The wrong way to approach this is what the GOP is doing, which is talking about cutting SS which will inevitably lose them an election and even if they win they won't cut it and we know it.
Let's just own up to the fact that we are going to have a fiscal crisis over the boomers retirement and try our best to prepare for it.
Social Security is not a fiscal problem. Medicare is. Politicians scapegoat SS because there are no SS lobbyists. Medicare has multiple industry lobbyists defending the program and the medical inflation the program creates.
Definitely true, and the "good" part is, due to the magic of math, if we know we are "going to have a fiscal crisis" it is the same as "currently in a fiscal crisis." The problem is who "we" are - and the party that will pay the largest part of the "needing to cough up money" part of that fiscal crisis is currently in second grade or so, where they are somewhat isolated from political decision making. And lots of the people who are in the "demanding the money get coughed up to them" party will be dead, and therefore also, sadly, isolated from the political process.
So [non-rhetorically], what can we do at this stage of the crisis to nudge public opinion towards accepting some mutually agreeable SS cuts so that we don't pick the "stage 2 crisis, 20 years from now" choice of "intergenerational warfare"? What does "prepare" look like?
It's easy to be snarky about it, but you don't have any better answer to the issue he raised.
Either that or you are missing his point.
The point is that all attempts at raising the alarm have failed and all crisis-avoiding options have been repeatedly demonstrated to be politically nonviable and thus off the table whether one likes it or not.
So, short of regime change, we are going to get a crisis.
It's difficult to accept this ugly truth, but it's a simple fact that the American polity is not capable of tightening its own belt and anyone thinking about what might be done might as well be adult and try to face up to it.
And it's hardly just America. This state of affairs has been known to be a likely outcome of a risky design defect in any democratic system with large voting constituencies that are beneficiaries of redistribution programs and with the government able to accumulate debt and/or debase fiat currency without constitutional limit in order to pay for those programs. Once you start down that road, even if you can keep playing the game for decades, your luck eventually runs out and the outcome is still inevitable. Without unexpected bursts of economic growth or increases in the fertility rate, it's only a matter of time.
This kind of thing happens in Latin America all the time, and it used to happen to plenty of European countries and will start happening there again, I'd guess within a decade. The PIGS will stop flying soon enough.
And it will happen to the US too. In just the past 14 years, Debt Held By The Public / GDP went from 35% to 100%. There's no good reason to look at American politics and conclude other than it's just going to keep going up that fast on average until Stein's Law blows it all up.
Now, whether there is anything at all a political party can be doing to soften the blows to the interests of its politicians and constituents when the crisis comes to pass, and in a way that will allow them to keep winning elections, well, it's an interesting question. I doubt it.
It will be up to individuals to see the writing on the wall and try their best to protect their own interests, and reallocate their savings to investments that track inflation and are easier to hide from future taxmen who will be grabbing everything they can.
Until US Democrats agree that the US govt is spending too much on some entitlement, proposing to reduce spending will make one lose. Thus, no spending reduction.
It may take a crisis, or catastrophe, to change the minds, & Big Govt Spending philosophy, of the Democrats.
Crying Wolf, too soon, just insures electoral defeat.
Why don't Republicans be honest? They should be honest about welcoming entitlement spending cuts that Democrats propose, but if the crisis isn't clear to Dem leaders, it's not yet a crisis.
Of course the trouble is that the progressives do not have a good track record of the manner in which they never let a crisis go to waste, and if they are still in charge when it happens they will only make things even worse and create a situation of permanent fiscal basket case. If there is any planning to be done for the crisis it's to do as much as possible to prevent that.
You write that “the government fool[s] people into thinking that they are wealthier than they really are, by running deficits.” But (apparently) people are already making a mistake, regardless of government action. As an American, a substantial part of my wealth consists in the American government’s capacity to provide me with services. By running deficits the government reduces this capacity. But I (and other Americans) do not notice the associated decline in my own wealth, because *I never did include my share of governmental capacity in my estimate of my wealth*. Thus I was fooled about the significance of the deficits *because of a mistake I had been making all along*.
Keynes on inflation: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." Further, "By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth." (Keynes's comments are from his 1919 "The Economic Consequences of the Peace.")
Governments practice through "necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done by design." Of course this nefarious process is going to lead to social strife.
Here's a technical point that might or might not affect Arnold's conclusions. In his example, there are two acorns available to distribute, and $300 worth of money or near money. However, Polly has $200, and Wally has only $100. How does the price of acorns get to $150? At that price, Polly can afford only one acorn, and Wally none, in which case one acorn goes to waste. The same would be true for any price greater than $100 per acorn. Thus, unless the government taxes Polly $50 and gives it to Wally (or Polly voluntarily donates the same amount to Wally), the market won't clear at $150 per acorn.
