(FORTUNE Magazine) – We must decide whether budget constraints should be as tight as we made them in the Eighties. We put government on a diet, and corporations went on a diet. We leveraged ourselves with debt so feet would be held to the fire. Some people still want to chop away at health and other social spending. But in both government and business, I think we will see a backlash, a renewed appreciation for slack in the system. We will be learning that we could have done some things more cheaply if we had spent a little more. The decision in the early 1980s to reduce the number of S&L inspectors epitomizes what's wrong with running the federal government like a late-stage struggling LBO. We will see more emphasis on development strategy. For example, I think the consequences of not supporting the semiconductor industry or commercial aviation could be worse than the consequences of wasting some money supporting less important industries. With U.S. wage growth lagging and Japanese wages growing by 6% a year, we've got plenty of problems. But it is easy to get too far down on the current situation. A country whose major fiscal troubles could be solved with a 50- cent-a-gallon gasoline tax doesn't have big problems compared with some other countries. This is still the place people are dying to immigrate to, and I don't see U.S. citizens clamoring to leave. That tells us something.