Occam's Razor

The age of limits

The motto for the University of Central Florida (where I got my bachelor’s degree) is “Reach for the stars”. For a university less than an hour’s drive to Cape Canaveral it is an appropriate motto. While UCF will continue reaching for the stars, the world in general and America in particular is realizing that reaching for the stars is unaffordable.

I am not speaking specifically about the space program although we are “reaching for the stars” a lot less than we used to. For example, the Obama administration is trying (wisely, I think) to retire the space shuttle. It also has the novel idea that in the future, the private sector should provide the government with a service to get astronauts into earth orbit and back. High unemployment and exploding deficits seem to be generating a bipartisan consensus that we now have more government than we can afford.  Believe it or not, I agree.

It is my opinion that given our modern world we probably need more government, at least for select programs. However, I don’t see how to pay for these programs without cutting others. Granted, the government can be staggeringly inefficient. While certain agencies are very efficient and indeed innovative, others are hugely wasteful. This week’s Washington Post investigation into the proliferating and apparently overlapping authorities working in the murky and high-classified world of counterterrorism shows good intentions gone seriously awry. There appears to be no central authority managing all this. We do have a Director of National Intelligence but in reality, the DNI is more of a coordinator than a director, as he does not have budget authority. This explains the high turnover among DNIs. Even if he did have the authority, it would prove a Herculean task to align our counterterrorism priorities with this kudzu of agencies and contractors and their proliferating and overlapping missions.

The main reason the United States is not reaching for the stars is that a lot of genuinely needed government is squeezed by the steadily increasing costs of entitlements. These entitlements are principally Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, although the list could also be expanded to include items like federal pensions. Arguably, we could actually get both health insurance costs under control, push it out on the private sector, pay a whole lot less and cover all Americans if we adopted the Japanese health care model. Perhaps we will get there someday but right now, we prefer to dither around the edges. The recently enacted health care legislation is a step in the right direction, but only a step.

Efficiencies in government programs are fine, but ultimately all government must be paid for with taxes. However, you can only pay taxes in relation to your income. With less income, less discretionary money to spend, and with more of it allocated toward health care, the consumer can no longer prop up the economy, which reduces economic growth. Moreover, if economic growth slows or halts, tax revenues must slow as well.

As Joe Bageant depressingly points out, future economic growth also assumes that nature will keep providing us with its bounty in endless supply. It assumes that we be able to find new affordable sources of mineral wealth and endless new tracts of land for agriculture and housing needed for a burgeoning population. Unfortunately, it appears that most of the easily available minerals have been extracted, which means the cost of living is going up. If our income does not keep pace then our standard of living is likely to be lower. Moreover, land is also finite. We cannot continue to grow forever by developing unspoiled land. Survival itself is predicated on the existence of nature. In short, growth is becoming more expensive. The more we grow, the more it costs to grow, and the less benefit there is to growth.

Thinking Americans seem to understand that we have reached a nebulous growth limit. If we can grow our way out of our economic problems, it will be at an unacceptable cost. We saw what the cost was recently with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Moving to an energy economy based on renewable energy is certainly more desirable than our current hydrocarbon-based economy, which among other things made June 2010 the hottest June on record. Our structural problems though are far larger than creating a clean energy future.

The real problem is we have reached a critical mass of people. Since 1970, the United States increased its population roughly by half: another hundred million people. From now on, population growth is going to introduce disproportionately negative effects. Unfortunately, at least in the short term, population growth is unstoppable. This means that the cost of living is going to increase, as more of us compete for fewer and more expensive resources.

The effects are being borne out not just at the federal government, but at state and local governments as well. As costs eat away at income, there is less revenue available for governments. Inevitably, this means fewer services. However, right now it seems impossible to come to consensus on how to address the problem. If government must be cut, what should be cut first? Since we essentially have government by corporation, it is likely that corporate interests will triumph over the needs of citizens.

Inevitably, something must give. In fact, that something is already giving. All sides seem to acknowledge our problems are structural, but parties are unwilling to move from ideology toward pragmatic solutions. Republicans will block any tax increases if they can, even if, as in the case of repealing tax cuts for the rich, there is plenty of ability to pay. Democrats seem loathe to admit that any part of the welfare state needs to be trimmed back. Most think that with the right mixture of pixie dust we can maintain the welfare state without raising taxes on the middle class. Right now Democrats are content with the delusion that health care reform will change the dynamics of runaway spending, when it will not. Even President Obama understands this. He has stated that it will only slow the growth of health care spending.

