Board-Ansicht
Mix-Ansicht- Economist: Bücher d. US-Regierung so zuverlässig wie die von Enron - kingsolomon, 13.08.2003, 23:24
Economist: Bücher d. US-Regierung so zuverlässig wie die von Enron
-->schau an, so langsam kriegt der seriöse mainstream was von der
"Verschwörung" mit. Hat ja mächtig gedauert!
(link leider Abonnenten vorbehalten)
AMERICA'S TAXES
JULY 31ST 2003
The American government's accounts look about as reliable as Enron's
IN BUSINESS, the penalties for poor book-keeping can be severe. The
first principle of accounts is that they should present, as far as
possible, a fair and accurate picture of an organisation's financial
position. That means not only reporting a year's income and
expenditure, and listing current assets and liabilities, but also
setting out future obligations and sources of revenue. Executives who
ignore these precepts risk being hauled before the courts for deceiving
investors. Yet for all the vigour with which America's politicians have
denounced the country's recent corporate scandals, it is not clear that
the government's books are any fairer or more accurate than Enron's.
The government's accounts are drawn up on a cash basis. In the private
sector, such a practice is followed only by firms such as
consultancies, which have few assets to produce revenue over the long
term, and few long-term liabilities. In such cases, cashflow is a good
measure of prosperity. The government, however, reasonably expects to
draw revenue from many of its assets, and from its citizens, for many
years. It also has many obligations--for example, for Social Security
and health care--stretching decades into the future. A fair portrayal
of the government's financial condition should at least try to sketch
what may lie ahead.
Among economists, there is a lively debate over how gloomy the true
picture is. In a recent working paper*[1], Michael Boskin of the Hoover
Institution argues that the federal government has lots of hidden
assets. Some are tangible, such as its vast holdings of land and
mineral rights. Others are intangible, the chief being, says Mr Boskin,
tax-deferred savings programmes. As the baby-boom generation retires
and draws down its 401(k) pension plans, claims his paper, the
government can expect an extra $12 trillion in taxes (in present-value
terms), which are largely absent from current projections.
Mr Boskin's paper has attracted a lot of fire, notably from Alan
Auerbach, of the University of California, Berkeley, and William Gale
and Peter Orszag, of the Brookings Institution†[2]. Most of the
savings he has found, they say, are already included in the
government's projections. They say his model is too optimistic in
several ways: it assumes, for example, much too high a tax rate on
income from tax-deferred savings. Mr Boskin has now conceded that he
made one mistake. He should, he says, have noted that the baby boomers'
cashing out would reduce national saving, and thus corporate
investment, profits and tax revenues. He says he is reworking his model
to account for this. However, this deals with only part of the
criticism. Pending Mr Boskin's revisions, his critics have the
advantage.
Others are also trying to measure the budget gap. Last month the
American Enterprise Institute published a paper by Jagadeesh Gokhale
and Kent Smetters‡[3], which proposes two new measures to gauge
the sustainability of the current budget. The first, fiscal imbalance
(FI), calculates the difference between the present value of all the
government's future obligations and its future revenues, assuming that
policies remain unchanged. A sustainable budget will have an FI of
zero. Otherwise American taxpayers risk a similar fate to that which
befell Enron's shareholders when the company's hidden liabilities came
to light.
BALANCING ACT
However, an FI of zero does not guarantee that a budget is sustainable.
A law that lavished new spending on today's citizens, but fully paid
for it by levying a 90% income tax on everybody born after this year,
would have an FI of zero. It would not, however, be sustainable--future
taxpayers would surely rebel--and it would also be monstrously unfair.
So Mr Gokhale and Mr Smetters propose a second measure, which they call
generational imbalance (GI). This is the difference between the present
value of the spending to be done for the benefit of current generations
and the present value of the tax revenues they may be expected to
produce. The resulting number represents the bill that those alive
today are handing on to generations yet unborn.
The results are staggering. The authors estimate that the money the
government is promising to spend outstrips the taxes it can expect to
collect by $44 trillion--20 times today's federal budget, and more than
four times America's GDP. Their estimate of the GI is also enormous.
Medicare (a health-care programme for old people) alone represents a
net transfer of more than $20 trillion from future generations to those
now alive. Mr Boskin's deferred tax assets are not likely to be much
help. In their paper, Messrs Auerbach, Gale and Orszag reckon that any
benefit from them is largely already included in the FI and GI
calculations.
Like any private company teetering on the verge of insolvency, the
American government must either find more revenue or cut spending. And
the sooner the better, not just because it is unfair to hand the bill
for today's spending to future generations, but also because the later
that changes are made, the bigger they need to be. Mr Gokhale and Mr
Smetters calculate that waiting until 2008 to repair the imbalance will
turn the $44 trillion into $54 trillion.
As the late Herbert Stein, a noted economist, once said,"If something
cannot go on forever, it will stop." One way or another, America's
budget gap will have to be closed. The question is, will it be done
responsibly, by coming clean about the hidden liabilities now and
taking the necessary, if painful, steps to deal with them? Or will the
top management, like Enron's, stave off admitting the true state of
America's finances until it is forced to do so by some spectacular
collapse?
*"Deferred Taxes in the Public Finances[4]"
†"Reassessing the Fiscal Gap: Why Tax-Deferred Saving Will Not
Solve the Problem[6]"
‡"Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: New Budget Measures for
New Budget Priorities[9]"
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