Christopher Caldwell is that rare bird: a truly thoughtful conservative. His most recent column for the Financial Times reminds us that whoever wins the election tonight will have a huge economic problem to solve, and that we as a people in the West are in poor condition psychologically to face it:
We should worry less about the bigness of our problems than about
the smallness of our character. We are out of practice at handling a
world of repossessed cars, hand-me-down clothes and canceled vacations
and graduation parties. For many decades, people were steeled against
recession by a knowledge that things could be a lot worse. Britain had
memories of postwar rationing. In the US, 8m people were unemployed
throughout the 1930s. Even people in their mid-40s may remember Edward
Heath’s three-day week and Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech.
people, though, are too young to remember that stuff. Perhaps that is
why we are in the mess we are in. The US has not had a deep nationwide
recession since at least 1981-82. The present consumer pessimism has
not been equalled since December 1974, just after the Nixon
resignation, when the US was still reeling from the oil embargo and
President Ford was exhorting citizens to wear buttons that said “whip
inflation now”. The youngest Americans who can remember the difficulty
of paying for their children’s college education under such
circumstances are approaching 70.
The US is not the same
country it was the last time people had to tighten their belts. It has
changed socially, economically and demographically. The range of
problems has widened and the range of solutions has narrowed. Back in
the 1970s, there were relatively few people with credit cards and
hardly any who were “maxed out” on half a dozen. But the US now has
$2,600bn (€2,000bn, £1,600bn) in outstanding non-mortgage debt, and The
New York Times recently reported that 5.5 per cent of outstanding
credit card debt had been written off by card issuers as losses.
Indications are that the credit card problem in Britain is considerably
worse.
Many of the arrangements and institutions that got
Americans through the 1970s are gone. It is not often remembered how
socialistic the US was in those days. It was a disguised socialism,
administered by huge corporations, but it was socialism. The flabbiness
and misrule of American companies was a kind of insulation. No one
mentions it now, not even in the heat of an election campaign.
Republicans fear telling voters that things of value have indeed been
stripped from them in recent decades, just as Democrats warned.
Democrats fear telling voters that heavy-handed socialism is indeed
their ideal, just as Republicans warned.
Is offering a Federal extension of unemployment past thirteen weeks "heavy-handed socialism?"
Kit Stolz 