The Absurdity of Our Current Political Discussion

Tax cuts for the rich: why is this what we are talking about?

The economic challenges we face are myriad and daunting. The unemployment rate is hovering near 10 percent. Our energy policy is stuck in the 20th century. We’ve got crumbling infrastructure all over the place. The budget is projected to remain badly out of balance. And perhaps most troubling, the middle class is barely keeping its head above water. Tax cuts for rich people address precisely none of these pressing issues. They would actually make matters worse in some cases.

Why, then, are we even discussing the possibility of cutting taxes for rich people? Is it because they’ve been hit particularly hard by the recession? Hardly. When the National Bureau of Economic Research announced recently that the Great Recession came to an end in June of last year that news must have come as quite a shock to the millions of Americans who are still out of work, working fewer hours for less pay, and struggling to make ends meet. But it probably didn’t surprise people at the top of the income ladder. They’ve been recovering quite nicely...

It should come as no surprise, then, that income inequality is fast approaching record levels. The richest 5 percent of Americans claimed almost 22 percent of all income in 2009, and the top fifth took home fully half of the nation’s income. The poorest fifth, meanwhile, earned just 3.4 percent of all the income, and the share of national income going to the vast middle dipped as well. Income inequality in 2009 was higher than at any point since at least 1967, according to one measure.

All those facts and figures reinforce what most people already know: The middle class took this recession right on the chin while the rich suffered no more than a glancing blow. And yet somehow in Washington the talk is all about tax cuts for rich people.

As I said in a recent post one of the big reasons we are talking about tax cuts for the rich is that almost all of our legislators in Washington are rich. The rich are their friends. The rich have easy access to Washington legislators, much easier than the middle class or poor. And so when they whine about their "high" taxes they get listened to.

Capitalism Works When...

It is heavily regulated. E.J. Dionne gets it right:

It is, indeed, naive to expect Wall Street to act as charitably as the Salvation Army, and you have to respect Fabulous Fab's brutal candor about this. Which brings us back to socialism.

Marx's predictions about the inevitable collapse of capitalism have been wrong so far because the system has worked reasonably well, thanks to the rules and redistributive programs established after the Great Depression.

The lesson is that the surest way to save capitalism is to regulate it in the public interest. The surest way to create socialists is for everyone to experience the economic consequences of counting only on the goodness in the hearts of Mr. Potter and Fabrice Tourre.

It was the unwinding of the post-Depression financial regulations, which allowed the free hand of the market to run loose, that brought us the worst recession since the Great Depression. There is a classic lesson here about human nature and it always amazes me that conservatives who supposedly believe in the lessons of human nature don't believe they apply in the economic arena. Or they don't care.

Capitalism only works well when it is heavily regulated by the government.

The Church and Social Justice

The Washington Post On Faith section is currently featuring a discussion about Glenn Beck's recent statement that Christians should flee churches where social justice is featured. Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler comes to Beck's defense:

My concern is very different. As an evangelical Christian, my concern is the primacy of the Gospel of Christ -- the Gospel that reveals the power of God in the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church's main message must be that Gospel. The New Testament is stunningly silent on any plan for governmental or social action. The apostles launched no social reform movement. Instead, they preached the Gospel of Christ and planted Gospel churches. Our task is to follow Christ's command and the example of the apostles.

The New Testament is stunningly silent on any plan for government or social action. Interesting response. Yes it is true that the New Testament writers don't have much to say about a government plan for social justice. Their government was the pagan Roman Empire and and in the eyes of the empire Christians were a new and suspicious religious movement. Government leaders did not recognize Christianity as legitimate; there was occasional government sanctioned persecution of Christians. The message of the NT writers was either lay low and don't make trouble or pray for the day when Jesus will return and punish the great whore Babylon. It is entirely unsurprising to find the NT silent on any plan for government social action.

What about the Old Testament, though. What about the prophets who railed against religious and political leaders for their injustice? They certainly had a vision for government social action on behalf of the poor and widows. Why isn't that pertinent to the discussion of whether Christians who now find themselves with a political voice and access to political power shouldn't use their voice and power to establish justice through government action? I am always confused about how some evangelical Christians pick and choose their moments to look to the Hebrew Bible for support.

And then there is Mohler's next sentence: The apostles launched no social reform movement. Read this passage from Acts:

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

This sounds a lot like a social reform movement to me. It sounds a lot like a socialist reform movement to me. It sounds like the kind of reform movement you would launch when there is no government sponsored social safety net and you are on your own. It also sounds like a template you might then transfer to the government when, lo and behold, you one day find yourself running it.

I think it is fair to say that early Christians felt a divine imperative to implement social justice reforms within their movement. I think if Rodney Stark is correct they not only did a good job of taking care of their own but they extended that care and hospitality to pagans and this helped win converts to the movement.

But I do not think it is fair to say that because the NT is silent on government-run social welfare programs that Christians should oppose them. There is a Christian social justice imperative rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and reinforced in the NT. There is an explicit reference to ends but not means. We ought to be open, then, to whatever is the most effective method of carrying out that imperative. The unparalleled success of Social Security of lifting the burden of poverty from seniors is but one example of social justice done well by the government, and done in a much more comprehensive way than any patchwork of church charities could ever do. Thanks to liberals, including liberal Christians. Thanks to liberals, including liberal Christians the same will soon be true of health care.

