For the last few years at least, former Reagan era speechwriter and current WSJ op-ed writer Peggy Noonan has been a bit of a Debbie Downer. She has surveyed the wrecked landscape of the Gipper’s vision, endured the oily creepiness of the Clinton era, and mostly succeeded in holding her nose through the budget busting “compassionate conservatism” of George W.
Mostly.
Towards the end there, you could see her starting to lose her faith, the notion that we would somehow always muddle through. Today’s editorial is a kind of coda to her dirge of national decline:
The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren’t rising, they’re bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we’re entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either…
The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out. Have you heard, “If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better”? Or, “If only we follow the Republicans, they’ll make it all work again”? I bet you haven’t, or not much.
This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.
Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too big. But a larger part is that our federal government, from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems to know that won’t work. It’s not a way out. It’s not a path through.
I tend to be an optimist, but I think it’s at least possible that Ms. Noonan may have hit upon something, even though it’s remarkable – and revealing – to see a conservative like Ms. Noonan look to government for solutions.
Across the seas from our island, we have an enduring, albeit low level internecine conflict in Iraq, one whose outcomes we are no longer capable nor really desirous of influencing. For better or worse we have done what we have done. Afghanistan, no matter what the president decides or the military can effect, will remain a festering sore for decades at least, if not longer, and we only quibble over how and at what cost to shape the least bad outcome. NATO, the throbbing heart of the Atlantic Alliance for over half a century has proven itself a grudging and largely ineffective partner. Needing mass infusions of imported labor to keep the machinery of the modern welfare state creaking, member state elites seem more fascinated with cushioning the blow of cultural obliteration than defending Western political thought, not linking the struggle abroad with that at home.
The Russian bear, if not quite resurgent has reasserted itself on the international stage and done so – quite rationally – purely on the basis of national self-interest. Where those interests roughly align with ours (Central Asian terrorism) we may find partners, where they do not (energy, Eastern Europe, Iran) we will find obstructionists, if not outright adversaries. The Chinese armament continues even as we disarm, with no plausible purpose but an inevitable future clash over diminishing natural resources. Nuclear-armed Pakistan writhes in an existential struggle with 7th century barbarians already within the gates. In Natanz the centrifuges continue to spin, while in Tel Aviv a barricaded populace once again facing the prospect of mass extinction ponders how many more years they can carve out in the face of inveterate malice, and who they can take down with them should the time come – there will be no more Masadas.
At home, political progressivism has the run of the national field. The culture war is largely lost to social conservatives, with the only question remaining being whether there is to be a triumphal march through the capital with the bitter clingers dragged behind the victors’ chariots in chains, or whether they will be eased down gently, taxed until bled white and then fed an anesthetizing pablum of government entitlements, fearing only the midnight knock on the door by ATF.
Little by little we will see – as Barney Frank recently revealed – the further extension of the smothering hand of government regulation into every sector. The public option will in time become the public plan, which will in turn become single-payer health care, fundamentally altering the relationship between government and the governed, just as its framers intended all along. We will expand Medicare to those at 150% of the poverty level while cutting Medicare costs by $400 billion, which will be a neat trick. At the cost of some $900 billion over ten years, an additional 13% of the uninsured will receive public coverage. Some form of Cappin’ Trade will eventually pass, creating enormous, market distorting wealth transfers both within our borders and beyond in support of a dubious theory, and to no good purpose so long as China and India remain upon their current trajectories, as they have every stated intention of doing.
Well enough, as far as it goes, but the necessary thing to understand is this: Progressivism is less a theory of government than it is a movement, and movements are defined by, well: Motion. There will always be inequalities, always self-identified classes of aggrieved victims, always those who dare to express incorrect or inconvenient thoughts. There will always be new dragons to slay.
When we have finally shifted that 15% of the GDP currently representing the private health care market into the hands of the bureaucrats, when the several states lose control of their contract laws and gays are everywhere free to marry, move and demand the public services intended for those who will beget the next nation, when abortions must be provided even in Catholic hospitals lest they be shuttered – or shutter themselves – when our carbon-fired economy is returned to nearly pre-industrial levels, when we have abandoned the outer battlefields to man the barricades at home, the need for “progress” will continue. Indeed, the Great Leveling has already begun, and it will not stop.
That, at least, would be the ultimate realization of Ms. Noonan’s grim essay. Change indeed.
Not everyone agrees with her of course. Steve M. at “No More Mr. Nice Blog thinks it’s all stuff and nonsense, this fear that the productive class might rather “go Galt” than break their backs laboring for the benefit of others:
I’ll say it again: This can’t happen. If there’s opportunity in an economy and some idiots walk away from it in a fit of pique over, God forbid, being taxed, or regulated, no biggie — someone else will seize the opportunities. That’s the way capitalism works — money-making opportunities simply don’t go unseized. The bizarre thing is that Ayn Rand, the alleged High Priestess of Capitalism, didn’t understand that. She was just so jealous of communists and socialists and union workers who seemed able to organize collectively. But they were doing it to empower themselves. Collective action to disempower yourselves — if it could ever happen — would never leave the power you abandoned just lying around. Someone would take it.
Well, perhaps. But this sort of thinking implies that there’s some sort of waiting list in effect to engage in the creative destruction that powers a market economy. That if only the chairman of GM stepped aside – wait, perhaps that’s a bad example – some collective force would come in behind him and take the “power” that money-making capital engenders. That all the rising class is looking for is an open seat at the table.
But entrepreneurs, the kind of people who create the vast majority of new jobs in our economy, don’t merely wait for opportunities to become available, they make markets where none existed before or take markets from those who have become too ponderous to move with them. They do not stand in line, but claw their way to the top. They take on enormous personal risk in doing so, laying it all on the line, even mortgaging their homes in the hope of a reward commensurate with the risks they are taking. Most of them, frankly, fail but the ones who do succeed are the ones that create real value and competitive advantage in our globally integrated economy. Which government turns around and taxes.
I would very much like to be an entrepreneur, I’d like to make something of my own, create value, engage in the tussle of the marketplace, leave something behind. Like the vast majority of us however, I simply don’t have the stomach for the risks involved. I’ve got a mortgage to pay, not to mention the college tuition. There are tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people just like me, standing on the sidelines and casting admiring glances at those who have the courage and grit to get it done. There are hundreds of thousands more jumping in the pool, creating (taxable) jobs and enduring value.
Market-driven entrepreneurial risks will always endure, but the problem is that as government imposed taxation and regulation vectors come to dominate the reward calculation, more and more of us will choose to sit on the sidelines, go for that safe government job, hope that there’s someone left to tax. Hope that government, as it shunts the market aside to choose its winners and losers, chooses us. Hope that this time, uniquely, government bureaucrats who’ve never run a business will get it right.
Or else we can, like Peggy Noonan seems to have done, take the counsel of our despair.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could do for themselves.
—Abraham Lincoln
It’s always good to leave on a high note.
Have you considered that given your California cost of living, you’re essentially working for free? You could move down to Texas, work zero hours, and have more money left over at the end of the month than you do now, working full time. Why be a victim?
There is so much to say but most would simply add little to what you wrote. It will take a revolution of sorts – taking back the country and all – which, in my manic moments I can see happening, perhaps starting next Tuesday in the 23rd NY Congressional District – and yet, in my depressing moments, I fear we’ve become a nation just ready to sit on the sidelines and let the great wave of government incompetence wash over us. Which is it? Maybe I should try Prozac to see if the flame of liberty still flickers inside me. Or just give up and fight Vx for whatever’s left in the bottle.
It is difficult to contemplate, as an middle-aged, unemployed degreed professional and Combat Veteran, but there are no certainities to the forecast outlined by Ms. Noonan.
Yea, verily, it does seem rather stormy on the horizon….we have allowed the keys of the kingdom to be handed to those who seem to have no real grasp of what they are infliciting upon us, the governed. They are akin to giving the keys to the shiny new race car to the teenager with no real driving experience and hoping the car doesn’t wind up on the first tree down the lane…
My main hope is that we are in a similar position to how our Country felt in mid -late 1942. The Nazis controlled most of Europe – We were unable to gain any idea of victory or of how we would overcome war in the Atlantic or Pacific. Supplies were perilously low and our money supplies were even lower. The Debt incurred to fight the war was mind-numbing…But in the end, we managed “small victories” that built up on each other and overcame the feeling of despair. We overcame despair and the forces of evil.
The small victories start with the off-year Gubernatorial elections in November 2009 where the Dems get hammered – Not as overwhelming support of the GOP but as an anti-Dem statement. That gets followed up with a severe trouncing of President Doofus’ agenda in the 2010 congressional elections – again, not as an endorsement of the GOP but as an anti- POTUS message.
The hope is that after 2 years of this, the 2012 election cycle will bring about some real candidates and not the same-old-same-old we have been force-fed for the past 12 years…..I feel that the backlash against President Doofus is coming
I can still believe that there are better days ahead for my country – as long as each of us makes an effort to make it so.
