I have taken notice of a considerable amount of cynicism and negativity around here. I have also observed, on the interwebs more broadly, a considerable amount of just plain dumb with people saying with great confidence really, really dumb things. Finally, I have noticed recently a remarkable gap, even among relatively credible sources of news/opinion, saying the exact opposite things about the exact same facts and circumstances. This distortion field is now enhanced by internet algorithms designed to fit each of us into an information silo that we have self-selected for ourselves and those silos have become more diffuse and isolated. In short, we are not all getting the same information on three channels of national nightly news.
If people lack hope, become increasingly insular, have little to no common sense or foundational scientific/historical background and we can’t even agree on the most basic of facts, I can understand the tendency to think prospects for the future are poor. However, I tend to be an optimist no matter how stark or desperate things seem to be.
And I would note that in spite of these issues and problems, here we are remaining the dominant economic, diplomatic and military force in the world. And, it’s really not close. We have been incredibly resilient, in spite of ourselves as the late, great John Prine might say. Well, at least so far.
Can we do better? How?
Is it all hopeless? Will things only get worse no matter what?
Discuss.
The Roman Empire died from within. It spent more than it could tax. Its culture had rotted to the core. It had lost its national identity. The system had corrupted itself (even the military) beyond repair.
Does that sound familiar? We can never repay $34+ trillion in debt without further devaluing our currency, taxing the living hell out of the producers (not just the super rich), and making significant cuts across the board (all of that affects our economic strength even to get the debt back into reasonable balance – I’m not one who believes in no government debt although I do believe in balancing the budget). On the culture and national identity, there’s a lot to unpack (more than can be done here). Corruption goes along with culture.
Can we fix it? Yes. Do we have the leaders in our institutions to do it? I’m increasingly skeptical.
I’m old enough to remember when we were running budget surpluses…. Then we (enough of us anyway) voted to change all that!! What’s all this peace and prosperity shit?!? Fuck that!!!
Two wars, two tax cuts for the rich, and an unfunded medicare prescription drug benefit later and here we are. I’m also old enough to remember Reagan running on a balanced budget when it was around 60 billion a year and running it up to near 300 billion a year before he left.
The constantly avoided issue there is that when the gop gets the white house they pull out the AMEX card and goes to town and everyone’s happy. Spending goes up, taxes (for the wealthy) go down. We’re like kids of divorced parents whose dad shows up every other weekend and takes us to Six Flags and feeds us ice cream and hot dogs. Yay!
When a Democrat hits the white house all of a sudden “well we gotta reign in this spending!” Rinse and repeat. 34 trillion later…
Of course, there is nothing to lose politically in doing that, other than the country. If you don’t want the government to have these programs but you can’t kill them and still win elections, you cynically let them collapse with a lack of funding and blame the idea as a liberal boondoggle that was never going to work. You can’t win elections on “we’re gonna kill social security and medicare” (I would love to see it tried tho) but you can claim that they are “unsustainable entitlements” far too expensive to maintain! While you could raise taxes, we will be filibustering all that. The truth of the matter is that we’ve allowed elite to buy the government and purchase an opt out on paying for a fair share for it. That is why Warren Buffett’s one million dollar offer to any ceo who could show he pays a higher tax rate than his secretary remains uncollected for near three decades.
As far as the Romans I would suggest that “crossing the Rubicon” sealed its ultimate fate. Dictatorships may have some short term efficiency benefits, but in the long run maintaining it becomes more and more impractical. Diffuse power amongst the people will ultimately lead to better results and be more sustainable. Had the Republic survived who knows how much longer it may have lasted? Democracies have been defeated, from within and without and replaced by tyrants, but thus far none have just simply withered away because the population never figured it out. None that I know of anyway. Monarchies, tyrants and dictators have a much worse record.
We do choose our leaders so if they are wanting that’s on us and we can correct our course as we’ve done throughout our history. Economic substantive due process was replaced and followed by FDR and then that has been tempered by Reagan whose economic policies have really been the defining ones since, much like FDR’s were from 1932-1980. Low taxes/high spending is just where we’ve been and for a long time now.
I have long thought that the best way to regain our footing would be if/when the demographic splits between the parties evaporate. When we can get past the culture wars and the societal divisions based on irrelevant categories and talk about policy then perhaps we can start making intelligent decisions. What we’ve been going through since the late 1960’s has been scaring the fuck out of white voters to convince them to vote conservative. That side has lost the popular vote 7 of the last 8. 2004 being the only outlier. When Barack Hussein Obama wins twice, by a lot, I thought there might be a correction. I know the gop debated that internally. Instead of a correction, the rhetoric was just turned up way hotter and we were moments away from our own crossing the Rubicon moment. And we ain’t out of the woods quite yet….
We need two functional political parties. One controls the gas and one has the foot on the brake. When we can accept that both sides have a role to play and are equally both right and wrong and that its not a ideological battle between good and evil we can muddle through. The truth upon close inspection is this:
if you gave the American left 50 years of unchecked power and when there is no commerce and the gdp is in the shitter, and asked them “what now?” they would have a program for that.
likewise, you give the American right power for 50 years and we have no money to pay for anything and the place looks like Haiti where there are 5 rich folks living in compounds with helipads and private security and everyone else is living in a state of nature and asked them “what now?” they would say “how about another tax cut for the rich?”
I’m sorry but both ideologies are just fucking dumb. You need capitalism to create wealth and then you “redistribute” that wealth in a responsible way as to ensure that the next generation has an opportunity to participate in that capitalist system. You can’t tolerate either multi-generational wealth OR multi-generational poverty. Those who are born rich need to earn their keep and the hungry kids need a chance to exceed their entitled, lazy, soft, silver spoon asses.
Would I support a higher tax rate if I knew if I knew the additional amount was going to pay down the debt and there would be a significant restructuring of the federal government to eliminate unnecessary (and unconstitutional) programs and deal with fraud, waste and abuse? Yep.
Will the career politicians ever agree to that? No way in hell.
Well the truth is very few supported the tax hikes Clinton imposed that, in part, led to a balanced budget by the late 1990’s. He got his ass walloped in 1994. People want everything for free and politicians will lie to them and tell them they can have it. For better or worse, the politicians will always give us what we tell them we want. All we can really do is try to make an intelligent decision between two flawed choices and hope for the best. What we can’t do is wallow in hopelessness or delude ourselves into believing that there same is no significant distinction between the choices. That’s far from true.
The political class and the bureaucracy have lost the trust of the governed. The media has lost the trust of its audience (the 3 networks were biased as well). Corporate leadership has lost the trust of investors and consumers. The education establishment has lost the trust of parents. So on … so on.
We are dealing with a crisis of trust.
While there is some truth to that, the new phenomenon of creating public distrust upon a series of lies and then relying on the distrust you went about fraudulently manufacturing is a crisis of leadership and it ought to be disqualifying. If an American politician held a press conference saying that our banks can’t meet their obligations so go take out all of your money now before its too late, that’s not a comment on the banks. Its a comment on that politician and the people who believe whatever bullshit is spewed. Private citizens and some public circumstances have created a degree of distrust. Can’t argue that.
Sworn public officials setting fires and pouring gas on them in a quest for power is new. And I’m not referring to matters of reasonable disagreements. I’m talking about just making shit up because it helps you and you couldn’t care less about the destruction in your wake. In fact, you watch it all unfold and snicker.
Chris Wallace said the media went down hill when his father’s show (60 min) figured out how to get viewers in prime time. This led to ad revenue and evolved into catering to the viewers beliefs or fears. Fast forward to today where it’s Fox vs the rest. The political parties drive us/them. Religious beliefs have been eroded from the constant deluge of social media and traditional viewed media. Cable opened the door in the 80s for almost no censorship. The internet finished the job, especially for kids. I’m not sure how to correct the down spiral of our society. History has shown moral decay is a killer. Most of the Old Testament describes tye same rise and fall over generations.
As for a correction, not sure how to get the genie back in the bottle. Most people believe traditional immoral behavior (abortion,out of wedlock kids, drug usage, etc) are acceptable and should be legalized if not already.
The media hasn’t exactly always been fair or just or informative. Its always been a profit game and always will be. Examples are legion. While some may argue that the golden age of national tv news was the late 1950’s and the 60’s, there are plenty of people who think McCarthy was treated unfairly, that the press lost Vietnam and led to the ouster of a great president. I don’t share those sentiments, but Roger Ailes did. He served in the Nixon administration and became convinced that a right wing media would have buoyed Nixon sufficiently to have saved him from resignation. Wrong morally, but absolutely right intellectually. There is no Watergate crisis in today’s political environment. Today Nixon could confess, no brag, that he did it and it was his right to do it and he’d do it again and they’d all take turns snuggling his scrotum and calling him a hero.
Not much of a fan of censorship. Not sure how much it can accomplish. I think some of that stuff breeds a lack of responsibility. I remember there was some controversy because the news called Florida for a candidate before the polls in the panhandle (central time zone) had closed and there was a suggestion that enough people were dissuaded from voting that it might have changed the result. Policies changed and now they won’t call a state until all polls are closed. I think its the exact opposite lesson. We simply shouldn’t take the media’s word for it. Why should we accept an exit poll projection as fact? A free people shouldn’t. I do have some sympathy for the idea that they are OUR airwaves and thus we have the right to some controls, but I wouldn’t want to be I charge of drawing those lines. I do think ridding ourselves of the Fairness Doctrine was a big fucking mistake and if you are going to regulate you start there.
