The current struggle over raising the debt ceiling and President Biden’s low approval numbers reflect a problem that is common to humanity, the allure of both stability and change. This often affects people’s marriages. On the one hand, most people appreciate the security that comes from a stable relationship. On the other hand, they tend to take that relationship for granted and get bored. Many divorces result from inappropriate reactions to boredom in search of change.
There is a similar relationship between restlessness with politicians and (at least middle-class) adolescence. In asserting their independence, adolescents tend to underappreciate how much they depend on their parents for food, clothing, and housing. Biden’s low approval ratings reflect in large part underappreciation of the benefits we continue to receive from past generations, much of it through tax-supported government activities.
I drive cars that I didn’t invent on some roads that were built before I was a taxpayer. I benefit from electricity that I don’t fully understand delivered through an electricity grid that I didn’t help to construct. I received an education paid for largely by a previous generation of taxpayers. Government expenditures have resulted in computers, the Internet, public health measures creating an environment more conducive to longer, healthier lives, and much more.
In other words, most of the infrastructure, physical and human, on which I rely was the product directly or indirectly of government expenditures and activities. My sense of entitlement, that I shouldn’t pay higher taxes to maintain this infrastructure and improve it for future generations as past generations improved it for me, reflects the same kind of adolescent thinking that results in teens underappreciating what they continue to receive from their parents.
I have a friend, a businessman, who thinks that the government does nothing but waste money, a legacy of thinking promoted by President Reagan – “Government is the problem.” But without government-supported infrastructure, how would businesses get products to market? How would they find workers educated enough to contribute to corporate success? Many people in poor countries work very hard. They remain poor precisely because they lack the political and physical infrastructure, as well as the human capital which is so familiar here that we take it for granted.
Many voters are angry because they think, like adolescents, that they deserve more, a common theme in most commercials as well – your life will be better if you buy this product. If my life isn’t all that it should be, it must be someone’s fault (certainly not mine when it comes to paying taxes), and Biden is the most prominent target of anger. A change is needed. Thus, Biden low approval ratings.
Ironically, change also angers many people. A significant segment of the population doesn’t like same-sex marriage, the legalization of pot, the loss of manufacturing jobs, or the increasing respect and power gained by women and members of racial minorities. So, the change they seek is a return from the current course of change to a (largely fictional) past. Nostalgia is evident in white supremacism, opposition to immigration, disdain for electric cars, opposition to wind and solar electricity generation, veneration of coal, and even support for using incandescent bulbs.
Some current concerns are valid, such as concern over the country’s mounting debt. But only adolescent thinking would yield the belief that for the first time in our history we should fail to meet the obligations of the “full faith and credit of the United States” by defaulting on our debt. As the adolescent doesn’t recognize the continuing benefits of parental support, those who threaten default are taking the familiar amenities of the world banking system for granted. They don’t understand how central it is to their own financial wellbeing regardless of their place on the current spectrum of income and wealth.
Economic growth depends on innovation. It requires investments that support inventions, new production lines, new advertising strategies, an altered physical infrastructure, and new educational facilities and personnel to train people for new types of jobs. Both government entities and private enterprises depend on borrowing in order to make such investments.
Without confidence in the full faith and credit of our country, our government won’t be able to borrow the money necessary to create needed upgrades in human and physical infrastructure, or it will borrow money at increased interest rates. This will raise interest rates for free enterprise as well. With increased costs of borrowing money, innovation will stall, and people will lose jobs that depend on innovation. Retirement accounts will diminish as the worth of investments decreases.
Let’s everyone grow up and recognize that tax increases on the wealthy are needed to curtail our deficits. By definition, wealthy people benefit most from the current monetary system, and it is totally dysfunctional for the country to stiff its creditors.
Please reply to wenz.peter@uis.edu and I’ll try to respond.
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