The Third Floor (48.16) A Dream of the '90s

[mragland]

4.13.2047, Unincorporated Los Angeles County

Grant is in his office running a simulation of the 1985 Brewster season (except all the stadia have two-foot high outfield walls) to settle a bar bet regarding Sawyer Silk. He's having trouble accounting for an outfielder's ability to hurdle the fence to catch a ball leaving the field of play. He is being paid to do this. Well, not this exactly, but he's doing it at the office, and being paid.

Alden sticks his head in, knocking on the door frame at the same time. “Hiya. You busy?” he asks.

“Yes and no,” replies Grant. “What's up?”

“Oh, been struggling with the quirks of BBA accounting and I needed a break.”

“How quirky does accounting get, really?” asks Grant, leaning back in his chair.

Alden takes a seat and grabs the baseball off Grant's desk. “Well, for starters, all of our financial reports are in 1995 dollars.”

Grant looks nonplussed.

Alden continues. “We have our daily ledgers in normal dollars, and we have the financial statements used by the people upstairs, which are in 1995 dollars. We have to deflate the figures in the ledgers to make the statements, at least the software has to.”

“That's not normal?”

“Not really, no. Economists speak of real versus nominal value. Nominal value is the present dollar cost of thing, whereas real value attempts to pin down the value of a thing, disregarding inflation and fluctuations in currency purchasing power. For bookkeeping, we only really ever deal with nominal values in our day-to-day operations. But here in the BBA, it's as if someone came along in 1995 and said, 'right, let's just ignore inflation from now on,' and so they do. Useful in its own way, I suppose, but I've never seen anyone try to operate a business on a nearly 'real value' basis. International accounting standards require reporting in units of constant purchasing power only in periods of hyperinflation, which is not something we've seen in the States. Not common practice. Not normal.”

“But we don't use 1995 dollars, we use … uh ... dollar dollars, right?” asks Grant.

“You mean for actual translations? Yes. No choice in the matter. This isn't 1995. But the unit of account? Deflated into 1995 dollars.” Alden tosses the ball from one hand to the other. “It leads to some interesting quirks. Take Jorge Garciá's 2048 salary, for instance. Could you look that up for me?”

Grant opens a window on his monitor and finds Garciá's salary history. “In 2048 he's going to make $15,439,880,” says Grant.

“And in 2047?”

“He made $15,063,300,” replies Grant.

“Looks like he received a rise in pay, doesn't it?”

“Yes, one number is larger than the other,” says Grant, sensing a trap.

“But in the club's salary statement, which you wouldn't have access to, it reads the same for both years: $4,500,000. Why? Because the club is paying players, you, me, everybody, in real rather than nominal value, expressed in 1995 dollars. The two figures for Garciá you read to me, though different, should have the same purchasing power in each respective year, which is why, if you aren't getting an annual raise, your pay is actually decreasing,” says Alden. “For us, and anybody drawing a salary for a BBA club, it's like there's an inflation adjustment clause baked into our employment contract. That part I rather like.”

“This is starting to sound like one of your 'money isn't real' talks,” says Grant.

Alden puts down the baseball and stands up. “It isn't,” he says. “It's better than real. It's magic. It's made up. All of this is made up," he says sweeping his arm.

Grant blinks, but says nothing.

"Well, be seeing you,” Alden says turning around to leave. He whistles Strawberry Fields Forever as he walks back to his office.

'Weird guy,' thinks Grant.

[bschr682]

Excellent