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Today in “Wearing Thin,” I will attempt to solve all the problems currently faced by the Obama administration. I will do it simply and without regard for statistical or documentary backup.
One hundred percent of my finite mental faculties will be devoted to cold, hard (albeit whimsical) logic, unencumbered by facts or statistics. On the other hand, if you’re fixated on such things, I’m sure you can go on the Web and easily find substantiation for anything I say (or anything anyone says, for that matter).
First, the Economy…
The United States’ massive budget deficit (how big is it? Well, it boasts more zeroes than the Cleveland Browns’ offense) is a huge problem, though much of it resulted from the very necessary stimulus injections last year and earlier this year. At the time, most economists felt the nation and world economies were teetering on the edge of collapse, and massive stimulus spending was the only practical recourse to jump-start things.
Critics at the time, including many conservatives and Republicans, argued for another course, doing nothing.
Yet, a very good case can be made that the outgoing Bush administration and incoming Obama administration had sat on their hands, the whole economy would have slid into long-term depression and collapse.
That didn’t happen, though the severe recession that we’re now slowly crawling out of has given the “do nothing” critics on the right plenty of ammunition. What they’d like everyone to forget, however, is that if we had followed their advice, most Americans would now be storing their money in coffee cans in the backyard, frequenting soup kitchens, picking bed-bugs out of their mattresses, and watching the skies for divine intervention.
The nation’s budget deficit now and projected into the future is untenable and poses grave risks, to be sure. The Obama administration needs to start cutting into it, but not until it’s clear that the economy will survive without further stimulus spending. Focusing on long-term deficits, while ignoring the economy’s immediate prospects, is like worrying about termite infestation in your house while it’s burning down (my appreciation to whoever made a similar comparison recently in some magazine or newspaper column).
The problem is that Obama and Democrats who take this approach necessarily have to argue on the basis of “what would have happened” if they hadn’t gotten their way, as opposed to “what did happen” as a result of their actions. Impressionable voters don’t seem too impressed by the argument that the former scenario would have been far worse than the latter reality.
As a result, I’m guessing, the Republicans and their tea-party cohort will beat the socks off the Democrats in Congress and statehouses next year. Unfortunately, even if Obama finally turns his focus toward serious deficit-cutting, the deficit won’t be addressed in 2011. This is because the new GOP majority in Congress will continue to make tax cuts its chief economic prescription, which will only make the deficit grow larger.
How to solve this seemingly intractable problem?
That’s easy. We increase greenhouse emissions to such an extent that climate change is accelerated, and the deficit becomes a minor concern next to the inevitable apocalypse. Glib, yes, but that’s all I got.
Now for climate change…
This one is easier. Assuming we don’t follow my above advice, logic dictates that we assume the worst and behave accordingly.
Just for the sake of argument, I will stipulate that human-caused climate-change deniers (as well as the flat-earthers who deny global warming is happening at all) might be right.
But on the other hand, I’ll stipulate that human-caused global-warming alarmists might also be right.
As long as we’re stipulating, let’s all agree that the weight of evidence is equally divided between the two camps (which it’s most definitely not, unless you believe everything you see on the Internet).
What we have to consider then is which is the worse outcome from each of our choices.
On the one hand, if we side with the human-caused global-warming deniers and they wind up being wrong, we’ve hastened the steady warming of the planet, and will be complicit in all the misery and death that entails for billions of human beings.
On the other hand, if we side with the alarmists about climate change and join worldwide efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and they end up being wrong, we’ll have unnecessarily made things more difficult for people and businesses in the Rust Belt and other coal-mining areas, while causing electric bills to go higher.
Hmmm… Higher electric bills and possibly more employment versus the end of human life as we know it. Geez, I just can’t decide which is preferable.
Well, I was going to tackle the war on terror, Afghanistan, health-care reform, immigration and other intractable problems, but I think my work is done for today. Maybe next week!
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&lscript>
Terry,
I think you are dead wrong about "...the severe recession that we’re now slowly crawling out of...".
We have not seen the worst by far.
There will be a second stimulas package -- and it will make things worse.