The numbers seem astronomical. The federal government is on course to be in debt to the tune of a trillion dollars next year.
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And, remember, for decades, the conventional wisdom is that debt was to be shunned at all cost. There will be a reckoning we were told. If the government borrowed in our name, then the debt would have to be paid via tax rises or cuts in public spending. So ran the conventional wisdom.
But now the government is spending like there's no tomorrow. The economy is being propped up by government spending.
The coronavirus-induced economic collapse hasn't happened because of the borrowing to spend, with the resultant government debt.
Should we worry?
We should be aware of the future problems, concerned even - but the general view of economists is that we shouldn't fear a sudden slamming on of the spending brakes once the epidemic is under control.
"Are you terrified of Australia's ballooning debts and deficits? You can strike that off your list of fears," is the way Chris Richardson of Deloitte Access Economics puts it.
"There's a lot worth worrying about amid a pandemic. But too many people are worrying a bit too much about the cost of protecting our livelihoods at the same time that we're protecting our lives.
"The dollars are admittedly jaw-dropping: the first federal response cost $17 billion, the second round cost another $66 billion, and then the third rang the bell at $130 billion."
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He sums up his view: "The costs of what we're doing really are big and important.
"But they shouldn't scare you as much as they have."
Why so calm with numbers so big?
Think of a household - think of your own finances.
Many of us are in debt for most of our lives: we borrow to buy a house and pay off the debt over our lifetimes. We pay off the debt before we die so that we don't hand it on to our children.
So we live with debt in the long term providing we can finance it. Debt is a problem in the here-and-now only if the weekly or monthly income is not enough to cover weekly or monthly spending.
On top of that, governments don't die. They can roll the debt over, reborrowing and refinancing.
And at the moment, interest rates are not far from zero so the cost of borrowing is very low.
"Never in the 2000 years of recorded history of interest rates has it been cheaper for governments to borrow. Never," Mr Richardson said.
On top of that, Australia's debt as a proportion of annual economic output is not that high compared with that of other countries.
France (116 per cent), the UK (96 per cent), the US (132 per cent) and Canada (109 per cent) all exceed Australia's (36.1 per cent this financial year, according to the Treasury, and 43.8 per cent in 2023-24).
So just sail on, borrowing for ever?
Not quite.
There is a constraint on borrowing by government. If the financial markets fear that a government's debts are so high that they can't be repaid, people and institutions might be loathe to lend.
Back in April, government debt was nearly $600 billion. It's now risen to $800 billion. That is about 40 per cent of the country's output.
Between 1939 and 1946, Australia's debt to national output ratio jumped from 40 per cent to over 120 per cent. It then shrank with inflation and growth so it was about 10 per cent of GDP by the turn of this century. It's now rising to what it was back in the 1960s - which is manageable.
Chris Richardson likens the current fight against the epidemic and its economic effects as a war, demanding war-time measures.
"Australia's economy will grow again on the other side of this war. So, here's a simple suggestion let's just let our debts from this new war simply become a smaller share of our growing economy over time.
"That's what we did with the war-time debts of the past. And it's probably the smart play this time too. Self-imposed flagellation rarely makes sense.
"The same policies that were sensible ahead of this crisis will remain just as sensible after it too. And the federal budget after this crisis will look a lot like the ones before it."
And borrowing can be good
It depends on why you borrow and what you do with the borrowed money. Would you be impressed by a company which never borrowed to expand?
In the immediate future, economists think spending is needed to keep the economy up but for the longer term, investment in infrastructure and training might strengthen the economy.
In March next year, some of the government's current measures end - there will be an "income cliff" for some. The immediate task of the government is to prevent that happening.
"Past experience tells us that those who don't get a job back in the first two years after they lose their job in a recession rarely work ever again in the rest of their lives - with knock on costs in everything from mental health to domestic violence. So, some of the jobs saved now will be returning benefits for a generation," Mr Richardson said.
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"That's why studies by economists over the past decade have increasingly come to the view that fighting as hard as you can to stop unemployment rising in a recession is incredibly important."
One difficulty we now have is that interest rates are so low that the Reserve Bank can't lower them much further to try to get spending going.
And we have a lot of personal debt, mostly because we borrowed to buy a home.
All this means that government spending is back in fashion.
Necessity has trumped ideology.