Ayn Rand’s proposal begins to make sense when there is no longer any long term advantage for the individual to work. Prior to that point, of course money making opportunities will be seized. After that point, the collapse and rebuilding under a new government is inevitable. There are no opportunities to profit left behind, they have been destroyed. Her vision was that sufficiently aware and capable individuals would see that it was in their self interest to speed that process up by giving up their struggle in what had become a completely socialist society. It is self empowerment at it’s finest.
I’ll offer an example based on the coming “reforms”. Let’s say I’m a doctor, after 12 years of school, I went to college for 4 years. Then medical school. Then I did time as a resident and I have continued to study, tried to stay current. I have devoted myself to my work and my patients. I make a good salary, and I am taxed at a very high rate, local, state, and federal. I have high insurance bills. I have invested well, and have enough money to live on if I am not extravagant. When health care is nationalized, doctor’s fees will be set by the health care czar. (Oh yes it will, count on it, just look at the move to set salaries in the businesses that had been “bailed out”). When I do the math, it will push me past the margins. It won’t be out of some disempowerment I am choosing, the government will have eliminated my profit motive, and I will be following my own self interests.
It is the liberal philosophy that people will continue to work for the common good that doesn’t make any sense.
Indeed, ASM826, there comes a time when it’s too expensive to work. Or invest. That’s when people cast about looking for ways to “Get off the Grid”, (love that phrase).
Working for wages in a “cube farm” keeps you harnessed. The concept of a “career” is a cruel trap. You loan or rent yourself to the man for most of your adult life and for what? Answer: so “the man” can continue to live in the manner to which he’s become accustomed.
Or maybe, you like to work for free because it’s just do much fun!
While I agree with Peggy Noonans feelings, she writes nothing really new that hasn’t been lingering out there for some time. Maybe not lingering for those that have heard Glenn Beck for the last 5 years, more like repeated attempts to push in to the middle to get the word out. I tend to be more optimistic than fatalistic at this point, as I see the country awakening, and with that awakening will come a unique form of cure all: American Ingenuity.
Of that, I’m sure of.
Never mind that in the 70s, we inflated that money supply by 13%, but in the last year we’ve inflated the money supply by 120%. Never mind that in the 70′s we had interest rates of 20% in order to pull that money back in (wonder what it will be this time around). Never mind that there are so many so-far-to-the-Left dyed in the wool socialist/communists in this administration that we have Chavez warning Castro that we may be more communist than those two. Just pay attention. And prepare as best you can, for our day of reckoning is coming. Maybe we go the way of Bolivia, or, maybe Poland.
In the end, we’ll be stronger for it. Of that, I’m sure of.
Not going to happen. Nobody’s going to borrow money at those rates. We’ll just have to sit through high (20-40%) interest rates for a longer period while the economy catches up to the money supply. Should be fun.
Has to happen until the money comes back to the fed. And, it has happend. Check out the Weimar Republic, and tell me again why it is never going to happen? It can happen. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong though.
Lex, you have encapsulated or dilemma in a very few short paragraphs — clearly and brutally.
I recall that in the Soviet Union, the statement was:
“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
And all of Western Europe owes its existence since 1941 to the United States.
Unless there is a clear alternative provided in 2010, and our citizenry do not wish to sink into Lotus Land stupor … more than at any time in my lifetime I fear for our nation.
I repeat again Lenin’s statement:
“The way to beat the Bourgeoisie is to grind them between the twin millstones of taxation and inflation.”
That is a very effective strategy, and I fear it is in process here.
And to those who think they can pull the covers over their heads, Pericles made this comment in 430 BC
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you!”
I’m pretty sure that the Lincoln quote is apocryphal.
“The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out”
I suspect that those people who Peggy considers “sophisticated Americans” are precisely *not* those who understand how the country works “on the ground.”
That’s how I look at it. These problems are solvable…but the cure is not more government, but less.
Daniel Webster: “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy” (Also reaffirmed by Chief justice John Marshall). It is destructive to value creation which is any action / process that customers are willing to pay for.
Destroying value is not limited only to taxation but also applies to excess regulation and wrong application of tort law. It’s a blood sucking mentality. Any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer is waste and should be targeted for elimination.
But our Federal Government doesn’t know the first thing about running a Lean Enterprize, nor does it care, since it believes there is a bottomless pit of funds from future generations.
