The travails of Cassandra

Never have the policies and politics of this country been more frustrating. Not only to myself, but to everybody: approval ratings for the president, Congress, and both political parties are cratering. Is it any surprise? Nothing is getting done. The American house is on fire, Republican leadership is arguing whether now is a good time to finally hold that garage sail, and Obama, meekly pointing to the flames on the roof, capitulates and sells the water hose to the guy across the street. One side is locked into a worldview that is increasingly distanced from reality (the leading Republican candidate for president is campaigning on chain emails, apparently never hearing of Snopes). The other side has thrown up its hands and bothers less and less to fight. The winners are pundits and inside-the-Beltway types who get paid to spill ink and electrons talking about what ails us. The losers are the people who are still unemployed because the U.S. can’t bother fixing its own problems.

I’m no great prognosticator, but I am educated enough to know when we are, in fact, shooting ourselves in the feet. Government layoffs continue to be a drag on the economy, as it turns out that government employees also live in houses and drive cars and eat food and engage in consumer spending. Every sane economist argued that austerity would only make things worse, and yet it takes a year to admit that maybe austerity was “addressing the wrong problem“. In much the same way as, say, a haircut does not address the problem of cancer, I suppose. When it comes to jobs, Josh Marshall has it right when he says it’s a case of “most of the economics profession, the bond market and the ‘liberals’ on one side and Republicans and beltway columnists on the other.” Even reliably liberal Nicholas Kristof is admitting that all this focusing on deficit-cutting really isn’t what 95% of America wants to focus on, proving that this isn’t as much an issue of ideology as much of an issue of the pundits versus people with blood still flowing in their brains. Personally, I feel that I have a new-found understanding for the tragedy of Cassandra; others seem to as well.

Of course, Democrats have much to blame, starting with Obama, who can give a mighty fine speech on ideas, but has all but given up on policies. Republicans have completely owned the debate by talking about “kitchen table economics” and “budgeting like a family”, as shallow and shortsighted as the resulting economic policies may be. It’s time for Obama to shift that debate towards more kitchen table economics, such as how nobody buys a house or a college education in cash and it’s great to take out loans to better yourself, especially when that money is free. So why not better ourselves as a country with some infrastructure spending? You know, put people back to work, clean up our sewer systems, fix those broken roads and bridges.

I’m not so pessimistic as to believe that we won’t get out of this funk and start acting like rational people again, but I have moved right up to that line in the past few months. The world is in too precarious a position with Europe acting similarly idiotic and China wobbling for the U.S. to be able to mess around much longer. I fear that we may end up in a position that could paraphrase Tacitus: instead of making a desert and calling it peace, we could eliminate our economy and call it prosperity.