As Jay Cost writes at the Weekly Standard, “You thought the Republicans and Democrats were vicious when they were fighting over a growing pie? Just wait until they finally catch on that the pie has to start shrinking:”
The bulk of political commentators, and the political class in general, have yet to wrap their minds around this fact, although there are several notable exceptions to the general tendency. These farsighted few now see the bad moon rising over the nation’s capitol, and they know it portends a dramatic, painful change in the way things work in D.C.
Since the end of World War Two, the political class has basically had to manage the country’s rapid economic growth. That hasn’t been a cakewalk, but managing growth has been relatively easy: you can spend billions on guns or butter, without taking too much from the average middle class American taxpayer. Yet these days are over. Now, our political leaders have to manage decline — for even if the economy continues to grow, it likely will not grow fast enough to pay for all the financial obligations the elites made when they foolishly assumed that the days of 4 percent growth would last forever.
The great political scientist Harold Lasswell once famously defined politics as, who gets what, when, and how? In the postwar age of perpetual growth, we’ve long thought of that in terms of who is going to get the extra revenues that our ever-growing economy is producing for us. But now, with our huge budget deficit and weak economy, it’d be better to classify our current politics as: who loses what, when, and how?
Any partisan who thinks their side has an inherent advantage in the battle of assigning losers is deluding himself. The Democrats have long argued for increased taxation to distribute more income to the lower classes. The Republicans have long argued for decreased taxation to spur business, coupled with free-market mechanisms to make social welfare more efficient. The response of the American public over the last thirty year? Regularly divided government, so that one side inevitably checks the grand ideological ambitions of the other, and nothing really changes. In other words, the public has consistently voted for the status quo over the Democratic plan and the Republican plan.
Sooner rather than later, this status quo must give way. No more guns, butter, and low taxes. At least one of them has got to go, and millions of Americans are going to lose something on the deal. How will that play out politically? Honestly, I do not know. But I can say two things for sure:
One, the political process, which has been ugly for some time, is going to get a whole lot uglier. You thought the Republicans and Democrats were vicious when they were fighting over a growing pie? Just wait until they finally catch on that the pie has to start shrinking.
Two, anybody who tells you what is likely to happen in 2012 is fooling themself. One way or the other, the country has voted for the status quo in just about every election for the last thirty years. What do they do when they realize that they can’t vote for the same thing anymore? The tiresome pundits don’t know, the statistical “gurus” don’t know, and the wonky poseurs don’t know. If they say otherwise, it’s simply proof that they don’t really get it.
Make no mistake: there’s a bad moon rising on Washington, and it’s foreshadowing a politics of decline that is going to dominate the election of 2012, and beyond.
As we enter into “Recovery Summer — it’s sure to arrive any year now, honest,” Steve Green is not optimistic about the near future:
The economy grew at an annual rate of 1.8% last quarter. With this jobs report, does anyone believe that we’re going to get the 4.5% we need over the next nine months? Does anyone believe this economy is going to generate anything like 8-10 million jobs over the next two years? Does anyone in the White House care?
Tax receipts will remain depressed until those jobs return. Welfare and unemployment checks will keep going out at record levels. It could be years and years before we see a deficit as small as a trillion dollars.
In the words of Melvin Udall: What if this is as good as it gets? Or as I said last night on The Rick Moran Show, Washington has its boot on our necks, smacking us around with a steel rod while demanding to know, “Why won’t you produce?”
The only correct response to that is, “Get the hell out of my way!”
That’s as good of a rallying cry for 2012 as any.
Related: “Did Geithner use Turbo-Tax to calculate Detroit employment?”
More: Here’s a fun statistic, via Michelle Malkin: “77,000 federal workers paid more than governors.” And they’re certainly not term-limited, either.
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