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| washingtonpost.com - Robert J. Samuelson (washingtonpost.com)
What we have here -- to borrow a line from the old movie "Cool Hand Luke" -- is a failure to communicate. By all rights, we should be having a fierce debate over the role of government. What should it do, for whom and why? What can we afford? Who should pay? These questions would suggest a campaign that seriously engages the future. Instead, we have a bidding war between candidates to see who can promise the most appealing package of new spending programs and tax cuts.
Obsessed with rankings, Americans are bound to see the Beijing Olympics as a metaphor for a larger and more troubling question. Will China overtake the United States as the world's biggest economy? Well, stop worrying. It almost certainly will.
Forget about a candid national conversation on energy. As John McCain and Barack Obama campaigned last week, that much seemed clear. To lower oil prices (which were already dropping), Obama proposed releasing 10 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is an atrocious idea. The SPR was intended as insurance against a catastrophic loss of oil from wars, embargoes, terrorism or natural disasters. It should not be manipulated cynically for political advantage. Earlier, McCain suggested suspending the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax; that was another bad and expedient idea.
People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the celebration of "diversity," it's sameness that dominates. Most people favor friendships with those who have similar backgrounds, interests and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is nearly universal. It's human nature.
The real lessons of the housing crisis have gotten lost. It's routinely portrayed as the financial system run amok; the housing market became a casino. The remedy, we're told, is to enact rules that prevent a repetition. All this is partly true. But it ignores a larger truth: Our infatuation with homeownership, embedded in dozens of government policies, has turned housing -- once a justifiable symbol of the American dream -- into something of a national nightmare.
The specter of depression stalks America. You hear the word repeatedly. Are we in a depression? If not, are we headed for one? The answer to the first question is no; the answer to the second is "almost certainly not." The use of "depression" to describe the economy is a case of rhetorical overkill that speaks volumes about today's widespread pessimism and anxiety. A short history lesson shows why.
We've been having the wrong discussion about globalization. For years, we've argued over whether this or that industry and its workers might suffer from imports and whether the social costs were worth the economic gains from foreign products, technologies and investments. By and large, the answer has been yes. But the harder questions, I think, lie elsewhere. Is an increasingly interconnected world economy basically stable? Or does it generate periodic crises that harm everyone and spawn international conflict?
It is one of our fondest political myths that elections allow us collectively to settle the "big issues." The truth is that there's often a bipartisan consensus to avoid the big issues, because they involve unpopular choices and conflicts. Elections become exercises in mass evasion; that certainly applies so far to the 2008 campaign. A case in point is America's population transformation. Few issues matter more for the country's future -- yet it's mostly ignored.
Tired of high gasoline prices and rising food costs? Well, here's a solution. Let's shoot the speculators. A chorus of politicians, including John McCain and Barack Obama, blames these financial slimeballs for piling into commodities markets and pushing prices to artificial and unconscionable levels. Gosh, if only it were that simple. Speculator-bashing is another exercise in scapegoating and grandstanding. Leading politicians either don't understand what's happening or don't want to acknowledge their own complicity.
Forget the housing collapse, the "credit crunch" and -- in isolation -- higher oil prices. The real economic menace may be resurgent inflation, which is the broad rise of most prices. To understand why, some history helps. The government's worst domestic blunder since World War II was the unleashing of high inflation: In 1960, annual inflation was 1.4 percent; by 1979, it was 13.3 percent. This terrified Americans, who feared falling living standards. It also destabilized the economy, causing harsher recessions that culminated with 10.8 percent unemployment in 1982.
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