BTW, this example also illustrates the problem with price controls. The government, say, could declare a price support for acorns at $150, e.g. to help the oak tree industry (read: farm sector, minimum wages). Without other government actions, such as in the prior paragraph, there will be a winter surplus of one acorn.
Would this be a reasonable justification for debt?
Polly would like to spend fewer hours of the day growing acorn, and fighting off pests, and losing the occasional crop altogether, and the water table is falling, and they are all at risk of extinction after the next bad crop.
Polly (and Wally) and the Government think it's wise to invest in R&D for better acorn hybrids, maybe also requiring less water.
The benefits will be felt not only by Polly and Wally but future generations who are not yet around to pay taxes. So the Government prints the money to pay Molly to invent the hybrid disease resistance acorn, and maybe she can stave off extinction.
That's called "raising capital for investment". That's what entrepreneurs do best. That is mostly not what government goes into debt to do, and when it does, it tends on average to do it poorly relative to the private sector.
Of course it makes sense to issue equity or sell debt instruments if you think you can use the money in a way that will generate more than enough marketable benefits and profit to pay off the obligations. Whatever Polly, Wally, and the Government think may be wise, they are not actually in the business of knowing whether or not a particular R&D project shows promise as making financial sense as one of these investments, and they are either not capable or not adequately incentivized to become the best decision makers about those questions.
Sure, there are some exceptional cases where government can and should take the lead on
borrowing money to invest in some R&D projects that for some reason can both be expected to have large public benefits exceeding their cost and which the private sector wouldn't do if left to their own devices because not expected there to be any ways to capture enough of the surplus gains to justify private expenditure.
But those cases are few and far between. Instead, because men are not angels, what always ends up happening when people grant this authority to the government is that the process of deciding who gets awards, grants, investments, or contracts becomes immediately corrupted and distorted in a manner to the personal benefit of the decision-makers, i.e., politicians and senior government officials and their close-personal friends (i.e., donors / future employers). It is just profoundly unreasonable and naive to think that politicians won't do this literally every single time they think they can get away with it, and the evidence is that this is precisely what they do.
Note: The point about all those future generations benefitting and so being happy to pay their taxes for the benefits created by those in the past does not make any special case in favor of the government playing the financial role here. What happens in the private sector is that the patent system gives them a very limited time to capture rents and surplus as a monopoly before releasing the discovery to the whole world and watching generic prices fall to the cost of production plus levels of profit normal in the general market. It's much more reasonable to ask those in the medium-term future to pay all the surplus needed to incentivize new big innovations than to force people generations hence to pay back debts incurred by decisions they had no part in making.
The key point was there are benefits that will accrue to future tax payers then the costs should be borne in part by future taxpayers. If Napoleon offers you 530M acres for $15M, and whose value exceeds your total budget, you issue debt to buy the land :)
Well put. Public debt is a really an inter-generational transfer tool to get people today to spend on projects and investments that will pay off in the future - something I have written about a bit.
It doesn't matter even if they were repeatable today. Sales between states transferring sovereignty over land are precisely the kind of transaction in which private parties cannot participate or compete. I have no doubt Napoleon could have gotten a much higher price had it been possible to sell the land in the open market. But it's wasn't. He could not protect his own French settlements along the Mississippi, let alone new private buyers, needed to drop a huge and distant front in his wars, and establishment of a new sovereign state that would stay allied to France during the European wars and be strong enough to survive despite being immediately at odds with both the Americans and the British was not feasible. He had to sell to a bordering sovereign ally, and the United States government was the only option. Being desperate for funds while in a situation of monopsony is precisely the fire-sale circumstance in which you'll take anything you can get, which is why the purchase was such a good deal for the US. If you too are somehow the only eligible buyer of something valuable owned by someone who has to unload it right away whatever the price, then by all means do not hesitate to mortgage your grandmother and your own kids in order to get the money to buy it!
Relatedly, my understanding is that Japan has had extremely high debts yet minimal inflation (until recently) despite low interest rate set by their fed equivalent.
What is the rough explanation for this? Deferred inflation that could get set off at some future time and that will then be very difficult to contain? Real rates that are higher than they seem on nominal level? Some unique aspect due to shrinking working age population?
In the case of Japan a big part of it is due to retirement funds being forced to invest in domestic bonds instead of buying more profitable foreign bonds.
The reality of Japan’s 250% ratio of national debt/ GDP (annual) makes the recent 100% breakthru of the US seem to be more manageable.
