Americans have grown fearful. Most believe, not surprisingly, that the country is headed in the wrong direction. For the first time ever, most Americans believe their children may not fare as well as they have. We spend nearly as much as the rest of the world combined on our military, chasing phantoms across the world. Conservatives in both parties rail about debt and deficits. They line up to support adding another $33 billion in emergency spending for the misbegotten war in Afghanistan, while blocking the $23 billion needed to forestall the layoff of a staggering 275,000 teachers across the country.
Washington is crazed about debt and deficits, but the real deficit is in fortitude, not finances. Consider the contrast between this country emerging from the Great Depression and World War II and now.
Then our debt was a far greater burden than now -- over 120% of GDP. The country had suffered a decade long Great Depression and a global war. The troops were coming home, but the entire economy was mobilized for war. Europe and Japan were devastated. And America was led by Harry S. Truman, a former haberdasher, product of the corrupt Pendergast machine in Kansas City.
But, having won the War, America had the confidence to face its future. Despite the massive debt, Congress passed the GI Bill, educating a generation of veterans. We financed the transformation of military factories to civilian production, investing in the industries -- from aerospace to automobiles -- that would transform the country. Congress passed subsidies to aid the purchase of homes, stimulating the growth of the suburbs. We passed the Marshall Plan to spur the rebuilding of Europe. A Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, a hero of the war, put a lid on military spending, while building the interstate highway system.
With rare exceptions the country continued to run annual deficits and the accumulated debt continued to rise. But the country grew faster, the broad middle class -- the triumph of American democracy -- was forged, and the debt as a percentage of GDP declined steadily down to less than 32% when Ronald Reagan took office.
None of this was easy or smooth. There were strikes and upheavals. Inflation and unemployment plagued the post-war transition. The Korean War divided the country.
Conservatives at the time were as timorous and noisome as they are now. Led by Ohio Senator Bob Taft, they opposed the creation of NATO. They railed about deficit spending. They waged war on labor unions. They hunted communists at home and abroad, trampling basic liberties in the process. They conjured up preposterous conspiracy theories about treachery within. American politics were even more poisonous than now. And black GIs returning from the war found that their service did not exempt them from the legalized apartheid that still scarred the country.
But a confident America didn't let the frightened and the crazed get in the way of doing what was necessary to forge a prosperous future. Eisenhower reaffirmed the New Deal reforms. Social Security was preserved; finance remained shackled; top end tax rates stayed at 90%; labor's right to organize was weakened but not gutted. A confident and broad middle class replaced the extreme inequality that contributed to the Great Depression. We all grew together.
The contrast with the present day is stark. Now as we remain mired in two costly and endless wars, and emerge from the Great Recession, the timorous have taken control. Our national debt -- about 90% of GDP -- is far lower a burden than it was after World War II, but our deficit in confidence is far higher.
Instead of forging the new economy needed to revive a broad and prosperous middle class, we are focused on balancing our accounts. With states and localities facing crippling budget crises, with school districts shutting down summer school, eliminating after school programs from athletics to tutorials, laying off teachers and increasing class size, the Congress blocks vitally needed bills to provide aid to states, and to put people to work. The president acknowledges a staggering public investment deficit in the foundations of a new economy -- in education and training, modern infrastructure, research and development - and then calls for a three year hard freeze on domestic spending, while the military budget continues to rise. Republicans and conservative Democrats join with the banking lobby to weaken financial reform, with big oil to frustrate the transition to new energy, with the insurance and drug companies to sustain an unaffordable health care system.
Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson enlists major foundations to rouse fears about debt, with "entitlements" -- meaning Social Security and Medicare as his major targets. The president sets up a deficit commission tasked with balancing the budget, not with defining the foundations of a new economy that would enable us to grow our way out of debt and rebuild a prosperous middle class.
President Obama is far better prepared for this moment than Harry S. Truman was. He has been clear about the need to build a new economy out of the ruins of the old. He has detailed core elements of that task -- public investments in areas vital to our future, making the transition to new energy, balancing our trade and making things in America once more, shrinking finance and curbing the casino, empowering workers to gain a fair share of the profits and productivity they help produce, fixing our broken health care system -- the source of those terrifying long-term deficits that Peterson brandishes and distorts.
But the president is now in retreat. His call to action has been muddled by pollsters and positioning. Conservatives peddle fear and conspiracies as they did after World War II, but this time America's leaders are cowed, letting the frightened block the bold measures needed to forge our future.
Needless to say, our current circumstances are far different than those at the end of World War II. Then we were victorious; now we are losing in Afghanistan. Then we were unified; the entire nation had sacrificed in the Depression and the war. Now we are divided, more unequal than ever; and the wars are fought by professionals out of the public consciousness. Then we had pent up private savings from years of wartime rationing; now household debt remains near record levels. Then the rest of the world was devastated; now America faces a surging and mercantilist Asia, an export addicted Germany.
But these are circumstances, not fate. The real contrast is in our confidence. Americans have grown fearful. We doubt our ability to pursue a common purpose. For good reason, we lack faith in our institutions - whether government or business or the banks. But instead of steeling our spine, we are daunted by the obstacles. Bluster substitutes for courage. We focus on balancing our accounts, not forging our future. That is a recipe for decline.
