The ‘infinite-horizon fiscal gap’ is just an infinity of nonsense – try measuring that!

The ‘infinite-horizon fiscal gap’ is just an infinity of nonsense. That is, if such a level of ridiculousness can be measured, which it cannot. So suffice to say a pretty large dose of nonsense. Certainly nothing to take seriously. Anyone who sprouts this nonsense declares themselves unqualified to discuss notions of sovereignty and the capacities of a currency-issuing state. But while some mainstream economists are firmly stuck in their Groupthink-riddled stupors with their ‘infinite-horizon fiscal gap’ calculations producing ever increasing (scaremungous) $ sums that the US government is allegedly unable to ever pay, the movers and shakers of the political scene, such as the Koch Brothers in the US, feel no compunction to stick with a consistent line attacking fiscal deficits. A few years ago they were predicting mayhem and insolvency just like the stupified academics. How things change when some dollars are up for grabs even if the fiscal deficit has to rise to transfer that largesse to the non-government sector. Then it is look the other way on the deficit and send us the cash. Sickening.

Yesterday (October 24, 2017) a report in a service that provides investment advice (I won’t link to it because it has goldbug adverts etc), ran a story on Laurence Kotlikoff.

Laurence Kotlikoff who is an American academic has been predicting (or rather asserting) that the US has run out of money for many years now.

Kotlikoff’s predictions are like a crack in an old vinyl record – click, click, click, moronic, moronic, click, click

Back in 1991, he was carrying on about the “fiscal burden current generations are placing on future generations”. He wrote then that (Source):

The federal deficit is widely viewed as the United States’ number one economic problem … As the underlying credo of fiscal policy is to cut spending or raise taxes to make the deficit zero, the attention given to how to define the deficit is not surprising … unless policy toward existing generations, including those who have just been born, is substantially altered (for example, through a real adherence to the just enacted budget deal), future generations will face a roughly 20% larger net tax burden over the course of their lifetimes than current newborns.

Okay, we can go back even further than 1991 if we wanted to where Kotlikoff was making the same sorts of statements.

The difference is that in more recent times his claims have become more strident – moving from the intergenerational burden shift to his latest claims about the US going broke.

He has consistently claimed that social security and healthcare systems were sending the US bankrupt.

In 2005, he was predicting that the US was “in the worst long-term fiscal shape of any OECD country”:

There is, of course, a limit to how much a government can extract from the young to accommodate the old. When that limit is reached, governments go broke. Of the ten countries considered here, the U.S. appears the most likely to hit this limit.

And the theme continued to the present day with Kotlikoff becoming increasingly aggressive in his predictions and using the same old argument with new ramped up figures as time passed.

His technique is to make some calculations based on current fiscal and demographic parameters, add in a whole lot of irrelevant alleged ‘costs’ or ‘debts’, extrapolate them out to infinity, which then produces some ridiculously large number that most people cannot even pronounce much less appreciate the scale and conclude government insolvency is beckoning.

Its been like that for 3 or more decades. The only difference is the lines on his face become more pronounced and his hair has greyed and thinned.

Of course, the current young adults who were entering the world in the early 1990s are not paying a “20% larger net tax burden” nor will.

Of course, the US government is not about to go broke, nor will.

This is not to say that the US government should not attempt to rein in the very expensive health care system that they have created under pressure from the greedy medical profession, the grasping pharmaceutical companies and the medical technology companies. But that necessity is nothing to do with the US government not being able to afford to maintain such a system in financial terms.

It is just about releasing itself from the captive rent-seekers who plunder the public purse for their own gain and deliver sub-optimal outcomes in terms of advancing well-being.

I wrote about that issue in these blogs (among others):

1. The US should have universal public health care.

2. A government can always afford high-quality health care provision.

In 2015, Kotlikoff appeared before the US Budget Committee (February 25, 2017). He tendered this written document – America’s Fiscal Insolvency and Its Generational Consequences.

He told the Senate:

Let me get right to the point. Our country is broke. It’s not broke in 75 years or 50 years or 25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. Indeed, it may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece.

Whenever a commentator or an economist conflates the fiscal outlook for a nation that issues its own currency (for example, the US) with the outlook for a nation that uses a foreign currency (for example, Greece) you know one thing for certain – they have not understood what currency sovereignty is.

They also have not understood (or choose to ignore for political/ideological reasons) the capacities that the former type of government has relative to the limitations faced by the latter type.

Broke means not being able to meet one’s outstanding liabilities. If you assert this in the present tense then it means that the bills that are coming due now are being dishonoured due to a lack of funds.

He gave that evidence nearly three years ago. It was false testimony. The US has kept paying all its outstanding liabilities as they have come due.

So it was not broke then. Nor is it broke today. And nor will it ever be so – unless it chooses for whatever reason to deny its own currency-capacity and deliberately default on these liabilities.

It simply doesn’t help anyone understand the political choices when these fake statements are bandied around in the public domain by so-called experts.

Kotlikoff thinks that we should actually used what he calls – infinite-horizon fiscal accounting – to really expose the extend of the fiscal problem facing the US government.

