Our Imagination Deficit (Guest Voice)
May 30th, 2011 | 13 responses
WASHINGTON — While the United States remains utterly frozen in a debate about budget deficits and all the things that government shouldn’t do, other countries are marrying public and private resources to make themselves stronger and more competitive.
While the United States is not even sure we should have gone halfway toward providing health insurance to all of our citizens, other democratic countries long ago began using government to cover all their citizens — and have health costs far lower than ours.
While Americans pay less in taxes than the citizens of other rich countries — and currently pay the smallest share of their incomes for taxes since 1958 -- one house of Congress thinks the only thing that can be done to help the country is to cut taxes even more.
While other countries have jumped ahead of us in green economics, we have backed away from any effort to put a price on carbon to battle climate change and promote new technologies. In the Republican Party, politicians have to apologize for even thinking about global warming.
And while other countries invest in their basic facilities, we are letting our roads and bridges, rail and water systems, and our broadband access go to seed. We created the interstate highway system, and now we can’t maintain our sewers.
Oh, yes, and nearly 14 million of our fellow citizens are unemployed.
OK, now you can go back to the dreary deficit debate if you wish, but this catalogue is offered to suggest the irrelevance of our Washington conversation to the problems the country faces.
Our imagination deficit is the shortfall we should worry about. We seem incapable of doing what we did in the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and, yes, Nixon years: imagining how practical public action could make our citizens’ lives better, our country stronger, and our private economy more productive.
Sure, we need long-term fiscal balance, and going back to and then reforming the tax rates we had under Bill Clinton would do much of what we need to do. The rest could be accomplished with far more modest reductions than the draconian cuts contained in Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan.
The larger and more important challenge is to figure out how we can plan, invest and compete with countries far more focused than we are on how the new global economy works. And the people most amazed at our country’s inability to do so are not armchair socialists but tough-minded CEOs.
Encouraged by Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, I spent time recently with The Wall Street Journal’s report on its annual ECO:nomics conference, published in March. Right off, the Journal’s account emphasized that China is “grabbing clean-technology market share not because of its cheap labor … but through strong mandates and subsidies to build a new export industry.” Ahem, those words “mandates” and “subsidies” don’t come out of free market playbook.
The report quoted Mark Pinto, the executive vice president of Applied Materials Inc., who said that in solar power, the U.S. is “neither the largest in manufacturing nor the largest market.” He added: “That’s very unusual.”
Do we really want to lose this market?
On his blog, Pope cites another corporate leader who attended the conference, Andrew N. Liveris, the chairman and chief executive of Dow Chemical Company. “Around the world,” Liveris writes in his book “Make It in America,” “countries are acting more and more like companies: competing aggressively against one another for business and progress and wealth. …
Meanwhile, in the United States, we operate as if little has changed.”
I won’t pretend to agree with all of the CEOs’ views on tax or regulatory policy. But it is striking that so many of them are pragmatists, not ideologues. They understand that government efforts to promote national prosperity need to go way beyond taxes and deficits.
You might recall an observant politician who noted earlier this year that “South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a ‘D.”‘
A few months later, the same politician said: “We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investment in our people and our country.”
That would be President Obama, and you wonder: Is there any chance at all that he can move our national conversation to the task of “winning the future”?
E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com. (c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
13 Responses to “Our Imagination Deficit (Guest Voice)”
Not having insurance would just be completely crazy. I am an accountant and in my local area “Penny Health Insurance” is the best health insurance finder I ever had. Yes my insurance does cover dental and eye insurance which is a big help to my life.
Hmm, do I sniff a hint of a Democratic plan for balancing the budget? Show us the numbers, Mr. Dionne.
And if it includes effective investment in infrastructure, so much the better. But the Democrats have a $700B credibility problem in this area.
I’m surprised how many on the right aren’t able to wrap their brains around the fact that their silly “Shown us the numbers” meme, a blatant attempt to mislead, has fallen flat on its face. People are wondering why you seem to think these lies work… or for that matter are necessary.
The “numbers” they are pretending have not been put out are called “The President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2012” and they were submitted by the President on February 14, 2011… Months before Ryan’s silly attempt to hoist once again a Republican attempt to destroy Social Security AND Medicare… Something the American people (even run of the mill Republicans, have already rejected.
