The Current Spending Debate

Yglesias:

I think the right way to think about the current debate is this. We have a fairly settled view in the United States that one important function of the government is taking care of elderly people. We also have a fairly settled view in the United States that one important function of the government is ensuring that people have health insurance. We also have a fairly settled view in the United States that we like being an unusually low tax country. We also also have a fairly settled view in the United States that we want to maintain a uniquely expensive posture of global military hegemony. These are straightforwardly incompatible goals. Large, regionally significant states such as China, India, Brazil, and Nigeria are growing faster than we are putting pressure on military hegemonism. The share of the population composed of elderly people is rising. And the productivity of the health care sector is increasing more slowly than the productivity of the economy as a whole. This leaves us with a lot of adjusting to do.
The essence of the problem is that what people want is the status quo, but the status quo is untenable. In a healthy political system featuring bipartisanship by alternation, both parties would put forward visions of fairly small deviations from the status quo and they would take turns implementing those deviations. The net impact over the course of the years would be quite large, and the weighting of the changes would depend on what proves workable, what proves popular, and the vicissitudes of electoral politics. Instead, we have a political system that counts on this problem being solved via some form of “grand bargain.” That turns various proposals into game theoretical exercises and creates a strange bargaining dynamic that empowers extreme voices.

My plans, let the Bush Tax Cuts expire, add a couple of very high income tax rates in the 45 to 50% range, cut back military spending, end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan  and Libya, bring pressure to bear on the medical delivery system (doctors, hospitals and insurance companies) to rein in costs, maybe create a national public option health care plan, and wrest control of state governments from loony Republicans.  Then we could fix some of the other issues, like banning the Designated Hitter and going back to exclusive use of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch.