Seeds of our dysfunction

......The housing debacle was not the result of “a spontaneous outbreak of private irresponsibility.” Public institutions and policies provided occasions and incentives for the exercise of private vices. Washington pays up to 80 percent of state Medicaid expenses, so state citizens demand more Medicaid services. Although the elderly consider Social Security and Medicare benefits earned, Greve says: “Most retirees could not have earned their expected payment streams if they had worked two or three jobs.”

“Our politics,” says Greve, “aims at inspiration on the cheap.” We should reduce government’s complicity in illusions by, for example, sending retirees “a statement showing the estimated present value of their old-age benefits; their lifetime earnings and contributions; and the earnings and contributions that it would have taken to ‘earn’ those benefits. We might then ask them who precisely should earn and remit the missing millions and in what sense it would be ‘unfair’ to modify the empty promises.”

Rash promises were made, Greve says, “in an era of prosperity, when and because we thought we could afford them.” Now they “are far too entrenched to be dislodged in the course of ordinary politics.” Even granting Mitt Romney’s embrace of something like his running mate’s reforms, this year’s politics are terribly ordinary. Alhough consensus is supposedly elusive, it actually is the problem. “Our operative consensus,” says Greve, “is to have a big transfer state, and not pay for it.”.......

RE “Our politics,” says Greve, “aims at inspiration on the cheap.” We should reduce government’s complicity in illusions by, for example, sending retirees “a statement showing the estimated present value of their old-age benefits; their lifetime earnings and contributions; and the earnings and contributions that it would have taken to ‘earn’ those benefits. We might then ask them who precisely should earn and remit the missing millions and in what sense it would be ‘unfair’ to modify the empty promises.”

Great idea.

What allows them to propagate this fantasy for there own cowardliness is the phony trust funds, those funds already spent many times over yet those worthless IOUs let both parties claim that current benefits are not adding to the deficit, and the media goes along with this grand lie.

Of course now much of SS and medicare benefits are paid for buy selling more US treasury debt to the Federal Reserve bank who creates that money on a computer keeping voters happy.

Until there is honesty I don't support any fixes.

“Our operative consensus,” says Greve, “is to have a big transfer state, and not pay for it.

” This reality is not new, it is as old as the Republic and as intransigent as human nature. I posted these thoughts in August 2009:

I infer from this that the author is suggesting that the system is somehow distorted by Democrats who have taken over the "chokepoints of information" and somehow prevented the electorate from working its will. I have an instinctive negative reaction to any theory that smacks of conspiracy. Yet I agree with the idea that liberals do dominate the chokepoints of information, education, entertainment and policy in American society." Living in Europe, I see the domination here to be generic and not just isolated to chokepoints. I do not like conspiracy theories, yet it is undeniable that many a voter enters the polling booths a conservative and emerges a Democrat. So there is clearly some sort of a disconnect.

It might not be a conspiracy at all, it might be something so simple as the average voter simply voting his perceived interests which he identifies with the Democrats' program. For example, many elderly are conservative but just flat will not vote for any candidate who does not support their Social Security. The Democrats have done a marvelous job for generations demonizing Republicans as thieves of Social Security. It took Ronald Reagan to bring union members to see, at least for a season, their true as opposed to perceived interests. It might be nice to subscribe to the abstract ideal of limited government, but many a single mother is far more interested in feeding her children.

Americans pride themselves in their pragmatism. It is human nature to vote one's self-interest and rationalize away the philosophical inconsistencies. The Democrats are masters at pandering to the interests of one special interest group after another. They do not say to the elderly, throw away your lifelong beliefs in limited government and we will reward you with healthcare, they change the vocabulary, obscure the issue, and enable the rationalization.

In this process, Democrats are greatly aided by the intensity factor. That is, if an earmark builds an unneeded bikepath in a congressional district the benefit is focused but the cost is spread across the entire nation. No one feels the pain of this particular insult but they do understand that Senator Byrd is helping them pave every square inch of West Virginia.

I am not sure that the way to fight this is to stand against the Democrats parceling out goodies to focused and motivated groups with platitudes of conservative truths. The Democrats have been providing Americans with the vocabulary to rationalize away these truths for generations. The people will not say "I'm voting against my heritage and my grandchildren knowingly because I want to stick my snout in the public trough now," they will say, "I have paid my share into Social Security and I'm only getting back my contribution." In fact, the recipient will be getting back on average multiple times his contribution. But that does not matter, what matters is that the voter has been supplied the rationalization he needs to abandon conservative principles.

In Europe there are no conservative principles there is only a resort to ad hoc solutions to problems. The best way to expose this difference between America and Europe is to talk to my German neighbors about the right to bear arms. They see no philosophical undergirding for the right to bear arms. It does not matter to them that piece of paper assures us of that right in America. They want a pragmatic solution to violence and they think that denial of the right to bear arms provide that security. The matter of philosophical right does not enter into the equation. They need the evidence of only one massacre in one school to decide the philosophical issue.

In America, the Democrats have been so artful in providing ad hoc solutions to real or imagined problems that we have now gotten to the point where it is rare indeed when a solution which benefits intensely one group will be denied because it is ultra vires the Constitution. We simply don't think that way very much anymore. Even today, the argument over nationalized healthcare is not primarily a constitutional but a pragmatic argument. The right does not emphasize that to nationalize healthcare is unconstitutional, but argues that it is impracticable, costly, unfair, and, yes, big government. But I believe that the seniors in the town hall meetings are not primarily motivated by their love of small government but by their love of their Medicare entitlements.

That is not to say that there are not transcendental moments in history when an issue crystallizes a philosophy. The healthcare issue is coming very close to that now. Cap And Trade, perhaps as mortally dangerous to our economy as healthcare, has not aroused the people to the same degree. I believe that they simply do not see their ox being gored by Cap and Trade. But healthcare is a matter of intense personal interest as opposed to rhetorical, conservative notions of good and constitutional governance.

Will self-interest continue to trump patriotism as the advancing blue line inexorable encroaches more and more of the map of America?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.