Al Mohler is wrong. Walter Rauschenbusch was right.

Everything Is Already Made In China

Nobel Prize winning economist/NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman has been arguing that the Chinese government is severely undervaluing its currency and that this is contributing to the worldwide recession. Krugman says, among other things, that the unbalanced flow of cheap Chinese exports to America would be balanced out with more American goods going to China - if the Chinese currency were fairly priced. I don't pretend to understand all of the economic arguments here, but I was reading a rebuttal in Forbes.com by a Chinese businessman and Forbes contributor Shaun Reign and was amused by this response:

Krugman believes appreciation would allow the Chinese people to buy more American exports. But what American exports? Everything is already made in China. America exported its manufacturing jobs years ago.

Good Housekeeping

Via Rod Dreher I came upon this very good speech by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the economy. Here is a sample:

'Economy' is simply the Greek word for 'housekeeping'. Remembering this is a useful way of getting things in proportion, so that we don't lose sight of the fact that economics is primarily about the decisions we make so as to create a habitat that we can actually live in. We are still haunted by the dogma that the economic world, 'economic realities', economic motivations and so on belong in a completely different frame of reference from the sort of human decisions we usually make and from considerations of how we build a place to live. And to speak about building a place to live, a habitat, reminds us too that we look for an environment that is stable, 'sustainable' in the popular jargon, a home that we can reasonably expect will be an asset for the next generation.

Economics understood in abstraction from all this is not just an academic error: it actually dismantles the walls of the home. Appealing to the market as an independent authority, unconnected with human decisions about 'housekeeping', has meant in many contexts over the last few decades a ruinous legacy for heavily indebted countries, large-scale and costly social disruption even in developed economies; and, most recently, the extraordinary phenomena of a financial trading world in which the marketing of toxic debt became the driver of money-making – until the bluffs were all called at the same time.

If we are not to be caught indefinitely in a trap we have designed for ourselves, we have to ask what an economy would look like if it were genuinely focused on making and sustaining a home – a social environment that offered security for citizens, including those who could not contribute in obvious ways to productive and profit-making business, an environment in which we felt free to forego the tempting fantasies of unlimited growth in exchange for the knowledge that we could hand on to our children and grandchildren a world, a social and material nexus of relations that would go on nourishing proper three-dimensional human beings – people whose family bonds, imaginative lives and capacity for mutual understanding and sympathy were regarded as every bit as important as their material prosperity.

Practically speaking, this means that both at the individual and the national level we have to question what we mean by 'growth'. The ability to produce more and more consumer goods (not to mention financial products) is in itself an entirely mechanical measure of wealth. It sets up the vicious cycle in which it is necessary all the time to create new demand for goods and thus new demands on a limited material environment for energy sources and raw materials. By the hectic inflation of demand it creates personal anxiety and rivalry. By systematically depleting the resources of the planet, it systematically destroys the basis for long-term well-being. In a nutshell, it is investing in the wrong things.

The whole speech given as a keynote address at an economics conference in London is a good read. I must admit that I am somewhat torn on the issue of what kind of economic growth we need. On the one hand I think it is beyond dispute that if the rest of the world grew in the manner that the US economy has grown it would mean the environmental degradation of the planet. On the other hand lots of people are out of work right now including friends of mine. We need some kind of economic growth to put people back to work.

I read lots about small-scale, environmentally friendly, self-sustaining, economic growth and it all sounds very attractive and ethical. I am all for stepping off of the mindless, dispiriting consumer train of endless addictive growth that also despoils the plant. But how a better way gets implemented on a large scale that avoids massive unemployment and dislocation isn't clear to me. On the other (third?) hand, our current way of living is no guarantee that we won't see massive unemployment and dislocation. So maybe it is time to give "another way of living" a try.

Victory Gardens

Last night fellow church member Veda Kanitz and I attended a workshop on community gardens at Dakota Tech. The Dakota County Health Department is making grants available next year to organizations to start or expand community gardens. It is perfect timing for us at Open Circle as a community garden is one of the next phases of our landscaping overhaul at church. I would say based on what I heard last night that we have an excellent chance of getting a grant.

During last night's presentation mention was made of Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, one of the few continuing Victory Gardens in the United States. When this was said a man sitting next to me, just slightly younger than me, asked: "what is a Victory Garden?" The older-than-me man sitting on my opposite side replied that he was "too young to know."

Well, I am too young to remember Victory Gardens, but I have been using a Victory Garden Cookbook for more than 20 years, and used to watch the PBS show regularly as we once upon a time had a large vegetable garden.

Victory Gardens were begun during World War I and it is said that during Word War II there were nearly 20 million Victory Gardens in the country that provided more than a third of the produce the nation consumed.

Like many Americans our family is rediscovering the virtues of vegetable gardening. As our home yard is full of perennials and shrubs, we have been gardening on a small plot at church, as have a few other families. The community garden would allow us to open this up to the neighborhood. In particular we would have a chance to offer plots to some of the lower income families who live in the neighborhood around the church.