Slight correction there Lex. When you say
You are confusing two different programs. Medicaid is the income based program, a shared responsibility of the states and the feds. Medicare is the “contributions” based system for those 65 and older, non-means tested. The fact is, that the states are grateful for the 25% of the uninsured that are currently Medicaid eligible. Most states are running deficits, and couldn’t afford it if more of their eligible citizens signed up. That is the reason for all of the squawking from the governors when this was first announced, and the 91/9% split the first two years if enacted. The problem is, the smart governors see the train wreck coming in the out years. The ideologues, not so much. They see beer and skittles.
The Medicare fund theft is another story. All federal money, supposedly paid for by the Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund. Problem is, the fund reserves are exhausted in 2017. This attempt to start diverting money even before that date is a breach of trust — the money has been collected for years, and now, our compassionate, Mommy party, has their foot on Granny’s oxygen tube — hasn’t shut her off, but is making her hypoxic.
Bill George uses Fred Hiatt’s WaPo piece yesterday as a departure point for a pretty salient obs http ervation:
For a bunch that speaks so much of their admiration of the courage of our fighting men and women, is it too much to ask that they display a little of that same hunger for a noble fight?
YES.
You left out that elections will be stolen rather than tallied from now on.
Just read the newspaper, then factor in that they too are in the tank.
Cheers.
No, not a “Debbie Downer.” Rather, Peggy is finally becoming more of a realist than her former idealistic self. One must understand a problem before attempting to fix it. Peggy finally at least, gets the first part right.
More than anything else, it was the lack of government regulation that propelled us into our current, miserable economic state. And had it not been for government stepping in when it did, we would now be far, far worse and in another Great Depression.
Government regulations designed to prevent another depression were systematically reduced beginning with the Reagan years, then much more during the Clinton and Bush II years. Unfettered greed, betting on derivatives and credit swaps and using unconscionable 30-times-leverage in markets that were unregulated contributed to most of our current financial malaise.
Entrepreneurs are wisely not taking risks now, not because of taxes or regulation, but because the economy is in the tank…. because of unregulated profligate and unproductive derivatives profiteering. Thus it was the lack of regulation that has poisoned the market for entrepreneurial start-ups.
Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan also deserves much of the blame for our current woes. For years his policy and advise set us up for our current fall.
Oh, and I believe throughout history, the wealthier citizens usually were taxed at higher rates and certainly paid a larger share. It seems to be the nature of these things.
Speaking of Ms. Rand, there is an interesting book review about her today…. but most will not like it. Link
“lack of regulation?”
You mean like not allowing redlining and regs driving banks to loan to unqualified borrowers? Yeah, I see what you mean.
/sarcasm off
Man up, dudes and dudettes. It is still possible to vote with your feet. America is a state of mind, not a place on a map. When the nanny state rules and regs overpower common sense in New Jersey, people move to Florida.
When it gets too much for me in the USSA, I have no problem with finding another, wilder, less regulated place to tend bar.
Live free or die.
Enough good news here to make you think about suck-starting a .45….
Isn’t life grand?
I’m pretty sure the Lincoln quote is apocryphal. It is the truth, but Lincoln was too much of an opportunist himself to see much truth beyond what he himself wanted. His handlers were the spiritual ancestors of the same people that got us where we are now.
Having said that, I think the country is finished. I don’t say that because I think it is inevitable and can’t be stopped. I say it because I’ve been a serious student of human nature since my early teen years and what we have now was predictable. man tends to be greedy, but most will recoil from doing serious damage to his neighbor. They have a sense of decency.
There is a very small coterie that walk on their grandmother’s grave to get what they want, and don’t care who gets hurt, as long as they reach their goals. We see the Madoff’s as the worst of the lot, but he simply got caught. People that have been appointed to Obama’s maladminstration, Bernanke, Greenspan, and many others are just as evil. The Goldman Sachs crowd are some of the worst and, as several financial writers have pointed out, their fingerprints are all over Washington.
Will anything be done about the situation? I think the tipping point was reached long ago, and the forces were set loose will overtake us regardless of what we do. The real federal debt is on the order of 100 Trillion. Do the math and figure what kind of debt that places on you and me. It will never get paid, but the holders are going to want their pound of flesh. The Chinese are already looking at ways to convert the US Federal debt they hold into equity. Any ideas where that will come from.
VX, I’m sure, will put up one big fight for what’s left in the bottle. There’s a bunch of people that are going to want it.
Quartermaster,
Apocryphal or mis-attributed? This one even got Reagan’s speechwriters at the ’92 Republican convention:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._H._Boetcker
I use the term apocryphal in the same sense it is used with the Patristic writers of the early church. Often the author would use the name of some one prominent rather than their own. For the person named it was apocryphal. Often the term “pseudo” was used, as in “Pseudo-Peter” to refer to the writer when the actual author is now unknown.
