burden of federal spending (which diverts resources away from productive uses and into unproductive but politically attractive ones) and regulation that does so much to deter business formation. Become like Hong Kong, not North Korea.