IRISH DEMOCRACY: Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. The lockdown can’t go on forever, and it isn’t. In Tennessee, we’re following a reasonably well-thought-out plan for reopening things. But a friend from Manhattan writes that she’s seeing stores, coffee shops, etc., just spontaneously reopening in spite of the orders. Not with loud defiance, just ignoring the government. It’s “Irish democracy,” and we’re going to see a lot more of it.

The shutdowns were sold as “two weeks to slow the spread,” and “flattening the curve,” and so on, and lots of people thought that was sensible, and it was. A two-month (or longer) shutdown is a different animal, and nobody consented to that. So now people are, mostly silently, withdrawing their consent from the state.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER WON’T: “Netflix’s fundamental business model seems unsustainable. I don’t see how it is going to work out.”

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: California’s Pension Woes Set To Deepen In 2017.

In 2015, California tried to reform CalPERS to address its shortfalls, but they didn’t do nearly enough. The system currently assumes annual returns of 7.5 percent, which is still far too optimistic. So CalPERS plans to revise its expectations downward, which would force governments to kick in more money to meet liabilities. Local government budgets, of course, are already stretched. It isn’t long before they’ll have to ask the state and, potentially, the federal government for a bailout. And with Republicans in control in Washington, it’s hard to imagine California getting any sympathy.

California’s state government has enjoyed finally being back in the black. But with all these pension liabilities coming due, it’s unclear how long the good times will last.

If you’re underfunding pension liabilities, you’re not really in the black.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: Blockbuster NYT Report Exposes Public Pension Charade. “America’s public pension funds, which manage trillions of dollars in retirement assets for millions of civil servants, are systematically deceiving taxpayers, the politicians, and municipal bond investors with elaborate accounting sleight-of-hand. The ‘official’ numbers show that public pension funds are struggling; the accurate ones show that the looming fiscal time bomb is so explosive that it may be impossible to defuse.”

I feel pretty confident that any proposed fix will involve taking money from me and giving it to Democratic constituencies.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: California’s Six Figure Pension Club Has More Than 20,000 Members.

Of course, California isn’t the only state with runaway public pensions. As Betsy Newmark writes, “One day, citizens will wake up to learn that their community or state can’t fund basic programs and expenses because too much of their budget is tied up with paying pensions for retired public employees. And they’ll learn that the blame lies with politicians who traded long-term concerns for short-term political gains from union workers.”

Curious that the left is obsessed with the word “sustainable,” when so many of their fiscal policies aren’t.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER WON’T: The California Pension Bomb Just Got More Explosive.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER WON’T: Could the Tide Be Turning Against Campus Illiberalism?

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T — BUT KNOWING THERE’S A BUBBLE ISN’T THE SAME AS KNOWING WHEN IT WILL POP: How Long Will the Classic Sports-Car Bubble Last?

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: Everyone Wants To Go To Export Heaven.

What’s interesting is that we’re having exactly the same ritualistic spats that we were having 10 years ago, when I first started writing for the Economist. Japan, China and Germany are entirely dependent on exports to keep unemployment to a low roar. The U.S. is running a persistent current account deficit and, in fact, hasn’t been in the black since 1990.

No one thinks this is sustainable. But none of the big players wants to end it, either; Americans aren’t ready to actually start saving like a grown-up nation, and the export powerhouses are desperately trying to accumulate a massive hoard of IOUs before their entire populations age into Centrum Silver territory.

Yet unlike Germany, Japan and China, the U.S. feels the need to actively argue in favor of its own position. China doesn’t go around trying to get other nations to export a quarter of their gross domestic product. In fact, China would rather not have the competition. But the U.S. has to complain. And I have to wonder if we don’t feel a bit guilty about our running tab with, well, the rest of the world. We’re like a drunk who wants to reform but knows he lacks the willpower, so he urges the bartenders to close down and take up haberdashery. Which is a good guide to how effective the whole thing is.

Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be. Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Plan accordingly.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T. DEBTS THAT CAN’T BE REPAID, WON’T BE. PROMISES THAT CAN’T BE KEPT, WON’T BE. Debt Limit, Huh: Unfunded Liabilities Dwarf $16.7 Trillion ‘Ceiling.’

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: Michael Barone: History Suggests That Era Of Entitlements Is Nearly Over.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T. “My main consolation is that the change will uproot many of the delusions that have sprouted up. My main fear is that history shows this is never, ever, a peaceful process.” One way or another, the Gods Of The Copybook Headings will have their due.

Related item here.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T:

What is monumentally new about the American state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects, manages and finances. Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined.

The growth of entitlement payments over the past half-century has been breathtaking. In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.

In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.

A half-century of unfettered expansion of entitlement outlays has completely inverted the priorities, structure and functions of federal administration as these were understood by all previous generations.