It won’t help in November if voters respond to their frustrations and visceral fears by electing more ideologues to Congress. This merely extends our national dysfunction, adding to the final bill. Perhaps Tea Partiers secretly hope that if elected they can effectively bring about the collapse of the federal government, thus allowing government to be reconstituted under a smaller federal model. Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995. Maybe it will work in 2011.

Even if they succeed, reducing the scope of the federal government will not really address the central issue. Reducing the scope of the federal government merely pushes costs back on state and local governments. For example, states already pay hefty shares of Medicaid services. If the federal government were simply to stop contributing to Medicaid, states would either need to pick up the slack, drastically cut Medicaid services or end Medicaid altogether. Unfortunately, ending Medicaid altogether does not solve the problem of treating poor people’s medical problems. It would simply extend lines at emergency rooms and push up already high health care premiums, which would make more people lose health care coverage. To “solve” this problem would mean to not solve it at all: simply not treat those who cannot afford to pay. Let ‘em eat cake, I guess.

Unless things are fundamentally realigned in a workable way, many of these sorts of horrible choices are in our future. If we acted united rather than divided, we could manage these problems with much less pain. Social security, for example, is not in much financial trouble and extending the retirement age can make it solvent with no increase in taxes. The real problems are in wasteful and hugely overpriced health care programs, which are exacerbated by our unwillingness to eat right and exercise, perhaps because lower income Americans simply cannot afford healthy food. Our choices here are stark: either do away with health insurance except for the increasingly smaller proportion of people moneyed enough to afford it, or institute the sort of “socialized” medicine anathema to so many on the right, whose effect might well be the rationing they fear. (We already have rationing based on ability to pay. What terrifies the right is that a physician might be required to put someone with less money but a more chronic condition ahead of their ability to get care.)

In an age of limits, other sacrosanct programs must now become touchable. Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understands that in a weak economy runaway military spending cannot be sustained indefinitely. Consensus seems to be forming that our War on Terror, or at least in Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer affordable nor are they buying us national security.

There is plenty of general government bloat that could be removed if we could summon the nerve; it’s not just where a lot of politicians think it is. Bloat includes the excessive and overlapping national security programs The Washington Post documented, huge and wasteful agricultural subsidies, corporate welfare in general, Medicare and Medicaid payment reform, and even our manned spaceflight program. We should not be cutting those services that are vitally needed to run our complex and increasingly interconnected world. Some of these agencies arguably need more money. These include the FDA, FAA, FCC, NIH, TSA and the SEC, to name a few. These agencies in reality spend only pocket change yet provide invaluable and absolutely necessary services.

The glass half-full news is that we are hardly alone. Even China at some point will have to scale back its growth and limit its services. Countries like China less leveraged by debt will have more breathing room, but the dynamics of population growth and resource limitations are inescapable for all nations. The more we resist these dynamics, the harder things are going to be.

Nature is trying to tell us to live simpler. We need to start listening.

July 21st, 2010 at 07:05pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2010 | no comments

Education: Walk the Walk

Some years back I opined that there are few places where we are more hypocritical than in our public schools. Therefore, I was not surprised when I heard this story today on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday. Texas, like many red states, is getting high from continually sniffing that Republican glue. Common sense is taking leave of its governor Rick Perry and its legislature. Apparently, it is more important to stand on a dubious principle than to do what is right for the children of Texas.

For those of you who do not want to listen to the seven-minute story here is a brief summary: Texas has no income tax. Its main forms of revenue are the state sales tax, already one of the highest in the country (which disproportionately affects the poor) and the property tax. The Republican legislature in its infinite wisdom requires that the portion of property taxes devoted to education must be capped at 1.5% of a house’s assessed value. Most school districts have hit the cap, but the student population in Texas is growing at around 80,000 students a year. Of course, this means that many more schools that need to be built and more buses have to be purchased. In general, the costs just to maintain the status quo have gone up. However, with property values leveling off, even wealthier districts are getting the squeeze. Large numbers of teachers are being laid off. Some school system superintendents are convinced that if the crisis continues the Texas public schools will be reduced to teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.

