What Kind of Country Do We Want to Live in? pt 1

In the last year or so I have spent a lot of time writing about what is going on in this country; who’s doing what to whom and why. It occurs to me that the answers to all questions about the direction of the people and parties in our country boils down to one very complicated question. What kind of country do we want?  What kind of country do we want to live in for the next fifty years?

To say it’s a complicated question is to seriously underestimate the situation because this country is a conglomeration of people with vastly different wants, needs and outlooks and trying to bring them together to function as a whole, is an all but insurmountable task.

Insurmountable as this task may seem, it is something that we must accomplish if the United States is to continue to hold its position as a world leader and I, for one, think that it must, not just for our sake but also for the sake of the entire planet. I say this with all chauvinistic pride because in the fifty years between the beginning of World War II and sometime around 1990 we showed that we could be, not only the world’s most powerful nation but also its most innovative, most industrious and most compassionate. Somewhere, since then, we have lost that which made us great, and if we want to continue to be the world’s leader we have to get it back, because the world doesn’t need the kind of country we are turning into now.

That is not to say that we are not still turning out admirable citizens, among the most accomplished, most compassionate, most intelligent and yes, most heroic. What it means is that our national bent is not focused on those attributes but rather on some twisted vision of success that has supplanted the American dream and turned it into a destructive model of useless celebrity and unearned fortune.

In his 1961 inaugural address, John F. Kennedy uttered what may be the most memorable quote by any American president when he instructed the American people to: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

The successful implementation of that quote will ultimately lead to the accomplishment of the American dream.

Easier said than done, you say. Sure it is. Nobody said it was going to be easy, very little we do that’s worthwhile is. We’re trying to recreate a great country here. But the hard part isn’t figuring out what the country should be, the hard part is agreeing on what it will take to make it that way. We already have a great model for what the country should be: The United States of America as we like to see it. Not as it always is, but as we seem to think it is.

So what is it, this dream USA?

Well, it’s a country where fairness rules.

It’s a country who’s economy is built on honest labor and the

production of real goods and where that labor is rewarded with an honest wage that allows for the living of a full life.

It’s a healthy country where children can grow up in a safe environment and where the creation of profit takes second place to the creation of healthy bodies and healthy minds.

It’s a country that honors the entrepreneurial spirit, where the fulfillment of great potential is still an achievable goal.

It’s a country truly without prejudice where people treat each other with kindness and compassion, not because the law demands it but because it’s the right thing to do and because we no longer think of others as them, but as us.

So what do we need to do to achieve this utopian goal? First and foremost we must understand that being utopian it will never be wholly achievable but that doesn’t mean that we should quit on it, it simply means that in the striving, we will achieve most of that which we seek.

So let’s look at what we’re dealing with. This is a big country with an enormous military industrial complex, huge entitlements, a gigantic economy and far reaching obligations all over the world. Is that what you want? I mean do you like it that way, with all that power and responsibility, cause if it is, if you are one of those people who think this is the greatest country in the world and that it should stay that way, you can forget small government right now. Right now this is a country of huge government, that’s how it got this way and that’s how it will stay this way. You can’t run or regulate all the metaphorical monster trucks we’ve got on the road without a hell of a lot of oversight. That oversight is called big government.

Now maybe you don’t want a huge military industrial complex, a gigantic economy, enormous entitlements or a finger pushing all the buttons of the world. Then you can live in a country with small government. But you can’t have it both ways.

Despite the Tea Party people and certain right-wingers, some of whom, like David Brooks, I usually agree with, we are not now and have not for a long time, been, a country of small government. The reality is, that despite the fantasies of the strivers for simplicity, we have never been a country of small government, at least not since our very founding.

The ink wasn’t even dry on the constitution when this country started growing and it hasn’t slowed since and that growth is the foundation of the American dream. This is a country of immigrants and those immigrants came here because they thought this was a place where they could build the kind of life that was impossible to achieve in the small government countries from which they immigrated. Those immigrants, in fulfilling their dream, are what made this a big country in need of big government because nature abhors a vacuum and if big government doesn’t fill it big business will and that will return us to the type of patriarchal country that existed in the Europe from which those immigrants came and which we were approaching before WWII when we were made up of the filthy rich and the very poor and not much else.

