The most telling chart in the Mayor’s budget presentation does not concern public policy or government finance. It is the chart on page nine that shows the U.S. personal savings rate. And it shows that the generations recently retired and now in their peak earning years, unlike the “Greatest Generation” that went before them, have been unwilling to save for their own personal futures. The majority wanted what they wanted when they wanted it, and didn’t concern themselves with the consequences. Is it any surprise, then, that in their collective choices they also were unwilling to make any of the changes needed to free the United States from energy dependency? That they raised the payroll tax on the less well off to “save Social Security” for the next generation in 1983, and then spent all the extra money on themselves in the years since? That they awarded themselves richer public employee pensions, deferred the cost, and when money got tight cut wages and benefits for future hires? That they ran up massive public debts, and allowed the infrastructure to degrade? And getting back to their personal lives, that so many were unwilling to put up with the obligations of permanent family relationships for the benefit of the children? And that those who could drained public corporations of their futures by extracting undeserved money in the present in excess executive compensation?
Guess what sort of people are in the New York State legislature, from which our current Governor and former Governor Pataki emerged? For two decades, since I didn’t share the values implied that chart, I looked at the actions of politicians such as Pataki, Silver, Bruno — not to mention George Bush and the Republican Congress — with growing outrage. And since no one bothers to vote in elections that (aside from a few higher offices) in reality don’t take place, I assumed “the people” weren’t making those choices would also be outraged that their future was being destroyed if only they knew. Perhaps I was wrong.
The onrushing collapse of the MTA, the huge deficits being run up by the federal government, the collapse of our economy, mass bankruptcies, and a falling standards of living, are the result of people’s choices. Not just the choices of leaders, but the choices of millions of people in their daily lives. And for many among those millions, it is now clear, those individual choices were entirely consistent with the choices of the State of New York in the Pataki/Bruno/Silver era and since. Perhaps that’s why our elected officials are the type of people they are. After all, if the goal is shortsighted sloth, why drag yourself to the polls — let alone sacrifice your family to run for public office — if you are getting what you want anyway? Is what has happened a surprise to anyone who was paying attention? No. They why did it happen? Perhaps pols like our state legislators were giving the people what they thought they wanted.
When things change in society, people have a tendency to believe the circumstances and choices of individual people have changed. My view is that isn’t so. There is the majority who just do whatever everyone else does and never think for themselves. There is a large minority who close their eyes and minds early in their lives and refuse to see things as they are. And there is just a small minority that is willing to see things as they are and act accordingly. Do we have a Black President became millions of people changed their minds about race? Or because one group of people with one set of ideas about race is dying off, while another generation that doesn’t share those views is coming of age? I’d say the latter. And looking at the personal savings decline, I don’t believe that individual people who had been saving more decided to save less. I believe the generations that saved reached old age, and started spending down their savings, and then died off. While the generations that couldn’t wait to spend too their place. And now the non-saving generations are approaching old age in debt and, aside from the few winners in the casino our economy became, with a huge sense of entitlement.
As I wrote earlier, the generations now in charge emerged from the 1960s and 1970s with two ideas of freedom, one good and one (for lack of a better word) evil. The good “freedom” might be called freedom of identity, or of lifestyle. For a brief period after World War II, many Americans believed that if you didn’t look like, act like, think like, and live like everyone else, then you shouldn’t be accepted. Think of the children’s TV show “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,” in which Rudolph and his companions become outcasts at the North Pole simply because Rudolph’s nose glows, and his friend is an elf that wanted to be a dentist instead of make toys. The idea of America as a land of social conformity is mostly gone, and the old conflicts associated with it irrelevant, but some politicians still try to stay elected by manipulating 35-year-old resentments, with tribal appeals to groups of people who feel aggrieved. Sometimes it still works, because legislative offices are still being held by those who were already adults 35 years ago, and haven’t had an open mind since, but as President Obama’s election shows, it is going away.
The evil idea of freedom is freedom from responsibility, which has both a “liberal” and a “conservative” version, depending on the responsibilities one does not want to meet. Liberal Democrats have sought to attract votes by telling people that they do not have personal responsibilities to earn their own living, and to take care of their own children. To knowledgeable critics, their excuse for irresponsibility has been “social realism,” the assertion that (for example) single parenthood or spending every dime one has and going into debt is the way people live today (because they are free to live that way), and thus policy “programs” must be designed to make this work. And they have cultivated a sense of entitlement to assistance, causing the poor and others who merely feel needy to feel anger at anyone who dares to make demands on them.
Conservative Republicans have sought to attract votes by telling people that they do not have social obligations to their communities, to the less well off, to the rest of the world, and to the future, particularly with regard to taxes and debt, but also with regard to energy and the environment. To knowledgeable critics, their excuse for irresponsibility has been “economic realism,” the assertion that the affluent are self interested and mobile, and if you make demands on them for the benefit of others, or for the benefit of the future, they will take their assets and go elsewhere, leaving you worse off than before. They also cultivate a sense of entitlement, telling the affluent that their position of privilege is the result of their own moral superiority, not social advantages, and that they do not owe anything to anyone.
Democrats appeal to the hostile, irresponsible poor. Republicans appeal to the self-righteous, irresponsible rich. And both try to appeal to the irresponsible, overspending, deep–in- debt people in the middle. While seeking to spend lots of money, generally on those who already receive lots of government funding, Democrats only dare to propose higher taxes on the “rich.” And while Republicans are always looking to cut taxes, particularly for the better off, they have only been willing to cut spending on the poor. The compromise is to go deeper and deeper into debt, at the federal, state, and local level, while deferring costs and advancing revenues. Until it is no longer possible, and our institutions collapse.
U.S. culture has apparently been shaped almost entirely by the advertising industry, with its endless message of “I want for me now!” Where has an alternative perspective come from? Not from our political “leaders,” among whom Pataki, Bruno and Silver appear to be men of their era. Not from religion. Those that assert that their particular brand is the route to a better material deal for oneself are growing; those that assert that a connection to other people and the universe requires one to make sacrifices are shrinking. Perhaps the problem is Americans have become too isolated from death, and too mobile to visit cemeteries and contemplate the lives of those who went before. Thus they do not realize that in the end whether you are a net positive or negative for others, and how well you are remembered, is all that will remain of you on this earth. Few try to build a legacy.
So now we face a diminished life in a diminished country, state and city. On the personal side, there is plenty of that stuff people went deep into credit card and mortgage debt to buy that they’d be better off without. But the decline of the public services and benefits that made the mass middle class possible, now inevitable absent bankruptcy because the burdens of the past are so great and the more people put in the more those with power take out (as the reduction in the NYC teacher retirement age from 62 to 55 immediately after the end of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit proves), is going to hurt, and is the way that the selfish, shortsighted choices of the past 25 years will be imposed on those who did not make them, and their children, and their children’s children. We can still make the best of it, but only after having admitted to the past and faced the facts. The unwillingness to do so is the reason for the circus one sees in Albany.
La la la-la-la They lived for today.
La la la-la-la They lived for today.
They didn’t worry, about tomorrow.
Now we’re going to pay.