So why would this be a problem? From our current president and former Texas governor, these things matter. (Actually, in Texas, high school football trumps everything else.) If necessary, science, music, the arts, even gym are expendable. It is important to know how to read, write and do math. It is apparently not important to teach our children about the humanities and certainly not important at all to learn how to think critically. How do we know it is not important? When push comes to shove, we will not pay for them.

The school funding issue is a hot button one in Texas. The Texas legislature is back in session yet again to try to cough up more money to fund the schools. There is some discussion that the sales tax rate might need to be raised. However, it sounds like with the “no tax increases ever” mantra from the Republican controlled legislature that even this proposal is unlikely to go anywhere. School districts are getting so desperate that they are petitioning the Texas courts, hoping the courts will step in where the legislature fears to tread. So far the courts have been hands off, expecting (probably naively) that the legislature and the governor will do their duty and find the money somewhere.

You do not need an HP calculator to figure out the Republican’s strategy for dealing with the problem. Yes, you guessed it: they are going to expect school districts to make unspecified efficiencies and cut out the waste to solve the problem! Argh! I do not even live in Texas, but it is enough to make me want to repeatedly hit my head against a brick wall. How can our leaders grow up to be so stupid? The reality of the funding caps is already playing out in Texas schools. Teachers are being let go. Class sizes are increasing. Trailers are taking over school parking lots. The list of elective subjects is growing leaner. Still this does not seem to be enough. The obvious result if Texans are foolhardy enough to keep charging forward can be found near where I live. In Prince George’s County, Maryland back in the 1980s voters put in place a property tax cap called TRIM. The result? Twenty years of substandard education in Prince George’s County. By limiting funds for the schools, students predictably dealt with larger classes, mediocre teachers and inferior facilities. The county has consistently placed in the bottom two Maryland counties for educational test scores. It is currently on a state watch list because it is having difficulty meeting the requirements of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

Perhaps the Texas legislature is apathetic because poor test scores are really not the big deal that they claim. While Texas certainly has its prosperous parts, it has many school districts that have always provided poor educations because they have never been adequately funded. Texas ranks 38th in teacher salaries ($32,426 per year) and 34th in expenditures per pupil ($5,267 per year). Despite the dubious “Texas Miracle”, Texas places in the middle of national educational rankings.

Nevertheless, Texas is hardly in unique in underfunding its schools. Nor is it unique in not doing much to actually prepare students for real life. I am willing to bet that you can graduate from high school in the vast majority of our states without ever learning how to balance a checkbook. I bet there is no requirement for students to spend time surveying the costs of independent living. As a result, I bet no student is required to put together a realistic financial and logistical plan mapping out their first five to ten years of adulthood.

Oy, this is but one of many egregious areas where students need some genuine education that they are unlikely to get from the public schools. Most school districts skimp on sex education. Students might absorb the practically compulsory lessons on abstinence but they will not know how use a condom should the need arise. (Why should it? When the times comes, the abstinence fairy will restrain their natural urges!) Moreover, there will likely be no classes on the psychological differences between men and women or relationship theory. There will probably be no course on personal finance, the dangers of credit cards and the wisdom of saving parts of your salary. Likewise, there will probably be no learning on early childhood education, parenting, insurance and financing an automobile. In short, a high school degree will continue to mean what it has always meant: a subset of skills that might make someone marginally marketable but will do little to prepare him or her for real life.

But by golly our students will be darn good at taking dumbed-down standardized tests. In my last entry I noted my wife’s experience teaching community college students. They want everything handed to them. And why shouldn’t they? Like Pavlov’s dogs, they know the drill. Have they not been heavily and repeatedly coached ad nauseum by their teachers so they could pass these standardized tests? When have they had the opportunity to apply any critical thinking or independent thought in the classroom? How many teachers have time for open discussions about the pros and cons of various lifestyle choices? How many of these students have learned from their parents and their churches that life is not squishy, only to find out in adulthood that real life is invariably complex and multifaceted?

We are doing serious injustices to our children who will someday run our country. Yes, it is good that they are at least getting some education. In many countries, there is no such thing as public education. However, we are not properly preparing our children for the real world. Reading, writing and arithmetic are foundations for learning, but they are not the result of education. They are tools used to allow us to engage and make sense of the rest of our complex world.

