The perils of living for today
The very real need to address the nation’s immediate economic crisis has drowned out meaningful debate on how to address the much more serious long-term fiscal challenges the nation faced before the collapse of housing, credit and stock markets. Because of the economic crisis and the splurge in federal spending during the last year, the terms of discussion from just a year ago have changed drastically.
The Obama administration has claimed the right to use extraordinary measures - spending a lot of money, and spending it now - to “get the economy back on track.” But the economy was on the wrong track even before the crisis emerged. There’s no rainy day fund, just borrowed umbrellas. Issues that will matter most over the coming decades for our nation’s macroeconomic well-being - large and growing entitlement programs, an inefficient and unfair tax system, and others - are off the table (or, at best, tucked away on a little table in a side room).
The real nub of the problem is cultural and political as much as it is economic: It’s a state of mind that has come to envelop America during the waning decades of the 20th century. One could call it the “tyranny of the here and now.” Or, in the words of a 1960s song by the Grass Roots: “Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today, and don’t worry ’bout tomorrow.” But unless we embark on long-term reform, when AIG and GM are long forgotten, we’ll still be confronted with tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security, a nearly trillion-dollar trade deficit, a near-zero personal savings rate and the reality that 40 percent of Americans say that they save nothing for retirement.
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