Until Arnold, or John Cochrane, can explain why Japan is NOT in crisis, at 250%, it reinforces my prior belief that the US at 105% is not yet a crisis.
So I am far more against losing elections due to fiscal crisis talk & fears, than I am against ever increasing govt debt. For now, until Japan is showing a bigger crisis—they are already in reduced population low TFR territory, with affordable housing in BIG city Tokyo.
I am not sure that the price of acorns in your example can go to 150$. If it does, Polly can buy 1 acorn back and sits on 50$ and Wally 0 acorns, so the bank is left with one remaining acorn it apparently doesn't do anything with.
Yea, whether or not the acorns are discrete is an important question. The example would probably be improved by specifying it is 2 bushels of acorns or something similar that can be divided. One would also want to explain why Polly doesn't just store them at her house, because that seems like a reasonable question followed by "What does Wally do then?"
Of course all these toy model explanations have problems like this; making them is hard!
I have a question about the simple model. You argued that the market price for acorns must rise because, at $100, the demands for acorns (=3) is greater than the supply (=2). But at $150 the demand (=1) is less than the supply (=2). So $150 can't be the market clearing price either. Am I missing something?
I see your point and have thought that basically, the system we have set up is a scheme to mislead people.
The basic idea that is not really mentioned here, is that real wealth and growth is only possible in the actual market with humans working together and selling goods and services to each other. But along with this rosy picture of growth is scarcity. There is in fact a limited amount of time and resources, and price is one way of looking at that.
So conflict naturally occurs, but conflict itself can get out of control and disrupt the very system trying to make the best of a bad situation, and since humans are naturally tribal and simplistic, they would rush to change the system thinking that the grass is greener (because all of life’s problems are caused by the other) effectively killing the golden goose.
So what government does is use complex schemes and rhetoric and elects politicians who make people feel like they have a voice, to basically run circles around the populace long enough to allow the real growth to occur. The people can’t be allowed to catch onto the game because we would collapse into the natural state of humanity - full of violent conflict, tribalism, and poverty.
In short: scarcity is a fact of life, but the truth hurts. When the truth hurts, we lie.
Great first pass simplistic fable on why both printing money to cover the deficit, and borrowing money, are bad. Later. The artificial wealth of debt is especially important and subtle. When the crisis comes, money printer goes brr -- and all the US govt debt will be covered by US Fed Reserve Notes (legal tender for all debts!), which can be printed as needed, and will be.
The important educational aspect is that the crisis comes from a deficit -- too much spending (we like), not enough taxation (none like). Most voters understand that higher taxes means less econ growth (tho that might not be true for all taxes); and it's good that Republicans oppose taxes. What is needed is to to teach Dem voters that deficit spending will create the crisis -- and they deny it.
The important second pass is to add investment -- when money is borrowed (from the future) for investment today, the higher production can pay for the borrowed money. More production means "more money" can be in circulation without price increases. But the money has to be invested in stuff that creates products folk want to buy at prices higher than the costs, including interest. A positive ROI (return on investment) - "profit". Profit is the single best measure of wealth creation.
Most governments invest in stuff at a loss, tho, so that doesn't reduce inflation the way that good investments would -- which is the main reason, in practice, that tax cut deficits are far far better for the economy than govt spending deficits. Taxpayers know what they would invest in next, if they had more cash to invest, like from a tax cut.
Social Security & Medicare need reform -- but it's politically stupid to support partisan cuts for these popular programs. Republicans should warn about the crisis coming, but be going more for tax cuts to the most productive companies, those employing the most Americans in America. And claiming that the Dems are over spending into a crisis, but they're willing to cut programs Dems are willing to cut. It's politically stupid for Reps to favor spending cuts of popular programs when Dems will call them selfish and uncaring.
Cutting tax exemptions for colleges that have been illegally discriminating against hiring Republicans as professors, often also excluding Republicans from their Boards of Directors would be a tax increase that would likely help society in many good ways, and be popular with Rep voters.
"people were afraid to go to work and/or were ordered to stay home, which reduced supply."
While your example is largely correct, its simplicity does not capture what happened when the pandemic hit. Both supply and demand changed drastically. Because many people stayed home demand for many good dropped. The obvious example is that demand for gasoline dropped precipitously and so did its price. Without checks to raise demand, it is very likely the economy would have tanked worse than it did.
Were the checks (and unemployment payments) too big? I'd say that was obvious even then. Either way, your example doesn't capture that some govt payments were economically justified.
“You can think of Wally as being on welfare, or working for the government. Regardless, he produces nothing.” If Wally is a police officer or a Supreme Court Justice does he not produce anything? He produces no good or service? He doesn’t produce anything that people want?