Like it or not we are sending some bad messages to our public school students. Do not think our students are not savvy enough to figure out the subtext. Here are some. Only the basics really matter because that is all we will give you. Low taxes for me are more important than giving you a quality education. We will expect you to be solid citizens and to manage your way in a complex world but we will not necessarily give you the straight facts or help you think through the complexities of the real world. Maybe your parents will help you and maybe they will not. Lastly, we will not give you many tools to deal effectively with the chaos into which you are about to be thrown. You are on your own. So do not be surprised if in adulthood that you bounce from one bad relationship to the next. Do not be surprised if you run up huge debts. Maybe if you are lucky in twenty years you will learn these for yourself. But we sure don’t care enough about you to warn you about these mega hurdles.

Sadly, our public schools have become a noxious experiment into which we inject our dubious values, philosophies and biases. Meanwhile graduate, here are ten dollars and a suit. Good luck, kid.

July 17th, 2005 at 09:38pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | 2 comments

The chickens are still coming home to roost

Lost in their euphoria over their victory on November 2nd Republicans are likely missing the bigger picture. Systemic problems don’t go away just because an election is won. Bad policy wreaks bad results that can’t be swept under a rug. By reelecting Bush, Americans have put the onus back on Bush and Republicans to fix problems that they created.

The most visible problem will be the quagmire in Iraq. We can expect a new application of American force in insurgent strongholds like Fallujah in the near future. But I don’t believe the fundamental situation in Iraq will change. I bet in November 2008 the situation in Iraq will be about the same or worse than it is now. The Iraq conflict requires new thinking yet the Administration has no plans on changing course. The fight against insurgents in Iraq is still being fought with 20th century methods. With insurgents refusing to wear uniforms it becomes impossible to tell friend from foe. Insurgents can slip out of places like Fallujah by masquerading as civilians fleeing for their lives. We can kill whatever insurgents choose to stay and fight. But these tactics won’t make much of a difference. As soon as the civilians are let back into these cities the insurgents can trickle in unnoticed, pick up their rifles, reopen their secret stashes of mortars and other explosives and go at us again. As I’ve stated before Iraq is an unwinnable war. Kerry would have been no more successful at ending it to our satisfaction that Bush will have. For some of us Iraq sure looks like the 21st century’s version of Vietnam. Four more years should convince even the most die hard skeptic.

Energy will cost more in the next four years. We may see periods where prices drop below $2 a gallon for gasoline but in general the days of cheap energy are behind us due to emerging economies in India, China and Indonesia. Barring a worldwide recession demand will increase. And petroleum supplies will not improve very much. As a result prices will rise or stay high. The waves of higher energy costs will continue to be felt throughout the economy. While it may not drive us back into recession the higher energy costs will continue to put a damper on growth. Our nation must find better ways to cope with rising energy prices. There is little in the Bush Administration’s approach that suggests they have much of a clue on how to really solve the energy problem. Even tapping oil that may exist in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only increase our supply of oil by a tiny amount. We need to find new technologies for a post oil era. But the Bushies still think the future will allow us to drive our SUVs at dollar a gallon prices.

The Bush Administration talks about reducing the deficit in half during the next four years. That’s all it is likely to be. The most likely scenario: deficits will continue to increase over their current levels. Neither the Republican controlled Congress nor the Bush Administration has demonstrated any fiscal discipline. There is already talk of more tax cuts. In addition Bush has a plan to allow younger workers to invest part of their social security withholdings in stocks and bonds. However this diversion of cash from the social security system simply exacerbates the deficit since the government is currently borrowing from the social security trust fund.

Of course this assumes that people and institutions continue to be willing to loan the U.S. government money. In August a Treasury bill sale attracted no international investors. While this may be a fluke it is worrisome if it recurs periodically. If foreign institutions are unwilling to lend our government money then interest rates for government bonds will have to go up. If they go up too high we’ll be perceived as a “junk bond” country and the flow of foreign capital might stop. But if government bonds need higher interest rates in order to attract investors then the private sector will have to match the rate increases to attract the capital it needs. If government and private industry cannot attract foreign capital then growth is likely to falter or stop.

