So, why do the two men who aspire to
leadership of the "greatest country in the world" bicker
over soundbites and make petty, out-of-context misquotes? President
Obama and Gov. Romney should be using this election campaign to
compare solutions to the problem of managing our future or just
getting past our present mess. Very bright possibilities are being
put in doubt.
In 1930, in the depths of the Great
Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay entitled "Economic
Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." He prophesied that in
2030: "… for the first time since his creation man will be
faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom
from pressing economic cares,… to live wisely and agreeably and
well." Nothing inevitable now stands in the way of that. Maybe I
should say, except our gridlocked politics and our own gumption.
The debate on foreign-policy on Monday
night demonstrated how disconnected our politics have become from
reality. The moderator asked Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney what they
thought was the greatest threat to the United States. The answer was
terror and a nuclear Iran.
Think about that! The war on terror is
one of the greatest missteps of the Bush administration. The
overreaction to a criminal act by a small group of men turned our
country on its head and gave Al Qaeda exactly the war they wanted. And that's supposed to be our greatest threat?
Similarly, with Iran, we are permitting
Israeli paranoia to drive our relationships in the most volatile
region in the world. We babble fearfully about a nuclear Iran when we
have inspectors crawling all over their nuclear sites on a monthly
basis. It's Iraq and weapons of mass destruction all over again.
What is our greatest threat? Actually,
we have no threat that deserves the word great. Nor is there a
military threat that deserves the $1 trillion per year defense
establishment that we have. Nor is there any economic threat from
China that deserves starting a trade war. Any future is possible.
Nowhere in the debates has there been a
mention of Africa, Latin America, India, Europe or Southeast Asia.
Are we withdrawing from leadership when these are exactly the places
where political and economic alliances are needed? China and the EU
are competing for sub-Saharan Africa. Japan and Russia moved into
Latin America during the eight years Bush wasn't watching. America is
dangerously absent and no one is talking about it.
The national debate we should have had
did not happen. The issues raised by Occupy Wall Street and the Tea
Party are being ignored. Instead we're gridlocked with no agreement
on the basic facts or nature of the problems. Worst of all, we are
losing respect for each other and that is something we have to
regain. Instead of having a real debate, we ignored anything of substance to obsess over the
national debt and fear of a Greek-like default.
So long as America carries its debts in
its own currency, the dollar, it can print as many dollars as it
wants and pay off any debt that it has. In addition, as long as there
are idle resources, like 20 million unemployed, there is no fear of
inflation or other unintended consequences. Forbes magazine (hardly a
liberal source) says: "there is 0% chance that the US will be
forced to default on the debt." Forbes got "a few folks
[mostly economists] from across the political spectrum"
including Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to
agree publicly that default is impossible.
If anything economic is a threat and
worth debating, it is the fear of the national debt. The politicians,
Republicans or Democrats, have locked themselves into the "fiscal
cliff" of spending cuts and tax increases that are due to go into effect
automatically on January 1, 2013if no agreement is reached earlier.
But it is neither necessary nor
appropriate to worry about the debt and the deficit when our economy
is still in a Great Recession. President Obama wisely dismissed the
fiscal cliff with "it's not going to happen," which was
probably the best line of the debate. But tens of millions of people
immediately wanted to ask "why not?" Unfortunately, the
American people were not invited to be part of that conversation.
The distortions and debatable issues in
our economic and political life, e.g., inequality of income and
wealth, money in politics and our hyper-expensive health care system,
are serious and we have to address them in an open, honest,
respectful way. That's what this election was supposed to be about.
Instead, the politicians and their campaign gurus carefully avoided
anything that might be important to anyone. The whole thing was a
sham. It is deeply disappointing that we let them get away with this.
Yet there is nothing inevitable in the
way of a very bright future. Our grandchildren should be able to
"live wisely and agreeably and well."
1 comment:
I always felt that the federal deficit was a somewhat overblown issue and a political pawn. Too many people equate it to their own checkbook because that is a simple analogy. I appreciate the author’s insight.
One hypothetical way to eliminate the debt could be that the government redeems all notes, bonds and debt paper and exchange the debt for US currency. Inflation would increase disproportionately because the wealthy would get most of the cash and have nowhere to spend or invest it. Then we might have real trickledown economics as the excess money would have to be spent somewhere.
The average citizen that holds few treasury notes, bonds etc. would be at a disadvantage but that would only put pressure on business owners to not raise prices beyond what the typical Wal-Mart shopper can afford. I don’t know if the post WWI Germany inflation would be able to occur if the country’s paper money was all concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.
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