It is not only financial capital that is distorted by this, but moral and social capital as well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Tim Turner writes: “This article is a great start on the current state of our national finances. It is too bad that they did not finish the accounting by noting that these transfer payments consume 100% of federal tax revenues, leaving nothing at all to pay for any of the actually legitimate functions of government.”

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: CBO: U.S Deficit Ran $240 Billion For First Two Months Of Fiscal 2012.

SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: Americans’ Incomes Flat, Spending Up. Yeah, the returns on savings are — by design — nonexistent, but I don’t think we’ll get an economic recovery this way. Just call me one of these critics: “Critics say the Fed is punishing those who play by the rules — those careful enough to set aside money for savings or people who built up a nest egg and are living on fixed incomes that depend on interest.”

I repeat — if this were a Republican administration, the press would be full of sob-story reporting about senior citizens eating dog food because their CD rates are so low.

SO IF WE CAN’T EXTEND THE DEBT CEILING WE DON’T DEFAULT ON BOND PAYMENTS, we just have to cut spending everywhere else.

Those who warn of default confuse debt payments with other spending obligations. “A failure on the part of the United States to meet any obligation, whether it’s to debt holders, to members of our military or to Social Security recipients, is effectively a default,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January.

That’s nonsense. Authorized and even appropriated spending isn’t “the public debt.” For constitutional purposes, promised benefits from Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements aren’t even property, as the Supreme Court held in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), and Congress has as much authority to reduce them as to increase them. When lawmakers were drafting the 14th Amendment, they revised Section 4’s language to replace the term “obligations” with “debts.” If the Treasury ran out of money, the constitutional obligation to pay bondholders would trump all statutory obligations to spend. . . .

Ms. Yellen also said that “Treasury’s systems have all been built to pay all of our bills when they’re due and on time, and not to prioritize one form of spending over another.” But as the Journal has reported, department officials conceded in 2011 that the government’s fiscal machinery certainly could prioritize payments to bondholders, and the Federal Reserve prepared for such a contingency. There’s no question enough money would be available: The government collects roughly $450 billion a month in tax revenue, more than enough to cover the $55 billion or so in monthly debt service.

These basic facts should inform decisions by credit-rating agencies in establishing the U.S. government’s creditworthiness. Those agencies have traditionally acted favorably when heavily indebted countries have significantly cut public spending rather than default on their debt.

This may be the only way we get spending under control, though the side effects could be . . . severe. But on net, not only is the spending excessive, it’s likely as not on things that are actively bad for the country. And anyway, something that can’t go on forever will stop. Time for it to stop.

YOU CAN’T STAY CLOSED FOREVER, AND TRYING TO DO SO MERELY LIMITS YOUR INFLUENCE ON WHAT COMES NEXT: Nevada Is Reopening, Ready Or Not.

These shutdowns were always meant to be temporary, emergency measures, like a donut spare tire you can only use until you get to the shop. It was to give us time to expand our hospital capacity, which we’ve done, and to spread out the infections so we didn’t overwhelm the medical system. It was to give us time to get more data, and to plan, and to act.

But it could not last. Humans aren’t built to be isolated from one another for this long, and we all recognize that life must still go on. We have to feed ourselves, pay for our homes and utilities, preserve our livelihoods for the future, and do all the things that make life worth living. Americans in particular don’t put up with boredom or confinement well, and we definitely don’t like being bossed around, at least not quite so overtly, and certainly not so arbitrarily. Under the best of leaders, where we knew what “victory” over this virus meant and where goalposts weren’t being moved, maybe we’d stay hunkered down for another month if clearly necessary, but even then it wouldn’t have lasted. And we don’t have that best-case leadership scenario. . . .

When people begin to understand that their leaders aren’t leading any more, they will either find other people to follow, or just go off and do their own thing. Political power is not only taken away at the ballot box, it’s also taken away when people just stop listening to you, which they will do when it becomes apparent you have nothing to say. And if someone else does have something to say, well, your power bleeds away that much faster. . . .

Individually, people are already making their own plans, and are slowly but surely executing them. They aren’t going to wait indefinitely for an as-yet-undetermined amount of testing to take place – they can’t afford to. Every day we’re seeing more traffic on the roads. Every day we see more people in the stores still allowed to be open. The protests will get bigger, and will expand far beyond a few cranks and conspiracy theorists. People will start hosting their own parties, with more and more people caring less and less about social distancing. Desperate small business owners will begin operating again, legal or not – what threat is a fine when you lose ten times that amount every day your doors are closed? The legal marijuana industry is struggling because a well-used black market was already in place – how long will it be before passwords to speakeasy barber shops (or hell, actual speakeasies) start floating around, or illicit home deliveries or services become the norm?

When other states open before we do (which they will because they all are actively planning for it and we’re still just planning to plan until more numbers come in), how many people will drive across a border to spend their money, leaving Nevada businesses and Nevada workers in the cold longer than necessary? COVID-19’s impact on our state will be The Worst without additional self-inflicted wounds.