Health care costs are likely to continue to outpace inflation. More Americans will be uninsured. Drug prices will continue to go through the roof. As usual the Bushies “solution” doesn’t really solve the problem. Their solution is medical savings accounts (MSAs). It fails the common sense test. Most Americans are already living beyond their means. Each year Americans put more debt on their credit cards. Americans simply don’t have money to squirrel away into MSAs. Try to imagine a middle class family earning $40,000 a year putting away thousands of dollars into these accounts. How likely is that? Instead this family will be trying to make their mortgage payments and keep up with the increases in energy costs. In addition even with MSAs people still need health insurance; only the very rich can afford to self insure. MSAs are a utopian Republican idea, not a serious solution to the health care problem.

Hopefully sometime in the next four years the economy will finally perk up enough so that all those who lost their jobs in the Bush recession will have found new ones. But currently wage increases are not keeping pace with inflation. Also there are millions of workers who have been outsourced (like my wife) or downsized. They are making a fraction of what they made before. Bush was the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs in his first term in office. Between spiraling deficits, the war in Iraq, potential terrorist attacks inside the United States and possibly higher interest rates the sustained recovery creating tens of millions of new jobs such as we saw under Bill Clinton are unlikely.

I am a big believer in karma. I think it exists on the macro level too. As much as I don’t like the idea of another four years of Bush and Republican domination of Congress unless both show leadership hitherto undemonstrated it will be impossible to dodge accountability during the next four years. The silver lining to Kerry’s defeat is that Kerry cannot be held accountable for the Bush and Republican screw-ups. Given Bush’s mess Kerry would have likely been a one-term president anyhow. Trying to fix their massive problems in the next four years would defeat anyone. The Republicans have made their bed. Let them have their brief moments of gloating. My sense is that they have created problems beyond their control.

November 7th, 2004 at 08:05pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | no comments

Are the United States a bad investment?

Back in February I wrote that the United States would be in a heck of a fix if foreign creditors decided to stop loaning us money. Now there is convincing evidence that foreigners are starting to see United States government bonds as chancy investments and U.S. stocks as poor investments.

Today’s Washington Post has an article titled Bearish on Uncle Sam. If it is not alarming it should at least be ringing a few bells. For example the article notes that a September 9th auction for $9B in long term U.S. Treasury Bonds failed to attract any international investors.

In addition U.S. stocks in general are looking a lot less attractive to foreigners. The Post reports that stock purchases by foreigners are down from $9.7 billion in July to $2.1 billion in August. Looking at just who owns our foreign debt should be sobering too. Since 2000 for example the undemocratic and totalitarian Chinese government has purchased $172B of our debt. But lately it has been finding more attractive places to invest its money, including many projects inside China. If one were to look at the United States Government as just another company, increasingly its stockholders are foreigners. The current total federal debt is about $7.4 trillion dollars. Of that “intragovernmental holdings” (the Treasury’s words for our debt held by foreigners) was about $3.1 trillion dollars. In other words foreigners own about 42% of the federal debt. In 1997 foreigners owned about 30% of the federal debt.

In the short term it is unlikely that foreigners will stop investing in the United States. But foreigners may well demand higher interest rates because they may see us as a country unable to live within its means. With federal deficits currently over $1B a day the cost of our borrowing money at all levels in the United States could rise markedly. In the longer term this trend is very bad news. If our country is perceived as living indefinitely off the future it may be perceived as a junk bond country. If the flow of overseas capital stops the government will still probably find the money to finance government. It will do so by offering higher and higher interest rates. And this will mean the capital needed by businesses for expansion will either dry up or also become a lot more costly. And that in turn will mean that inflation will no longer be a mild problem but a severe problem. Inflation will drive an economic downturn that will put people out of work and could slide us into a recession or worse.

The United States is skating on fairly thin financial ice. But except for us fiscal conservatives no one seems to notice nor care. They think, “It can’t happen here. We won’t be another Argentina.” Oh but it can happen here. If our levels of deficit spending continue into the stratosphere and our insatiable desire for cheap foreign goods continues at its current insane levels then the day of reckoning is much closer than it appears. What is needed is some good old-fashioned austerity and modest tax hikes. Leadership, in other words. Unfortunately I don’t see that sort of sober leadership happening regardless of who gets elected in two weeks. Both parties have sold to the public, almost as if it is a right, that we can have our cake and eat it too. Even Kerry is promising more tax cuts for the middle class, not less.

