An economic hypothesis holding that consumers are forward looking and so internalize the government's budget constraint when making their consumption decisions. This leads to the result that, for a given pattern of government spending, the method of financing that spending does not affect agents' consumption decisions, and thus, it does not change aggregate demand. Suppose that the government finances some extra spending through deficits; i.e. it chooses to tax later. According to the hypothesis, taxpayers will anticipate that they will have to pay higher taxes in future. As a result, they will save, rather than spend, the extra disposable income from the initial tax cut, leaving demand and output unchanged.