This is a technique he has been using for years which he knows produces these scaremungous, off-the-planet numbers that boggle the mind.

At that point, the average person will be groomed into believing that social security privatisation or cutting government welfare payments etc are going to save the nation from bankruptcy – even if they have no idea as to why or what the arguments are.

Big is scary. Big has to be paid back. But our kids will do the paying back. At least until we move on another generation and then their kids will have to pay it back and so the stupid narrative continues.

Kotlikoff told the US Senate that the US government has regularly defaulted on its outstanding Treasury bonds:

Yes, the Treasury bonds bear “the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.” But those fancy, legal words don’t make those bonds safe in any real economic sense. Our government has periodically defaulted on the real value of official debt by running inflation. In 1946, for example, it wiped out a quarter of the real value of War Bonds by lifting price controls. In the 1970s, our government used inflation to wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in the real value of federal debt.

Notice immediately how he conflates concepts – runs things together to confuse and confound.

When we talk about going broke – or defaulting – we are referring to the ability to service and pay back any outstanding nominal liabilities.

A bank doesn’t say to me that I have to pay them back in real terms when I borrow to fund a home purchase. I pay a periodic monetary amount and as long as I keep paying that I am solvent in terms of that debt commitment.

The rise and fall of the inflation rate clearly impacts on the real burden of that debt commitment but I am not defaulting if the real commitment is falling.

For a government, the same logic follows. It is clear that the fixed nominal value on a treasury bond will vary in real terms as the price level varies and shift real burdens between creditor and debtor accordingly.

But that doesn’t accord with going broke or defaulting. That is just a misuse of the terminology – rendering it without meaning.

Kotlikoff speaks like that because he knows people are typically not that discerning and so it ‘sounds about right’, which reinforces his claim to credibility when, in fact, he has none.

The infinite-horizon fiscal gap he advocates is based on the idea that:

All government obligations and all government receipts, no matter what they are called, need to be properly valued in the present taking into account their likelihood of payment by and to the government.

So, it follows that “high future transfer payments” and “low future levels of taxation” have to be accounted for, because otherwise, it places:

… our children and grandchildren under a fiscal Sword of Damocles that gravely endangers their economic futures.

What Kotlikoff regularly produces is a summation of the known liabilities and all the so-called unfunded liabilities – such as future social security pensions.

The features of the ‘infinite-horizon fiscal gap’ are:

1. “it puts everything on the books”.

2. “a positive fiscal gap means the government is attempting to spend, over time, more than it can afford … Hence, a positive fiscal gap is a direct measure of the unsustainability of current fiscal policy.”

3. “the fiscal gap tells us the fiscal burden that will be imposed on today’s and tomorrow’s children if current adults don’t pay more to or receive less from the government.”

He then told the US Senate that the ‘fiscal gap” was “massive” ($US210 trillion) – “almost 12 years of GDP” (in 2015). Scaremungous!

He told the Senate that “Another comparison is Detroit prior to declaring bankruptcy. The city appears to have been roughly 25 percent underfunded. Hence, the U.S. is in far worse fiscal shape than was Detroit before it went broke.”

So now he is conflating the US federal currency-issuer with a state in the US. A totally fake comparison.

Okay.

Think about this. What happens if the government privatises some major public asset? Well according to Kotlikoff, the ‘infinite-horizon fiscal gap’ would decline because the sale would reduce debt.

But what about the flow of benefits that the community would enjoy from public use of this asset? They are excluded from his measure.

What about the increased productivity that comes from public education and investment in public infrastructure, that the private sector leverages off? Excluded.

What about climate change allevation, which might add to current government outlays but save a fortune in the future? The outlays are included but the future savings are excluded.

So, even on its own logic, the ‘infinite-horizon fiscal gap’ is highly misleading. It does not measure anything like the net future liabilities of the federal government.

The recent story I mentioned above (but did not link to) just provided some updated scaremungous numbers using Kotlikoff’s approach and quoted him as saying:

Our country is broke … We are in worse shape than Russia, China or any developed nation …

The article repeated Kotlikoff’s claims that US “government officials are well-aware that many of America’s debts and accruing liabilities are being written off the book … they are keeping their mouths shut.”

He claims that “politicians and insiders have access to key data buried in footnotes about unfunded liabilities, which indicated their are huge problems in the economy”. But they lie and say “overall everything is OK”.

So scaremungery mixes with conspiracy theory – the usual duet.

The journalist who says he has an MBA (wow!) concludes that:

Kotlikoff is correct on one crucial point: America is unable to meet its obligations as they become due. That is the definition of bankruptcy.

In a sense, it should hardly come as a surprise that politicians are hiding this fact.

Okay, where is the evidence that the US government has not paid out or honoured any liability that has been maturing? There is no evidence.

Where is the evidence that it has refused to pay a pension that was due? There is no evidence.

To claim otherwise is a lie.

Once we escape from the Kotlikoff logic it is clear that none of his predictions have come true because they are flawed at the most elemental level.