Think of Wally as working in the Department Acorn Production in D.C. writing a thousand pages of regulations governing the gathering of acorns from around oak trees.
I detected in it a little slyness he couldn't help but slip into an otherwise engaging fable, although I am a little hung up on what Doctor Hammer noticed above.
Polly gets to collect acorns (from the commons?:-)) instead of being a human resources soul-eater in a company that markets acorns through internet ads.
Wally is a loser.
I personally, being an old Dave Foreman acolyte, would endorse an absolute moratorium on roadbuilding in this country - but I too stumbled unnecessarily on that, thinking "maybe Wally built the road Polly takes to get to the forest" - before deciding this must serve simplicity.
A moratorium on road building? And why aren’t you writing this up in a longer piece somewhere, like on Substack? We want to learn about your perspective on this. I’ve read half a dozen books by Edward Abbey, mostly before I was 21.
He did clarify. He said you can think of Wally as doing X or Y, but regardless he produces nothing. It's right there in what you quoted. It seems that you got hung up on the notion that maybe government workers don't produce anything, instead of noticing that what Wally does isn't critical, you can think of it different ways, but the important point is that he doesn't produce anything.
That’s one interpretation. I can see people interpreting this as “government employees are equivalent to welfare recipients. They don’t produce anything.” It’s sloppy libertarian writing. Why choose a broad job category like government employees and then associate it with producing nothing? Why not actually specify a job that produces nothing? Name the specific job.
People might interpret it that way, but not because of what Kling wrote but instead because of the baggage they brought with them that is preventing them from parsing the sentences correctly. There is only so much you can do to think for people when you write.
Let me crack open my copy of The Three Languages of Politics and see what the author advises on communicating in less tribal ways. After crossing out the bit about government employees not producing anything I think most middle school students would find Arnold’s fable on inflation insightful. Kids are impressionable.
As to government workers, while we can think of some that produce something, we can also think of many that produce nothing, so I don't think the exercise is that hard.
A large class produce something but its worth a lot less then what's paid. Our local public schools do indeed provide daycare (well, at least not during the pandemic) but it's a daycare I don't particularly like and yet it somehow costs $24k/kid/year.
Although I agree with the basic idea of fiscal policy as conflict two additional point are needed. a) Polly supposedly agreed to hiring Wally and he is performing a service for her (or she wished to transfer money to Wally). THAT is not the locus of the conflict. b) The bank is able to offer Polly interest because the saved acorns are productive; they can be used to produce more acorns.
In this model there is still conflict, a deficit is still bad even if Polly does not want to withdraw the two acorns because they were not in fact invested to produce more acorns. Inflation is not really important; it is failure invest the acorns, the diminished growth. The conflict is that Polly does not want to be taxed to pay for the salary/transfer to Wally, but also wants the income from her investment.
You are completely twisting the example to fit your priors.
In addition to what Yancey noted about interest, no where in the example is Polly hiring Wally to do anything or providing him charity. Arnold specifically notes that you can assume Wally is a ward of the state as he is not producing anything tradable in this simplified economy.
Ok Polly wants Wally to be on welfare. The issue is still that Poly is not being taxed to provide the resources that Wally consumes so her "saving" is being used for that instead of being invested. It is the no investment that is the problem not the inflation IF Poly want to try to send her now non-existent savings. The issue as I see it is Poly's inconsistency if she both wants to transfer resources to Wally but does not want to pay taxes to free the resources.
Now if we eliminate the possibility of investment then Poly's inconsistency will cause inflation, but the inflation has no efficiency consequences. Poly is taxed with taxes or is taxed with inflation, in which case who cares?
I think you should abbreviate "have a nice day" as HND. People in the know would experience a real increase in status, and it would become part of your brand, as in HND Kling.
The wrong way to approach this is what the GOP is doing, which is talking about cutting SS which will inevitably lose them an election and even if they win they won't cut it and we know it.
Let's just own up to the fact that we are going to have a fiscal crisis over the boomers retirement and try our best to prepare for it.
Social Security is not a fiscal problem. Medicare is. Politicians scapegoat SS because there are no SS lobbyists. Medicare has multiple industry lobbyists defending the program and the medical inflation the program creates.
Yes, hence we are doomed. Might as well funnel money to your allies now while there still is some.
Definitely true, and the "good" part is, due to the magic of math, if we know we are "going to have a fiscal crisis" it is the same as "currently in a fiscal crisis." The problem is who "we" are - and the party that will pay the largest part of the "needing to cough up money" part of that fiscal crisis is currently in second grade or so, where they are somewhat isolated from political decision making. And lots of the people who are in the "demanding the money get coughed up to them" party will be dead, and therefore also, sadly, isolated from the political process.