You can’t legislate morality. What you can recognize is this truth:
when it comes to morals the poor can’t afford them and the rich think they’re bullshit and don’t apply to them anyway.
Therefore, if you want a moral country, defend the middle class because if morals are going to exist at all it will emanate from there.
Most of the major religions emphasis morals. For most of the USA’s history a majority of it’s residents where Christians. That equation has flipped which o believe is the driver.
Not to quibble over the Playpen date, I’d like to offer a different take. The average I.Q. in the U.S. is 98, three points lower than Canada. This means in the U.S., roughly sixty-eight percent of the population has an I.Q. of 115 or less. Pause and dwell for a moment about the last time you interacted with someone that you suspected wasn’t “the brightest bulb in the box.” Now recognize that that person was around the 100 I.Q. mark and that roughly 68% of the population is not as quick as he is. Now speculate that there is a well-funded movement designed to exploit those individuals for their own benefit.
In addition to perpetrating falsehoods on a constant basis through the media, this group is hard at work on dismantling the last bastion of civil discourse open to the vast majority of citizens, the public schools. Most of us learned in public school the rights and privileges of American citizens through history and civics courses. I understand that Civics is no longer taught most places. How convenient…. If the average citizen doesn’t learn their rights, their responsibilities and the way to preserve their rights in school, they’re certainly not going to learn them from the Faux News Network. The Faux News Network has its own agenda and it’s not inclusive.
MSNBC, CNN and the rest of the mainstream media aren’t exactly fair or balanced in their reporting.
Perhaps but neither have had their owner bend over and write a 750 million dollar check to settle a defamation lawsuit. Proportionality matters. Given the standard under NYT vs. Sullivan the fact that they fucked up bad enough to not win a dismissal is striking. The fact that they were afraid to let a jury hear the case? Fuck me….
The plaintiffs had to prove that Fox News KNEW they were lying WHEN they were lying and did not care who was harmed while doing it. This from the same folks who say that want to lower that burden of proof? I agree in that I don’t watch tv news really since someone threw Keith Olberman’s meds out the window, but there still is a yawning gap. I personally don’t find it entertaining to listen to political propaganda even if I may be sympathetic to the overall message. I’d rather listen to intelligent people. I still sit and watch old firing line episodes on YouTube. I didn’t agree with much of what Buckley had to say but at least you learned something even if it were only a new word or three.
Nothing like an erudite conversation between elites with different POVs.
https://www.pbs.org/video/independent-lens-crypto-nazi-and-other-insults/
Their debates were wonderful exchanges of intellectual firepower. It seems that Buckley’s view of Utopia has won out.
Agreed, CNN has become Faux Lite. The Faux News Network and its benefactors/promoters are masters at taking complicated issues and reducing them to buzzwords that the person of “average” I.Q. can latch on to and use to sound like an “informed individual” when shouting them out at a school board meeting. Phrases like “cancel culture” which is Faux’s take on the public telling a business “we’re not going to use your products anymore if your behavior continues in the same way.” What’s the public’s recourse to protest the bad actions of a corporation, burn all of their locations to the ground?
Choosing the talking points and even the headlines can slant POV. Bothsideism is a huge problem. To appear to be “fair” networks have to call on someone from the opposition, and one side has completely detached from reality.
I just want to know what happened, not the propaganda. As Derek postulates, if the less informed/intelligent continue to be spoon fed misinformation, the future is bleak.
I am concerned with the USD remaining the world reservce currency. Some estimates put half of US Dollars in circulation being used abroad.
Keeping the USD as world reserrve currency is aided by being in trade agreement and withdrawing from agreements opens the door for agreement like BRICs. Agreement takes years to negotiate.
The other is US debt returning a yield. The country approached the 0% interest bound. Who wants to buy debt without yield? Also as the 0 bound is cross reserve banks buy bonds, then in the case of Japan stock. Socialism is government ownership of industry, every capitalist IMO should want interest rates higher than what the country recently flirted with.
If the need for USD abroad falls, the higher percentage of USD we have chasing goods at home and thus inflation will sky rocket.