We need Victory Gardens again. A home or community garden not only provides fresh produce, but it cuts down on dependence on food that is shipped from across the country and world. It saves oil. It makes us more self-sustaining. It gets our hands dirty in a good way. It builds community. If that isn't a recipe for Victory I don't know what is.

Forbes on Moore on Capitalism

Michael Moore says capitalism has to go. Michael Maiello, writing in Forbes, says Moore is partly right:

In practicing what we call capitalism, America has recently been missing the point. Our current system isn't eliminating scarcity and poverty; it's causing scarcity for most people and delivering extreme prosperity to a powerful minority. More than 85% of the financial wealth of the U.S. is held by 20% of the population, says G. William Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Over the last decade, wages for most have fallen against very low inflation even as productivity and profits have risen.

We overwhelmingly support unequal outcomes so long as there's something resembling a fair (but not level) playing field. We're fine with rich kids having material and social advantages over poor kids. We just ask that the game not be actively rigged against people. So long as the law doesn't favor Best Buy ( BBY - news - people ) over Circuit City ( CC - news - people ), we can accept that Circuit City will go into bankruptcy and be sold to an online retailer while its former rival moves into its empty storefronts.

But our laws aren't applied equally or fairly. Underneath the Trinity Church in Manhattan's financial district there's a magic revolving door. If you go into it and run fast enough it'll let you out either at 1 Wall, K Street or Pennsylvania Avenue (sometimes it gets stuck and you wind up running into the World Bank).

...The argument for capitalism is that nimble, clever and brave entrepreneurs acting out of self-interest will lead humanity away from want and scarcity. It's hard to see how international conglomerates bribing politicians at home and abroad, exploiting cheap labor and loose environmental standards around the world and depending on the implicit and sometime explicit support of the U.S. military really compares to the capitalist ideal.

I think Moore's a little too flip about how important it is for people to be free to chase their fortunes. Some take Moore's own financial success as irony. I see it as hopeful. We need more Michael Moores. But we don't get them in a system where, say, the telecom, television and radio industries are difficult to disrupt because only the largest companies can afford access to a spectrum that's supposed to be held in the public trust...

If you want a system that encourages more plucky entrepreneurs like Michael Moore then you have to do some things that the big corporations won't like. We need access to higher education that doesn't depend on crushing student loan debt. We need, as Franklin Roosevelt suggested, to look at health care as a right not a perk provided by an employer or a service to be bought and sold. We need a strong enough social safety net so that the risk of failing in an entrepreneurial venture isn't life-crushing penury. Ultimately, we need to take all the love and care that we give to big corporations and transfer that to individuals.

The problem with the right-wing defenders of capitalism is that they don't really believe in free-market capitalism. They believe in big business, which is the only player that has the resources to fund teams of lobbyists and contribute endless sums of money to the system to make sure their interests are taken care of.

Not all of us are fine with a playing field that isn't level and rich kids having material and social advantages over poor kids. What ever happened to the idea of merit? How about a system where a kid can't get into an Ivy League school unless he is smart enough to be there. Or a system where an Ivy League graduate who fails at every job he is handed in his life can't be considered a serious candidate to be President of the United States. One of capitalism's biggest recent failures. (Yes it was economic as much as political: the worst President money could buy) In any case...

I think capitalism is the best economic system we know for unleashing creativity and allowing individuals the opportunity to ply their craft and lift themselves up intellectually and materially. When it works the way Adam Smith talked about it, it's not only economically but spiritually liberating.

But Adam Smith never dreamed of multinational corporations that move jobs around the globe to find the cheapest labor. Smith never dreamed of AIG or Exxon. Smith's capitalism was small scale. Smith assumed there would be spiritually-based (Christian) self restraint and concern for the plight of other humans. He assumed a moral framework in the culture for capitalism that no longer exists.

Thus the need for a strong government with regulatory powers and a healthy social safety net that provides health care for all. Power bumping chest to chest with power. It's the only way to rescue capitalism from the people who control the money and practice crony capitalism and corporate welfare and keep the "free market" from being anything resembling free.

I look forward to seeing Moore's movie.

We Need a Populist Movement

I find myself agreeing with this position:

The Obama ''trickle down'' is, sadly, not all that different from the Bush-Paulson strategy. Like its predecessor, it endorses the bailout of giant financial institutions as the linchpin of its economic policy. It is, simultaneously, profoundly anti-democratic and anti-capitalist.

Other aspects of the Obama policy seem likely to prop up Wall Street traders at the expense of the rest of us. The administration's big ''cap and trade'' proposals could prove more advantageous to well-heeled ''carbon traders'' than to the environment. The other big winners may be Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who-- increasingly bereft of their own ideas for making money--hope to cash in on Washington-subsidized energy schemes.

Of course, not all Democrats have sold out. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and John Tester, D-Mont., have expressed opposition to bailing out ''too big to fail'' institutions. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been fearless in unveiling the enormous Wall Street bonuses--over $32.6 billion last year-- handed out as firms suffered $81 billion in losses and almost drove the world economy to ruin.

Unfortunately, these are exceptions. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin recently admitted that the banks remain ''the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,'' adding that they ''frankly own the place.''

