Can we inflate away the debt? With President Trump saying that “certain levels of inflation” would pay off the $40 trillion national debt, Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine are back to settle whether America can print its way out.

Franklin says paper money paid and clothed the army that won the Revolution and that inflation is a tax that falls more equally than most. Paine says forcing paper money on the public is tyranny and that inflating away a debt is a default, not a decision.

Which Founding Father makes common sense, and which isn’t worth a Continental?