harm the poor if the policies implemented to achieve low inflation target restricting propoor government spending and induce recession" (Mudho, 2OO7), ot o Taxing low-income and middle class households to pay interest on public debt owned by the wealthier segments of the global economy. (Balakrishnan et al, 2011) To address discrimination, HRBA to public finance urges the adoption of measures that grant special and differential treatment to those discriminated against, so long as the treatment is reasonable, objective, legitimate, compatible with human rights, and is undertaken solely to promote the general welfare in a democratic society and demonstrates a clear and reasonable relationship of proportionaiity between the objectives and the measures and their results. These measures may take the form of subsidies, exemptions and similar fiscal instruments. Ma<imum available resources The concept of "maximum available resources" is at the core of the human rights based approach to public finance and defining it is a critical task. Balakrishnan et al (2011) obserue that "the term is often narrowly interpreted to refer to resources fixed by previous policy and that fiscal policy is mainly concerned with the efficient administration of these limited resources." One may add that there is a tendency in policymaking circles to uncritically take as given self-imposed constraints embedded in laws and economic policies (e.9. legal prohibition against the national government borrowing from the central bank or fiscal responsibility law), including preconceived notions of what is "sound" or "unsustainable" based on some rule-ofthumb financial ratios (e.9. the fiscal deficit should not exceed 2o/" of GDP or debt-to-GDP should be kept below 4O/o). It is important to realize that the concrete meaning of maximum available resources depends on the public finance framework in a particular context. Different views of the role of the State in the economy, the scope of the public sector, and the goals and instruments of public finance hold radically ditferent implications in terms of resource availability. Moreover, the level of economic development and the specific institutional setting determine, in practice, the role given to, and the effectiveness of, public finance. The dominant view sees the role of the State in the economy as creating the conditions for the functioning of free markets. ln this view, the goals of public finance are confined to maintaining macroeconomic stability (avoiding inflation) and debt sustainability (avoiding debt distress). This imparts a strong bias against fiscal measures that tend to expand the role of the State in the economy. Consequently, severe limits are placed on resources available to government, thereby seriously constraining its ability to comply with its human rights obligations. A human rights based approach differs in a fundamental way from the standard view. The obligation to mobilize and use maximum available resources should be interpreted together with the principle of the primacy of human rights. Given the government's access to resources in the economy (which flows from, among others, the sole power to issue domestic currency or regulate economic activities), maximum available resources refer not only to resources in the public sphere but resources in the economy. Seen this way, the obligation to mobilize and use maximum available resources is equivalent to a mandate to achieve full productive capacity to realize human rights for all, especially those most vulnerable. 26