Those who campaign for small government need to understand that yes, we can have small government, but that means we must become a small country. Small governments just don’t have the means to run large countries because the concept of large countries encompasses the need for; creating and maintaining an infrastructure, building and supporting a significant military, establishing and regulating structures and practices for business and banking, and establishing support for that part of the population who could never or can no longer care for themselves.

We have, to some extent, done all this in the past and that has actually been the foundation of the American dream but it’s also what made us a big government country. We are now faced with a significant segment of our population who don’t seem to understand what went into the creation of that dream. I find it hard to accept that the very Americans who would deny entitlements to their fellow citizens are constantly looking for a free ride themselves.

This type of individual is exemplified in Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, who seems to think governments are run on air. His anti-tax resolutions, appeared to campaigning Republicans, to be a great way to accumulate Tea Party votes, but now that they’re in office the great majority of them are seeing how impractical it is to try to run a government without money and a country without resources and they are all searching desperately for ways to worm out of their pledges never to raise taxes or to replace taxes that are abandoned.

It’s very simple; do you want to live in The United States or do you want to live in Nigeria? First world country or third world country, of which do you wish to be a citizen? I’m not knocking small government. Lichtenstein is a lovely country. Of course it’s smaller than Brooklyn, which makes it kind of easy to run.

I have just finished reading a story by the aforementioned David Brooks in which he describes the co-workings of HUD and the Veterans Administration in an attempt to solve, the seemingly insoluble problem of homeless/damaged veterans. It’s an empowering story of bureaucrats functioning together to do a job that is all but impossible and doing it with a lot less money and resources than they need. Reduce tax money and this program disappears, is that what Norquist and his ilk really want? Remember, you get what you pay for.

Right now we are in the midst of a lingering unemployment crisis. One of the best solutions to that crisis, one that has often been suggested but, because of the flack that Obama had to take for the money spent in the Stimulus program, never implemented, is the institution of a WPA-like organization that could immediately put people to work rebuilding our country’s crumbling infrastructure. A huge percentage of the currently unemployed come from the construction trades. This is construction work. It will create employment and it will help solve a big problem that has been facing our nation for a good number of years. It is not a problem for small government to solve. It takes big, big government and big sweeping moves to make it happen but in order to implement it we need to spend money, money that the small government people do not want to spend, even if it means a lesser country. You get what you pay for.

Okay, so we know what a big government country is like because that’s what we live in now. All we’ve got to do is look around, and frankly in looking around we should see a lot that needs fixing. Big does not mean good, it just means big and the same goes for small. When run right, both can be excellent, it’s just a question of which one fits the United States of America.

We’ve already looked at what big government means to this country, let’s take a look at what it would be like with small government.

Well, the first thing we would have to reduce is the military simply because the military is the largest budget item. Besides if we want to be a small country we don’t need a big army because like Sweden, Denmark and Greece we won’t be meddling in other people’s problems any more.

But wait a minute. Sweden has a 59% top tax rate, Denmark a 63% top tax rate and Greece a 45% top, all far higher than ours. So let’s look further. How about Germany, The Netherlands or Spain? They’re not really small countries but they’re a lot smaller than the U.S. Well they run 45%, 52% & 42%. But compared to us these are all small governments. How come they have such high tax rates? Maybe because they treat their citizens like citizens and not like the help. All have much better social programs and usually better general health care than we do. Yes if you need the best brain surgeon in the world you’ll probably find him here but if you just need a regular run of the mill appendectomy you’ll probably find, cleaner, better run, cheaper and more accommodating hospitals in most other developed countries all over the world.

You can also find better tax rates. You just have to be willing to move to The Ukraine, Slovakia, Syria or Uzbekistan. It’s really up to you. Is any kind of a picture emerging here? In this day and age small government equates with third world government. You can have it… if you want it, but then you get bad roads, worse communications, no education and horrible health care. Why? Because all those things are bought with tax money and when you cut tax money you cut all that good stuff that makes this a better place to live than Armenia. It’s that simple.

This was part one of a three part series. The second and third parts will be published on Friday and Monday.