Post by shoreman on Nov 9, 2006 17:44:38 GMT -5
My age of pessimism
We need hard decisions, and nobody has the guts
Nov. 7, 2006 11:35 PM
www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1107robb08.html
I guess I'm getting old because I'm having old-guy concerns about things.
Due to deadlines, I'm writing this before knowing the outcome of the elections. But that's OK, because there is no outcome that would leave me optimistic.
My old-guy concern is about the future of representative government.
This country has a big domestic problem: the cost of publicly funded retirement benefits.
According to the General Accounting Office, Social Security and Medicare currently consume about 7 percent of gross domestic product. With the declining ratio of workers to retirees, that's projected to increase to 11 percent by 2025 and 15 percent by 2050.
To accommodate this would require, in today's terms, a 40 percent increase in federal spending.
Yet, we've had an election in which this problem was barely discussed. Democrats occasionally obliquely referenced it in criticizing the Bush tax cuts or their opponents for favoring "privatizing" Social Security. Republicans pretended that the problem didn't exist.
Certainly neither party was telling the electorate what it was going to do about a problem that dwarfs every other domestic issue.
The Economist recently had an interesting section devoted to how dysfunctional the French economy had become. In addition to the retiree demographic challenge faced by all modern economies, France has a more immediate problem: an overregulated labor market. This has resulted in high unemployment, particularly among young adults, and a sluggish overall economy.
The solution, according to the Economist, was for politicians to stand up and sell the French people on the need for tough reforms.
I wonder whether that's still possible in a modern democracy.
Germany has much the same problem as France. In its national election last year, Angela Merkel was supposedly the tough-reform candidate. She began the election with a healthy lead, but by the end was forced into a coalition government that hasn't done much.
In the United States, there's a perception that elections just keep getting nastier. In reality, elections in this country have always been fairly brutal affairs, not the elevated civil discourse we would like to imagine once prevailed.
However, the intimacy of television makes it different - more pervasive, more powerful, more destructive.
Estimates are that 90 percent of television ads this election were negative, criticizing the other guy and his ideas rather than promoting your own.
The presidential race in 2008 will be somewhat better. There's still an expectation that people running for president will offer some ideas on where they plan to lead the nation.
However, the majority of the messaging will still undoubtedly be negative. A consensus in favor of tough reforms simply cannot be forged if most of the discussion is about what's wrong with the other guy.
The fate of President Bush's Social Security reform illustrates the limitation. Bush supported private retirement accounts as part of Social Security reform in both 2000 and 2004. However, he was sketchy about the details and spent most of his time criticizing the other guy.
In 2005, he wanted to cash in his "political capital" on behalf of Social Security reform, only to discover that he didn't really have any.
Perhaps the American people would reward someone who talked turkey with them about the need to make some tough decisions about Social Security and Medicare. My old-guy instinct is to doubt it, however. The candidate selling sunshine and scorched-earth criticism would probably win going away.
Things aren't so dreary at the state and local level. Despite periodic anxiety attacks on both the left and right, there are no big crises looming. We can manage with a governing class that just sort of kicks the can down the road.
Unlike France and Germany, the United States can also get along with a governing class that does the same thing for a while. However, at some point in the next decade or two, we may have to face the question: What's the fate of representative government if it proves incapable of making tough but necessary decisions?
So, if your side won yesterday, congratulations. If your side lost, better luck next time.
As for me, I can't shake the feeling that it's all beside the point.
We need hard decisions, and nobody has the guts
Nov. 7, 2006 11:35 PM
www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1107robb08.html
I guess I'm getting old because I'm having old-guy concerns about things.
Due to deadlines, I'm writing this before knowing the outcome of the elections. But that's OK, because there is no outcome that would leave me optimistic.
My old-guy concern is about the future of representative government.
This country has a big domestic problem: the cost of publicly funded retirement benefits.
According to the General Accounting Office, Social Security and Medicare currently consume about 7 percent of gross domestic product. With the declining ratio of workers to retirees, that's projected to increase to 11 percent by 2025 and 15 percent by 2050.
To accommodate this would require, in today's terms, a 40 percent increase in federal spending.
Yet, we've had an election in which this problem was barely discussed. Democrats occasionally obliquely referenced it in criticizing the Bush tax cuts or their opponents for favoring "privatizing" Social Security. Republicans pretended that the problem didn't exist.
Certainly neither party was telling the electorate what it was going to do about a problem that dwarfs every other domestic issue.
The Economist recently had an interesting section devoted to how dysfunctional the French economy had become. In addition to the retiree demographic challenge faced by all modern economies, France has a more immediate problem: an overregulated labor market. This has resulted in high unemployment, particularly among young adults, and a sluggish overall economy.
The solution, according to the Economist, was for politicians to stand up and sell the French people on the need for tough reforms.
I wonder whether that's still possible in a modern democracy.
Germany has much the same problem as France. In its national election last year, Angela Merkel was supposedly the tough-reform candidate. She began the election with a healthy lead, but by the end was forced into a coalition government that hasn't done much.
In the United States, there's a perception that elections just keep getting nastier. In reality, elections in this country have always been fairly brutal affairs, not the elevated civil discourse we would like to imagine once prevailed.
However, the intimacy of television makes it different - more pervasive, more powerful, more destructive.
Estimates are that 90 percent of television ads this election were negative, criticizing the other guy and his ideas rather than promoting your own.
The presidential race in 2008 will be somewhat better. There's still an expectation that people running for president will offer some ideas on where they plan to lead the nation.
However, the majority of the messaging will still undoubtedly be negative. A consensus in favor of tough reforms simply cannot be forged if most of the discussion is about what's wrong with the other guy.
The fate of President Bush's Social Security reform illustrates the limitation. Bush supported private retirement accounts as part of Social Security reform in both 2000 and 2004. However, he was sketchy about the details and spent most of his time criticizing the other guy.
In 2005, he wanted to cash in his "political capital" on behalf of Social Security reform, only to discover that he didn't really have any.
Perhaps the American people would reward someone who talked turkey with them about the need to make some tough decisions about Social Security and Medicare. My old-guy instinct is to doubt it, however. The candidate selling sunshine and scorched-earth criticism would probably win going away.
Things aren't so dreary at the state and local level. Despite periodic anxiety attacks on both the left and right, there are no big crises looming. We can manage with a governing class that just sort of kicks the can down the road.
Unlike France and Germany, the United States can also get along with a governing class that does the same thing for a while. However, at some point in the next decade or two, we may have to face the question: What's the fate of representative government if it proves incapable of making tough but necessary decisions?
So, if your side won yesterday, congratulations. If your side lost, better luck next time.
As for me, I can't shake the feeling that it's all beside the point.