So far in 2009 the Democrats have netted nearly 60% of all campaign contributions that have come from the financial industry, now the largest sector in terms of donations. The biggest donations have gone to such influential Democrats as Sen. Charles Schumer and his sidekick, newly appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, from New York; Sen. Chris Dodd D-Conn., and Majority Leader Harry Reid D-Nev. Schumer, the Street's leading vassal in Congress, has emerged as the rising star in the Democratic leadership. If Majority Leader Reid loses his seat--as is now possible, according to polls in Nevada--Wall Street's main man could well end up a future Majority Leader.

Some Democrats try to have it both ways, playing populists for the peanut galleries but getting cozy with the industry when it matters. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, the House Financial Services Chairman, talks tough but has a history of friendly relations with financial powerhouses. One of Frank's own top assistants, Michael Pease, just went to work for the biggest winner since taking TARP bucks, Goldman Sachs. As left-winger blogger Glenn Greenwald put it recently: ''The only way they can make it more blatant is if they hung a huge Goldman Sachs banner on the Capitol dome and branded it onto the foreheads of leading members of Congress and executive branch officials.''

In the end the faux populist Democrats end up with policies that make Ronald Reagan's ''trickle down'' seem downright Leninist. Harry Truman once quipped that ''There should be a real liberal party in this country, and I don't mean a crackpot professional one.'' Sadly, it's increasingly the latter.

The hypocrisy should open a path for the Republicans as wide as the Grand Canyon. But the ill-named Party of Lincoln still seems to think that the path to power lies in the tired old formula of ultra-patriotism, guns, abortion and religious rectitude. Screaming ''socialism'' may awaken the spirits of some on the old right, but it's hard to make a convincing case when George Bush socialized banking and grew the deficit.

You certainly can't trust big-business conservatives to stop bonuses for the TARP babies, particularly the 25 financial firms deemed ''too big to fail'' by the likes of Ben Benanke. Give GOP big-business leaders higher stock prices, and they will follow you anywhere. Only a few--such as Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa,--have shown they are truly serious about the free market or defending the interests of the regular taxpayer.

Given this sad political picture, the best hope now is to build an alternative perspective that focuses on the basic economic issues. This would not be the media celebrated movement of moderates--Democrats-lite and Republicans-lite--who seek kumbaya through compromise. It would, instead, require a radical third tendency--neither strictly left or right--that would draw on long-term American priorities and values.

These new radicals would focus on basic issues like improving infrastructure, and primary education and bolstering the nation's productive economy. Their inspiration would come from a long tradition of federal successes--from the Homestead Act and the WPA to the Interstate Highway and the space program. They would view the financial crisis not as an imperative for protecting the well-connected but for financial reform, decentralization and innovation.

Such an approach would address what the British author Austin Williams calls our ''poverty of ambition.'' Americans historically have rejected a future constrained by entrenched hierarchies. Most, I believe, would support spending money and paying taxes, if it was spent to achieve big things that would lead to a greater, more widespread prosperity and opportunity.

Just imagine if the upward of $1 trillion spent guaranteeing Goldman Sachs and Citigroup executives giant paydays had instead gone into roads, bridges, subways, buses, port development, skills training, energy transmission lines and basic scientific research. And imagine if instead of protecting Citigroup and Bank of America, we encouraged stronger local banks and solvent financial entrepreneurs to fill the breach left behind by gross failures.

It has made all the difference in the world having a Democrat in the White House directing our foreign policy. No more crazy neo-cons starting wars on false pretenses and planning and hoping for a half dozen more. Sane policies and a touch of humility on the world stage have made the world a safer place for everyone.

But in domestic politics I think the difference is not so much. It will make a difference on health care reform because with Republicans in charge it would simply never happen. But we won't get the radical reform we need for the simple reason that Congress is in bed with the pharmaceuticals and HMO's and insurance companies and physicians and everyone else who has grown rich off of the dysfunctional system we have now.

Same with the financial industry. They own the place. A trillion dollars to bail them out and nothing changes. Big bonuses for those who are adept at moving money around - but not 'down' to the small businesses that need loans or homeowners who are going under. The rich get richer and another long jobless recovery begins where everyone who isn't rich doesn't feel very much like anything has recovered at all.

But thank God we have Wal-Mart!

I think there is something to be said for taking as much money out of the big economy as possible and supporting local businesses and farms and co-ops. And... supporting small operators in emerging economies through micro-loans and SERRV and Ten Thousand Villages.

Politically we need a real populist movement that isn't nativist and fear-based ala Lou Dobbs, but one that focuses on support for decentralized and local economies in combination with a robust federally funded government that takes care of the big items like health care and infrastructure where bigger really is better. What we don't need any more are the too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions and the politicians who answer first to them.

I am very glad that Obama is President and that Democrats are in charge of Congress. But having them in power just shines a light on how deeply tilted our political system is in favor of the very rich. We need to save them from themselves and remind them of who voted for them and why.

Unalloted in Minnesota

I listened to Governor Tim Pawlenty today as he announced his specific proposals for unallotting government funded programs like aid to cities and counties and money for healthcare funding for the poor. The Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled legislature were unable to agree on a way to balance the budget for the next 2 years. The Dems proposed raising taxes and the Governor vetoed their bills. Therefore, a MN statute allows the governor to unilaterally balance the budget by de-funding programs.

The Governor said repeatedly in his talk that just as Minnesota families were tightening their budgets in the face of the recession, so the government should do the same.

This kind of thinking sounds perfectly reasonable but is totally wrong. Imagine if the federal government took that approach. Our deep recession would quickly turn into another great depression. Now is precisely the time when the government needs to step up spending to employ more people and keep the economy from going into a free-fall.

The states cannot fund their budgets with deficit spending like the federal government can, but they can raise taxes to maintain services. Minnesota DFLers (our particular version of Dems) proposed a slight tax increase on the wealthiest Minnesotans along with some small budget cuts in order to balance the budget. The governor, who is now essentially running for President, wouldn't hear of it.

Instead, funding to colleges, hospitals, cities and counties will be cut. People will lose their jobs, thus deepening the state's financial difficulties. State budget belt-tightening in a recession sounds so reasonable but is totally counter-productive.

Bush's Deficit, Obama's Problem

A New York Times article today shows that no matter what Republicans may be claiming now, the exploding budget deficit can still be laid squarely at the feet of former President Bush:

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

Obama's stimulus package is responsible for only 7% of that swing, his spending proposals on items like healthcare and the environment another 3%. The rest of it is the result of policies hatched by Bush and an economic downturn largely caused by Bush.

Nevertheless, it is now Obama's problem and as the article points out he hasn't really started to address it yet. Nor have the Republicans whose own suggested fixes would only make the deficit worse.

Any solution is almost certainly going to include reigning-in entitlements - my entitlements, as a 50-year old baby-boomer who knows that his retirement benefits are going to need to take a hit. Thank God for my Church of the Brethren pension! That was a joke, son.

But I also hope that part of the solution to the deficit problem comes in the form of a significant gasoline tax. A big gas tax would not only help pay for the deficit but it would also make a dent in the global warming crisis. And, I can't imagine the bailouts of Chrysler and GM and their forced retooling to make smaller, more fuel-efficient cars making any sense unless gas prices are a lot higher. Who is going to buy these small cars if gas is cheap? I would imagine that $5 a gallon is going to need to be the floor to get us to the kind of psychological shift that really changes driving and buying habits. We are going to need a gas tax to get us there.

The Resurrection of Jimmy Carter

In the last few days I have seen two bloggers, conservative Rod Dreher and progressive Kevin Mattson, recall and praise Jimmy Carter's famous (or infamous) "malaise" speech and lay claim to it as a conservative, no progressive, statement of values.

You may recall that Carter delivered the speech to a national television audience on July 15, 1979. The country was in the midst of a national energy crisis. Carter had cut short a vacation after truckers and residents had rioted in Levittown, PA to protest fuel costs and rampant inflation. Carter came home and called a national summit of leaders to talk about the country's challenges. Ten days later he delivered the speech. In it he said:

I know, of course, being president, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

He suggested that there were two possible paths ahead:

...One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

He then proposed a series of steps to be taken to address the energy crisis. These steps included finding and using more domestic sources of energy. including both drilling and the expansion of solar power, and he called for major conservation efforts. He challenged every person to make personal sacrifices to use less energy and he called on the Legislature to bring him legislation mandating various forms of conservation.

So was it a conservative speech or a progressive speech?

Here is conservative Dreher at Beliefnet:

This was not the speech of some America-hating leftist. Carter did not try to tear down the country, he simply wanted it to come together and direct itself toward a goal other than unlimited growth or unending progress. As Andrew Bacevich points out in The New American Militarism, the president recognized the high cost of empire:

In July of 1979, Carter already anticipated that a continuing and unchecked thirst for imported oil was sure to distort U.S. strategic priorities with unforeseen but adverse consequences. He feared the impact of that distortion on American democracy still reeling from the effects of the 1960s. So he summoned his fellow citizens to change course, to choose self-sufficiency and self-reliance and therefore true independence but at a cost of collective sacrifice and lowered expectations.

Self-sufficiency, discipline, sacrifice, conservation, independence, the striving for meaning and purpose beyond material wealth. All of these characteristics were once associated with conservatism, and they were all part of a speech given by a man who was naval officer, farmer and large landowner, small businessman, Sunday school teacher, and Southerner. Does this not sound the background of a conservative?

Here is progressive Mattson at The American Prospect:

You might have heard that the speech was a disaster. That it was all about Jimmy Carter, the "loser" president, shirking his responsibilities. Sean Wilentz writes in The Age of Reagan, "Carter appeared to be abdicating his role as leader and blaming the people themselves for their own afflictions." This interpretation is repeated countless times in history textbooks.

But in fact, the speech worked. It prompted an overwhelmingly favorable response. Carter received a whopping 11 percent rise in his poll numbers. The mail that poured into the White House testified that many citizens felt moved by the speech. One man wrote to Carter, "You are the first politician that [sic] has said the words that I have been thinking for years. Last month I purchased a moped to drive to work with. I plan to use it as much as possible, and by doing so I have cut my gas consumption by 75%."

