#376 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday June 13)
Good morning,
I enjoyed putting together these past ten successive Mondays my picks of the best books of, and about, the decades from the 1940s through the 2010s.
I decided it might be fun to continue with a “theme” for each Monday. The theme over the next several weeks is the idea that there are often simple things that can be done to make a material difference in our lives and our country. I’m going to share one simple idea. It may be a tax proposal, a thought on homeless housing, modification of a law or regulation—we’ll see—I haven’t thought it all through yet.
Those of you who know me well know that I am an incrementalist. Progress more often than not is made in incremental steps. I think we often conflate a number of different issues in such a way as to make any sort of resolution out of reach. We need, instead, to look at issues in their constituent pieces and solve those bits one at a time. The New Deal was not one gigantic piece of legislation. It was a series of legislative acts that, all together, reshaped society, with a fair bit of buy-in from a broad consensus. Often new ideas move slowly, as they require developing sufficient “buy in” from these varied constituencies.
But today we aren’t moving much—not fast and not slow! Congress simply doesn’t act—neither bravely nor incrementally. In the past, notwithstanding intense political debate and posturing the two parties were able to come together to pass legislation. Much of the credit for these successes is because each side shared many core values and objectives, while differing on the means to achieve progress and/or bear the cost of doing so.
Today, it often is difficult to find common values shared by the parties, reflective of their constituents’ increasing view that the “other side” possesses values and objectives that are at best misguided or—as often characterized by the more extreme people on each side—even evil. In this environment, there seems to exist a pervasive sentiment that suggests the “loyal opposition” is really supposed to be the “disloyal obstructionists.” But even in this climate, I believe a number of places where small victories can be achieved.
I have a conservative friend, who believed most problems could be solved through common sense, focusing on practical solutions, rather than political grandstanding. He maintained that, if he were locked in a room with a liberal friend of ours for a weekend, and were charged with coming up with a single solution for a specific issue, they were almost assured of success. Certainly there are wicked problems that are not conducive to simple solutions—such as the morality of abortion versus the morality of forcibly control a woman’s body and choices. But most others are, at their core, about fairness, allocation of risk, and matters of dollars and cents. But under the scrutiny of constant public scrutiny, 24 hour news, and relentless attacks from “true believers,” trying to achieve anything resembling compromise these days is nearly impossible.
TAKE IT ONE STEP AT A TIME
The Democrats suffer in passing a meaningful bill on either social welfare issues like universal childcare, tax reform, or election fairness because they pursue these relatively simple ideas in hugely complex and costly legislative proposals that try to do too many things at once. In trying to achieve “the whole enchilada,” they encounter opposition from many of those who might well agree with one aspect of the bill but disagree with other parts. What if, instead, we slowly unwind the Gordian knot of complex issues and “tease out” one or two at a time?
We can’t solve climate change overnight (although I’d argue we’ve largely been sitting on this one for decades), but reasonable people might agree on one or two simple steps. We can’t address the poisonous combination of hate speech, monopoly power, and the manipulation of access to information on the Internet, but we might agree on one or two steps. We can’t solve the failure to provide an acceptable education to our youth in a single stroke. Or save our electoral system or reform our tax system. And we can’t address the problems of income inequality all at once, but we might agree on one or two steps to take now.
BUILD BACK A LITTLE BIT BETTER
So I’ll start with one very simple idea. Get rid of Build Back Better. The Democrats are not going to come up with an omnibus bill that will garner the votes of both Senators Synema and Manchin, much less the Republican caucus. So pick two things. And keep them simple. My vote for the first is early childhood education. Any number of studies suggest that there is a huge advantage to a child in having the nurturing, socialization, and early education that this provides. I think we can get a majority of Congress to agree that early childhood education can and should be made available to all children. We already have the infrastructure of quality early childhood education—both public and private—already in existence. It is a question of expanding access and availability. Figure out the funding and move on. I welcome people’s thoughts on one more simple concept the scaled-down “build back better” might include.
In the coming weeks, I’ll touch on the capital gains tax that more fairly taxes the wealthy, the progressive tax system, election reform, the VAT, DC statehood, Mideast peace, and who knows what else. I expect some disagreement but I’m cautiously optimistic that many will see the wisdom of addressing the “big issues” one small step at a time.
Cheers,
Glenn
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