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I think this has always been the way we've paid for infrastructure. I remember reading an article about Japan. They've stopped taking on massive infrastructur

I think this has always been the way we've paid for infrastructure. I remember reading an article about Japan. They've stopped taking on massive infrastructure projects, because the population isn't growing -- they don't want immigrants and people aren't having kids anymore. Without a future tax base to pay for infrastructure, they can't build it anymore. So things like the Tokyo subway system are "done"; no money will ever be available again to build anything. I think we're beginning to see this in the US. In a few years, you won't be able to live in New Jersey and commute to New York City, or take the train from Boston to Washington D.C. The North River Tunnels will have collapsed, because we can't find any money to repair them. Ultimately, it's a little disingenuous to say this is "selling your children". Yes, if we keep buying stuff, someone will have to pay for it. If society takes on projects that need to be paid for over 100 years, people that aren't born today will be spending some of their taxes on it. But with the right investments, it's almost certainly worth it. We can look back at some of the achievements over the last century and find that they probably grew the economy more than they cost, which makes them good investments when paid for collectively. In 1920, we didn't have an Interstate Highway System, we didn't live in the suburbs and commute to the city, we couldn't fly to the far corners of the world in 16 hours, we didn't have all of humanity's knowledge available in our pockets. There is no reason to believe that 2120 won't be just as good as long as we keep investing.

jsdalton 7y ago
Interesting observation, although it should be noted that in the case of infrastructure, the future generations that are obligated to pay for its construction will also be in a position to reap its benefits.
- jrockway 7y ago
  True. To some extent, even a good mortgage rate trickles down to one's family. Some kid is going to inherit their parents paid-off house. The problem is that people have more than 1 kid, so most of them don't get that benefit and we keep building new homes, I guess.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    Only 1 kid can inherit a house, sure, but out of two marriage partners it’s enough that only one inherits it. In this simple model, you only need to build new homes if you have more than two kids per woman, which developed societies are not on track of achieving. Practically though we build new houses because old houses tend to not be in places we want them to be, and are not large and nice enough to our liking.
RobertoG 7y ago
Money is just a number in some computer. The important thing is the real economy. Deficits, as any other spending, and depending of the circumstances, could be inflationary, but they don't have to be, it depends of the state of the economy in the moment of the spending. The public debt is just a number, it's the accumulate of pass deficits and it's not inflationary in itself and it's not a problem. A mental experiment (not so hypothetical): suppose that in order to fight an economic crisis the government decide to spend a big deficit and, in order to do it, they emit bonds. Suppose now, that the Federal Reserve buy all those bonds. Who is that money owned to? who receive the dividends of those bonds? A second mental experiment: in order to not increasing the public debt and "save for our children" the government don't spend in infrastructure or investigation. In 50 years there is not infrastructure left or new technologies but the public debt is zero. Are the children rich or poor?
- w0utert 7y ago
  Whether money or debt is 'just a number in a computer' or not is besides the point. We built the system that way deliberately because bartering is not efficient, doesn't scale, and doesn't easily allow creating debt that needs to be settled in the future. What we ended up with is a situation where almost all the wealth/value we (governments, businesses, the people) have built is represented in terms of 'monetary units' (the numbers in the computer), but it's increasingly clear that in the future, these positive and negative numbers will never add up to zero anymore, and we're not going to 'grow our economies out of debt' as was originally the idea of taking on debt now to invest in the future. This means someone is going to lose big time sooner or later. Printing more money to take some negative numbers from the economy and infusing it with some positive numbers is not a strategy that can save the system in the long term as there are exponential terms involved because of interest. There will be a point where diluting the the money supply (which is exactly what QE is) will result in a loss of confidence people have in the 'numbers in the computer' being a reliable proxy for their wealth. Governments will have a hard time selling treasuries when no-one expects them to have any value in the future. When that happens (which IMO is just a matter of time, how much time is not clear but most definitely not 100+ years) all value that is not recorded in tangible, useful assets or skills will simply disappear, and it will not just mean the 'numbers of the computer' have to be adjusted or reset and everything can go back to normal...
LatteLazy 7y ago
I'm being tongue in cheek with the "selling your kids" bit, I hope you don't mind. But I'd be less worried if these debts were to build infrastructure (and we'd have some incredible infrastructure). That's my real concern here: we borrowing to maintain lifestyles not to build useful things. Your point about Japan is really interesting. I heard things were moving that way but I didn't know they were so up front in recognising it. I love the Japanese. Here in Europe we're in a similar position but no one quite wants to admit it. And we borrow still, we just give it all to OAPs :(
samdamsam 7y ago
This is extremely disingenuous. The reason we aren’t having kids is we can’t afford it. All of my friends want to have kids but can’t. The few who have done so anyways are hurting.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  It’s really strange how it is that we cannot afford having kids, but our parents and their parents etc, who almost universally have been poorer than us, managed to do that.
wil421 7y ago
> I think we're beginning to see this in the US. In a few years, you won't be able to live in New Jersey and commute to New York City, or take the train from Boston to Washington D.C. The North River Tunnels will have collapsed, because we can't find any money to repair them. Yea this is never going to happen in our lifetime.
walleeee 7y ago
> There is no reason to believe that 2120 won't be just as good as long as we keep investing. Only if you squint _really_ hard, have near-religious faith in technological advancement, and ignore all the ways we're making the planet increasingly difficult to live on.
kyuudou 7y ago
I'd say our military budget is a good target for trimming. Even a fraction of it could be applied to infrastructure projects.

jsdalton 7y ago

Interesting observation, although it should be noted that in the case of infrastructure, the future generations that are obligated to pay for its construction will also be in a position to reap its benefits.

jrockway 7y ago
True. To some extent, even a good mortgage rate trickles down to one's family. Some kid is going to inherit their parents paid-off house. The problem is that people have more than 1 kid, so most of them don't get that benefit and we keep building new homes, I guess.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  Only 1 kid can inherit a house, sure, but out of two marriage partners it’s enough that only one inherits it. In this simple model, you only need to build new homes if you have more than two kids per woman, which developed societies are not on track of achieving. Practically though we build new houses because old houses tend to not be in places we want them to be, and are not large and nice enough to our liking.

RobertoG 7y ago

Money is just a number in some computer. The important thing is the real economy. Deficits, as any other spending, and depending of the circumstances, could be inflationary, but they don't have to be, it depends of the state of the economy in the moment of the spending. The public debt is just a number, it's the accumulate of pass deficits and it's not inflationary in itself and it's not a problem. A mental experiment (not so hypothetical): suppose that in order to fight an economic crisis the government decide to spend a big deficit and, in order to do it, they emit bonds. Suppose now, that the Federal Reserve buy all those bonds. Who is that money owned to? who receive the dividends of those bonds? A second mental experiment: in order to not increasing the public debt and "save for our children" the government don't spend in infrastructure or investigation. In 50 years there is not infrastructure left or new technologies but the public debt is zero. Are the children rich or poor?

w0utert 7y ago
Whether money or debt is 'just a number in a computer' or not is besides the point. We built the system that way deliberately because bartering is not efficient, doesn't scale, and doesn't easily allow creating debt that needs to be settled in the future. What we ended up with is a situation where almost all the wealth/value we (governments, businesses, the people) have built is represented in terms of 'monetary units' (the numbers in the computer), but it's increasingly clear that in the future, these positive and negative numbers will never add up to zero anymore, and we're not going to 'grow our economies out of debt' as was originally the idea of taking on debt now to invest in the future. This means someone is going to lose big time sooner or later. Printing more money to take some negative numbers from the economy and infusing it with some positive numbers is not a strategy that can save the system in the long term as there are exponential terms involved because of interest. There will be a point where diluting the the money supply (which is exactly what QE is) will result in a loss of confidence people have in the 'numbers in the computer' being a reliable proxy for their wealth. Governments will have a hard time selling treasuries when no-one expects them to have any value in the future. When that happens (which IMO is just a matter of time, how much time is not clear but most definitely not 100+ years) all value that is not recorded in tangible, useful assets or skills will simply disappear, and it will not just mean the 'numbers of the computer' have to be adjusted or reset and everything can go back to normal...

LatteLazy 7y ago

I'm being tongue in cheek with the "selling your kids" bit, I hope you don't mind. But I'd be less worried if these debts were to build infrastructure (and we'd have some incredible infrastructure). That's my real concern here: we borrowing to maintain lifestyles not to build useful things. Your point about Japan is really interesting. I heard things were moving that way but I didn't know they were so up front in recognising it. I love the Japanese. Here in Europe we're in a similar position but no one quite wants to admit it. And we borrow still, we just give it all to OAPs :(

samdamsam 7y ago

This is extremely disingenuous. The reason we aren’t having kids is we can’t afford it. All of my friends want to have kids but can’t. The few who have done so anyways are hurting.

xyzzyz 7y ago
It’s really strange how it is that we cannot afford having kids, but our parents and their parents etc, who almost universally have been poorer than us, managed to do that.

wil421 7y ago

> I think we're beginning to see this in the US. In a few years, you won't be able to live in New Jersey and commute to New York City, or take the train from Boston to Washington D.C. The North River Tunnels will have collapsed, because we can't find any money to repair them. Yea this is never going to happen in our lifetime.

walleeee 7y ago

> There is no reason to believe that 2120 won't be just as good as long as we keep investing. Only if you squint _really_ hard, have near-religious faith in technological advancement, and ignore all the ways we're making the planet increasingly difficult to live on.

kyuudou 7y ago

I'd say our military budget is a good target for trimming. Even a fraction of it could be applied to infrastructure projects.