I am no monetary expert BUT I would make a few observations. One, what or who is running the fed is doing a helluva a job. Its fucking Sully landing the plane on the Hudson. The policy makers keep making shit really hard and they turn the knob one way or another and we’ve stayed afloat somehow. Printing free money from 2008-2023 was bound to end somehow. I thought a much more messy end than its been. That we’re at manageable inflation rates and near full employment is pretty damn remarkable as an objective matter. It is quite the privilege to be both a country with fiat currency AND also having the most trusted currency. When I hear that our leaders are so dumb my immediate thought is what?!?! If you can’t keep a casino afloat you might keep the stones in your pocket. Bankrupting a casino is like not getting any at the whorehouse.
We all know that interest rates were kept at very low levels for a very long time and we know why that had to be done. Just like the bailout. It sucked, but we had no options. What would be nice is if ideology and political influence stopped preventing us from solving those issues permanently. Too big to fail should not be a thing. Banks signing onto and then selling mortgages out the backdoor the same day, should not be a thing. Or at least not something that isn’t heavily regulated. Greed may be good, but it damn sure isn’t always wise. Sometimes greed is a damn idiot and we need to account for that. The big things I worry about now are: housing shortages as wall street buys and holds property raising prices and rents. The cost and availability of labor is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. If the chinese start selling cheap cars worldwide while we use tariffs to keep them out, we will suffer for it. I remember calls to protect our markets from cheap japanese cars. We wisely did not and in the end it was good for the consumer and the worker and now we have toyota, honda, hyundai, mercedes, bmw all building cars right here. And american vehicles have gotten a whole lot better. Competition is good. Trade is good. Protectionism is bad…
Rates could have inched up in good times but didn’t rates have been declining since the early 80s.
I am more concerned with foreign policy set by the executive branch than the Fed. However, both have added to the problem.
Rates are supposed to go up in good times. Thats what keeps a lid on inflation. Rates come down in bad times so that the economy keeps afloat.
Good times mean higher wages and higher prices. Bad times mean lower wages, higher unemployment and you need to encourage investment.
Whatever has been learned so that you don’t have interest rates, unemployment rates and inflation all ballooning all at the same time, I do not know. It seems someone has tho. Maybe its really good computers….
IMO, where all this went off the rails is when the actual factual news started to be expanded on as opinion. The more talking heads the merrier. As the saying goes, opinions are like assholes everybody has one. And if you noticed I started off as IMO……
While true, I think it would help if we were a bit more selective in what we accept as fact. It seems there is more effort in joining a, and defending your, “team” than trying to come to some ascertainable truth. When you’ve wired yourself to swallow everything your side says and reject everything the other side says, you’re not doing it right. I don’t prefer to call those people media “victims” because it relieves them of their own responsibilities.
Why were rates at record lows and markets at record highs just a few years ago?
Good question and probably above my pay grade. I would speculate as to a couple of factors though. If inflation was under control (demand was not driving inflation north) and you wanted to try to get gdp to perform at a more aggressive rate than its been, I could see a “why not” attitude prevailing. I would also note that there was some unfortunate external political force our there:
Was the fed feeling that pressure and responding to it? Its certainly possible. If they had to do it over again would they have raised rates earlier to accommodate the flood of covid cash sloshing about, once the stock markets stabilized? Quite possibly.
Likely and I only have a bit of say on few people that make that decision, thus a factor in my concern on executive branch policy.
However, I am not an end the fed type, that is an Andrew Jackson rabbit hole. The fed has been improperly run.
BTW members of BRICs have proposed an international reserve currency of their own. Search implications of that. We need to be making trading deals not withdrawing and threatening allies to save a few $. The argument will cost far more in the long run.
Journalists factually reporting on the actions of our and other governments is of vital importance to a healthy, educated society. Now, the major news outlets take the view that news = entertainment and we must be entertained. Entertainment has a target audience, so we have this infotainment for all political leanings.
I don’t have the solution, but I think it starts with pouring as much of our resources as possible into education and teaching critical thinking. Fund the schools, make teachers show they are truly qualified to teach and then pay them like the professionals we want them to be (fun fact – in other countries like Japan, teachers are paid and revered professionally like physicians). If, as a society, we can’t discern what’s fact and what’s propaganda, spin and/or tabloid-fodder, then we’ll continue with these problems.
“If, as a society, we can’t discern what’s fact and what’s propaganda, spin and/or tabloid-fodder, then we’ll continue with these problems.”
Exactly. But, even the 68% of the country that budlite refers to can help themselves by asking themselves this question: Do I like this because it is what I want to hear, or do I like this because there is actual evidence that it is true? Or, if you heard someone make a claim and took a little time to consider if the statement makes the person issuing it someone that you would buy a used car from you could solve a lot of problems.
Well done, folks! Nobody has to clean up around the playpen today!