Steve, “show us the numbers” is an attempt to cut through the starry-eyed vagueness Mr. Dionne puts out and the content-free abuse you serve up and to drag the discussion into the light of reality. Just to correct you on a few facts:
Mr. Ryan proposed not to destroy Medicare but to spend approximately 4% of GDP on it. And the Republicans have had to back off on his plan. All the Ryan budget did to Social Security was call for a plan to make it solvent.
Far from balancing anything, Mr. Obama’s budget proposed nearly tripling the national debt between now and 2020. He backed off from it in his April 12th speech and called on Congress to figure out how to reduce the deficit.
So “show us the numbers” is precisely where we’re at with the budget. Neither the Ryan nor the Obama plan are going anywhere as is, so we need to see the next rev.
You want numbers?
Here are some numbers that come from OWEN GRAY, GUEST VOICE COLUMNIST – Pap the Republican:
Funny how all your righties cry about wanting to see numbers when it’s the rights fault that we’re here in the first place.
You folks are proof positive that the Study [that] Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid is right on the money.
A great graph, Steve. Maybe someone in Congress will propose a budget based on rewriting all that history.
I didn’t actually vote for or support the Bush tax cuts, two wars, TARP, or any of the other expenses on the graph. And I don’t watch Fox News. So I’m not sure who the “righties” are you’re referring to, or what the goal of your comment was.
Imagination (and, say, inventiveness and of course fiction) deficits as seen by old-style dinosaurs like Dionne (or maybe Stein on this site, for example) or Slimy Hacks like Krugman, are predictable complaints.
What are they going to when the vote-buying E-Z super-fed Fairy Godmother money runs out around the end of this decade or so?
Tsk, tsk.
Actually, it’s a phenomenally lousy graph. Let’s look at what the graph purports to do and then what it actually does.
First off, it’s entire premise is bogus, namely that certain policies as opposed to all policies are responsible for the debt/deficit. But let’s ignore that oversight and move on to the substance of what’s there.
1. “Bush Era Tax Cuts”…note the CBPP needs to be careful here because the current tax table was passed by an entirely democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President. But, hey, it’s still Bush’s fault. Second, you’ll note that the cost of the tax cuts continues to go up over time, despite the fact that the law says the tax cuts end at the end of 2012. This type of “analysis” leaves a lot to be desired. Oh yes, and 3/4 of the “tax cuts” at least are those not for “the rich”. But let’s ignore all of that.
2. Wars in Iraq/Afghanistan. OK, here’s another good example of how the chart works. Even once the wars are over, the chart assigns long term debt to them. This is the fallacy of the entire chart writ large. I could as easily blame Medicare cost inflation for the future debt since it’s a policy too.
3. Economic downturn shows another BS analysis. What it is showing is the gap (in terms of revenue and expenses) between projected GDP and a fictitious counterfactual where there wasn’t a recession. Clearly the counterfactual is what drives the gap. Now, there is a component of that part of the chart that is real…the part that represents depressed receipts from their historical level. But that’s not what’s modeled here. That is all captured in the “Bush era tax cuts”.
See, that’s what passes for analysis for an ideologically oriented think tank…and what passes for facts from SteveK is posting a graph…a graph that maybe he doesn’t understand.
SteveK only understands that he shares the far-Left’s hatred of America.
Nitpicking, Steve. This is the rewrite-history fantasy, the money we could have saved if we had run home behind the bus rather than paying the fare. We didn’t go to war with anyone–maybe 9/11 didn’t happen at all. Financial regulators regulated, there was no mortgage crisis, no recession, and no recovery measures needed.
As good as that is, imagine how much better off we’d be if we had run home behind a taxicab instead. Political upheaval in India and China made them less attractive for businesses, and millions of jobs returned onshore. Conflicts in Africa and Mideast abated and a new era of peace enabled us to close a bunch of military bases. Medicare payment model experiments yielded massive new efficiencies in health care, transforming the entire industry and putting insurance within everyone’s reach.
You may complain that none of this is particularly helpful or actionable, but Dionne’s column, after all, was about imagination.
Comments read… and shared with the neighbors! (half dems / half reps)
We just laughed and laughed and laughed… you guys are too much! Thanks.
I’m picturing some pretty well-trained neighbors, Steve. But glad you got some benefit.
Steve K,
Reply read and shared with the city. All appreciated the value add.