I know Lincoln never said much of what was attributed to him.
It’s a FACT that it’s Time-for-Adults – long since and past the time for adults to take over once again both in government and outside of it. For a lot of years, going back at least as far as “The Great Society,” and probably could be traced back to FDR’s programs and the mindset they engendered, there has been an expectation on the part of some citizens that the government was there to take care of them. That feeling has been festering for a lot of years now, fed by pandering politicians and the preachers of victimhood (and, lest I forget, by a certain “elite” strata of our society that has been “educated” in a left-leaning system that has gone hard left one soft step at a time until now, when we are seeing the results – and those results are in high elected and non-elected) positions).
So, now, it’s time for optimistic adults to step up to plainly state the bad news and teach the good lessons. Or Else. We either find some decent people to put into government or we are in for a mega-ride for some time to come. We either educate the people of this country to the realities of what will result from socialism or “European-style” governance as it might be called in the ‘nuanced’ crowd, or we are cooked. I’m worried that we will not be able to sustain the effort for the time necessary to outlast the current mis-educated supporters of the current government, nor that we can or will do what is necessary to change what is being taught in the schools or in the homes. Certainly, once the government programs that perpetuate the wrong mindset are in-place it’s darned difficult…or should I say impossible, to get rid of them.
Crap! And you can quote me on that.
Steve, I find your ideas intruiging and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
We need to stop the current political process of collecting interest groups like Pokemon cards. There may be more than one right answer to our problems, but thre are certainly wrong ones. We need to start telling people how their answers are wrong (and have the humility to admit when our answers are wrong). Stop trying to woo Hispanics and the poor and instead show them how the liberal’s immigration and welfare policies hurt them. Maybe then we can end the current scrum around the trough of federal dollars.
Maybe they’re right and it’s too late. In that case my Celtic ancestry says it’s time to strip naked, paint yourself blue, light your hair on fire and charge screaming to Glory.
Another view on Peggy
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/2754
Peggy Noonan? The Obama supporter?
Insta had a reader comment:
As DWAS points out, Surber has a point.
Most of us won’t go Galt. We’ll go underground.
Legit or underground, freemarkets happen.
Me? I’ll keep working on my homebrewing and winemaking skills.
Co-workers from Eastern Europe and former USSR who lived through dark days there say the real currency of a crashed economy isn’t gold or silver; it’s tobacco and alcohol.
Damn, I think I drank up most of my future wealth today after my round of golf.
interesting discussion here: http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/10/23/year-end-deficit-report-part-2-aps-crutsinger-misses-the-year-of-going-galt/
“Going Galt” may have already started,
Following a link from bizzyblog:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1005/taxes-financial-aid-college-roughing-up-middle-class.html
I have to wonder about the money I’ve been socking away for college for my children. I saw it when I went to school–no one gave us anything because my retired enlisted father carried little debt and paid in cash. But if he’d gone and bought a boat and was over his head in debt, all sorts of funds would have been open to us. In the end, State U was relatively inexpensive, and he paid for it all out of pocket rather than fill out any more intrusive and insulting aid forms (in those days, all on paper, but these days, all electronic and collected in databases to be exploited and compared with other databases).
As it is, every penny socked away is one less fund taken away, and as it is every penny saved won’t pay for even one year of tuition ten years from now. I won’t take on stupid debt, but it seems I ought to convert everything else into cash or buy stuff I can covert when the SHTF.
The most fantastic military benefit, bar none, is BAH/BAQ/OHA, the non-taxed allowance monies that keep taxable income low but allow one to live quite decently. Let’s see if they last until retirement.
Just stay off my mountain. Don’t piss in my stream. Don’t poach MY Muley’s. Don’t go rootin’ through my garden, and we’re all good.
Such a selfish attitude. I think I’ll report you to the Wealth Nazis at Spreadthewealth.com
Wait for the knock at 3 AM.
The “website” is a hoax in case anyone thinks I may be the slightest bit serious.
For those of us Lexizens who are considering relocating you can get a little help in your considerations of places to go by comparing cost of living at various locations at
http://www.relocationessentials.com/aff/www/tools/salary/col.aspx
Seems to be pretty good in relative terms. I used my former Morgan County, Ohio location vs Haywood County, NC and it seemed to leave some things (Dentistry, for example, about 2 times more costly here than where I used to live and supposedly I need just $9 more per year to make up the difference).
You can look at other things apparently, but I didn’t play with those sections of the website.