The little pastel spoons dip into the gelato. Curly Top asks her boyfriend, “Is our city better today than it was four years ago?”
He ponders a few moments. “I don’t think I know about the city as a whole. My life in particular has gotten better, and the impact of ‘the city’ on me personally seems minimal.”
Curly Top pressed further. “Well, have you noticed more crime in your neighborhood, or less? Does your car hit more potholes along the same routes, or less? Are you paying more in city taxes while parks go into disrepair and libraries shut down? Do you think we even need parks and libraries?”
Curly Top may have been testing her beau to see if he was up to her vision of a life in politics. Who knows, but they were good questions. It made me ask the same of myself, not only about San Diego, but my state and country as well. Like Curly Top’s boyfriend, I could only speak for myself. My life has gotten better. But I’m not worried about my own tenure on the planet as much today as I was thirty years ago. I’m more concerned with what’s to come for my adult kids and their potential progeny. I don’t think the Baby Boomers will be hit with the consequences of decisions made in the last ten to twenty years as hard as those who follow. Policy decisions, those made on behalf of all of us by some of us, don’t typically have immediate impact. The actions percolate through the fabric of the social and economic relationships we historically (and somewhat arbitrarily) define as cities, states and countries. It can take years to understand the physical manifestation of the policy decisions made today.
Take the national debt for example. I try not to keep too close a track on it, because it can be a depressing hobby, but last I checked we citizens of the U.S. collectively owe $16 trillion bucks. More than our total annual GDP.
With roughly 310 million people in the country, that works out to over $50,000 for every citizen. That number has nearly doubled since 2007. If we use a ratio of 25% in average taxes paid, then this debt amounts to over $200,000 in additional lifetime income necessary for every U.S. citizen to pay off the national debt. Assuming we didn’t add another dime to it, of course.
What is our total debt as a percentage of GDP? Right now, it’s about just over 100%. Back in Truman’s post-World War II America, it was 90%, got down to 30% under Carter, then zoomed up again during Reagan and the first Bush, down under Clinton, and back up again under the “W”. But even that is misleading. If GDP goes up faster than deficit spending, the percentage of GDP we’re borrowing can go down even as the absolute dollars go up. At the end of Reagan’s presidency, the national debt stood at $2.6 trillion. It’s grown $13.4 trillion since then, and it’s doubled since 2005.
But does our national debt matter? In the words of the famous left-Keynesian apostle of “functional finance,” Professor Abba Lernr, there is nothing wrong with the public debt because “we owe it to ourselves.” That probably depends on whether you happen to be the “we” or the “ourselves”. In our case, “ourselves” refers to our kids and grandkids, and “we” represents the Baby Boomers who will be checking out of the planetary hotel long before the debt is even close to retired.
So Curly Top probably should have composed her survey question more prospectively. If she had asked her boyfriend, “Do you think your kids will have a quality of life better or worse than you currently experience?” the answer might well have been different. Her next question might logically be, “Do you care if it’s worse?” I’m amazed at how many people act as if they don’t.
Collectively, our fortunate, wealthy society has a sense of responsibility to our progeny that rivals the forward-thinking of a fruit fly.