So [non-rhetorically], what can we do at this stage of the crisis to nudge public opinion towards accepting some mutually agreeable SS cuts so that we don't pick the "stage 2 crisis, 20 years from now" choice of "intergenerational warfare"? What does "prepare" look like?
It's easy to be snarky about it, but you don't have any better answer to the issue he raised.
Either that or you are missing his point.
The point is that all attempts at raising the alarm have failed and all crisis-avoiding options have been repeatedly demonstrated to be politically nonviable and thus off the table whether one likes it or not.
So, short of regime change, we are going to get a crisis.
It's difficult to accept this ugly truth, but it's a simple fact that the American polity is not capable of tightening its own belt and anyone thinking about what might be done might as well be adult and try to face up to it.
And it's hardly just America. This state of affairs has been known to be a likely outcome of a risky design defect in any democratic system with large voting constituencies that are beneficiaries of redistribution programs and with the government able to accumulate debt and/or debase fiat currency without constitutional limit in order to pay for those programs. Once you start down that road, even if you can keep playing the game for decades, your luck eventually runs out and the outcome is still inevitable. Without unexpected bursts of economic growth or increases in the fertility rate, it's only a matter of time.
This kind of thing happens in Latin America all the time, and it used to happen to plenty of European countries and will start happening there again, I'd guess within a decade. The PIGS will stop flying soon enough.
And it will happen to the US too. In just the past 14 years, Debt Held By The Public / GDP went from 35% to 100%. There's no good reason to look at American politics and conclude other than it's just going to keep going up that fast on average until Stein's Law blows it all up.
Now, whether there is anything at all a political party can be doing to soften the blows to the interests of its politicians and constituents when the crisis comes to pass, and in a way that will allow them to keep winning elections, well, it's an interesting question. I doubt it.
It will be up to individuals to see the writing on the wall and try their best to protect their own interests, and reallocate their savings to investments that track inflation and are easier to hide from future taxmen who will be grabbing everything they can.
Until US Democrats agree that the US govt is spending too much on some entitlement, proposing to reduce spending will make one lose. Thus, no spending reduction.
It may take a crisis, or catastrophe, to change the minds, & Big Govt Spending philosophy, of the Democrats.
Crying Wolf, too soon, just insures electoral defeat.
Why don't Republicans be honest? They should be honest about welcoming entitlement spending cuts that Democrats propose, but if the crisis isn't clear to Dem leaders, it's not yet a crisis.
Of course the trouble is that the progressives do not have a good track record of the manner in which they never let a crisis go to waste, and if they are still in charge when it happens they will only make things even worse and create a situation of permanent fiscal basket case. If there is any planning to be done for the crisis it's to do as much as possible to prevent that.
You write that “the government fool[s] people into thinking that they are wealthier than they really are, by running deficits.” But (apparently) people are already making a mistake, regardless of government action. As an American, a substantial part of my wealth consists in the American government’s capacity to provide me with services. By running deficits the government reduces this capacity. But I (and other Americans) do not notice the associated decline in my own wealth, because *I never did include my share of governmental capacity in my estimate of my wealth*. Thus I was fooled about the significance of the deficits *because of a mistake I had been making all along*.
Keynes on inflation: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." Further, "By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth." (Keynes's comments are from his 1919 "The Economic Consequences of the Peace.")
Governments practice through "necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done by design." Of course this nefarious process is going to lead to social strife.
https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/keynes_persuasion/Inflation.htm The short passage is well worth reading in full.
Here's a technical point that might or might not affect Arnold's conclusions. In his example, there are two acorns available to distribute, and $300 worth of money or near money. However, Polly has $200, and Wally has only $100. How does the price of acorns get to $150? At that price, Polly can afford only one acorn, and Wally none, in which case one acorn goes to waste. The same would be true for any price greater than $100 per acorn. Thus, unless the government taxes Polly $50 and gives it to Wally (or Polly voluntarily donates the same amount to Wally), the market won't clear at $150 per acorn.
BTW, this example also illustrates the problem with price controls. The government, say, could declare a price support for acorns at $150, e.g. to help the oak tree industry (read: farm sector, minimum wages). Without other government actions, such as in the prior paragraph, there will be a winter surplus of one acorn.
Oops. I should have noticed that. I would need to rework the example to make it possible for Wally to buy at least one acorn.
Rather than 10, make it 100 acorns, so it's 20 acorns to distribute, at $10-15 per acorn.
Much smaller "waste"; Polly can buy 20 @ 10, or 13 @ $15. Wally can buy 6 @ 15.
Still one acorn, but only $15 worth unclear distribution / waste.
