The Great American Divide

What happened on November 8?  Why did the pollsters get it so wrong?  Why did so many working class voters support a party that for decades has stood on the side of the rich and privileged?

Change is happening in America, and it’s not being handled well.

We’re used to referring to the Democrats and the Republicans as the “Liberals” and the “Conservatives”.  For a long time, this meant that the Democrats supported socio-economic improvement for the less-well-off, the disenfranchised, and others whose rights were limited by the ruling elite.  An extensive role for government was often involved.  The Republicans fought a rear-guard action to keep their privileges intact and their wealth protected, usually resisting government regulation.

But the old “Liberal” and “Conservative” labels no longer work.  This year’s election was not decided on the basis of which policies were better for the country or even for the individual voter.  This election pitted the Fearful against the Hopeful, and the Fearful think they won.

Why is there so much fear in America?  Why do so many people ignore the facts of economic and social improvement and believe the unfounded lies that tell them their country is being stolen and destroyed?

The reason is relatively new, in terms of human history.  It is simply this:  Change is happening far faster than the bulk of humanity can cope with.  If you had transported a farmer from the 15th Century to the 17th, he might have found styles different, and equipment better, but his activities would have been the same, by and large, and he would not have needed to change his way of thinking about things in order to raise crops and make a living. 

But consider the pace of change since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  At first, it was simply a matter of improving technology enabling the farmer to work more land with the same amount of labor, to raise and harvest more crops, to increase his income.  By the end of the 20th Century, he was having to deal with constant equipment upgrades, with the encroachment of vast agribusinesses, with the financial complexities of loans, mortgages, and insurance, with comprehending the appropriate use of a wide variety of fertilizers, with working his way through the maze of genetic modification.  The pressures are enormous, and few of them have anything to do with working a spade into the earth.

The amount people have to know in order to cope with day-to-day existence in the 21st Century is staggering, pushing many not only to their limits, but beyond.  And when they feel they can no longer cope, when they feel they can’t rely on themselves and their own decisions in order to survive with reasonable expectations of security — when they become aware of their own powerlessness — that’s when panic sets in.  It may not be full-blown hysteria, but it is panic, nonetheless.  They stop making decisions based on logic, because their efforts to use logic and sense have ceased to lead anywhere.  Instead, they fall back on emotion.

When things don’t go right, people tend to look for whatever help and reassurance they can find.  They stop listening to the people who tell them things will turn out all right.  They used to believe that, but where did it get them?  Instead, they turn to those who tell them their panic is reasonable, that it’s not their fault, that they can blame something or someone outside themselves.  If only that evil outside agency could be brought under control, they’re told, they’d regain control over their lives.

Is it true?  Hardly.  But it certainly relieves them of responsibility and self-doubt.  Is it any wonder that they’re happy to accept lies that relieve their panic rather than facing the facts that show how little power they have?

Until this election, candidates of both parties have told voters things would turn out all right if only they’d vote for a government that pursued the right policies.  The percentage of eligible voters actually voting has become remarkably low, because fewer and fewer people felt capable of making such decisions.  Whether the party was liberal or conservative, it was essentially peddling the argument that “everything’s under control.”  Voting simply determined which group of Washington insiders divvied up the spoils.

But this time around, Donald Trump stepped up from outside.  He mouthed the same scapegoat-blaming lies that had already successfully appealed to the powerless.  He drew forth denunciations from the establishment politicians, clearly demonstrating his distinction from them.  Suddenly, those who had given up on voting years ago had a candidate they recognized as one of their own.

This explains the failure of the polls.  Pollsters build models for correct prediction based on past experience.  Unfortunately, there was no past experience of a candidate appealing to that group previously identified as “unlikely voters”.  This group didn’t vote, so they weren’t broadly represented in the pollsters’ databases.  The polls we saw probably reflected the interests and intentions of traditional voting pools quite well, but they left out a great number of this year’s actual voters.

Generally speaking, the Trump voters came from that quadrant of the voting spectrum in which conservatives have traditionally resided.  Why is that?  Because this is the group that is resistant to Change.  Change in and of itself is a threat to those who have identified themselves as Change’s powerless victims. 