It appears we’d rather live in fantasyland. Most likely sometime in the next four years our day of reckoning will arrive sharply and painfully.

October 19th, 2004 at 08:29pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | one comment

I’m a fiscal conservative!

Yes, as hard as it is to believe I, a good liberal, am a fiscal conservative! I realized this yesterday when I read stories of President Bush rushing to Ohio to push for his $550B tax cut, calling a few Republican senators like neighboring Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio weenies for agreeing “only” to a $350B tax cut.

All these tax cuts are in addition to massive tax cuts made over the last few years. Those tax cuts were made to make the economy grow. They didn’t seem to do the trick so naturally we need more and higher tax cuts that will do the trick. How deep do we want to dig our own grave? The economy is not improving George. Maybe it’s because of the reckless way you are steering our economy? Well, duh!

Let’s look at what worked. Let’s look at your father who also fought a war against Iraq but failed on the economy. He lost reelection largely because he didn’t do what was needed for the economy and us citizens, who were sick of high unemployment. Bill Clinton came in to office. Did he cut taxes right and left to stimulate the economy? No, in one of those increasingly rare shows from a politician, Bill Clinton developed a spine and did the right thing. He got a marginally Democratic congress to approve tax increases that were needed to bring the government’s expenditures in line with its income. I don’t think a single Republican voted for them.

What happened? Maybe it was just coincidence, maybe it was all those low interest rates but Wall Street got confidence and the economy improved. It seems that not knowing from year to year how much money the government is going to borrow is bad for the economy. Business likes to have reasonable certainty about capital. We all know the rest. During Clinton’s eight years of pragmatic leadership the economy boomed, tax revenues poured in, deficits dropped and record surpluses emerged.

One would think Bush and his Republican party would learn from the experience but no, it’s back to cut those evil taxes while spending more and more. And let’s have faith in his, his father’s and Reagan’s voodoo economics that we can build a prosperous economy through deficit spending. This is Keynesian economics, for crying out loud. Bush and the Republicans are advocating the same sort of logic pushed by JFK. Is there role reversal here?

I’m a fiscal conservative. I am by no means anti-tax. I think taxes pay for us to have a civilized society and I think civilization beats the heck out of the alternative … look at Angola for a sterling example of the benefits of zero taxes. However I do believe the government should live within its means. Yes, I think we probably should have national health insurance and it will cost a lot of money. So let’s find taxes to make it a reality. But if we don’t have a political consensus to do it then it let’s certainly not borrow the money and spent it anyhow.

In just a couple years we went from record surpluses to record deficits. Unbelievable. Yeah, there’s a war on but even factoring in the cost of the war these deficits would still be in the stratosphere. It was those unwise tax cuts, George. But another $90B down payment to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it apparently didn’t possess didn’t help either.

Hey, let’s all follow the government’s example. Here is real leadership for you. You have vital needs too. The United States needs to protect its national security. You need to protect yours. You need, for example, an armor plated SUV just in case of a terrorist incident. Don’t have the money now? No matter, charge up those credit cards to the max. No sense in being unprepared. Oh but wait a minute you also deserve a break today. You work too hard, poor dear. You don’t need that full time job. Cut your hours. Make it a 32 hour week instead of a 40 hour week. You deserve it.

That’s what Bush is doing to the nation. We are simply living beyond our means. If your income were cut you would probably feel it might be wise to cut back on frivolous expenses. Perhaps you would defer that armor plated SUV purchase, or maybe target more modest expenses like going out to dinner or the cable TV. You might look at used cars and a cheaper apartment. Not the US of A. We want it all first class! We deserve it! And if we don’t do it one of our neighbors across the channel will get that armor plated SUV and maybe pick a fight with us and then where will we be? Horrors! (Never mind we spend more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined.)

Enough! There is no free lunch, folks. It works the same way for the federal government as it does for the rest of us. Republicans are hoping with enough chants and incense their deficit spending will buy us prosperity, even though the evidence is scant it has worked in the past. This is about ideology; it is not grounded in much economics and it certainly isn’t grounded in the real world. Maybe in a way it’s just naked vote buying: give people a big enough tax cut and they’ll overlook those massive, record deficits they will have to pay with interest later. But maybe it is time for the government to go on a diet because its income will be lean until the economy improves. But hey we can’t go on a national “diet” while porking out every night with all you can eat specials at the Red Lobster.

