I know a lot of my readers and friends think I must have gone stark raving mad. I detoured off the deep end and kept going. I missed that turn in Albuquerque. Whatever.
I personally find some of the things that I have suggested to be philosophically offensive. I can’t imagine there is anyone reading this who thinks every one of these ideas is actually a good idea. Seriously, if I haven’t offended your political sensibilities, you are either very flexible or I’m not trying hard enough.
But that is the point. We have a deeply divided country. Nearly fifty percent of Democrats seem to be voting for a full-throated socialist. Sanders is not socialism lite. He would take us to European socialism and keep right on going, and there’s a significant contingent of Americans who seem to be with him. Meanwhile, over 50% of Republicans are saying that what we need is somebody who is way outside the “establishment,” who will shake things up and do things differently. Forget on-the-job experience; people no longer trust the current leadership to get the job done.
Unless something really odd happens at the conventions, we are going to end up with a race where the only thing the majority of Americans agree upon is that they don’t like their choices. The unfavorable ratings of all the candidates in the final running are extraordinarily high.
I am seriously, deeply worried that we are going to have a recession in the next few years. The negative impacts this time around will be every bit as drastic as they were in 2007–08. Pensions and retirement funds will be devastated. Unemployment will go through the roof. Monetary policy will be impotent. The government will be all but nonfunctional, given the current players and system. A recession this time around is actually going to feel far worse than the last one did.
Now, the republic will survive. We’ve actually faced far worse times and come through them. You can go back and read about those periods – they weren’t fun. So it’s not the end of the world, but for much of America it could end up feeling every bit as bad as the Great Depression.
To stave off such a serious outcome will require radical solutions; and given that I don’t think any one party is going to have control of the process (which is not exactly what we’d want anyway), we are going to have to choose between real compromise and real trouble. What I have tried to do is to propose a program that actually amounts to a workable compromise.
I fully recognize that proposing to take another 1–2% of GDP out of the economy and turn it into tax revenue is heresy among my more conservative friends. I fully recognize that cutting income taxes to a 20% top rate feels like giving the rich another get-out-of-jail-free card if you’re a liberal Democrat.
My goal with this proposal is to create an environment in which the economy can grow in the 3–4% range, and that rising tide really will raise all boats with the structure I suggest. Do I think there is much chance of that growth being achieved? That is the question we will deal with next week, when I will talk about what we’ll need to do in case my admittedly rose-colored, optimistic proposals never even make the desk of serious politicians, let alone the next president.
Abu Dhabi, Raleigh, and Home