In his article, “Are Conservatives Less Creative Than Liberals?” in Psychology Today (<https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200811/are-conservatives-less-creative-liberals>), Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman reports on psychological studies that suggest “that conservatives prefer simple representational art over abstract art, traditional poetry over the avant-garde, and music that is simple, familiar, and 'safe'.”  Another study featuring a test requiring the completion of creative tasks by the subjects found that

. . . conservatives are indeed less creative than liberals. . . . [C]onservatives may have found the ambiguity of the creativity tasks threatening, and the anxiety associated with this sense of threat may have hindered the expression of creativity. Prior research has indeed shown that those that are more conservative have lower cognitive-complexity and therefore may dislike ambiguity more than those who are less conservative.

. . .

Another explanation is that conservatives are more inclined to follow convention in general. And of course, convention sounds the death knell for creativity. A related possibility is that the authoritarian and anti-hedonistic aspects of conservatism may cause imagination to be devalued amongst conservatives. It is interesting to note that in support of this hypothesis, Dollinger did find that conservatives in the study scored lower on openness to experience.

If conservatives are less creative than liberals, what is the causal factor?  Does a conservative attitude limit creativity, or does limited creativity foster conservatism?  If my argument above is correct — that the pace of change can create panic and resistance in those individuals who lack the ability to adapt effectively — then it is not at all surprising that there is a high correlation between a sense of powerlessness and a conservative outlook.  This may also account for the expressions of violence among Trump followers.  People who feel themselves under threat are those most likely to lash out against their perceived or assumed enemies.

What I want to leave you with as a result of all this verbiage is the idea that the real divide between the voting blocs that supported Clinton on the one hand and Trump on the other may have had nothing to do with any of the policy positions that Clinton kept trying to place before the voters and Trump kept sidestepping during the debates.  Instead, the divide was between voters who felt powerless, desperate, and fearful, and voters who felt hopeful and able to believe that human effort could find a way out of their difficulties.

That divide may be the new demarcation between Republicans, fast becoming the party of Irrational Fear and Resistance to Change, and the Democrats, a party of Hope and Change and all the uncertainty that goes with those factors.  Unfortunately, Fear is far more motivating than Hope.  Fear is susceptible to lies that are intended to reinforce the Fear, where Hope must rely on an optimismic interpretation of the possibilities that are out there.  How the Democrats can build a positive voting bloc in the absence of the emotional power of Fear remains to be seen, but if they are to move forward effectively it will have to be done.  As long as the Republicans can keep fostering fear among the voters, they’ll continue to win elections despite any Democratic appeals to facts or logic.

One final note:  In a country so divided, the rise of either party to power strikes some level of fear in the hearts of the other.  The powerless gain power, those who had been in control lose control.  And as a result, the motivators shift.  When Obama ran on a promise of Hope and Change, he represented — right down to the color of his skin — the possibility of power for a wide range of previously powerless voters, particularly those in groups easily identified and discriminated against.  Clinton’s campaign promised power to one more suppressed group — women — but despite early indications, failed to crusade forcefully for many of those feeling left out, notably African-Americans.  A stronger, more emotional push for reform of the judicial system might have energized these voters and changed the results of the election.

But even if the turnover of the Executive Branch to Donald Trump represents a loss of power for those invested in the Democratic Party, the Democrats remain dedicated to optimistic, positive change,  and thus more resistant to fear-mongering.  It’s a complex puzzle, and true progress for the US won’t happen until it’s figured out.

Back to Havana: Rejecting a Counter-Productive Foreign Policy

About 50 years ago, Fidel Castro stepped out of the Cuban jungles at the head of a ridiculously small group of rebels and took control of the country. His aim: to take Cuba’s economy out of the hands of a privileged and corrupt elite and put it to worrk for the benefit of the entire population.

Unfortunately, several things went wrong. First, Castro himself was a little too proud and too much of an ideologue to be able to accommodate himself or his government to practical politics. Second, he dared to voice approval of Communist ideals at a time when Americans were being told that Communism was the greatest threat to peace and prosperity that Western Democracy had ever known. And third, his revolution simply took place too late.

By the 1950s, Cuba’s economy was the playground of big US financial interests working hand-in-glove with a rich Cuban elite. It was obvious to Castro when he took over the country that the only way to separate the elite from its power base was to remove the source of its funding. And the only way to prevent the wealth generated by Cuban labor and resources from flowing directly into US bank accounts instead of into local development was to take the major national industries out of US hands.

