written 1 September, 2024
published 8 September, 2024
When the "outgoing" is greater than the "incoming", a deficit arises. In political discussion, this usually refers to the US fiscal deficit, which has risen from $5.7T in 2000, to $35.3T today. Bush the younger spent $4.3T on the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama spent $9.6T bailing out the economy after banks crashed housing. Trump spent $8.1T on tax cuts for the wealthy. Biden spent $7.6T keeping the economy out of depression during the COVID pandemic. Republicans spent on wars and billionaires, and Democrats spent on keeping the economy alive, both parties showing their core concerns.
The deficit is large and growing, with real economic consequences, but it is really only a fiction. Money is a concept, of value only by virtue of collective social agreement. As a concept, money can be conjured into existence. When money is deposited into a bank, the bank can then loan out 10 times as much, created on nothing more than "trust". These days, most money has no physical existence, living only as electronic data. The 8 percent that is "hard" currency has little physical value of its own.
While the fiscal deficit draws most attention, especially during campaign years, other deficits have greater real-life impact, and unlike money, solutions can't be created out of nothing.
The US loses topsoil 5 times faster than it is being created, for a net deficit of 58B tons over the last 160 years. Healthy topsoil has 200B organisms per cubic foot, essential for plant nutrition and water retention. As this living system degrades, and the soil erodes, growing food becomes more difficult and expensive, and what is grown has declining nutritional value. Yet commercial farming focuses on making money to service their debts, which takes priority over restoring topsoil.
Another deficit is ground water, which provides drinking water for half the US population, and 50B gallons a day for agriculture. Ground water aquafer recharge rates vary, some as slow as thousands of years. As population and agriculture production increases, using bigger pumps on deeper wells, larger ground water deficits occur, and land subsides as much as 5 inches per year in some areas. The changing climate has affected rainfall patterns, bringing flooding and droughts, making ground water extraction more critical and precarious.
All physical systems begin to deteriorate as soon as they are constructed, demanding periodic servicing to identify problems and make needed repairs. This is an ongoing expense, which is often deferred due to budget limitations, or desires to appear more "profitable", creating a physical deficit that grows with time. The long-term consequences can be disastrous and expensive.
The US has over 90,000 dams, with an average age of 60 years. Engineering and seismic designs have progressed enormously in that time period, so what seemed "good design" at the time is now more questionable. Add in the consequence of "deferred maintenance", and over 2,000 are in poor condition, endangering life if they fail, requiring over $80B to repair. As rainfall becomes more extreme, the stress on these dams increases.
The US has over 600,000 bridges, with 40 percent over 50 years old. Due to age and neglect, 46,000 are structurally deficient and in "poor" condition, yet they carry almost 180 million vehicles a day. Mitigation will cost over $100B, and the current rate of repair is half what is required, resulting in increasing risk over time.
This is just a partial list of real-world deficits that affect our social wellbeing. These problems stem from the growing focus on maximizing "profit" over every other concern. For instance, stock buybacks are on the rise, which benefit the shareholders, but reduces the capacity of the industry to maintain their infrastructure or modernize their operations. As wealth accrues disproportionally to the very wealthy, who then use their political clout to reduce their taxes, cities and states are under increased budget pressures to defer essential planning and maintenance.
The common factor is lack of whole systems planning and the belief in exclusive gain. Making money by ignoring the consequences, and getting "someone else" to pay the cleanup cost, is considered "good business". Our culture honors those who accumulate more than everyone else, but complains when things fall apart, which happens because the world is totally connected. This is a deep societal dysfunction, with thousands of years of history. Change may seem slow, but it is inevitable, because the alternative is collapse.
