l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Victor Davis Hanson
Sometimes societies find themselves in pernicious cycles in which the
perceived medicine seems worse than the known disease. The Roman satirist
Juvenal lamented the ill effects of free food and free entertainment for the
masses (“bread and circuses”) in part because he knew there was no remedy
for the pathology in sight — and thus only a slow decline toward fiscal
insolvency or riots were on the horizon. Any Roman emperor bold enough to
rein in the Praetorian Guard, charge the mob for grain, and curb
gladiatorial shows would earn a usurper marching on Rome from the provinces.
So most did not.
When Ronald Reagan sought to end the so-called misery index, he knew that
higher interest rates, tax cuts, and efforts to prune entitlements would in
the short term lead to higher unemployment, more deficits, slower growth —
and growing unpopularity. His recovery came just in time for the 1984
election; just a year earlier Reagan had been demonized as a heartless
bastard who had strangled the economy for the benefit of the rich.
We are currently mired in the slowest recovery from any recession in our
modern history — and we face the same circular dilemma. A good argument
could be made that President Obama’s gargantuan new health-care initiative,
federal takeovers of businesses and failed subsidization of green
industries, vastly expanded food stamps, unemployment insurance, and
disability insurance, and “You didn’t build that business” boilerplate
have ossified the private sector. Many businesses have plenty of cash, but
their owners are terrified to risk much of it in hiring, buying, or
expanding. This results in fewer jobs and slower growth — and again, in
this squirrel cage of an economy, yet more need for entitlements.
How to break the cycle of less money coming in, ensuring more money going
out? Curbing entitlement spending is critical if we are to rein in debt and
foster initiative, but in the short term such sobriety will raise howls of
protest from those who are hurting and the legions invested in administering
their entitlements. Business incentives are needed to spur growth, but may
spike for a time our already unsustainable deficits. Vast new investments in
energy production could create real wealth and millions of jobs — but not
without eliciting environmental hysteria. Raising interest rates slightly
would restore some of the dollar’s value and allow savers to earn something
more than the present pittance on their deposits — but it would anger
those who are already deeply indebted.
The federalization of the private sector, the constant talk of higher taxes,
the demonization of the entrepreneur, and the war against the gas and oil
industries seem to ensure an ossified economy that guarantees, in turn, a
need for more entitlements that, in turn again, only raise the deficit and
slow down the economy further — in a self-perpetuating cycle that cannot be
stopped and yet cannot go on. And yet it can go on for a while longer on
borrowed money to the benefit of those invested in receiving from big
government.
Given human nature, societies never voluntarily reduce entitlements. That is
the subtext of much of the critique of popular democracy, beginning with
Plato and Aristotle. It will do no good to note that before the 2006
Medicare prescription-drug benefit, Medicare recipients felt that payouts
were already generous. It will do no good either to note that the country
once felt that its Social Security disability program was humane enough
without 85,000 new enrollees each month. Nor would it be wise to remind
Americans that vast new improvements in technology — from laptops, cell
phones, and flat-screen TVs to new prescription drugs — have made life far
less harsh and far more entertaining than at any time in the past. Tell
today’s Kia owner that his car is far more comfortable and reliable than
the rich man’s Mercedes of the 1970s — and he is still upset that someone
else has the money for a new Mercedes right now.
Appetites are never judged by an absolute standard, only by a relative one
— as “cuts” to entitlements that draw hysterical invective almost always
prove to be cuts in the rates of increase. Political suicide would follow
any frank reminder that the present level of entitlements leads to
bankruptcy. Or that we could easily prune back the welfare state and yet
still live far more lavishly than we did a decade ago — given the vast rate
of growth in federal spending and the explosion in technological progress.
We see the symptoms everywhere of a political discourse that has nothing to
do with reality. Agribusiness and its apologists in an age of record farm
prices insist that growers will perish without direct crop subsidies. We are
lectured that the inner-city impoverished go to bed hungry, even as a
greater number suffer from obesity; the administration cannot decide whether
overeating or starvation plagues the underclass. Poor flash-mobbers rarely
go after bulk foodstores when they can loot pricey sneakers and electronics.
Entire industries exist to figure out how to sign parents’ assets away to
their heirs so that the instantly impoverished mom and pop can receive free
government nursing-home care. Police, firefighter, and non-combat military
pensions and benefits are considered sacrosanct and are a third rail to
anyone foolish enough to question them — even though the all-night 7-Eleven
clerk, the freeway construction-crew member, and the private security guard
are far lower paid, may face as much danger, and as taxpayers are expected
to fund compensation for others that they could never dream of for
themselves. Pious professors and administrators hector the public about the
value of a college education and worry little about creating newly indebted
generations — who will never attain the lifestyle of those professors and
administrators whom they subsidize.
Our salvation lies in a group of politicians who will balance budgets, put
entitlements on a fiscally sustainable basis, and remind Americans that in
comparison with our predecessors — who gave us much of what we enjoy — we
live amazingly prosperous lives. If history is any guide, such frankness
will never happen. Financial implosion, not prudent correction, is the usual
remedy for reckless expenditure.
In that regard, the president has offered $5 trillion more in debt, rather
than a way to reduce the $11 trillion debt he inherited. As gas hits $4 a
gallon, he talks about tapping oil reserves that others invested in, rather
than using vast new finds of oil and gas on federal land. He has borrowed to
fund more food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability entitlements
although we could not pay for the existing recipients.
Remember the Nika riots, which followed the naïve emperor Justinian’s
efforts to trim Byzantium’s bloated civil service. The triggers for the
revolutions of 1848 included the cancellation of social workshops for the
poor that just months earlier had never existed. Postwar Britain demanded
nationalization of industries, national health care, and greater worker
compensation, which ensured that Britain would soon be outproduced by war-
flattened Germany and Japan. Reagan’s air-traffic controllers preferred to
lose their jobs and endanger travelers rather than face wage restraints. I
grew up with large farmers swearing that the end of cotton allotments and
pay-not-to-farm setasides would mean the end of them.
The strangest thing of all? Americans watch both parties demagogue proposed
cuts in Medicare, knowing full well that the present rate of expenditure
cannot go on — and yet they are fully prepared to blame those who agree
with them and reduce the rates of yearly increases. In other words, we know
that we are doomed on the present course; we oppose those who agree and take
action to avert it; and yet we might some day praise them for saving us
after we did all we could to destroy them.
One wonders whether we have any leaders who wish to save the country even if
it means endangering themselves.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution and the author most recently of The End of Sparta, a novel about
ancient freedom. | P*********0
发帖数: 4321 | 2 Nope. We still have Sarah.
I still like her.
the
remedy
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【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: By Victor Davis Hanson
: Sometimes societies find themselves in pernicious cycles in which the
: perceived medicine seems worse than the known disease. The Roman satirist
: Juvenal lamented the ill effects of free food and free entertainment for the
: masses (“bread and circuses”) in part because he knew there was no remedy
: for the pathology in sight — and thus only a slow decline toward fiscal
: insolvency or riots were on the horizon. Any Roman emperor bold enough to
: rein in the Praetorian Guard, charge the mob for grain, and curb
: gladiatorial shows would earn a usurper marching on Rome from the provinces.
: So most did not.
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