In an ideal world, a country devoted to improving the lot of the world’s citizens — a country such as the US claims to be — would do its best to work with a group that had just deposed a repressive dictator and was seeking to provide education, health care, and economic opportunity to its citizens. Isn’t that the kind of thing the US claimed it itself was doing in Iraq? Isn’t that kind of freedom what the American Revolution was all about?

What Drives US Foreign Policy
But the US has not operated in the interests of the ordinary citizens of the world for a long time. What drives US foreign policy — and what has driven it since the US became an acknowledged world power following the First World War — are the interests of major American businesses. If these interests were enlightened this would not be a great problem. If American business realized that developing the economies of poor countries would increase markets and expand prosperity, then American business would be behind efforts at democratization and development.

But just as it did when dealing with mortgages in the US, American business tends not to look at the Big Picture. Rather than plan for long-term prosperity and a viable future for coming generations, American business, with a few minor exceptions, opts for maximizing short-term gain, whatever the future costs. If there are poor people or countries in the world, America doesn’t think about improving their condition and turning them into possible purchasers of American goods; instead it sees them as sources of cheap labor and raw materials as long as they can be kept poor.

When President Eisenhower warned against the “military-industrial complex”, he wasn’t only talking about collusion between the military establishment and weapons manufacturers. He was talking about American industry’s drive to dominate the world, and the economic power could wield in convincing government to back them politically and militarily.

And that’s where things stood when Castro took over Cuba. American business used its clout to convince the US government to resist Castro instead of negotiating with him, to focus on overthrowing his regime instead of concentrating on the welfare of his people. An embargo was put in place, and it exists to this day.

The Practical Effects of US Policy
The embargo has been a failure on one hand and an unfortunate success on the other. It has not managed to topple the regime. Cuba has effectively been kept poor, but that has not been enough to convince the population to rise up in anger. Perhaps the fact that the population isn’t significantly worse off than it was under the brutal dictatorships that existed before Castro has some part in this response. Perhaps the fact that education and decent health care have been made accessible to all citizens, despite by the country’s starved economy, has made the population feel that the Castro regime has some positive aspects. The embargo has not succeeded in its stated goals. All it has managed to do is keep ordinary Cubans poor and their country underdeveloped.

Contrast the US policy toward Cuba with its policy toward China. China is a little too large and a little too distant to bully effectively. For a long time the US maintained a policy of ignoring China and hoping it would go away. Then American business began to see some potential in China — how many McDonald’s burgers, Nike shoes, Coca-Colas and Starbuck’s coffees could be sold in a land of a billion or more people? Even if they were poor? So where the US tried to shut Cuba down, it sought to open China up.

And we can see the result of US economic cooperation with China all around us. First, lower cost goods are available at Walmarts across the land. Second, China’s economy is growing by leaps and bounds. Even during the current world recession, China’s economy is not shrinking — it’s simply growing a little more slowly. Without that economic growth and China’s tendency (following years of poverty) to save, China would not be in the economic condition to provide us with the loans we need to fight the current downturn.

Was China signally more democratic or more supportive of human rights than Cuba? Clearly not. But the US wanted to make money in China, and Cuba was small enough to ignore. And what has happened to democracy and human rights in China since they opened to US and other Western business interests? They have expanded. As the threat from the West decreases and China’s ability to provide decent opportunities to its citizens grows, the need to exert force to control the citizenry and the need to resist popular control of government both decline.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if the US had adopted this approach to Cuba a long time ago? America might have had a democratic, prosperous trading partner by the 1980s, instead of ensuring itself of an enemy into the 21st century.

Cuba Is Not Alone
Cuba is far from the only example of this wrong-headed, business-driven tradition in US foreign policy. Look at Viet Nam, Iran, Chile, Panama, Iraq, and other cases. And look at places like Darfur, where an activist policy could actually do some good.