Integer purchasing is an issue on pricing and packaging.
Would this be a reasonable justification for debt?
Polly would like to spend fewer hours of the day growing acorn, and fighting off pests, and losing the occasional crop altogether, and the water table is falling, and they are all at risk of extinction after the next bad crop.
Polly (and Wally) and the Government think it's wise to invest in R&D for better acorn hybrids, maybe also requiring less water.
The benefits will be felt not only by Polly and Wally but future generations who are not yet around to pay taxes. So the Government prints the money to pay Molly to invent the hybrid disease resistance acorn, and maybe she can stave off extinction.
That's called "raising capital for investment". That's what entrepreneurs do best. That is mostly not what government goes into debt to do, and when it does, it tends on average to do it poorly relative to the private sector.
Of course it makes sense to issue equity or sell debt instruments if you think you can use the money in a way that will generate more than enough marketable benefits and profit to pay off the obligations. Whatever Polly, Wally, and the Government think may be wise, they are not actually in the business of knowing whether or not a particular R&D project shows promise as making financial sense as one of these investments, and they are either not capable or not adequately incentivized to become the best decision makers about those questions.
Sure, there are some exceptional cases where government can and should take the lead on
borrowing money to invest in some R&D projects that for some reason can both be expected to have large public benefits exceeding their cost and which the private sector wouldn't do if left to their own devices because not expected there to be any ways to capture enough of the surplus gains to justify private expenditure.
But those cases are few and far between. Instead, because men are not angels, what always ends up happening when people grant this authority to the government is that the process of deciding who gets awards, grants, investments, or contracts becomes immediately corrupted and distorted in a manner to the personal benefit of the decision-makers, i.e., politicians and senior government officials and their close-personal friends (i.e., donors / future employers). It is just profoundly unreasonable and naive to think that politicians won't do this literally every single time they think they can get away with it, and the evidence is that this is precisely what they do.
Note: The point about all those future generations benefitting and so being happy to pay their taxes for the benefits created by those in the past does not make any special case in favor of the government playing the financial role here. What happens in the private sector is that the patent system gives them a very limited time to capture rents and surplus as a monopoly before releasing the discovery to the whole world and watching generic prices fall to the cost of production plus levels of profit normal in the general market. It's much more reasonable to ask those in the medium-term future to pay all the surplus needed to incentivize new big innovations than to force people generations hence to pay back debts incurred by decisions they had no part in making.
The key point was there are benefits that will accrue to future tax payers then the costs should be borne in part by future taxpayers. If Napoleon offers you 530M acres for $15M, and whose value exceeds your total budget, you issue debt to buy the land :)
Well put. Public debt is a really an inter-generational transfer tool to get people today to spend on projects and investments that will pay off in the future - something I have written about a bit.
ICWYDT, but the circumstances are not repeatable today!
It doesn't matter even if they were repeatable today. Sales between states transferring sovereignty over land are precisely the kind of transaction in which private parties cannot participate or compete. I have no doubt Napoleon could have gotten a much higher price had it been possible to sell the land in the open market. But it's wasn't. He could not protect his own French settlements along the Mississippi, let alone new private buyers, needed to drop a huge and distant front in his wars, and establishment of a new sovereign state that would stay allied to France during the European wars and be strong enough to survive despite being immediately at odds with both the Americans and the British was not feasible. He had to sell to a bordering sovereign ally, and the United States government was the only option. Being desperate for funds while in a situation of monopsony is precisely the fire-sale circumstance in which you'll take anything you can get, which is why the purchase was such a good deal for the US. If you too are somehow the only eligible buyer of something valuable owned by someone who has to unload it right away whatever the price, then by all means do not hesitate to mortgage your grandmother and your own kids in order to get the money to buy it!
We have established who you (and I!) are madam, now we are merely haggling over the price.
This story conforms to my intuitive notion.
Relatedly, my understanding is that Japan has had extremely high debts yet minimal inflation (until recently) despite low interest rate set by their fed equivalent.
What is the rough explanation for this? Deferred inflation that could get set off at some future time and that will then be very difficult to contain? Real rates that are higher than they seem on nominal level? Some unique aspect due to shrinking working age population?
In the case of Japan a big part of it is due to retirement funds being forced to invest in domestic bonds instead of buying more profitable foreign bonds.
The reality of Japan’s 250% ratio of national debt/ GDP (annual) makes the recent 100% breakthru of the US seem to be more manageable.
Until Arnold, or John Cochrane, can explain why Japan is NOT in crisis, at 250%, it reinforces my prior belief that the US at 105% is not yet a crisis.
