Author: Larry Littlefield

In a previous post on the upcoming Presidential election, I pointed out that a good deal of it comes down to trust. We humans are social animals, who rely on our social institutions for our well-being, but we have selfish impulses as well. A leader is someone who can influence people to voluntarily make efforts and sacrifices on behalf of the common well being, by assuring them that their efforts and sacrifices would not simply be exploited by those less cooperative and fair minded than themselves. The President of the United States is the leader of the country, not just the administrator of the federal government, which is just one of many institutions in our society. And in world affairs, influence and cooperation are the only tools he has. In a circumstance when the nation is facing a series of crises, can either of the candidates for that office inspire the trust required for some people, more people, to be willing to cooperate and change their behavior? We may get an idea tonight.

When the number of placard holders was released, we found out how many people were in the deserving “middle class.” About 150,000 people qualified, as I recall. The rest of us are the serfs. Courtesy of this election, we not also know the number of "real people" and who have "real needs." It is 6,743 — Sheldon Silver's vote total. Anyone who has read enough of my posts, and downloaded the data and looked at it themselves, know what our state government has done during the time Mr. Silver was one of those in charge: handed out more and more benefits to those who already have a host of privileges, and passed the cost, usually deferred, onto everyone else, including the less well off. “This campaign was about real people with real needs,” he said. “It was about results.”

Governor Paterson vetoed the bill that would have prevented public employee retiree benefits from being diminished as a result of collective bargaining agreements. Since pensions (with inflation adjustments) are absolutely guaranteed, that is the only way current and younger employees can make older generations of public employees, who traded rich benefits for themselves for lower pay and benefits for those coming after, give something back. The prohibition would have been in place for the period of time we are in a fiscal crisis.

Perhaps New York's "I've got mine jack, and I'll be getting more before you get anything" public employee unions might decide to make universal health care a bit more of a priority as a result. The veto was a part of a package of 49 bills, many of which are pension sweeteners as usual. The list is here.  The Governor didn't give any reasons.  If you need one, read this and this.

The data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the 2007 version of which is rolling out over the next month, is a good news/bad news thing. The good news is that for areas such as all of New York City or Brooklyn, we get data on a wide range of social and economic population characteristics every year, rather than just once a decade as part of the census. The bad news is that the long form of the census, which had been sent to one-in-six households every decade, has been eliminated, and while the Bureau has promised ACS data for small areas such as census tracts (based on averaging a whole bunch of years together), I have yet to see it. The small number of questions on the “short form,” which was and is sent to everyone every ten years, is now all we are assured of knowing about ourselves with a high level of geographic detail. So what are the questions deemed important enough to ask everyone? Administrative questions to compile the number of people in a housing unit, whether the housing unit is owned or rented, the age and sex or each person, the relationship of each person to the person filling out the form, and one other thing. Race and Hispanic Origin, according to “the requirements of standards issued by the Office of Management and Budget in 1997 (Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity).”

The purpose of art (visual, music, stories in various formats) as far as I’m concerned, is communication. The message communicated could be how things are, how they really are, or how they should be, but if there isn’t one, or if the message is designed to be incomprehensible for those who aren’t in on it (like most modern art), then it isn’t really art, or at least isn’t really useful. The reason art is important is that most people’s beliefs are based on their life experiences, and new knowledge that doesn’t correspond with those life experiences tends to be discarded. I can post all the non-fiction essays and arguments, and all the spreadsheets I want here, but very few people have enough of an open mind to wade through them, understand them, and alter their beliefs based on them.

A story or other work of art, however, can serve as a kind of artificial life experience, one that broadens perspectives beyond what any given person experiences directly themselves. Properly disguised, fictional stories, songs, and visual art can therefore change more minds than carefully researched collections of facts, because the recipient of the message comes to the new perspective on their own, as if it were their own idea, not something forced on them by someone else. Such epiphanies don’t bruise the ego. I bring this up now because there is a message that needs to get out there, given the economic conditions Americans are likely to face in the next few years: that they can be happy, and live fulfilling lives, without going deeper and deeper into debt to spend more and more money on more and more goods and services that they may no longer be able to afford.

