Give us a child at 10 and we will show you the debt

The article quoted below, by editors of The Australian, was shared on Facebook, to which I responded rather pointedly:

It's an absolute nonsense article, and a bullshit cover story for a blatant agenda to get public assets into the hands of "mates of Murdoch".

In the economic circles I travel it can be socially risky to be so blunt about points of economics that have divergent and strongly held views.

So I want to pick apart the story, piece by piece, to show how the words are spin and misdirection dressed up as hard economic truths. The title of this post is the title of that piece. Threatening? A little.

Here we go:

A child born in Australia 10 years ago began life in a country whose national government had zero net debt. These children had the great good fortune of starting their lives with the unlimited opportunities of our diverse economy, the freedoms of our liberal democracy and the advantages of our universal education, health and welfare systems. With no net debt, Australians of just a decade ago owed nothing to their forebears but gratitude and nothing to future generations but their diligence.

It’s not true that have no net federal government debt means what they say - a virtuous social timeline of perfect opportunity. Because federal government debt is owned by someone as well. And the next generation will inherit both the liability and the asset side of the debt. It also ignores the many other gross liabilities the next generation inherits in terms of, for example, having to buy housing from the past generations at exorbitant prices. And lastly, the education, health and welfare systems will survive regardless of the debt picture, so to announce them to be implicitly at risk because of debt is pure scaremongering.

But each child born this year bears the burden of a net federal government debt of about $13,000 per capita. With any luck these children will aspire to the same opportunities — but, apart from paying for the education, health and welfare systems, they will have to find a way to service and repay a $300 billion debt. This is their generational burden and this is the inequity we grapple with: do we have the right to fund our own comforts through deficit budgets and extended borrowings that merely pass on the burden to future generations?

This is absolute nonsense. It’s “time travel” economics to pretend that a resource burden can be passed through time to a future point. Debts simply facilitate a transfers of resources at one point in time between lender and borrower, and another transfer at a future point in time between borrower and lender. The next generation inherits not only the $300billion debt, but the $300billion asset in the form of government bonds as well! There are certainly major distributional questions about who owns these bonds, and many are owned by foreign entities - something which this article ignores entirely.

On the surface, we are going about our business happily enough. The unemployment rate is lower than in most developed economies, interest rates are at historic lows, our dollar is defiantly strong, petrol is relatively cheap and travel has never been more affordable. Despite the GFC, sluggish global growth and the end of the mining investment boom, real estate prices remain buoyant, underpinning personal wealth as the nation notches 25 unbroken years of economic growth. Government services and payments such as the National Broadband Network, National Disability Insurance Scheme, paid parental leave scheme and subsidised childcare have been expanded across the decade while additional funds have been poured into health and education. It may all seem a little too good to be true.

It’s not too good to be true. These are the types of social benefits all countries invest in as they get wealthier. And you could say the same thing at any point in history. Also, suspiciously absent is the spending in submarines and other “wasteful” schemes.

If we dig beneath the surface we can see that our economic and budgetary situation is perilous. Investment levels have plunged from extraordinary highs and in the past year wages growth was 2.1 per cent, the lowest since the last recession. The federal government’s net debt position has deteriorated from zero a decade ago to more than $290bn and will rise to almost $350bn within three years. The interest costs on the debt, even at historically low rates, already total more than $1bn a month. Household debt is at record levels. When state public debt is included, government debt amounts to more than 36 per cent of gross domestic product. The debt situation is not out of control but it will be if it is not arrested.

Investment levels have nothing to do with government debt. Indeed, the rush to pay off debt could arise because many public investments are trimmed back. It is actually much easier and cheaper for the government to borrow for investment than the private sector. At exactly what level, besides zero, do they think would be “out of control” debt? They sneak in a cab at household debt, but I am quite sure none of the writers think that household debt should be zero.

With these mounting problems we seem to be living in something of a fool’s paradise. While GDP growth remains comparatively encouraging, with expectations it can be sustained at 2.5 per cent, much of the economic activity is in the deficit-funded public sector. As we report today, annual public sector wages growth has outstripped increases in the private sector and hours worked have grown by almost 2 per cent in the non-market economy while they have barely risen in the productive sectors. In the past eight years, the non-market industries have boosted hours worked by almost 25 per cent while elsewhere the growth has been below 5 per cent. The states are leading this process, with state public employee numbers growing by 10 per cent from 2008 to last year to total almost 1.5 million while the federal public service headcount remained static. These trends, combined with diminished terms of trade, demonstrate an unsustainable position.

Pubic sector wages have seen recent increases, but if we look just a few years back, the opposite was the case. Strangely enough, State government employees have risen 10% since 2008, which is exactly in line with population growth.

None other than the outgoing Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, issued a warning last week. He spoke about the “difficult choices” required to get the federal budget back to balance and to foster growth. He noted how the debate had become predictable after agreement was reached on the need for fiscal repair. “When specific ideas are proposed that will actually make a difference over the medium to long term,” he said, “the conversation quickly shifts to rather narrow notions of ‘fairness’, people look to their own positions, the interest groups all come out and the specific proposals often run into the sand.” Mr Stevens warns that unless this challenge is overcome public debt will become a “material” problem.

What Glenn Stevens said “Well, actually it matters how you got the surplus; it matters what you did with it. And even if you're reducing debt, it matters how you do that, and what the debt is for. A country with no debt but no public assets, is that actually good?”

Malcolm Turnbull tackled all this in a speech this week. He dared the opposition to work “constructively, co-operatively” on the economic and budget task, and warned that failure would hurt the most disadvantaged. “Unless we deal sensibly with the challenge of living within our means,” the Prime Minister said, “Australians, and our children and grandchildren, will be facing a future of higher taxes, higher public debt and, ultimately, a reduction in the quality of services our society wants and expects.” This is where the clear and present economic and fiscal danger runs hard up against political risk. Bill Shorten has declared “Labor’s up for budget repair which is fair”. But he is demanding Labor’s agenda rather than recognising the government’s mandate, and throwing in a good dose of anti-business, class-warfare rhetoric. “Mr Turnbull could improve the budget bottom line dramatically by not going ahead with the $50bn of tax giveaways that he wants to give large companies,” the Opposition Leader said.

This is just quoting professional liars arguing.

As a nation we need to think about what benefits and liabilities may confront children born a decade from now. Politicians from both major parties, and Senate crossbenchers, need to consider whether fiscal decline and mounting debt can be left for another generation to tackle. Because nothing is surer than the simple fact this nation will eventually be forced to live within its means. The question now is whether we will roll up our sleeves and make this a national project of considerable priority so we can manage the task sensibly over time, or if we will kid ourselves that all is well enough until we are confronted by calamity, forcing a sudden and ugly reckoning.

Doom. Fear. Reiterating the nonsense that come before. Exactly how can we live beyond our means. We can’t bring resources forward from the future - taxes and debts are just alternative mechanisms for making current redistributions.

Even if you buy into the fear, there are many easy ways to fix government budgets: inheritance taxes, betterment taxes, and more. And there are bad ways to do it, like privatising assets, which in the hands of the public would have generated future incomes. But you can be certain that the authors of this article will spin this fear in the direction that support the economic interests of their mates, even if it makes less economic sense than what they have already argued.