In the end, Jimmy Carter did blow the situation, but it wasn't because of the speech itself. Rather, he blew the opportunity that the speech opened up for him. Just two days after July 15, Carter fired his Cabinet, signifying a governmental meltdown. The president's poll numbers sank again as confusion and disarray took over. Carter could give a great speech, but there were two things he couldn't manage: to govern well enough to make his language buoy him or to find a way to yoke the energy crisis with concrete civic re-engagement initiatives. Though Americans were inspired by the speech, many were still stumped as to what was expected of them. As Time magazine described it: "The President basked in the applause for a day and then set in motion his astounding purge, undoing much of the good he had done himself."

Short-term losses, though, sometimes hide long-term opportunities. Today that language of civic sacrifice resonates even more powerfully, after eight years of conservative rule grounded in talk about the virtues of free markets and self-interest. Carter's vision of humbled leadership and engaged citizenship also contrasts nicely with the hubris of George W. Bush. A vision of government and citizens working together to overcome a crisis might offer progressives a way to set realistic expectations about what government can and cannot do. It would seem that our current president has started to learn that lesson.

What strikes me after reading Carter's speech again and then the comments of Dreher and Mattson is how in modern understanding both terms conservative and liberal has become unmoored from their meaningful roots.

What does it mean to be a conservative today? For the last eight years it has meant letting the financial markets run free so the rich can get richer and it has meant using America's military power to extend its empire under the guise of defending freedom and promoting democracy in the world. What is conservative about any of that? "Free markets" is a core conservative value, but where in the free market orgy that we have recently experienced were the values of thrift, self-discipline, conservation, sacrifice, honor? These were once known as conservative values too. And where in the Iraq misadventure was any sense of the limits of power, any acknowledgment that fallen human nature cannot just be remade with guns and money? Nothing so demonstrated George Bush's unhingement from anything conservative when he championed a free election in Palestine and then was surprised that the democratically elected government turned out to be Hamas. Democracy doesn't just happen with an election. Any conservative knows this. Culture and tradition can't just be changed overnight.

To their credit progressives have historically been consistent champions of personal freedom. Civil Rights for minorities, equal rights for women, gay rights, workers rights, etc. At its best the progressive vision has worked to remove barriers to equal access and level the playing field so that everyone has an opportunity. But an opportunity to do what? To shop? To have bigger homes and cars and TVs? Too often the progressive message has lacked a connection with a larger vision that we are trying to build something worthwhile here. We are removing shackles and barriers so we can build heaven on earth, so we can create more healthy communities, a more livable planet, a more just social order. But when individual freedom is detached from social vision, we are free to check out and watch TV. Community service and civic engagement are core progressive values. It takes a village to raise a child, but the villagers have to come out of their homes.

It isn't surprising to me that a conservative and a progressive would both claim Jimmy Carter as one of their own. He was both conservative and progressive. He embodied the conservative values Rod Dreher named: "self-sufficiency, discipline, sacrifice, conservation, independence, the striving for meaning and purpose beyond material wealth." But he also believed in the progressive vision that we could put those conservative values to work to bring meaningful and lasting change to our society. He supported the onward march of personal freedom and continued to work tirelessly long after he left the White House to give others the chance to have a piece of the economic and political pie. But the key here is that although he was free himself he continued to work on behalf of the others. Personal freedom connected to social vision.

In any case I am glad to see Jimmy Carter getting another hearing. His 1976 presidential campaign was the first one I worked on and it pained me to watch him be tarred and feathered as his presidency wore on. I have long since come to see that he was not a great President; he was not just a victim of circumstances beyond his control like the hostage crisis that finally undid him. He had a good vision of where the country needed to go, but he lacked the skills to move that vision forward. He ran a brilliant campaign in 1975 but he did not run a brilliant White House. The "malaise" speech, though, was brilliant; it was the follow-up that wasn't.

Stock markets seem to not be sold on Obama

That's the headline up right now on MSNBC. I just tuned into the national news on ABC and listened to Charlie Gibson say essentially the same thing: Wall Street isn't reacting well to Obama. CNN has been all over this as well. Interestingly, I just watched Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and he talked about this too (it isn't up on the web yet). But here's my question: why is it that it is only on the comedy show that we actually get some perspective about this story? Stewart actually showed graphs with the stock market reaction to the policies of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan; the markets tanked. Conversely, when the Titanic sank the market took off. Stewart's point being that gauging the success or failure of a President by the stock market isn't very helpful. But again: why is it that I only get this perspective from a comedy show? Stewart did the same thing last night with Rick Santelli and CNBC and their ranting about the homeowner bailout. Santelli has had nothing to say about the hundreds of billions being shoveled into the financial sector, where he makes his living, but makes a public spectacle when a small portion of that money is going to help homeowners. Stewart's piece was great, but it was great because it was funny and very informative. Unlike CNN, CNBC, or ABC.

The stock market is tanking because the ponzi scheme being run by our country's financial sector is finally being fully exposed. The market is actually reacting correctly to the financial truth about AIG and Citicorp and GM, among others. They are worthless and there is no hiding it anymore. They may be too big to fail and we may have to bail them out, but their management and boards of directors and investors should not be bailed out. The market can see this coming too. It's their pals and it's them and it isn't going to be pretty.