And once these seals are broken without everyone suddenly dropping dead in the streets, are people really going to listen when the next “second wave” shutdown order is issued?

Trust is the most important resource during a crisis, and it’s the resource our ruling class takes most for granted.

OREGON’S LOOMING PUBLIC PENSION CALAMITY: Oregon officials face truth behind state’s soaring public pension costs: ‘It’s a little bit like a Ponzi scheme,’ the chair of the Oregon Investment Council says.

Just how bad is Oregon’s public pension funding crisis?

Bad enough that Rukaiyah Adams, the normally polished investment professional who is vice chair of the Oregon Investment Council, broke down in tears last week as she spoke of passing a record $22 billion in unfunded promises to future taxpayers.

“My call to the Legislature and to the governor is for leadership on this, and I mean right now,” Adams said during last Wednesday’s joint meeting of the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System board and the citizen panel that oversees its investments. “This is becoming a moral issue. We can’t just talk about numbers anymore.”

The numbers are bleak. Oregon’s pension system owes billions of dollars more to retirees than it has, and the last major attempt to fix the problem was shot down in courts.

This month, cities, school districts and others will find out how much more they’ll pay to help prop up the system. Higher pension costs could come at the expense of funding for other needs, including social services, infrastructure investments and education programs.

Last week’s meeting was extraordinarily candid. And it provided a brief, reality-based peek behind the financial charade taking place not only in Oregon’s pension system, but also in systems across the country.

Experts openly acknowledged they’re understating the magnitude of Oregon’s problem. They’re relying on optimistic assumptions about investment returns. And they’re holding down required pension payments below what’s needed to keep pace with the debt, to avoid eviscerating school and government budgets across Oregon.

“We’re beyond crisis,” Katy Durant, chair of the Oregon Investment Council, said in an interview after last week’s meeting. “We should have been addressing this 20 years ago and it’s just been building. It’s a little bit like a Ponzi scheme. Sooner or later it’s going to catch up with you.”

Politicians just keep kicking the can down the road, hoping the bill will fall due after their time. That’s worked so far, but something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

ALAN GREENSPAN: U.S. ‘Way Underestimating’ the National Debt. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Promises that can’t be kept will be broken. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Plan accordingly.

DER SPIEGEL: Green Fade-Out: Europe to Ditch Climate Protection Goals.

The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking — jeopardizing Germany’s touted energy revolution in the process.

The climate between Brussels and Berlin is polluted, something European Commission officials attribute, among other things, to the “reckless” way German Chancellor Angela Merkel blocked stricter exhaust emissions during her re-election campaign to placate domestic automotive manufacturers like Daimler and BMW. This kind of blatant self-interest, officials complained at the time, is poisoning the climate.

More here:

At the heart of the matter is the simple fact that renewable energy comes at a premium, and the costs for propping it up have been passed along to consumers, both industrial and residential, in the form of higher electricity costs.

Yet this turn towards green energy has produced a browner energy landscape. Germany produced more energy from coal in 2013 than it had in nearly a quarter century, and its emissions actually rose. . . .

German businesses are considering jumping ship for cheaper energy prices in the developing world or (gasp!) the United States. For households, these subsidies have acted like a particularly regressive tax: The poor feel the bite of higher electricity bills than do the rich. Germany’s new energy and economy minister Sigmar Gabriel is expected to announce a plan to cut renewable energy subsidies later this week in an effort to keep electricity prices down. That will be a step in the right direction, but significant damage has already been done.

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

A SOBERING GRAPHIC: The Reality Of America’s Finances.

Once again: Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Make your plans accordingly.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: U.S. Adds Two Times More Debt than Economic Output in Last 2 Years. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

PUBLIC PENSION UPDATE: Salon Warns Public Workers: Your Pensions Are Not Safe. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be. Plan accordingly.

IN BRITAIN, A DAWNING REALIZATION: The truth is that politicians are telling lies: Government is simply unaffordable. “The immediate emergency created by the crash of 2008 was not some temporary blip in the infinitely expanding growth of the beneficent state. It was, in fact, almost irrelevant to the larger truth which it happened, by coincidence, to bring into view. Government on the scale established in most modern western countries is simply unaffordable.”

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: CalPERS Goes After Compton. “California’s pension crisis is metastasizing. Last week we noted that the California public pension fund CalPERS was at loggerheads with the city of San Bernardino, which was using its bankruptcy filing as grounds to default on its obligations. This week, CalPERS sued the city of Compton, which owes $2.6 million to the fund. One detects its desperation here. . . . Spin it as you like, but math wins in the end. California’s retirement numbers just don’t add up, and clinging grimly to failing policies and dying institutions is not the way forward. CalPERS can sue every city in California, but that won’t fix the pension crisis — and it won’t get the California economy on track for the kind of growth that would make the tradeoff between pensions and services a little less dire.”

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be.