My Grandchild’s Future, and What About The Elephant Herd in Our National Living Room?

By: George Wallace

The official bulleted happy talking points dance down the page suggesting that in the US economy all is wonderful. The concert of the financial pundits is an all too familiar croak of pond frogs, and similar to whistling while walking through the cemetery at night. That is why a super majority of Americans feel like they are teetering on unstable ground before the rising winds of the gathering storm. Perhaps it is the trampling, trumpeting herd of elephants in our national living room that is causing the added disquiet?

This unease in the electorate is based on their collective personal experiences which fly in the face of the happy-talking, flim-flam, slight-of-hand statements of political misdirection. Each payday reinforces the very clear perception that things economic are not improving on their personal middle class American basis. Everything from what wage earners see at the bottom of their pay stubs to how little is left on the 30th of each month, and everything they see daily on television about how others live in our economy reinforces the clear vision of a country dividing along “have” and “have-not” lines. A huge majority are beginning to understand that their own government has been and is complicit in planning to hold their families in the “have not” category.

In a consumer society, people are smart enough to understand that their personal economic prospects are not as good as those enjoyed by their parents. They are also able to clearly see that the economic prospects for their children are not as good as the life style they personally have enjoyed. Those with grandchildren are developing very real fears about the future prospects of those grandchildren.

Yes, there is a clear demarcation based on political philosophy with strong blended elements of economic belief. I think it is clear that Republicans are convinced that individuals and families are best served when each person is individually responsible for their own financial welfare, and accepts the results of both extremes of risk-reward outcomes, win or lose. From this, it may be fair to label Republicans, as a group, as those more inclined to be risk takers.

Risk takers are a perfectly valid and necessary component of human social life. I think that it is built into our very genetic structure by the forces of evolution. Without the risk takers to lead the way, we do not advance into the future with as much diversity as we really need as a species. Of course, those that are successful in their risk taking, no matter how that end might be achieved, immediately begin to do everything possible to maintain that condition, including making it more difficult for others to join that select group. This is called “consolidating gains”, self-delusion of the elect, and monument building.

I think that it is equally clear that Democrats are convinced that individuals and families are best served when individuals join in mutual efforts to improve their welfare and to reduce their exposure to the outcomes of risk at the extremes. This is called tribalism, the change from hunter-gatherer to civilization, the development of villages into cities, the change from worker generalists to jobs specialization, and the development of guilds and unions. That was what Social Security was and is all about: to reduce the risks to individuals inherent in free wheeling, unrestricted capitalism. To give my Republican friends a couple more opportunities to foam volcanically at the mouth over Social Security: I see very few Republican retirees declining to accept their Social Security benefit payments. All it takes to covert a lifetime, straight ticket Republican to a Democrat is for him to live long enough to retire. The simplest answer to solving the solvency problems of Social Security is to make all personal income subject to this tax.

Labor unions are ultimately attempts to join together in groups for mutual protection from the predatory practices of unfettered capitalists and corporations. This kind of gathering together is the natural thing for humans to do. It is built into our genes by evolution. It is a survival tactic that works. We are social animals.

At the same time, within that context, it is the security of the social group that allows individuals to develop the inner sense of well being and adventure (with Mommy and Daddy as a fall-back position) that encourages individuals to participate in a series of learning activities that eventually leads to high risk activities. Within the socialization background of tribal humans, there has always existed the reality of the individuals that grow up to take the risks (hunters and soldiers), the individual that leaves the group to seek out a new group or experiences (adventurers and explorers), or the individual that leaves the group to start a group of their own (founders).

It is this last point that laissez-faire entrepreneurial capitalists seem incapable of remembering or understanding: none of them have or can succeed totally alone. Their success is dependent on others. They ultimately owe their individual success to others, the group that gave them initial support from infancy to adulthood. The capitalist can only succeed under the sheltering, protecting, greenhouse roof of permissive government. Government protects the capitalist by creating and maintaining military forces, police forces, courts of law and a legal system, and the socialized construction of infrastructures necessary for capitalistic ventures to succeed: from the physical items of roads, highways, bridges, ports, airports, canals, railroads, and all the utility services to systems that provide the work force: education and health systems.

If the individual had to provide all of these things for himself, he would have no time to adventure into entrepreneurial business development activities. He would have no time to get rich by non-criminal means. It is the much simpler acceptance of the obligation to pay a fair share of the taxes that support these support activities that should make sense to the capitalist. Complaining about taxes is really complaining about the society that provided the opportunity to enjoy the adventure, the opportunity to take the risk to become well off. Complainers about the low level of American taxes are essentially ill informed, whining ingrates.

Of course, there does remain the eternal discussion of tax fairness. At least that measurement is easy to calculate. It has already been done for us in the Scandinavian countries. Are people refusing to work longer hours or for higher pay? As long as the answer is “No”, then the tax level is probably O.K.

In the end, the real dichotomy of the American electorate, the real shift of political power for the next several generations will go to the political party that best articulates, explains, ands sells their view of personal, family, and national economic risk.

I believe that the elephant herd in the national living room yet to be “politically” discovered contains some very unruly and dangerous animals. The largest member of the herd is sick. Health care is throwing up and has diarrhea. It is going to be very difficult to clean the carpet. There is no point in calling in the cleaners until the sick animal is cured. There needs to be a national consensus that a healthy herd pulls together better to compete globally.

The next largest elephant is education. There needs to be a real commitment to improving American human capitol. That means dramatically improving K-12 education on a national basis. That includes nationally normed tests at multiple levels, and a high school diploma that is more than an attendance sheet.

As a nation, we are no longer competitive with the rest of the world, and we can no longer hide behind our oceans, and our insular internal markets are not enough to sustain us. (The Chinese laundry drill no longer works.) We can no longer ignore the demands of the world economy for a well trained and educated work force. Each year that passes makes that clearer and clearer. We have only a narrow window of opportunity to institute the changes needed.

I do not think that we Americans have the will to do what is necessary to compete globally. This means that America is already in the beginning stages of an economic decline. It may take a few decades to reach the bottom of the slope, but the slide has been greased, and the brakes are broken. We know what to do and how to do it. What is lacking is the will to do it. Squads of snowballs will march through Death Valley in August unscathed before we can get our act together.

Just these two elephants are so large that it is difficult to see the rest of the herd, each of which is also necessary and must be wrestled into submission. Even a small elephant in the living room leaves a very big mess to clean up.

We need to reduce our military spending. We can no longer afford to waste our resources in this manner. Who is the enemy? Who is our military competitor? In comparison to our enemies in World War II, al-Qaeda requires only a few squads of Rangers, and a platoon or two of Marines to clean their clock. Maybe if we remove our collective noses from the internal affairs of the world’s nations, we will actually need a lot smaller military establishment. Right now all we are doing is preserving a sinecure for an over-bloated officer corps.

We need mass commuter transportation systems like the rest of the world.

We need to revitalize our heavy freight transport systems, including our seaports.

We need high speed rail systems between our cities like the rest of the world.

We need intensive energy resource development like the rest of the world: clean coal, nuclear, geothermal, hydroelectric, tar sands, oil shale, wind, solar, and biomass.

We need to move huge numbers of our population out of low lying areas in advance of raising sea levels during an age of global warming which cannot be stopped. Florida will shrink to the size of a postage stamp. St. Louis will be a coastal sea port. Central California will be the world’s largest natural, in-land seaport.

On sleepless nights when I worry about the future for my grandchild, I really worry.

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(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com

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