I wrote this blog – Social security insolvency 101 – in 2009, to provide the framework for understanding why the likes of Kotlikoff should be ignored.

Another related blog (from 2012) – Accounting smokescreens excite the conservatives – is worth re-reading.

The scaremungous estimates that Kotlikoff and his ilk continually pump out into the public debate and which are repeated by mindless media commentators, parading as financial wizards, are really elaborate smokescreens about nations that have full currency sovereignty.

No matter what accounting structures are created for the US Social Security and Medicare systems, which require cash to flow into various accounts and spending to be taken out in particular ways, the reality is that these are voluntary arrangements imposed by the government upon itself.

And a fiat currency issuing government can always ensure benefits are paid (in nominal terms). That capacity is intrinsic to the monetary system.

However, to obscure that intrinsic capacity successive generations of politicians have placed a series of restrictive layers on top which the conservatives then focus on and pursue their anti-government agenda by purporting to the public that these voluntary layers are in some way binding to any federal government.

It is, in fact, meaningless to say the future pension entitlements are ‘unfunded’ and therefore a dangerous, hidden item that renders the US government insolvent.

If non-government households, for example, started racking up future liabilities for which it had no discernable income capacity to ensure they could meet these liabilities then we might call them ‘unfunded’ and be alarmed about them

Take the emerging car loan train wreck that in the US and the UK (sorry about the mixed transport pun). That is a problem which I will write about another day.

But the US government can relax any of these voluntary accounting constraints anytime it desires if there was the political will.

Taxpayers do not fund anything in a fiat monetary system and the government doesn’t need any ‘funding’ to provide whatever goods and services to the non-government sector it chooses.

Please read my blog – Taxpayers do not fund anything – for more discussion on this point.

If there are goods and services for sale in 2050 in US dollars the US government will be able to purchase them, irrespective of the public debt ratio. The real challenge is to ensure that pensions translate into better real outcomes (higher living standards).

The summary facts are as follows:

• The US government could pay all of the benefits in each year with the stroke of a computer key. The only question would be if the nominal transfers were possible in real terms – that is, will there be enough real goods and services for older Americans to enjoy in say 2050.
• There is no need to eliminate any deficits in contrived Social Security Trust Funds – now or later. They are accounting fictions. The reality is summary fact 1.
• There is no impending financial crisis in the US Social Security Trust Fund. The US government can always fund any entitlements at any time – summary fact 1.
• The billions that go to Social Security each year will not make it harder to find money for other government programs or require large and growing tax increases. The US government is not financially compromised in meeting spending on Y by spending on X. It might be politically compromised but that is nothing to do with the underlying features of the monetary system and the capacities that the US government enjoys as the monopoly issuer of the currency. Summary Fact 1 again.
• Younger workers have nothing at all to worry about the fact that their parents and grandparents are enjoying benefits from the Funds. The largest problem facing younger workers is the entrenched unemployment and rising duration of unemployment brought upon by the failure of the US government to expand its deficit enough to support appropriate levels of job creation. This unemployment will cause intergenerational disadvantage and trying to cut spending now to “fix up social security” will worsen the situation for younger workers.

Which brings me to the final point – the Koch Brothers.

There is a great story in the Intercept (October 14, 2017) – Koch Brothers’ Internal Strategy Memo on Selling Tax Cuts: Ignore The Deficit – which highlights the lack of integrity of the anti-deficit crowd.

Recall the Koch Brothers leading the charge about the Obama deficits:

Their political network aired an unending cascade of campaign advertisements against Democratic politicians, sponsored several national bus tours, and paid organizers in communities across the country to mobilize public demonstrations, all focused on the dangers of increasing the deficit.

One such ad even warned that government debt would lead to a Chinese takeover of America – which, for many voters, is a concern linked to debt.

Here is the ad:

If it wasn’t so influential it would be pure comedy.

Anyway, it seems that with the Republicans in control now the Koch Brothers have changed their tune:

… the Koch brothers are poised to reap a windfall of billions of dollars through tax cuts, they have a new message: Don’t worry about the deficit.

An intercepted memo from the Koch Brothers to their network on “how to sell tax reform legislation” indicated that lobbyists neede to “avoid becoming distracted by deficit concerns”.

A quote from the memo reads:

Avoid getting distracted on revenue neutrality; economic growth increases revenues. Some Republican Senators have expressed concern over supporting comprehensive tax reform that adds to short-term deficits. Though we fully appreciate those concerns, the long-term economic growth that would result from the first comprehensive tax reform in a generation would help to offset short-term deficits over time. That was the result of the Kennedy and Reagan tax reforms-there’s no reason this time will be any different.

Hypocrisy knows no bounds.

The rest of the Intercept article is worth reading.

Conclusion

It is the same pattern – rehearsed endlessly – over time and across space.

The Koch Brothers and their ilk shift from attacking deficits when they can benefit to supporting them when the opposite would costs them dollars. There is no purity in their position. Pure greed.

At least Kotlikoff, stuck in the academy making himself delirious on ever increasing $ numbers and pumping ever more drastic scenarios – is consistent, like a stuck record.

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2017 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.