In Vietnam, French colonialism supported a corrupt regime not unlike that attacked by Castro in Cuba. Ho Chi Minh, a leader of the popular resistance to this regime, approached the US for assistance in bringing democracy to Vietnam. Across the world, ordinary people shared his assumption that the US government espoused the values that led to America’s own successful revolution. But the US of the 20th century was not the US imagined by America’s founding fathers. Instead, the US chose to back American business interests that associated themselves with the same ruling elite the French had supported. To do this meant demonizing Ho Chi Minh and the resistance movement, now the government of North Vietnam. The easiest way to do this was to call them Communists and trust in the knee-jerk reaction of patriotic Americans.

Were the North Vietnamese Communists? Of course they were. But the people who start Communist movements do so out of idealism. Before their movements bring them to power, they are in prime condition to be worked with in a practical way to make sure that their efforts lead to peaceful, successful democracies that promote the interests of their populations. Unfortunately, almost since the success of its own idealistic revolution, the US has refused to work with other idealistic revolutionaries. The first successful Communist revolution was in Russia, where an autocratic ruler and his powerful elite were overthrown. Did the US provide aid, counsel, or guidance to the new government? No, the US chose to send assistance to the White Russians seeking to restore the Romanovs to power. If the present US, following its present foreign policies, were to be able to send troops back in time to the American Revolution, they would have been ordered to fight on the side of King George.

So what happened in Vietnam? Thousands of US soldiers died, an entire country was ravaged and polluted, and a host of new enemies was trained to hate the US where once the US had had eager supporters. And still the popular revolution ended up succeeding. The US then imposed embargoes and rejected diplomatic relations. The regime in Vietnam has not been turned out since then, but the embargoes have been severely reduced, diplomatic relations have been restored, and Vietnam is developing. All those lives gone, all those emotions scarred, and for what? For nothing. For the short-sighted demands of American business, which can’t see the forest for the trees.

In Iran, American business interests (notably oil interests) received support from the Shah, and in return the US government gave him aid, including training his vicious secret police. The result of this collaboration: most of the population kept in poverty while the elite succeeded, thousands brutally tortured. Efforts at democratization kept being thwarted with US approval, until finally the population could take no more, and rose up in rebellion. The Shah was driven out. Did moderates come in to replace him? Of course not. The US had made sure the moderates were no longer trusted and no longer had a power base. The only people left in opposition were the fundamentalist hard-liners, including some who’d been the most abused by the US-trained secret police. Once again, by following short-sighted American business demands, the US ensured that it would have no voice in the popular regime that followed the dictator, that that regime would be as paranoid and anti-rights as possible, that the country would face severe economic difficulties, and that the US would be denied a market.

In Chile, forces favoring democracy finally managed to establish an electoral process. One of the first beneficiaries of this shift to civilian rule was the popularly-elected Salvador Allende. Like Castro, he saw that the conservative elite would maintain real power if they were not separated from their source of wealth, and once again there were significant American business interests affected. So what happened? America’s CIA supported and guided a coup that left Allende dead and the right-wing dictator Pinochet in place for years. Pinochet returned the elite to their positions of dominance and went on to rule by torture. His regime proved so objectionable that cases were brought against him for human rights violations as far away as Europe.

Everywhere it goes, US foreign policy carries on this tradition to some extent. In Panama, the overthrow of Noriega had business overtones. In Nicaragua, a ruling dictator and a wealthy elite, supported by the US, were driven from power by Communist revolutionaries. Oddly enough, the revolutionaries set up democratic systems, and when they were voted out of office in later years they turned over power gracefully. This is what the US was fighting to supress? And now, in Iraq, control of oil is at stake.

We Need a Change
Is it any wonder at all that people around the world, looking at this history, would fail to see an America that is supportive of democracy or the welfare of ordinary people? America seems willing to see its own young citizens die, see foreign lands bombed to rubble, see national economies disrupted and foreign populations kept repressed and poor, all in pursuit of American business interests that aren’t even carefully considered. Should Americans be surprised that their government has become the symbol for economic colonialism around the world? Should they be startled when extremists see America as their most legitimate international target?

This is a Change America desperately needs. We need to adopt a foreign policy based on the legitimate long-term interests of a safe, peaceful, and prosperous world, not a world in which short-term greed demands the encouragement of conflict and repression. We can see what happens when we work with other nations for mutual benefit.

Let’s stop fighting world development and start encouraging it. Cuba is the perfect place to begin.

Toward a Saner Drug Policy

One of the key characteristics of the Change we really need is that it doesn’t start where the failed approaches of the past have brought us. Instead of thinking, “How can we modify the way we do things to make our situation better?”, we need to ask, “What do we want our situation to be, and what is the best way to get there?” Then we can look at the difference between how we’ve been doing things and how we need to do things, and figure out whether minor modifications will work, or whether we really need Change.

Current drug policy is an excellent example of government trying to solve problems not by thinking about what will work, but by looking for ways to modify what doesn’t work.

Our current policy (and this concept covers all the interrelated — and occasionally conflicting — policies of the different levels of government in the US, as well as the policies in place in most other countries and in agreements between countries) is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive, and in several ways:
• First, efforts to halt drug use and drug trafficking require huge amounts of manpower and extensive outlays for hardware, much of it high-tech.
• Second, the more “successful” our current anti-drug programs are, the more crowded our prisons become, and, as a result, the less effective they are at promoting rehabilitation.
• Third, the more “successful” these programs are, the harder it is for suppliers to get drugs to users, and therefore the higher the prices must be for the drugs. This results in increased efforts to provide supply, which in turn encourages increases in the cultivation of the plants that provide some of the drugs, and the manufacture of those drugs that aren’t biologically-based.
• Fourth, as drugs get harder to get and prices rise, the drug user’s need for funds increases, and more criminal activity becomes necessary in order to obtain those funds.
• Fifth, as anti-drug techniques improve, drug users and drug traffickers are pushed farther underground, and development of new techniques becomes necessary. The new techniques must be more sophisticated, and as they become more sophisticated the cost of their development grows exponentially.
• Sixth, if efforts at interdiction of drugs become more successful, the supply is lessened, and replacement supply is needed by traffickers. This means more encouragement for opium farmers in Afghanistan, and consequently growing profits making their way to terrorists.

Is that a long enough list of the impact of current policy?

And what happens to the users under this system? Are they being cared for? Helped to kick their habits? No. As noted above, in order to maintain their supply, they have to meet the traffickers halfway, which means going underground, avoiding notice, keeping a distance from authority. This makes helping them all but impossible.

So let’s start over by asking the basic question, “What do we want our situation to be, and what is the best way to get there?”

We really want to do several things. We want to help users kick the habit. We want to reduce crime and the costs of crime. We want to make things tougher on terrorists. We want to have better information about where our problem populations are.

How can we do all of these things if we don’t form armies of police and send them around the world?

The basic answer is pretty simple, really. Decriminalize drugs.

If the government dispenses drugs to users in government facilities, what happens?
• First, the cost of drugs plummets because the government authorizes their legal production by private business concerns.
• Second, the users don’t need to turn to criminals to get their drugs. Why should they, when the drugs are far cheaper from the government?
• Third, without a market, criminal production and trafficking dries up.
• Fourth, the need for law enforcement to police the criminals is dramatically reduced.
• Third, the amount of crime committed in order to get funds to buy drugs drops dramatically, reducing both the costs of law enforcement and the need for prison construction.
• Fifth, the terrorists lose a prime revenue source, and efforts to discourage poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, not to mention the trafficking of the opium worldwide, become far less necessary.
• Sixth, in order to get their drugs, the users must make themselves known, so we can work with them and help them.
• Seventh, the facilities where users get their drugs do not have to offer long term care; they just have to be medical facilities where users can come, take their drugs, be monitored until they are capable of behaving appropriately outside the facility, then let out. One reason we have tried to lock people into such centers in the past is that we hope to get them “cured” before they are released. If not cured, they may start buying drugs again, and indulging in anti-social behavior such as committing crimes in order to get the money to buy drugs. But our new system allows them access to the drugs without anti-social behavior, and ensures that they will come back to the facility if they need drugs, not go elsewhere. But getting this government help won’t be a free ride. It will involve working with specialists who can try to help these people get off drugs, or find appropriate situations in which to live if they can’t.

The cost of decriminalizing but monitoring drug use will be a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of current policy, but the social benefits for all concerned will be tremendous.

A quick look at the effectiveness of Prohibition gives us a comparison, though the repeal of Prohibition failed to supply us with an effective method for controlling the use of alcohol. During Prohibition we had extensive illegal activity prompting widespread disdain of the law (a bad situation to get into in its own right!), intensive criminal activity spilling over into violence against the citizenry at large, and heavy costs associated with efforts at enforcement.

Most of the Prohibition-related problems declined significantly once Prohibition was repealed. We now have regulation of sales, and we have acceptable control over distribution, and the major profits reaped by serious criminals have generally disappeared. These improvements have led to healthy social and financial improvements for the government. On the other hand, deaths and costs due to drunk driving, impaired decision-making leading to crime and injury, and incredible health expenses related to alcohol abuse, among other difficulties, still remain to be addressed effectively.

The nature of drinking as a social activity complicates the effort to come up with a more satisfactory solution to the problems drinking causes, but that is not the case with drug use, and shouldn’t discourage us from addressing the problems associated with drug use now. All we need is a little creativity in how we design, locate, and operate our drug-use establishments, systems, and regulations.

This means Change for our policy on drugs. Our Standard Operating Procedure has proved inadequate. Tinkering with it won’t help. We need to start over from scratch. Figuring out the details of how to decriminalize drug use is an excellent place to begin.

Understanding What Economic Stimulus Means

When you watch the news these days, you see and hear a lot of people arguing about what will or won’t Stimulate the Economy. As far as I can see, most of these people don’t get it. Barack Obama gets it, because he has a Big Picture approach to the problems we’re facing. Unfortunately, he’s not saying what he needs to say so that other people can get it.

It isn’t only money, and it isn’t only jobs. What we have to stimulate is the whole economy. What does that mean? That means we have to take actions that are going to result in the whole economic system running more efficiently, more effectively, and more cheaply, so that the businesses of the country have a good shot at continuing to make progress after the Stimulus funds run out.

Let’s consider how this works. When you improve a highway, you put construction people to work. Those construction people can then go out and spend their earnings buying things. The stores that sell those things and the companies that make those things can then afford to keep their own employees on the payroll, because the orders are coming in. When those employees keep their jobs, they keep money flowing into the economy to help other stores and businesses. In addition to all this, every person who’s employed puts money into the government through taxes, and puts more money into government by no longer needing financial support through unemployment insurance payments and food stamps. And so on.

But that’s just the surface of the situation. We started with improving a highway. When that improvement is finished, traffic flows will be improved. The road should be safer, and should be able to move more vehicles faster. Faster transport lowers the cost of moving goods for business, freeing up more money for hiring employees (!) or even reducing prices (which would allow our newly employed road-builders to spend their dollars on a wider range of goods).

If the plan is well-designed, by the time the construction projects are completed — and that will be a long time — the economy will be building up again and workers will be needed for other construction projects, such as erecting business offices or manufacturing premises.

One reason this works is because the Stimulus plan is not limited to improving highways. There is the redesign and rebuilding of the energy grid, to improve its capacity to carry energy produced by alternative technology to the places where that energy is needed. An upgraded grid will be more efficient and will help reduce the cost of power down the line. In an information age, a stable electric system will be critical to expanding business.

Significant, organized expansion of our communications system, improving broadband access, is another important step to make sure American businesses remain competitive in an age when China and India are making great strides in technology.

Sure, all of this is infrastructure work that will require a large number of workers, but it doesn’t stop stimulating the economy when the construction is over. It will stimulate economic growth for years to come.

But let’s not stop there. What else can the government do to improve the business climate? For one thing, it can support the adequate training of our future work force, our future managers, our future businessmen, our future engineers and technologists. How? By improving the schools, both in terms of the physical buildings and in terms of what those buildings contain — good teachers and administrators, developing good students. Refusing to spend money on education because it “doesn’t stimulate the economy” is like refusing to buy quality ingredients for a restaurant and then wondering why the food doesn’t attract customers.

What about the computerization of medical records? Eliminating the wasteful expense of maintaining paper-based record systems in our medical facilities will reduce the overhead passed on to the patients. This in turn cuts into the amount of insurance needed, which should lower premiums. Where does that savings go? Right back into the economy. Not only is the hospital running more efficiently and handling internal and external information demands more rapidly (thus saving lives and reducing medical complications as a marvelous bonus), it is also saving money and allowing more money to flow where it really is needed.

Are there other systems that the government could beef up in order to enhance the smooth running of business? Of course. The post office is threatening to cut back service because it can’t meet all its expenses. Will slowing the flow of the mail be good for America’s business? And if keeping the mail moving is a basic need of the economy, why are we asking those who send first class mail to bear most of the cost? Shouldn’t this be subsidised by the taxpayer in the long term, in the best interests of the citizenry as a whole?

And what about Amtrak? America is a big country, and there’s a lot of empty space between population centers in the West. Who should pay for people to move from place to place? As long as we don’t treat our rail service seriously as a form of mass transit, we’re encouraging people to buy private transport and burn foreign-source fossil fuels to move from place to place. Will it stimulate the economy to improve our rail system, both for passenger travel and for freight movement as well? You can be sure of it.

The cost of moving goods by rail is far less per mile than other forms of transport, but all we’ve done to encourage the use of rail is talk about it. The service on Amtrak, compared to train service in Europe and Japan, is a joke. The improvement of the rail system has to go beyond merely straightening a few rails. We need to add lines, so Amtrak and freight trains can use them simultaneously. We need to improve service, so using trains is more satisfactory. We need to increase service, so it’s actually available when people need it. We need to recognize that a government subsidy may be needed in order to make this vital economic element of our system workable.

The same thing is true of mass transit systems in our urban areas. If we really want people to leave their cars out of the central cities (thus reducing fuel use, relieving congestion, and eliminating need for expanded parking), we have to make it more satisfactory to ride the bus. This means more routes, more frequent travel and lower fares. Will the bus service pay for itself? Probably not, but why should it? When we look at what our economy is gaining by providing this service below cost, it more than pays for itself in savings.

This is one of the major problems that we have faced when talking about the Stimulus Package. People think about the major element involved in the package, and how that stimulates the economy — like the hiring of construction workers — but they forget to go beyond that and see the incredible array of side effects. People don’t think about the interrelated nature of all of these actions and how every little boost given by one program is multiplied by boosts coming in from every other direction as well. People don’t look at the Big Picture, and don’t ask the Big Question:

How can we spend our money so that it really stimulates the economy — and how can we measure whether the economy is stimulated?

There are a few key premises that have to be kept in mind.
• First, giving tax breaks to people who have lost their jobs and so don’t pay taxes does those people little good.
• Second, giving money to people who already have money is not going to get that money into the economy. It is the lower-earning worker who is guaranteed to put his money back into the economy, while the higher-earning worker can simply save his extra earnings against the time when he feels it safe to invest again. Hiring three workers at $30,000 each will do more for the economy than hiring one person at $90,000, partly because it takes two more people off the unemployment rolls!
• Third, spending money in endeavors that are labor-intensive is more effective than spending it on expensive equipment — unless that equipment is going to provide long-term savings that will make the economy run significantly more smoothly. Cost effectiveness has to be examined carefully. A prime example of non-stimulating spending is the buying of expensive weapons systems, which are used once and destroyed in the process of use. Sure, a few people work in the weapons factories, but when you look at how effectively the spending of money on weapons has improved our economy (especially when you consider how effective those weapons have been, per dollar spent, on achieving the purpose for which they were made), you can only sigh.
• Fourth, the government needs to focus on providing the services necessary to keep business moving effectively. Infrastructure is more than such physical things as roads, bridges, and high-power lines. It is also services like the mail, education, health care, and mass transit. There are many functions that government performs that have become serious bottlenecks to progress — the FDA doesn’t have enough inspectors to thoroughly check our food, and bad meat and produce are reaching our stores as a result. Recalls are an incredible waste of everyone’s money, and are brought on by the “savings” of reducing inspection staffs. The same is true of our Air Traffic Control system, other regulatory agencies, our court systems, and so on. The impact on the economy of all these poorly operating, glacially-moving systems is incredible, and all that’s really needed is a little manpower. Why don’t we have this manpower already? Because too many people think that government involvement is “Socialism”. Well, you can’t have it both ways. Either the governnment provides the services the country needs, or the entire country and its economy suffer.

In the final analysis, the stimulus that works is the stimulus that pumps as much money into the economy (as opposed to under people’s mattresses) as possible, gets as many people off of unproductive government funding (like unemployment and food stamps) as possible, and simultaneously improves for as long as possible the efficiency of the system in which business works. No project that does all of these things is “Pork”, and that’s all there is to it.