12 Zeros

The word "trillion" has historically been the private domain of central governments - - including our own. But the word trillion has become the new billion in other areas of our democracy - - namely at the state and local levels. Ron Lieber of The New York Times writes the following in his August 7, 2010 column (A Class War Over Public Pensions):

At stake is at least $1 trillion. That's trillion, with a "t," as in titanic and terrifying.

The figure comes from a study by the Pew Center on the States that came out in February. Pew estimated a $1 trillion gap as of fiscal 2008 between what states had promised workers in the way of retiree pensions, health care and other benefits and the money they currently had to pay for it all. And some economists say Pew is too conservative and the problem is two or three times as large.

The engineering professions, namely the design and construction firms that have a considerable financial stake in all of this (i.e., plugging gaps in trillion dollar holes is a whole lot of bridges and highways and dams and community libraries) need to step forward and be a part and party to the discussions and debates surrounding potential alternatives and solutions. One can watch the movie or be in the movie - - this is a blockbuster that we need a starring role in.

Michael Elliott, in his August 16, 2010 Fortune column, The U.S. Isn't Alone: High Unemployment Rates Are The New Global Reality hits on a parallel city/state issue:

Unemployment was the specter at the Global Forum's feast. For all the excitement over the developing world, there was a constant recognition that the Great Recession had played havoc with labor markets. On July 2 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released deeply disappointing figures for June, with the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remaining stubbornly high at 9.5%, the same as a year ago. There's probably worse to come. In Cape Town financial analyst Meredith Whitney, who warned of the parlous state of the banking sector in 2007, drew attention to the silent fiscal crisis in the U.S., the one hammering state and local governments. As they try to get their budgets in order - - 49 states must run balanced budgets - - those governments, which account for 15% of U.S. jobs, will cut programs and lay workers off. In a May report, Whitney's firm, the Meredith Whitney Advisory group, estimated that 1 million to 2 million state and local governments jobs could be cut in the next year.

With these two examples - - and many more from both the recent Great Recession and our 10-year Great Stagnation - - the barometer is economic. But the anger is human and increasingly political. You take away a sense of optimism, things tend to get more volatile. Sixteen million unemployment and underemployed people without hope - - it starts to look a lot like Latin America: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine.