{"id":10497,"date":"2011-07-29T12:06:21","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T12:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/29\/the-debt-debate\/"},"modified":"2011-07-29T12:06:21","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T12:06:21","slug":"the-debt-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/29\/the-debt-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Debt Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

A U.K. commenter remarks:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Meanwhile, changing the subject completely, I fail to understand the game of 'chicken' that the two houses are playing over debt. (Wasn't there a James Dean film that started that way, with bad results?). I would be interested in hearing your views in a post.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here are some quick thoughts.<\/span><\/p>\n

To understand what this wrangling is all about you must understand that the USA is a deeply divided country in which the common ground on which we formerly stood is shrinking.  To borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell, what divides us is a very deep "conflict of visions."  The conflict concerns the nature and purpose of government, its size, scope and reach, what it can and cannot legitimately do.  The Left favors, in practice if not always in theory, an ever-expanding welfare state which provides citizens with cradle-to-grave security.  Although liberals don't like to be called socialists, and will retreat to an exceedingly narrow definition of 'socialism' in order to avoid this label, their tendency is clearly in the socialist direction and they have been marching in this direction since FDR at least.  A perfect example is President Obama's health care initiative, popularly known as 'Obamacare,' which increases government control of the health care system.  Particularly offensive to libertarians and conservatives is Obamacare's individual mandate which requires citizens to purchase health care insurance whether they need it or not, whether they want it or not.  A clear indication of the 'visionary' and ideological nature of this initiative is that it is being forwarded at a time when the country simply cannot afford another entitlement program.  But this hard fact cuts no ice with the ideologues of the Left.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Right, on the other hand, resists the expansion of government power, championing the traditional values of self-reliance, individual responsibility, and limited government.  This deep Right-Left conflict of visions plays out over a myriad of issues major and minor from guns to light bulbs to soda pop to circumcision to using federal tax dollars to fund abortion clinics, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps we should distinguish the political and the economic aspects of the conflict of visions.  What I have just sketched is the political difference, the difference as to what the polis<\/em>, the state, ought to be and ought to do.  But there is also deep disagreement about economics.  The Left favors central planning and top-down control while the Right looks to a more or less free market for solutions. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you ask a liberal how to generate government revenue he will tell you to raise taxes while the conservative will say the opposite: lower taxes, thereby stimulating the economy.  The creation of jobs will increase income, FICA, and sales tax revenues.  Each side looks for 'facts' to support its overarching vison, which underscores the fact that what we have here is fundamentally a conflict of radically opposed visions. <\/span><\/p>\n

In sum, we Americans are fundamentally divided and in a way that is irreconcilable at the level of ideas.  We do not stand on the common ground of shared principles and there is no point in blinking this fact.  Left and Right are riven by deep and unbridgeable value differences.  And so any compromises that are reached are merely provisional and pro tem,<\/em> reflecting as they do the fact that neither side has the power to  clobber decisively the other and push the nation in the direction in which it thinks it ought to move.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so it should come as no surprise that there is bitter wrangling over the national debt.  Making it worse is the fact that on the Republican side there is a split between libertarians and true conservatives on the one hand and RINOs (Republicans in name only) on the other.  A proper subset of the first group is the Tea Party folks whose central animating desideratum is fiscal responsibility.  The Dems are more unified toeing as they do the leftist party line.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Tea Party faction has rightly sounded the alarm concerning the national debt which under Obama is increasing at the rate of 4.1 billion<\/em> dollars per day.  (Under G. W. Bush the rate of increase was also unacceptable but much less, around 1.6 billion per day.)  Unfortunately, their standing on principle could have disastrous effects.  I mean the principle that the debt ceiling ought not be raised.  The crucial fact here is that the Republicans do not control the Senate or the White House.  So they really can't do much.  What they can do is get themselves perceived as pigheaded extremists.  If enough ordinary Americans come to view  Republicans as obstructionists or extremist then then the Right will lose the 2012 battles and it will be all over.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Boehner Plan<\/a> is the way to go given the current political climate and the current distribution of power among the branches of government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles Krauthammer has it nailed<\/a>. (Get the pun?)  <\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, Krauthammer would make a great president except that he looks like a cadaver, is bound to a wheel chair, and is a chess player.  Totally unelectable.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A U.K. commenter remarks: Meanwhile, changing the subject completely, I fail to understand the game of 'chicken' that the two houses are playing over debt. (Wasn't there a James Dean film that started that way, with bad results?). I would be interested in hearing your views in a post. Here are some quick thoughts. To understand what … Continue reading “The Debt Debate”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,216,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-money-matters","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}