ParisTampaBlog

It does seem that if you’re on the one side, perhaps a bit left of center, and probably a Democrat, that your first priority when looking at presidential candidates would be how likely this or that candidate would be to look to public, government funded solutions to our problems, being not convinced that the private sector could do it all. And in particular how likely the candidate would be to protect those entitlements including free public schooling, health insurance, and social security, that have clearly made life better for millions of beneficiaries.

And if you’re on the other side, a bit right of center, your first priority when sizing up the presidential candidates might be to hear how they would protect individuals, and states, from further federal encroachment into their (individuals and states) lives and activities. Also, you’d want to hear your candidate on how he or she would keep governmental rules and regulations, and taxes, at a minimum, thereby allowing individual entrepreneurs with good ideas to grow their ideas and prosper.

If you’re in the middle like, alas, too few of us, no where near enough of us (I haven’t even mentioned all those at either extreme, there being a rapidly growing number of these, —actually here and most everywhere in the world), you would look for candidates who would do both, protect our entitlements and protect us from the regulatory excesses of our government, even though in important respects the one is the inverse of the other, more of the one meaning less of the other, and less of the one meaning more of the other.

And that’s the kind of the situation we have now, the ones, Republicans, always trying to undo the others, Democrats, and vice versa. Republicans rage against regulations and taxes and haven’t yet found a place where they might stop. Nor have the Democrats promising more and more of everything to all us us, and thereby growing the entitlement culture, haven’t yet said to themselves, let alone to the rest of us, that this is enough.

Yes, I know, it’s crazy. On the one hand our government is not affluent enough, in fact has no money of its own, to permit the Democrats to continue to grow the entitlement portion of the budget. And on the other hand the rest of us including the Republicans can’t get along without, certainly can not live comfortably, without a fairly substantial number of rules and regulations, and taxes.

Crazy, because while it’s common sense that governments and individuals depend upon, need one another our Washington elites act as if they didn’t. Crazy because so many seem to have forgotten, or never learned just how dependent the ones are on the others.

And they are what history is most about. For our history is mostly about kings and other such tyrants and their more or less violent oppression of their peoples, mostly about their depriving the individual of his rights. On occasion history does record the other side, that occasional rebellion, for example, when the people, made up of individuals, a fact often overlooked by those rebelling, such as right now in the Middle East undergoing the Arab Spring, that rebellion when the people take back, if only for brief periods, what they claim was in fact their own.

There is, of course, the social contract, made much of throughout the 17th. and 18th. centuries in Europe, as well as at the moment of the founding of our own country, the “contract” being a kind of balancing act between freedom and responsibility (between Republicans and Democrats?). Unfortunately our people, and our presidential candidates too often fall on one side or the other of the contract, forgetting that both sides are equally essential to the contract’s realization, as well as to the ongoing health and strength of the entire country.

I found it rare, and refreshing to read in the news and to hear on UTube last month these words from Elizabeth Warren, now a democratic candidate for U.S. Senator from Massachusetts:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she said at a campaign event. “You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. . .”

Well said, I said to myself, if in fact factory owners do forget how much their own accomplishments depend on the work and contributions of others they should be reminded of this. But Ms. Warren goes too far. She assumes that those who build and then profit from the factories (and other industries) are not, doing what? paying taxes? For she says,

“You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay it forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Ms. Warren is clearly incorrect to imply that those businessmen who benefit from the roads leading to and from their business, from a highly skilled and well educated work force (although it’s not at all clear that this is the product of our public schools), from having a police and fire department ready to respond to their calls (and she might have mentioned many other benefits, not the least of them being clean air and water), to imply that these people do not take a big “hunk” of what they have earned and turn it over to the government in support of future generations of others much like themselves.

In this regard many have pointed out Ms. Warren’s error, as well as that of the President who says much the same thing. Here, for example, is Russ Roberts writing in today’s WSJ:

“Ms. Warren implies that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. I’m not sure what that is, but they’re already paying a lot of taxes. In the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, from 2007, the top 1% of households paid 28.1% of all federal tax revenue—income taxes, payroll taxes and so on—for a total of $722 billion. That would buy plenty of roads, police and fire protection—and plenty of education, too.”

The question, the one that Ms. Warren never asked, really should be, not whether the rich should be taxed, and taxed in some relation to their riches, but how much of their income should go to the federal government. Is there a limit? Some of us feel, not unreasonably (the top 1% of households paid 28% of all federal tax revenue) that the limit may have already been reached.

In any case our tax laws are badly in need of revision. Ms. Warren ever the “regulator” ought to have talked about this. But instead of proposing fundamental revisions our political leaders, with Ms. Warren perhaps about to become one herself, fall either on the side of more entitlements, more spending, and more taxes, or on the side of reigning in the three of them and thereby reducing the place of government in our lives.

The tragedy (comedy) is that the opposition between our political parties seems to be working primarily to maintain the opposition, to strengthen the opposed positions, rather than to the benefit of anyone. Yes it’s crazy.

There are problems the solutions of which lie way down the chain, or ladder of possible actions we might take to solve them. For example, my oversleeping. The solution to that problem is myself, or perhaps the person or people with whom I am living, all of us at the very bottom of this ladder.

We wouldn’t think (although they be some who would, even in this instance) of going to government, —local, state, or federal— for help with that.

There are other problems, the solutions of which lie way up at the top of the ladder of possible steps that might be taken. Our country was attacked by terrorists, resulting, on one particular terrible occasion, in the destruction of the twin towers.

To prevent future such happenings we wouldn’t go to the bottom of the ladder, to the local police department for example, but directly to one or more of our national organizations high up there such as the Department of Defense, the FBI, or CIA.

Governments, our government, President Obama at the moment, have always struggled with the problem of deciding just when it is primarily the role of government to take action.

Struggled because, in fact, there is always a difference of opinion between those in Washington and those out in the localities as to with whom or with what the responsibility for finding a solution primarily lies.

Take the problem of the current high unemployment level of 9%, that which just about everyone is talking about. Unfortunately most of the talk is way up there, at the top of the ladder, about what the government, could or should do to get more people to work —the jobs speech by the President just the other day being an egregious example of this.

In regard to the unemployment problem government answers range from providing hundreds of billions in additional stimulus monies (Paul Krugman), to making it easier for entrepreneurs to obtain bank loans to expand their businesses and hire additional workers (Joe Nocera).

But if there is a solution, and based on our economic history there probably is —for the economy has always come back from a recession—  what can be done to help bring it about? It probably won’t come, as it never has in the past, from government actions.

A Newsweek cover story suggests that this problem, as innumerable others, will best be solved, and is in fact being solved, by leaving the solution or solutions up to the people at the bottom of the chain, by leaving it to the localities to come up themselves with what needs to be done.

For new jobs, good jobs, “permanent” jobs will mostly come from individuals who decide to hire new workers in order to develop their own business plans. Government jobs, while we can make them, such as with the tens of billions of dollars the President would give to state and local governments to hire laid off public employees, will last only as long as the monies themselves.

But let’s not leave government entirely off the hook. Government should and could help by getting out of the way and therefore making things easier for entrepreneurs to get started.

Many have asked how did America become the world’s wealthiest nation. Here’s my answer.

First, we opened our doors, or rather held them open because they were open when the very first settlers came, to all those people from other lands and nations, millions of them, who for whatever reason wanted to leave where they were and come here, at first to a vast mostly unknown and unsettled land and frontier, and then later to a no less vast but fully described and settled land and nation.

Second from the time of our founding as a nation we fashioned a government whose major responsibility would be to guarantee that the people, once here, would be truly free to pursue their own desires and interests, and that while here any oppression they may have endured in the lands they had left would be on their arrival a thing of the past.

In short we became the world’s wealthiest nation because we allowed millions to come here to live, and once here we gave them the freedom and security (government’s principal role) to live and to work as they chose.

So the source of our nation’s great wealth? Allowing people to come here in large numbers, and once here allowing them the freedom to pursue their dreams.

These, what should I call them, policies? They were certainly not, at the beginning anyway, conscious policies of the government. Rather I would say they were at the beginning, and still are, truly human ways of being and acting, ways that the people coming here latched onto and reinforced throughout the founding and early years of our country’s history.

These ways are, perhaps, the principal and strongest evidence of our own humanity, and that which has made us, at least up until recent times, the exception among nations. For what other nations have ever allowed their humanity, their membership in the human race, to interfere with their constant and usually failed efforts to direct the lives of their peoples?

Now, given the problems that our country is currently facing, we have to ask, is this still the way things are. Or are things now changing in regard to what I have called the sources of the country’s great wealth? For one thing many are now beginning to question our exceptional status (there are even those who would willingly take it away!). And in fact, how real is it, or is it still, our supposed uniqueness among nations?

It does seem to be that today, our exceptional wealth, or what is the same thing, our ability to provide for our people, is in decline. More and more Americans are finding it harder and harder to provide for their families. And our government, while taking more and more from those who have, still does not seem to be substantially alleviating the plight of those who have not.

So are things changing? Is there a real decline? Well yes, when you see, for example, that those who come here now, unlike those who came here earlier, are no longer readily welcomed as new Americans, and in more and more cases are not being allowed to stay and are being deported, even when their American employers (not to mention the country’s well being) are benefiting from their work and are begging the government to allow them to remain.

Again, is it real, our fall? Well yes, when you see, for example, our representatives and senators in Congress rejecting the Dream Act that which would have provided conditional permanent residency to illegal alien-students who had come to the US as minors, and lived and attended school in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment. Again new Americans, clearly a source of new wealth, are being turned away.

And the decline is especially real when you see more and more people, already here, clamoring for special rights and privileges, often at the expense of the new comers. When you see Americans now well established seeming to forget that they too were once immigrants to our shores asking only to be given an opportunity to work and otherwise do for themselves.

The people who come here today are asking for no more, but no less, than just such an opportunity. To no longer provide it, we do so at our peril. Restore it and the country’s seeming decline would quickly come to an end. For when in the past when immigrants came freely to our shores did we worry about the country’s future? The new comers brought the future with them.

Bill Keller (see Times article of August 25th) would like to ask the presidential candidates the three questions below (and others).

I would too, although I’m afraid I already know the answers, especially if they were ever to be forthcoming from the Republican candidates, and I live in dread that one of them might eventually become my president, a kind of reincarnation of our “never again” president, George W. Bush.

•Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or a “Judeo-Christian nation?” and what does that mean in practice?

•Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? What about an atheist?

•What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution, and do you believe it should be taught in public schools?

In your opinion how many will answer, No, No, and Yes?