If Senator Obama becomes President, it is nearly certain that the Democrats will control both the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the third time in my adult lifetime. The first was under President Carter in the 1977 to 1980 period, and the second was under President Clinton in 1993 and 1994. Both times they blew it, and ended up being repudiated by the voters. To President Carter, the nation’s number one challenge was energy, and to President Clinton, it was the lack of universal health care. Each proposed policies that, whatever their flaws, would have addressed those challenges. But any reasonable proposal on either subject may be expected to generate opposition from those who benefit from current arrangements, including interests prominent in both the Republican and Democratic Party coalitions. Solutions to problems, moreover, including these, often involve sacrifices or disruption in the short run to make things better in the long run. In each case – Carter’s energy policy, and Clinton’s health care policy — the Congress, controlled by their fellow Democrats, yielded to those interests and shrank from any sacrifices, and not only failed to follow the Presidents’ lead but also failed to enact betters alternative Carter and Clinton could have lived with. And years later, while the next President will likely face immediate economic, fiscal, and foreign policy crises on a grand scale, these two issues remain the most important long-term domestic problems the country faces. This time, the Democratic Congress had better not blow it.

There is a moral issue behind most of the public policy issues at the federal, state and local levels, and even in the private sector: generational equity. Almost every decision, non-decision, deal and trend of the past 25 years has provided no reductions in benefits, or even more benefits, for older generations, while imposing additional burdens and sacrifices on younger generations, those who will be working and paying taxes, and in need of public services and benefits in the future. One finds generational inequities in the Social Security system, in government financed and subsidized health care, in public employee union pensions and other retiree benefits, in the wages and benefits of older and younger generations in the private sector, in the financing of maintenance of the public infrastructure, in energy and the status of the natural environment, and in the tax code. These are in addition to soaring on-the-books federal, state and local debts. In some cases a diminished future for younger generations has already arrived, and in some cases it is coming. And no one, not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not “liberals,” not “conservatives,” seems willing to point this out.

Imagine two parallel horizontal lines, one representing a philosophy of greater government intervention in people’s lives, and the other a philosophy of lesser intervention, but both applying their philosophy equally to everyone. The higher line could be called the social community philosophy, the lower the individual autonomy philosophy. Or imagine two points of view on what constitutes the good and moral life, one material, one spiritual. Those holding one point of view could be called the new Athenians, and the other the new Israelites. In that case I could respect either philosophy or point of view. Neither of these divisions, however, and indeed no universal philosophy or ideology at all, describes the Republican or Democratic parties today. Rather than two sets of principles of what is best for everyone, these parties for the most part represent two sets of interests seeking a better deal for their insiders at everyone else’s expense, and at the expense of the future and the younger generations who will live in it. The parallel lines are in fact vertical, not horizontal, with some feeling entitled to more out of government and others left with less, some forced to contribute more to government and others avoiding similar contributions.

If in New York City education the signposts to the future are easy to see, that is even more the cast in health care, where an institutional collapse is slowly grinding on even as health care spending escalates. For the shrinking number of people with access to benefits paid for by others, ever more services of greater or lesser value continue to be provided at greater and greater cost — to someone else — with no end in sight. Meanwhile, a larger and larger number of people are entitled to less and less. The one thing that could head off a retirement crisis caused by rising lifespans, moreover, is that rising obesity and diabetes could slash the age of death or disability of those without the health insurance benefits to combat it. Average American life expectancy could fall as a result, the way it did in the former Soviet Union after its institutions collapsed, unless the increasingly long lives to those with the good deals are enough to bring up the average compared with the majority. Moreover, those facing pre-mature disability are, by and large, also those without access to retirement benefits other than an oversubscribed Social Security system. So we could have two classes — one that has to go on working though unable, and one that is able to work but doesn’t have to, and gets to live on while not working, and consuming lots of health care, for a very long time.

A recent article on Bloomberg News demonstrates why I believe this recession will not be nearly as bad for most New Yorkers as the 1987 to 1992 or 2000 to 2003 recession in terms of their employment situation, but could be as bad as the 1970s for their standard of living and state and local taxes and services. “Jessica Walter didn't go to Harvard University to study cupcakes, but they're what she does since losing her job as a vice president in credit strategy at Bear Stearns Cos.,” the article reported. “’I want to teach kids to cook,’' said Walter, 27, who founded Cupcake Kids! in New York to provide birthday parties and cooking classes for children. `The goal is to have this be my full-time job and make enough to live.’'' Congratulations on joining the company of socially useful adults, Jessica! The bad news is that the impact of your work on society, as measured in dollars, is a lot smaller than it once was. The good news is there is a “plus” sign in front of it instead of a “minus.” The other bad news is that you and people like you, and your former firms, will be paying much less in taxes to the City and State of New York, who will now look to sacrifice someone else to make up for it.