What’s Missing?
Politics and life in general are missing something today. It certainly is not rage. We have all too much of that. It certainly is not tragedy. We have too much of that too. It is not the unexplained either. That happens all the time.
Is it the sense of helplessness? Is it a paucity of hope? Is it the lost American dream?
It could be a lack of perspective. (If it is an American it cannot be credible.) It also could be a limited view of history and the lessons readily available from the past. It could be naivety or plain laziness. Critical thinking seems a good candidate too.
Maybe there is a lot of rage or tragedy or the unexplained today. And maybe there is an abundance of helplessness and hopelessness. And maybe the American dream, as we remember it, has drifted away.
All of this might be limiting our sense of perspective. It could be dimming our view of history and the lessons from it. And critical thinking may have been crowded out by the immediateness of social media.
But while these are important, they are not what is missing.
It is fairness, openness, and the sense of practicality.
Consider the debate over health care. How can it be ok for some to receive a high level of coverage (like Federal employees) and others to receive none or worse be denied insurance coverage which makes health care prohibitively expensive and practically unavailable? How can it be that health care insurance costs are increasing each year and no clear explanation is given? How can the national health care debate continue to say the US has the best health care in the world when outcome data shows otherwise, annual premiums are hurting the competitiveness of businesses, and not all Americans are included?
Or, the Wisconsin debate over the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees. How can the State think they can simply take away the negotiated benfits, without negotiations? How can the State say it is about balancing the State budget and attempt to eliminate collective bargaining, especially when the worker’s union has agreed to concessions? Why can’t all Americans see that if it can happen there, it can happen next to them. After State workers, it could be private sector employees until everyone in the bottom 98% of earners are earning a lot less. Why can’t people see this?
The answer is not to continue as we are. And the answer is not to simply take from some. There must be some across the board belt tightening for sure. And, in the sense of fairness, openness, and practicality, there must be a sharing of both the cuts and any tax increases.
Steady stable growth is the best long term answer. The greater wealth that this creates must be shared and invested wisely. If not, we can expect to cycle wildly through period of feast or famine. Fairness, openness, and a sense of practicality will do us all well.
Greed and “me first” lurk behind every bush and tree ready to bring us back to where we are today.
This entry was posted on February 26, 2011 at 11:30 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: collective bargaining, deficits, health care, health care costs, scott walker, unions, wisconsin
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