Deep Economy

My newsletter post this week:

I wouldn't wish this recession with its job losses and suffering on anyone. There is nothing good about it. I have heard a few pastoral colleagues essentially welcoming it because it brings people into the church. But it is a weak and insecure church that welcomes suffering because it fills the pews. We want people to have jobs and homes and healthcare.

Here we are, though. The economy is contracting and everyone, rich and poor, is being affected. President Obama has recently talked about the need to "reset" diplomatic relations with a variety of countries. Perhaps it is also time to revisit our values and reset our priorities.

Recently I have been reading a book called Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. McKibben addresses what he calls the "single-minded focus on increasing wealth" that has "driven the planet's ecological systems to the brink of failure, without making us happier."

How we got to this point is pretty obvious, he says:

We kept doing something past the point where it worked. Since happiness has increased with income in the past, we assumed it would do so in the future. We make these kinds of mistakes regularly: two beers make me feel good, so ten beers will make me feel five times better. But this case was particularly extreme and easy to understand, because human beings have spent so much of their history trying to satisfy basic needs... Consider, say, America in 1820, two generations after Adam Smith. The average American earned, in current dollars, less than $1,500, which is somewhere near the current African average. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey explains, "Your great-great-great grandmother had one dress for church and one for the week, if she were not in rags. Her children did not attend school, and probably could not read. She and her husband worked eighty hours a week for a diet of bread and milk-they were four inches shorter than you." Even in 1900, the average American lived in a house the size of today's typical garage. Is it any wonder, then, that we built up a considerable velocity trying to escape the gravitational pull of that kind of poverty?

But then, thanks to the genius of the free market wedded with the wonders of technology, we suddenly blew past a way of life that had marked our ancestors' lot for centuries. Good riddance. Life was better. People were happier. We don't want to go back to those days.

But we never slowed down. Everything kept getting bigger and bigger: our homes, cars, meals, our pile of toys, and our environmental footprint. We supersized everything. And we long ago passed the point where making more and having more could make us more happy. We know, too, that there is no way the mothership Earth can take the rest of the world living the way we have lived.

Now we are being forced to slow down. As I said at the beginning it isn't "good for us." People are suffering; they don't know how they are going to feed their families. We want the economy to recover and soon.

But as we recover we have an opportunity here to make choices about how we live our lives and where and how much we spend our money. Community, friendship, spiritual well-being don't take much money but they do take time and effort that can actually bring us happiness. Building a sustainable world with a healthy environment, making the world more just and peaceful take both time and money. But it is time and money well-spent. We don't want "no" economic growth. We want smart, sustainable, and slower economic growth that lifts all boats and takes care of the planet.

Over the next year you are going to be hearing much more about sustainability at the church. We are going to be studying sustainability in adult ed, actually working to make our own piece of land on Highland Drive more sustainable (and beautiful), hearing me and some guest speakers talk about it. It is a teachable moment. I hope and trust we will all use it well.

Obama's Going to Kill the Church

Over at the Christianity Today blog I see that some conservatives are worried that Obama's big government plans are going to be bad news for the church:

Not surprisingly, the historical and sociological record suggests that when the state addresses most of the physical and financial needs of people, or when individuals are wealthy enough to care for those needs entirely on their own, that people are less likely to turn to God, their local church, charities, or their families for help, direction, and consolation.

This is why in some important respects the Church is healthier in Nairobi than it is in New York, or in Lagos than it is Los Angeles. In these African cities, the Church—and faith—is more likely to take, by force of necessity, a wholistic approach to ministering to the human person. In stable, affluent societies the Church is often reduced to a therapeutic role in people’s lives. Any my worry is that a successful Obama revolution would only deepen that pattern in the United States, and reduce the size and vitality of the Christian faith in the process.

What is being suggested here is that the church needs a little (or a lot of) suffering in order to thrive. While it is certainly true that the church (or mosque) does well in parts of the world where human suffering is greater, and it does better in this country when the economy tanks, it is a weak and insecure church that depends on and perhaps quietly welcomes trouble so the pews will be filled.

Jesus said "blessed are the poor." He did not say blessed is poverty. I imagine that Jesus would endorse whatever system best alleviates poverty and human suffering. When there was no welfare state churches stepped into the void and cared for widows and orphans, created hospitals, and fed the poor. But today there is a welfare state and it has the potential to feed, protect, and care for our physical needs in a manner far more efficient than churches. We should welcome a robust state that sees it as an essential part of its mission to take the rough edges off of capitalism and make sure that no one lives in poverty, everyone has adequate healthcare.

If the church needs suffering to thrive, then the church deserves to die. Ditto for the notion that without fear of eternal punishment there will be no one left in the pews. There is plenty of heart, mind, and spirit left to speak to without relying on suffering, fear, or guilt.

