The Bt2 trillion shame: views from the future
The following conversation takes place in the year 2063. A five-year-old boy, his 25-year-old father and 50-year-old grandpa are having a virtual get-together one day ahead of the child's neurological implant that will make him 100 times smarter than the
Boy: Do I really need to do it, Dad? My friends all say the economics implant sucks. It gets all those statistics swirling in their heads. And anyway, I’ve just had political science implanted. Why do I have to know everything?
Father: Like our ancestors always said: if you don’t know your history, you are a leaf that doesn’t know it’s a part of a tree. You already know everything about our political past, so it’s time to complete the picture with all the economic numbers.
Grandpa: In other words, you need to know, for example, why we – our government and us – still can’t shake off a Bt2-trillion debt some people created long before our time.
Boy: I thought they did it in your time.
Grandpa: Nope. This is why you need the implant, as it will make you get all the key dates right. The infrastructure development bill, or whatever they called it, was passed weeks before I was born, which is a minor comfort really, because it completely separated me from that generation of shame.
Boy: Is it true that much of the money was spent on railway overhaul? How silly. Didn’t they anticipate the exponential growth of air travel? Didn’t they know a genetics revolution was coming and that agricultural logistics would depend less and less on trains?
Father: Are you alluding to that famous “Veggies won’t rot” defence of the Bt2 trillion borrowing?
Boy: I have all political quotes already embedded in my brain, remember?
Father: Whether or not Bt2 trillion saved vegetables from rotting, I’m not quite sure, but it’s the borrowers whom the later generations wanted to see rotting in hell. How the hell they could put all the borrowed eggs basically in one railway basket is beyond me.
Boy: On the bright side, we are supposed to pay off that massive debt this year, aren’t we?
Grandpa: After your economics implant tomorrow, you’ll know that borrowing such a gigantic sum has to be religiously followed by what they call refinancing.
Boy: What’s refinancing?
Father: You borrow again to pay off, or partially pay off, what you borrowed earlier.
Grandpa: And on and on it goes.
Boy: So, Grandpa, it sounds like you borrowed and left the burden of repayment to Dad, and Dad borrowed some more and left the burden to me. Is that what the Bt2 trillion thing is all about?
Father: Yes and no. Of course, it’s like you keep passing on the burden to the next generation, but in this case you are both creditors and debtors. To be more specific, the government borrowed the money from the people, and had to tax the people to pay back the loans.
Boy: So, refinancing means they borrow more from us, and our so-called “debt” gets bigger?
Grandpa: You got it, kid. This is how economics and democracy work together. Best part is, all the real spenders do is borrow, spend and die. They don’t have to account for anything.
Boy: At least our economy hasn’t collapsed, has it?
Father: Oh, it must have in some alternate universe. Either we are lucky or we are damned to suffer longer than others.
Boy: I’ve changed my mind. I’ll run to the neurological implant centre first thing tomorrow. Economics sounds like fun.
Grandpa: Don’t take the train. Flying is faster and cheaper, unless you’ve got bored of bird’s-eye views. And I’ve heard that NIC branches are opening up near your place and the downloads will be equally efficient. Check it out.
Boy: I will.
Father: I can’t wait to see how you think about all this after implantation. There are other fascinating things as well. For example, you’ll know how an entirely different situation all but wrecked the US economy.
Boy: My world history implant has that one, Dad. You mean when the ancient Americans were lured into borrowing like crazy and then couldn’t pay back banks that had lent out money like crazy?
Father: Yes. It always amazes me how the ancients often lent or borrowed themselves into a financial mess. The economy is so easy to sustain. All you have to do is avoid reckless lending and reckless borrowing.
Boy: Maybe they didn’t have the benefit of implants like we do.
Grandpa: You are too sympathetic, son. Let’s see what you’ll say after tomorrow. I think you’ll come back calling a spade a spade, and greedy fools greedy fools.
