romeburns

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

National Fiddling While Rome Burns by Gert Innsry The greatest tragedy facing our country today is not the things done to us, or the things we are doing, but the things we are leaving undone. We have the opportunity to attack grave problems while solutions are still possible, but we are passing up these opportunities, and will find, to our grief, that the cost of this neglect is greater than we can bear. The clock is ticking on many of these problems, and the costs and consequences rise exponentially with each year they are left inadequately addressed.

Global warming is one such problem. The environment does not turn on a dime. Even if we succeed in reducing our contribution to this effect, it will be decades or even generations before changes are noticeable. Each year of delay means that the peak effect of global warming will be that much worse, and that much harder to reverse. The official American position on this issue calls for increasing pollutants, just at a slower rate than GDP growth, rather than making any reduction at all. The irony is that, rather than being an expense, increasing efficiency in the use of energy represents a major cost savings to the economy as a whole and to those sectors practicing such efficiency.

Social security and medical care is another problem which is solvable today but, left unaddressed becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to resolve. If minor adjustments to Social Security are made today, the costs down the line are low. If the adjustments are delayed, the costs will become all but unaffordable. Similarly, the costs involved in not providing medical care, or having prescription drugs be unaffordable, are far greater than costs of making these available to all. The only solutions being discussed with any seriousness include privatization of a system which has proven to be effective and efficient, and which has administrative costs on the order of one to three percent. Instead, we are asked to substitute providers with administrative costs and profit varying between ten and thirty-five percent, leaving that much less money for actual patient care. This makes no sense.

Government deficits are a third area which can be addressed effectively today, had we only the will (and good information), but which left unchecked will burden us increasingly over the years. From the party of fiscal responsibility, the Republican party has turned into the party of deficit. Two presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. have run up more national debt than all other presidents combined. Mr. Bush does not even have the excuse of a Democrat-controlled Congress. With a policy of both guns and welfare-for-the-rich, President Bush has dissipated the Clinton surpluses and ensured that no money is available for domestic needs, and that interest on the national debt will absorb even the eventual revenue increases of an economy that may improve under some other administration. Our strength depends on the strength of our economy. Long a debtor nation in international trade, we are fast becoming a country whose economic statistics, if exhibited by Argentina or Poland, would cause the IMM and World Bank to pull the plug.

Finally, there is the matter of our food supply. Climate change, increasing demand for water in the West, and depletion of fishing stocks worldwide all pose threats to the cheap and abundant food supply we have enjoyed for over a century. Lack of action in any of these areas can have disastrous consequences, not in the far future, but relatively soon. No adequate action is being taken by our government as yet.

It's not that we need an activist government; we have one, but it has been activist about peripheral issues, or in directions antithetical to our needs. We need effective, immediate action to solve real problems, not Axis of Evil fantasies; actions that improve the lives of the majority of our citizens, rather than looting our national resources to enrich the few.