So I am far more against losing elections due to fiscal crisis talk & fears, than I am against ever increasing govt debt. For now, until Japan is showing a bigger crisis—they are already in reduced population low TFR territory, with affordable housing in BIG city Tokyo.
Japan is a net exporter and owes a lot of money to itself. There are more reasons as well.
The US stumbling into an energy surplus gave it a reprieve on this issue in some ways as well.
I am not sure that the price of acorns in your example can go to 150$. If it does, Polly can buy 1 acorn back and sits on 50$ and Wally 0 acorns, so the bank is left with one remaining acorn it apparently doesn't do anything with.
Polly will but 4/3 of an acorn and Wally will buy 2/3 of an acorn, assuming the bank has an acorn splitting machine.
Yea, whether or not the acorns are discrete is an important question. The example would probably be improved by specifying it is 2 bushels of acorns or something similar that can be divided. One would also want to explain why Polly doesn't just store them at her house, because that seems like a reasonable question followed by "What does Wally do then?"
Of course all these toy model explanations have problems like this; making them is hard!
I have a question about the simple model. You argued that the market price for acorns must rise because, at $100, the demands for acorns (=3) is greater than the supply (=2). But at $150 the demand (=1) is less than the supply (=2). So $150 can't be the market clearing price either. Am I missing something?
I see your point and have thought that basically, the system we have set up is a scheme to mislead people.
The basic idea that is not really mentioned here, is that real wealth and growth is only possible in the actual market with humans working together and selling goods and services to each other. But along with this rosy picture of growth is scarcity. There is in fact a limited amount of time and resources, and price is one way of looking at that.
So conflict naturally occurs, but conflict itself can get out of control and disrupt the very system trying to make the best of a bad situation, and since humans are naturally tribal and simplistic, they would rush to change the system thinking that the grass is greener (because all of life’s problems are caused by the other) effectively killing the golden goose.
So what government does is use complex schemes and rhetoric and elects politicians who make people feel like they have a voice, to basically run circles around the populace long enough to allow the real growth to occur. The people can’t be allowed to catch onto the game because we would collapse into the natural state of humanity - full of violent conflict, tribalism, and poverty.
In short: scarcity is a fact of life, but the truth hurts. When the truth hurts, we lie.
Great first pass simplistic fable on why both printing money to cover the deficit, and borrowing money, are bad. Later. The artificial wealth of debt is especially important and subtle. When the crisis comes, money printer goes brr -- and all the US govt debt will be covered by US Fed Reserve Notes (legal tender for all debts!), which can be printed as needed, and will be.
The important educational aspect is that the crisis comes from a deficit -- too much spending (we like), not enough taxation (none like). Most voters understand that higher taxes means less econ growth (tho that might not be true for all taxes); and it's good that Republicans oppose taxes. What is needed is to to teach Dem voters that deficit spending will create the crisis -- and they deny it.
The important second pass is to add investment -- when money is borrowed (from the future) for investment today, the higher production can pay for the borrowed money. More production means "more money" can be in circulation without price increases. But the money has to be invested in stuff that creates products folk want to buy at prices higher than the costs, including interest. A positive ROI (return on investment) - "profit". Profit is the single best measure of wealth creation.
Most governments invest in stuff at a loss, tho, so that doesn't reduce inflation the way that good investments would -- which is the main reason, in practice, that tax cut deficits are far far better for the economy than govt spending deficits. Taxpayers know what they would invest in next, if they had more cash to invest, like from a tax cut.
Social Security & Medicare need reform -- but it's politically stupid to support partisan cuts for these popular programs. Republicans should warn about the crisis coming, but be going more for tax cuts to the most productive companies, those employing the most Americans in America. And claiming that the Dems are over spending into a crisis, but they're willing to cut programs Dems are willing to cut. It's politically stupid for Reps to favor spending cuts of popular programs when Dems will call them selfish and uncaring.
Cutting tax exemptions for colleges that have been illegally discriminating against hiring Republicans as professors, often also excluding Republicans from their Boards of Directors would be a tax increase that would likely help society in many good ways, and be popular with Rep voters.
"people were afraid to go to work and/or were ordered to stay home, which reduced supply."
While your example is largely correct, its simplicity does not capture what happened when the pandemic hit. Both supply and demand changed drastically. Because many people stayed home demand for many good dropped. The obvious example is that demand for gasoline dropped precipitously and so did its price. Without checks to raise demand, it is very likely the economy would have tanked worse than it did.
Were the checks (and unemployment payments) too big? I'd say that was obvious even then. Either way, your example doesn't capture that some govt payments were economically justified.