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What's missing is belief in ourselves. The concept, "We're Americans - we can do this" could be heard in one form or another from union hall to VFW hall, from the church social to the board room during the 20 years following WWII. Again, during the 90s we balanced the budget (following 12 years of 200b annual deficits) and created 33 million jobs (compared to 24m created the 12 years prior) The difference? Confidence. The end of the Cold War and the limited but therapeutic success of Desert Storm gave us the luxury to believe in ourselves. 911 destroyed that. Desperately, traumatized, we turned to self-indulgence. Those who could hid out in bigger and bigger homes and SUVs while they, and the rest of us began pointing fingers in disgust at anyone available.
We seriously need to ask ourselves (not each other - but our own selves), "Self, are we up to this?". Until we do that, the answer is "no".
Personal values have shifted tremendously over the past 10 decades. One wonders if society will successfully re-adapt from an environment of excess and overabundance to one of sharp limits that demands discriminating choices and greater interdependency. I too am concerned about the future of my family. Keep on posting, sir.
if he could lead he just might be effectual and that is what we are all looking for.
“Where did the financial crisis begin? Which central bank conducted monetary policy that was too loose? Which country went down the wrong path of social policy by encouraging low income households to take on mortgage loans that they can never pay back? Who in the year 2000 weakened regulations limiting investment bank leverage ratios, let Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 and thereby tipped world financial markets into chaos?” he wrote.
It's very easy for the administration to blame Wall Street "greed" rather than accept any responsibility!
What is their motive? They have already satisfied greed, that's passe'. There is something else going on. A return to feudal society with barons and serfs? That DID work for a few thousand years, you know. This citizen stuff is only a few hundred years old, with a rocky history to boot.
ps. I'm 70, seen a lot, and now can say I've been right in most of my political observations since about 16.
A big wake up call to them would be to re-institute the draft. And citizens, when we are not in a war declared by Congress (not the President, who as Chief Executive is just supposed to carry out that order from Congress; an Executive, executes, doesn't Decide), should have choices other than the military for service to the country.
That would get them serious about the country they say they love but don't show it.
IMO, what we haven't learned yet as a species -- though more of us are "getting it", I think -- is that fierceness in battle is not the same as strength of character. We are fearful, but our fear makes us behave ever more arrogantly, bluster even more loudly about how great we are. Sometimes our national dialogue sounds like the "conversations" I have with my 7 year old when she does something careless with disastrous results. She insists on her rightness, her knowledge, her control, backing herself further and further out on a limb until it snaps and the only way back is a trembling and tearful apology from which she learns ... something for a while.
I pray we stop short of the tearful, quivering and ask ourselves if our attitudes as individuals about ourselves, our country and our place in the world are rational and beneficial or harmful to the very things and people we claim we love.
I believe America could be as great a nation in reality as it is on paper if we could just stop backing ourselves out onto that limb and take stock of how we've allowed partisan politics and a serious inability to assume responsibility for our attitudes and behavior to drive us into separate camps. It may be comforting to blame the President for it, but it's not realistic and it won't solve the
I wish you were my neighbor.
IT'S THE WARS STUPID!!!!!
$ Trillions wasted for absolutely no purpose against non-existing threats to "national security" by third world nations with no air force, navy or functional armies to threaten us with. Of all of the reasons given for the need for these wars - absolutely ALL were found to be totally false - and still we fight on and pay to rebuild and refurbish these countries while the infastructure of the United States crumbles around us.
What have WE learned in 2,064 years?
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest the Republic become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
Cicero - 55 BC
Evidently, nothing.
Well, we've learned that our opinions (and votes) as individuals matter less and less and less.
We've learned that when the Military Industrial Complex says "Jump!", we ask, "How high?"
We've learned that when we say, "Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan! Stop killing people for private commerical gain and doing it in our name. Stop selling our children's future." Our opinions are dismissed, and we're told that we can't see the Big Picture.
We've learned that nearly 100% of congressmen are on the payroll of PAC funds.
We've learned that both political parties have two overriding commandments: 1) Get the power and hold on to it; and 2) Tell the citizens whatever fairy tales are necessary.
Cicero was right.
Plus none of us is rich enough to bribe a congress person. Our government has become so corrupt that I fear only bodies in the street will get their attention.
I realize that there is not a whole lot you can do to those you expect to raise your wages. But you sure as he// can do as much as you can to get, (vote) the ones out of office who help those who don't help you. It starts with you elected representatives.
A comedian once said that the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was that Democrats had no ideas, and Republicans had bad ideas.
My take on it: Democrats have not well thought out strategies.
That said, Republicans in the White House and a majority in congress definitely is a bad idea. If you think two wars is bad, how about adding war with Iran and North Korea; and while Republicans talk a good game about reducing deficits ... they simply don't and won't. They will just divert monies elsewhere (like war) and hide the money.
The rich will continue to get richer, and the Middle Class will stay in free fall or be wiped out.
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Until we get the collective cajones to stand up to the Blackmailers and their lackeys in Congress who tell us they're going to take their money and go elsewhere, we're going to continue the destruction of the middle class and increase of the divide. I say tax the top 1% at least at 40% and make them take their money where their mouth is. The country isn't get their 'investments' now anyway.