ParisTampaBlog

In some ways nothing has changed. The overriding political issue of our time, as it was in the times of the French and Russian revolutions, is that the few have a lot, and the many a little. (And it’s probably even more true in Russia today.) We know that only when these two camps seem to be growing closer together, and we are at peace, do we have what most would call the good life.

At the present time the camps are not coming together, and we are not a peace. And the good life is not yet within the reach of most. We have instead, in the words of Frank Rich in today’s Times: “an obscene widening of income inequality between the very rich and everyone else since the 1970s.” And Rich quotes the President in his budget message to Congress, “There is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few.”

The President, according to Rich, was calling for fundamental fairness, not as in earlier times class warfare. In Rich’s words, “America hasn’t seen such gaping inequality since the Gilded Age and 1920s boom that preceded the Great Depression.”

And the question is still, que faire, сто делатъ, what to do? And as in the past there are only three answers, more government, more reliance on market forces and individual initiative, and more of something in between. And if we would be at peace the answer has to be number three.

But, alas, the loudest and most unruly voices are coming from one side or the other, and the voices of reason are not being heard. Instead we hear, “Bail out the banks and the automobile companies. Don’t bail them out.” “Launch expensive new health, education, and environmental protection programs. Don’t, at least until we we can pay, for them without raising taxes or going even further into debt.”

The U.S. economy, no less than the world economy, seems to be on its own trajectory, down, and all of our efforts to reverse its direction have been, so far, without effect. It’s a wife who has decided to do her own thing and a husband, whose efforts to reign her in, are totally without influence.

It seems all we can do is wait. The two camps are as far apart as ever. And the “gaping inequality” of which the President speaks is not about to be lessened by the actions of his team. We are, as were the inhabitants of New Orleans by Katrina, caught up in a destructive storm, the power of which is clearly beyond our ability to check.

This entry was posted on March 8, 2009 at 4:29 am and is filed under Idle idle thoughts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.