Making it at Wal-Mart

Aubretia Edick is 58 and works in the pharmacy department of a Wal-Mart in Hudson, New York. Edick's starting pay was $6.40 in 2001; today it is $10.50. With inflation factored in, her wages have basically remained stagnant. She is among several profiled in a Mother Jones story America on $195 a Week. It's not just about Wal-Mart but since the big-box retailer is the largest in America, it features prominently in the story:

In essence, the nation's biggest employers of unskilled labor often leave workers having to feed from the public trough. In 2004, a year in which Wal-Mart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the retailer's California employees collected $86 million in public assistance, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. Other studies have revealed widespread use of publicly funded health care by Wal-Mart employees in numerous states. In 2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee calculated that each 200-employee Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers an average of more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy-assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that provides food to low-income women with children.

When Obama unveils his proposals for healthcare reform and universal coverage, I sure hope Wal-Mart is a big public supporter. We are already subsidizing their business big-time.

If Governors Reject Stimulus Money

Some Republican governors are making noise about not taking stimulus money:

Though none has outright rejected the money available for education, health care and infrastructure, the governors of Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alaska, South Carolina and Idaho have all questioned whether the $787 billion bill signed into law this week will even help the economy.

In the end they will take it because their states are hurting too. But wouldn't it be interesting to have a few states take no money and see how they fare compared to those states who take the money. No money for road construction; no extended unemployment benefits. Then we'd have some sort of measuring stick for how much good the stimulus is doing.

I'm a Social Democrat

Sheri Berman has a great article in Dissent Magazine on the history of leftist movement in response to capitalism. The very short synopsis: Marx thought capitalism served an important purpose in bringing to an end a feudal economic system. But he also thought it was a transitional phase on the way to communism. Lenin decided to help the transition along by using force. The rest of the left recoiled at the violence of communism but was split about whether capitalism still needed to die (democratic socialists) or whether capitalism was a good economic system but needed the state to protect its citizens against the worst excesses of Laissez-faire economics (social democrats) as championed by classic liberalism or modern American conservatism.

I think the evidence is clear that capitalism is unmatched in its ability to lift people out of poverty. It is equally clear, though, that the unchecked invisible hand of the market leads to vast inequality of wealth and power. Conservatives don't care of course; it's survival of the fittest or the will of God for them. I do care. I think in a global economy the state needs to be big and powerful and that it needs to use its muscle to police for the cheaters (and aren't they being forced out of the woodwork right now) and to provide a strong social safety network so that basic needs are taken care of for all citizens. This means that those who have succeeded or been fortunate (by birth) under capitalism need to pay a larger share of taxes to level the playing field. How much is always the big political question. You don't want to stifle the entrepreneurial spirit but you also don't want create a social situation that is so intolerable for the poor that they either give up or rise up in rebellion.

For awhile now in America the invisible hand has been allowed to move without adequate regulation or redistribution and inequality and cheating has been growing. The result is the mess we are in now. Hopefully we will seize this moment of crisis and reintroduce some needed regulations and take care of some serious problems, like our woeful healthcare system. We need some form of universal healthcare.

But we also don't want to go the xenophobic Lou Dobbs route of closing the borders to immigration and buying only American. We want the best and brightest to want to come to America. We want the tired and the poor to have a chance to make it here. We also want the Indians and the Chinese to buy our goods and sell theirs here. We want to lift all boats.

Capitalism can make this happen. With the power of the state to soften its hard edges.

Fondly Do We Hope...

...fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war economic turmoil may speedily pass away. From Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

One wonders what Lincoln would have to say about our precipitous economic decline.

A Moderate Republican

Susan Collins of Maine is one of the "moderate" Republicans working with a group of moderate Senators to make the stimulus bill more palatable to some Senators. Here is the kind of change she wants to make to the bill:

She proposed eliminating money in the bill for K-12 education while boosting funding for Pentagon operations, facilities and procurement by $13 billion.

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

Why Tax Cuts Won't Cut It

Robert Reich talks some sense about why government spending is so much more effective than tax cuts at this moment:

First, most people who receive a tax cut don't spend all of it. They use part of it to pay down their debts or they save it. Most of us did one or the other last spring with that tax rebate. From the standpoint of any particular individual, paying down debts or saving may be smart behavior -- even commendable. But what's intelligent for an individual does not necessarily translate into what's good for the economy as a whole. The only way to get businesses to create or preserve jobs is through additional spending. And unlike tax cuts used to pay down personal debt or add to savings, every dollar of government spending flows directly into the economy and adds to overall demand.

Second, even that portion of a tax cut we might actually spend doesn't necessarily go into the American economy. It goes all over the world. I have nothing against creating or preserving the jobs of Asians who assemble those flat-panel TVs you see at the mall, for example, but right now we're trying to create or preserve jobs here in America. Sure, the retail workers at the mall who sell the flat-panel TV's might benefit, but remember we're talking about how to get the biggest bang for every dollar. When government spends to repair a highway or build a school or help pay for medical services, the money and the jobs stay here in America.

Finally, those who say cutting taxes on businesses is the best way to create or preserve jobs forget about the demand side. Even with a tax cut, businesses won't hire workers unless there are customers to buy what those workers produce. A government stimulus that creates jobs is a necessary precondition.

Every cent of our last stimulus check went to paying bills and debt. Every cent of any new stimulus check we get will go in the same direction. We are glad for the money and sorry we won't be spending it to help the economy. But that is the reality of our economic situation. My guess is you can multiply that thinking by millions.