I have trust issues.
I distrust politicians. I have little more than suspicion for managers. And when somebody presents me with an official figure, my first instinct is not to believe it. It is to ask what has been left out.
Why?
Because numbers do not exist in a vacuum. They are produced by institutions, and institutions have interests.
I have made this argument many times about China and countries with similarly opaque systems. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the problem disappears simply because the flag changes. Western countries may be less blatant about manipulating reality, but the incentives are remarkably similar.
The motivations are not particularly complicated.
If you are in power, bad economic figures are a problem.
You need good news. At the very least, you need news that is better than the alternative. A deteriorating economy, exploding debt, unfunded obligations or a structural deficit are not merely unpleasant statistics. They threaten political survival.
And if you are in opposition?
You want to become the government.
So you criticise the people currently in charge, perhaps loudly, perhaps theatrically—but you are not necessarily interested in exposing the entire structure. Because sooner or later you may inherit it.
And then you will need the same machinery.
They all play the game.
Take a figure like forty trillion dollars of national debt.
Forty trillion is an almost meaningless number because its size alone tells us very little. The more important question is what that number actually includes.
What does it cover?
What does it exclude?
Which future obligations are recognised? Which are conveniently pushed into another category? What assumptions sit underneath the calculations? How much of the real liability has simply not yet become visible?
My suspicion is that the official number is merely the visible tip of a very large iceberg.
And that raises the more uncomfortable question:
Can we ever get out of this?
My experience has not given me much confidence.
Things rarely reform for real.
They are adjusted.
Renamed.
Reclassified.
Repackaged.
A committee is established. A programme is announced. A new framework is published. Politicians declare that difficult decisions have been taken.
And for a while, everybody congratulates themselves on reform.
Until the bill arrives.
Because genuine reform almost always involves pain.
Someone loses something.
Someone pays more.
Someone receives less.
Someone’s protected position disappears.
Someone’s pension becomes less generous. Someone’s subsidy is reduced. Someone’s entitlement is questioned. Someone’s comfortable assumption about the future turns out to have been wrong.
That is the point at which reform usually becomes politically inconvenient.
The willingness evaporates.
There are simply too many people with too much to lose.
So the system continues.
Until it cannot.
This is why I do not believe we are heading towards some grand moment of political courage in which everybody suddenly recognises the problem, accepts the necessary sacrifices and fixes the machinery.
I think the more likely outcome is considerably less elegant.
This will not be reformed.
It will collapse.
And badly.
The consequences will not remain confined to government balance sheets or economic textbooks. They will eventually find their way into wages, pensions, taxes, energy prices, public services, savings, investments and the ordinary cost of living.
The bill will arrive.
And unlike the figures on a government spreadsheet, it will be very difficult to redefine.
So, if you are not yet eighty years old, you will probably get to experience at least part of it.
Cheer up.
There is still time to watch the iceberg.