“You can think of Wally as being on welfare, or working for the government. Regardless, he produces nothing.” If Wally is a police officer or a Supreme Court Justice does he not produce anything? He produces no good or service? He doesn’t produce anything that people want?
You are missing the point, which is that Wally produces nothing, regardless of why. The point isn't that no government worker ever produces anything.
Then Arnold should clarify. It sounds like he is writing to a group of libertarian anarchists.
Think of Wally as working in the Department Acorn Production in D.C. writing a thousand pages of regulations governing the gathering of acorns from around oak trees.
As someone who produces nothing of value and probably does more harm than good, this description works for me.
I detected in it a little slyness he couldn't help but slip into an otherwise engaging fable, although I am a little hung up on what Doctor Hammer noticed above.
Polly gets to collect acorns (from the commons?:-)) instead of being a human resources soul-eater in a company that markets acorns through internet ads.
Wally is a loser.
I personally, being an old Dave Foreman acolyte, would endorse an absolute moratorium on roadbuilding in this country - but I too stumbled unnecessarily on that, thinking "maybe Wally built the road Polly takes to get to the forest" - before deciding this must serve simplicity.
A moratorium on road building? And why aren’t you writing this up in a longer piece somewhere, like on Substack? We want to learn about your perspective on this. I’ve read half a dozen books by Edward Abbey, mostly before I was 21.
Kind. I've neither: the discipline, the ability to focus, the self-confidence, nor the calm coolness of an A. Kling.
How about sharing three paragraphs? :)
He did clarify. He said you can think of Wally as doing X or Y, but regardless he produces nothing. It's right there in what you quoted. It seems that you got hung up on the notion that maybe government workers don't produce anything, instead of noticing that what Wally does isn't critical, you can think of it different ways, but the important point is that he doesn't produce anything.
That’s one interpretation. I can see people interpreting this as “government employees are equivalent to welfare recipients. They don’t produce anything.” It’s sloppy libertarian writing. Why choose a broad job category like government employees and then associate it with producing nothing? Why not actually specify a job that produces nothing? Name the specific job.
People might interpret it that way, but not because of what Kling wrote but instead because of the baggage they brought with them that is preventing them from parsing the sentences correctly. There is only so much you can do to think for people when you write.
Let me crack open my copy of The Three Languages of Politics and see what the author advises on communicating in less tribal ways. After crossing out the bit about government employees not producing anything I think most middle school students would find Arnold’s fable on inflation insightful. Kids are impressionable.
Yes, neither of us would complain if he had said that Wally was a diviseness administrator at Acorn U.
Its irrelevant to the example.
As to government workers, while we can think of some that produce something, we can also think of many that produce nothing, so I don't think the exercise is that hard.
A large class produce something but its worth a lot less then what's paid. Our local public schools do indeed provide daycare (well, at least not during the pandemic) but it's a daycare I don't particularly like and yet it somehow costs $24k/kid/year.
Although I agree with the basic idea of fiscal policy as conflict two additional point are needed. a) Polly supposedly agreed to hiring Wally and he is performing a service for her (or she wished to transfer money to Wally). THAT is not the locus of the conflict. b) The bank is able to offer Polly interest because the saved acorns are productive; they can be used to produce more acorns.
In this model there is still conflict, a deficit is still bad even if Polly does not want to withdraw the two acorns because they were not in fact invested to produce more acorns. Inflation is not really important; it is failure invest the acorns, the diminished growth. The conflict is that Polly does not want to be taxed to pay for the salary/transfer to Wally, but also wants the income from her investment.
There is no interest paid in this model, Thomas.
You are completely twisting the example to fit your priors.
In addition to what Yancey noted about interest, no where in the example is Polly hiring Wally to do anything or providing him charity. Arnold specifically notes that you can assume Wally is a ward of the state as he is not producing anything tradable in this simplified economy.
Ok Polly wants Wally to be on welfare. The issue is still that Poly is not being taxed to provide the resources that Wally consumes so her "saving" is being used for that instead of being invested. It is the no investment that is the problem not the inflation IF Poly want to try to send her now non-existent savings. The issue as I see it is Poly's inconsistency if she both wants to transfer resources to Wally but does not want to pay taxes to free the resources.
Now if we eliminate the possibility of investment then Poly's inconsistency will cause inflation, but the inflation has no efficiency consequences. Poly is taxed with taxes or is taxed with inflation, in which case who cares?
I think you should abbreviate "have a nice day" as HND. People in the know would experience a real increase in status, and it would become part of your brand, as in HND Kling.
Knowing what an acronym means as a badge of status is always and everywhere a bad thing.
I’ve sometimes included in my love of different types of dancing the pleasure of dancing horizontally, but haven’t before noted The Joy of HND.