Some political reforms make so much common sense they have to be banned from polite conversation.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) says the U.S. spent $738 billion (in 2011 dollars) fighting the war in Vietnam. The World Bank estimates that when the war began in 1964 the population of Vietnam was 38 million. Assuming five per family, simple arithmetic reveals that instead of waging a ten-year war that killed two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans, we could have given each of those families $97,105. Had we done so, we would have obtained just what we got by fighting and losing the war: a law-abiding trading partner willing to assert its independence from China and Russia.
This startling fact begs the question about our policy in Afghanistan. The CRS estimates that the war there has cost $321 billion to date (again, in 2011 dollars), not including hundreds of billions more when post-war expenses like veterans' benefits come due. The World Bank estimates that when the war began in 2001 the Afghan population was 27 million. Again, if their average family size is also five, we have already spent $59,444 per family. If we had given that amount to each, or provided, say, a new pick-up truck and a free college education for one of their daughters, we would not now be bogged down in a war that all agree cannot be won.
Common sense solutions like these, while painfully obvious, are entirely inadmissible within mainstream political dialogue. Why is that? Why can't common sense be applied to our defense expenditures, which now are almost equal to the rest of the world combined? Our current level of defense spending cannot be driven by our need for physical security. We spend six times as much on defense as our nearest competitor, China, and twelve times as much as Russia.
The defense budget isn't just for defense. It has another objective: propping up our economy. The huge military-industrial complex created to wage the Cold War has taken on a life of its own. When the federal government tried to reduce expenditures by closing unneeded military bases, the affected communities rebelled because of lost jobs. Today, when we try to shut down unneeded weapons systems, like the F-35 fighter, we are told that companies too big to fail would be jeopardized.
This is the tail wagging the dog. Dollars spent on peaceful pursuits, like manufacturing pick-up trucks, churn far more downstream economic activity, and more jobs, than dollars spent on products that blow up and disappear the first time they are used, like bullets and bombs.
Obviously, our inability to apply common sense solutions to thorny policy issues does not stop with defense. Want a common sense solution to the social security crisis? Easy. Remove the cap on the social security tax that gives high earners a free ride. Want to reduce global warming? Easy, again. Use Congress to break the power of the oil and coal companies. Worried about the deficit? Pass a one-time wealth tax and wipe it out. Not enough money for public education? Tax the rich. They used to pay for it.
But these "radical" solutions are off the table. The media tells us repeatedly that they are impractical, which is why angry voices ranging from the Tea Party on the right to the Occupy movement on the left all complain that the "mainstream media" represents the interests of the wealthiest 1% of the country while ignoring the needs of the other 99%.
This anger is driven in large part by our inability to inject common sense into our political debates, and that inability comes from the corrosive role of money in politics. Too many of our elected officials are concerned first with the furtherance their own careers. As long as the campaign contributions and lobbying perks they need to do that come primarily from the wealthiest 1% of society rather than the other 99%, mainstream political dialogue will be no broader than the self-interest of those putting up the money.
Of course, there's a common sense solution: End the system of camouflaged bribes by which campaign money and lobbying perks are showered upon officials elected to serve the common good. Take money completely out of politics. Nothing less will solve the problem, but, alas, that too is a taboo topic, inadmissible in polite conversation.
It's all quite amazing, since the amounts of money corrupting our political system are an open secret. In 2010, a total of $3.65 billion was spent on federal elections while a total of $3.51 billion was spent to lobby Congress and federal agencies. Let's be serious. Given these numbers, it is preposterous to think that working -- and non-working -- Americans have a chance at equal representation under the law.
Our nation is in crisis. Our government is hopelessly gridlocked. Our middle class is evaporating. Our schools are in decay. Our health care is failing. Our people can't find jobs. Our streets are in disrepair and chocking on traffic. Even our planet is losing its ability to sustain us. And all the while, our political system drives us farther and farther apart.
No serious person can believe that fundamental solutions to our national problems will emerge from what is now admissible political dialogue. The conversation must be expanded. The best of today's radical ideas must be allowed to blossom into tomorrow's common sense solutions, as they often have in the past. We are the country that invented open political dialogue. If we can't stop the wealthiest 1% from limiting what the rest of us understand to be realistic, our political dialogue will remain terminally irrelevant.
Bill Zimmerman is a partner in Zimmerman & Markman, a political consulting firm. His most recent book is Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties (Doubleday, 2011).
> ..Had we done so, we would have obtained just what we got by fighting and losing the war: a law-abiding trading partner
That is why i salute to China !
You do understand why everything from China is so incredible cheap:
They have done exactly that !!
With us !!!
read my U.S.-revolution :-) http://www.robodurden.com/?&iGroup=222&iClass=244&Show=222,244,5
Petroleum? We have 2% of the world's oil. That's it. We consume 26%. We must import, or switch to other fuels.
Coal? We got lots! But it pollutes our air (and water) and ruins our lands, and we can't put it in our cars.
Almost every time the U.S. has had the opportunity to manipulate an offshore situation to its (and liberal democracy's) advantage, the government has done exactly the anti-sensible thing.
Cuba, Iran, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Thailand, China, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina..... the list is not quite endless.
In every case, the application of relatively inexpensive liberal goodwill towards these countries - as opposed to the very expensive support of the oppressive minorities which held the population of them in poverty and despair - would likely have resulted in returned goodwill towards America instead of the hatred of America that, understandably, resulted from the policies actually followed by the government.
"The Ugly American," written by an American in the 50s, laid out the government attitude, which persists to this day, that has made, "America," and "Yankee," epithets in many places around the world.
Fortress America, bulwarked against reason, isn't going to change anytime soon, not matter who howls at the moon of common sense.
Like anything else, people can disagree greatly about what is common sense, about anything.
And common sense is often flat wrong too. It's "common sense" that the earth is flat. Look at it!
(*) The semi-informed often think that the defense budget goes to bombs and bullets that blow up. That's the least of it. Most defense spending goes to R&D, advanced manufacturing processes, wages and benefits for millions of Americans, education and healthcare, and doing things like developing the Internet.
If we get rid of the deficit spending our economy will crash.
Germany has put themselves on a strict austerity regime: Schuldenbremse which required a balanced federal and state budgets and raising the retirement age to 68. The longer we wait to follow them, because we certainly will eventually follow them, the more painful it's going to be.
Austerity only benefits those who already have the wealth, why do you think POLITICIANS ARE IN FAVOR OF AUSTERITY?
That is more than the entire education budget (which tops the world also). Funny the author left out that fact.
Education is constructive: it builds a better society. Health services are constructive: they improve people's lives. The military is purely destructive. It creates nothing, just drains away resources.
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No, we would not have obtained the same thing. Namely, the defense industry wouldn't have profited by billions and billions of dollars.
And there is no lack of common sense. It's that the very purpose of the federal government is to enrich the rich while keeping the rest of us cowed through laws and threats. And our nation is NOT in crisis. WE ARE EXACTLY WHERE WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE. This is by intent, by plan, by deliberate step-by-step procedure. The only thing that will change things in the USA, frankly, is insurrection. When once again, like in the 1930s, Americans start openly joining the socialist and communist parties by the thousands and rioting in the streets, only then will we see change.