DARK ENERGY, FAR AND NEAR

The past and the future are fiction; they only exist in the imaginations of the present. ~ Archibald Wheeler  

People consider many distinct time periods during their lives. Many persons focus on what’s going to happen to them during the next day or next week. Some young folks wonder how they’ll survive their teenage lives. California truckers pay attention to the next 12 hours, the maximum duty period many of them can drive during any single time interval between rest stops. Unsurprisingly, elected federal politicians focus on the next 2, 4 or 6 years depending on what political office they want to retain. I hope at least a few of them, especially the president and Rep. McCarthy, are also now concentrating on the time between now and June 1st to avoid a national debt default.

Economists distinguish different analytical time periods as either short run or long run. The economic short run is a time period where at least one productive input is fixed or unchangeable. Classic productive inputs are land, labor and capital. More recently, entrepreneurship has been added. The long run is a time period where all productive inputs can vary; for example, rental rates (the price of land) and wage rates (the price of labor) can change. Notice that economists often do not usually state how much actual clock time the short run or long run is. That degree of specificity apparently depends on case-study specifics. I believe the range of a short run period is from 3 months to a full year. The long run heads off from there into multi-year eras.

Almost a century ago, archeologists devised a means of classifying ancient societies called the three-age system. This system, beginning with the oldest period called the Stone Age, measures human development. The Stone Age lasted more than 3 million years ending between 4000 BCE and 2000 BCE, with the advent of metalworking. The Bronze Age lasted through 1200 BCE. The last and most recent period was the Iron Age, when the production of iron and then steel was mastered. The Iron Age ended during the 5th century BCE, after written records like Samarian tablets were first produced by human accountants and royal writers.

Cosmologists, like the late Professor Wheeler, quoted above and who popularized the concept of black holes, have adopted an entirely different, truly expansive time perspective. Astrophysicists have no professional trepidations about next month’s consumer price index or an up-coming prophesized recession. Their long run heads not just for a decade or even a century. No, cosmologists’ attention squarely aimed at the firmament could span 100 billion (10^10) earth years.

This very looong run period – give or take a few billions years – is cosmologists’ current guestimate for when the entire universe will end. No personal worries for any of us or our grandkids’ grandkids. But if you’re the worrying sort, cosmologists also expect our dear sun – currently a yellow dwarf star – will flame out in a mere 5 billion years. Oh, my.

Cosmologists concern themselves with the life cycle of stars and galaxies that comprise our universe. The picture below illustrates fragments of Cassiopeia A, a massive red supergiant star that met its fate when it became a supernova. The light from this star’s detonation probably reached the Earth in the early 1680s, about 80 years after the telescope was invented. Perhaps Edmond Halley, a pioneering astronomer during that time, saw Cassiopeia A explode through his eye piece. Halley’s fame rests with his comet, whose periodicity he accurately computed to be 75-76 years. Halley’s comet will next be seen here on Earth in 2062, perhaps by our kids and grandkids.  

Remnants of Cassiopeia A

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA via the New York Times

 

It was a mere 13.8 billion years ago that our current universe was created in some sort of singularly impressive, fiery burst of energy. It has been growing ever since. Astrophysicists have debated for decades if our universe will continue to expand forever or collapse in some sort of gigantic contraction. In fact, 25 years ago astronomers realized that the cosmic enlargement was not contracting but speeding up, attributed to a supremely strange force called dark energy.

If the universe’s dark energy continues to reign unabated, distant galaxies will be speeding away ever-faster from our miniscule neighborhood in the Milky Way. Which means eventually we won’t be able to see them anymore. As the celestial clock continues to tick, the less we’ll know about our universe. That represents a worrying prospect for cosmologists, given their very elongated analytical time period.

But dark energy isn’t just a celestial force influencing the heavens. I’d posit that we Americans also are once again suffering from a dark energy force in Washington, DC. I’m referring to the Republicans’ efforts to use our nation’s artificially-imposed federal debt ceiling (created in 1917 and legislatively modified in 1939) to now forcibly implement their own detrimental policies. Our debt ceiling concerns the fiscal requirements associated with paying for already-implemented legislation, not future legislation.

The US debt ceiling has been raised or revised 78 times since 1960, including 49 times under Repub presidents and 29 times under Dem presidents. The debt ceiling was increased 3 times with trifling trauma under President Trump without any associated conditions. Each of these 78 rounds of debt ceiling revisions has involved considerable political posturing and much media attention. Each time the same issues are raised but never resolved; they’re simply pushed off for the next round to deal with once again.

Last week, the president wisely retreated from his pointless no negotiation stance. The initial “negotiations” began at the White House, with President Biden and congressional leaders including Rep. McCarthy and Sen. Schumer. Each side regurgitated their already-known positions. Dems want a clean debt ceiling increase passed by Congress – meaning debt enlargement with no spending cuts. The Repubs offered a temporary $1.5 trillion (T) debt increase only if the Biden Administration agrees to remove sizeable existing renewable energy tax credits, add more work requirements for food stamp and government aid recipients and stop the president’s student debt-forgiveness plans. Predictably, neither side gave a proverbial fiscal inch to the other.

The best debt ceiling resolution would be to annul the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 that authorized Congress to establish an aggregate ceiling on the total amount of new bonds – Liberty Bonds – that the government could issue (for World War I expenditures). Neither Repubs nor Dems want such an annulment to happen because it would significantly diminish congressional budgetary authority. I expect the ultimate resolution for this round of debt ceiling negotiations, like others before it, will be another unclean agreement that includes budget cuts that aren’t as large as Repubs want, but are greater than what Dems want, tied to a substantial increase in the debt limit. Dems and Repubs are no doubt now discussing such terms behind very tightly sealed doors.

Real negotiations will not start until the debt ceiling clock ticks to within 10 seconds of when current federal expenditures officially reach the existing debt limit of $31.4 T. On May 1st Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the US may exhaust its established “extraordinary measures” by June 1st (the so-called “X-date”) to pay its existing debt obligations. Until then, we will suffer from the Repubs’ self-righteous brinkmanship.

    Is this any way to operate a political economy? No. Besides the US only Denmark has a national debt ceiling that is an absolute amount of money. But while Dems occupy the White House and at least one side of Congress is controlled by the Repubs, that’s when dark energy may force our fiscal cookie to crumble with severely damaging consequences for everyone. It’s time for Rep. McCarthy to remove the dark energy cloud surrounding him and other Repubs and pass an almost-clean, significant public debt increase without delay or obstruction.