You will get the government you pay for. If you want more government then cough up more taxes. If you don’t want more government, pay the price and drive on crappy and congested roads and let services lapse. But you can’t lower your income and keep spending for very long and not have problems pop up elsewhere as a reaction to it. We’re seeing it now in the form of a flat economy and a business climate full of uncertainty. And that’s because what purports to be our leadership is out on the quarterdeck drinking the evil rum of don’t tax and spend more instead of competently steering the ship.

Come 2004 we the citizens must sober up and throw these winos off the poop deck. We need new and sober management.

April 25th, 2003 at 02:13pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2003 | one comment

Things Cost Money!

I have startling news for the Republican Party and fiscal conservatives in general. Things cost money.

I generally vote Democratic and when I mention it to non-Democrats I get this horrified look like “So you are in favor of higher taxes, big government and wasteful spending?” Huh? What? When did I say this? I don’t want to pay one dollar more in taxes than I need to contribute. The difference is that I don’t want society to look like a slum. I’ve made the connection, which apparently a lot of people haven’t, that you get the society you pay for.

There are lots of examples of trying to have your cake and eating it too but I will pick today President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative. Even I can’t complain about the idea. Why should some poor inner city kid get an inferior education compared to someone here in Fairfax County, Virginia? The law that was passed is more accurately named “Leave no child behind, and make the states pay for it.” In other words, it’s an unfunded mandate. Last I checked almost every state government, including here in Virginia, is running deficits.

The states are starting to cry foul (I wonder what took them so long). Instead of a race to the top, it’s a recipe for failure. Why? Because for the most part states can’t or won’t summon the political will to raise taxes, and with the money remaining most are not going to throw more money automatically into education.

In fact when it comes to education we are a bunch of damned hypocrites. We say we want better teachers and smaller classrooms. When was the last time someone really decided to pay for it? Okay, there is the progressive state of Maryland, largely controlled by the Democrats. They “got” it. They’ve figured out it will cost serious money to leave no child behind and are paying for it. There are no income tax cuts in Maryland. Taxes may even have to be raised.

Pretty much every year, even here in Fairfax County which is renown for its schools, the class sizes increase, the number of trailers increases out in the play ground, teacher’s salaries are kept at or below the cost of living and everyone runs around trying to meet standards of learning benchmarks, teaching to a test instead of imparting valuable skills like critical thinking. This is politically correct “education”.

Here in Fairfax County our air is increasingly bad, our roads are forever more crowded but just recently we rejected an initiative to raise our taxes half a cent to solve some of these problems. It’s not like we’re exactly poor. We have the second highest per capita income in the country.

There is no way I’d become a public school teacher. Would you want to live in Fairfax County, where houses cost $300K on up on maybe $40,000 a year, teach in overcrowded classrooms, spend most of your off the job time doing lesson plans and grading homework, then be held accountable for bratty kids and their ability to score on some politically inspired standardized test? I’m not sure you can rent an apartment for $40,000 a year in this county any more. And yet we must be doing something better than most, which suggests that other school districts are spending far, far less. When it comes to education in general we talk a good talk but fund the schools as if we were Ebenezer Scrooge.

You want low taxes? Move to Angola. I’m serious. There are NO taxes in Angola; there is only anarchy. You may find that there are additional expenses, like hiring your own personal armies to do your shopping (owning a tank might get expensive), and you might have to build your own roads to get where you want to go. But it must be paradise right? No taxes at all! But what is that? You want low or no taxes AND great roads AND great schools AND minimal crime AND clean air AND you want to drive around in smog producing SUVs? This isn’t rocket science, folks. At best you can get two out of three. You won’t get all of them.

So Republicans and fiscal conservatives, stop being such damned hypocrites. Things cost money. If you want these things, pony up the dough. Pay your share. If you don’t, quit your bitching. Home school your brats. Put a fortress around your McMansions and lead your little xenophobic life detached from the real world. But if you value civilization then pay for it. Taxes are not evil. Taxes are the price of living in a civilized society. And apparently they aren’t nearly high enough.

January 3rd, 2003 at 12:48pm Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Politics 2003 | one comment