All the Meaningless Zeroes

Today, in its first budget for over two years, the Government of Canada posted a deficit surpassing 100% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This is a record for any Canadian Government. We already knew that the Liberals’ pandemic spending had eclipsed, in one year, the deficit spending over the six years of the Second World War. For what we’ve spent propping up an economy we’ve hobbled due to “an abundance of caution,” as the experts say, we could’ve beaten Germany and Japan six times over.

And the reaction to this historical peak of spending money we just invented for the occasion? Largely a collective yawn.

This problem of complacency in the face of historical orgies of overspending is not confined to Canada; no, the Biden Administration in the United States has tabled a 2.2 trillion dollar “infrastructure” plan. In this plan, “infrastructure” apparently covers such things as targeted aid to businesses and research grants, special protection for Democrat-friendly unions, and vague promises to tackle gender inequality. Even by the most liberal definition of “infrastructure,” according to Forbes Magazine, only 24% of Biden’s budget goes to it.

Again, though, listen for the yawns. In the more radical sectors of an increasingly Socialist body politic, the call is not for less, but for more. Former bartender turned economist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks it’s too little, calling for ten trillion dollars to be spent.

Ten trillion dollars? How much is that, anyway?

Personally, I think one of the key issues here is basic mathematical illiteracy. People’s heads get a little fuzzy once you start adding stacks of zeroes. It might be easy for us to understand a thousand-dollar mortgage payment, or even a twenty-thousand-dollar car purchase. But add on the zeroes, and things get confusing.

Perhaps a shift to astronomy, much more exciting than economics, is in order. People probably understand that the Moon is 330,000 kilometres away, and that Mars’ distance requires a shift into the tens of millions. Saturn is a billion-and-a-half kilometres away. That’s one hell of a long way, folks.

Beyond the Outer Solar System, things get funny. Out there, we enter the realm of trillions, where AOC lives. The nearest star is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.24 light years away. A light year is about 9.4 trillion kilometres away, which is as fast as a photon can travel in one year. Even with our fastest spacecraft, it would take us tens of thousands of years to travel one light year. One light year of cash is what AOC wants to spend.

That, to use a non-scientific term, is a shit ton of money.

Does a trillion bucks seem like a lot yet? Even to count to that number would take you 31,700 years. Even if you were “only” given a billion dollars, and told you had to spend a thousand dollars every day, it would still take you 2740 years to go broke.

Does anyone really understand money at these levels? I bet a lot of the politicians don’t. Such interstellar amounts of cash create amongst themselves an aura of unreality. How can we understand macroeconomics at this level, any better than we can understand interstellar distances?

Maybe we should switch gears. Let’s look at what happens, historically, when governments go nuts printing money to get themselves out of trouble. When the unreality of large numbers meets the reality of everyday life.

We could consider, let’s say, the Germany of the early 1920s, when a shopping cart full of marks was required to buy a loaf of bread. Among other things, the resulting privation and disorder helped bring a pleasant chap named Adolf Hitler to power. Maybe we could examine Brazil in the early 1990s, when the poorly planned introduction of a new currency led to people waking up to discover that their life savings could no longer buy a cup of coffee. Or, more recently, Venezuela, socialist paradise, where despite having prodigious oil reserves, a recklessly profligate government has successfully reduced their own population to eating from dumpsters.

Ah, but there’s a problem here too. Generally speaking, our populations are no more fond of reading history than they are of studying economics, math, or astronomy. The slow-motion decline of our educational system has prepared us for the moment where, to paraphrase Orwell, there is no longer any past or present; rather, a never-ending present in which the Party is always right.

So, who’s to say that eclipsing your GDP in debt is a big deal? Who’s to say 2.2 trillion bucks, or even 10 trillion (i.e. an AOC money year) is a lot of money? People don’t know about 1923 Germany or even what’s going on in Venezuela right now. They only know what they’ve been told.

And what they’ve been told is that economies are artificial constructs. If one isn’t working, try a new one on for size.

We make money, and we can always make more when that runs out. In a reality in which one can identify as whatever one wants, why can’t we make money do what it’s told?

Carry on then. Per ardua ad astra.