There was an article in the book review section of the NYTimes this weekend on differences between liberals and conservatives and it suggested that sensitivity to pain and threats predisposed people to being conservative. I tend to agree with this. Conservatives are always finding monsters under their bed: "communists in the State Department," ala Joe McCarthy and "we are fiscally doomed" ala Newt Gingrich.
This is what I would call an existential context and maybe nothing we can do about that. There is also what I would suggest is the attitudinal context, which is how people respond to their perceived existential context. An old saw goes like this: "If you are not a liberal in your youth, you have no heart, and it you are not a conservative in your older years, you have no brain." That may be a reflection of the vigor and optimism of youth being able to trump adversities (real or imagined) and the absence of that vigor and self-doubt of old age that drives us to just want to hang on to what we have and hope it lasts until the Grim Reaper makes his call.
I don't know for sure, but I would suggest this points to something beyond this attitudinal context, namely to the issue of values. You know, nobody promised us a "safe" world. Nobody has a claim on life or property as the events of 9/11 and Haiti remind us. The uncertainties of life are what we all live with.
Where we might differ and where a different perspective comes into play in the public policy arena is in how much some of us are willing to pay to reduce those uncertainties or the severity of their consequences. Or, in the public policy arena, how much we are going to force others to pay so that we can feed our illusion of security. We are sending young men and women to die on fields of battle for our "national security" and we seem to think little of that cost to their family. And some of us are willing to see millions of families turned out of their homes, deprived a job paying a living wage, children denied a college education and persons with medical liabilities doomed to an early death all so that the tax structure is not changed...so that the rich can keep on getting richer. Someone has suggested that to see a man's values all you have to do is look at his checkbook. Maybe the same can be said for nations.
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Along that line. there was a rehashing of the NYTimes analysis of the federal debt problem in Sunday's Dallas Morning News that concluded that, if any of the so-called "solutions to balancing the budget" tactics were implemented we would still have a federal debt, all the way from "eliminating all the earmarks" (leaving $1.257T) to "cutting all national security programs" (leaving $421B). It was a sobering analysis.
Two things that seemed to just fall through the cracks, however. One was the parenthetical note in 8-pt type that read "(about $4,100 a person) appearing under the reversed-out "Deficit: $1.267 trillion." Why the small print? I don't know but I know that there are people who really want it to be ignored and they are no friends of the Obama administration or, for that matter, the American people that I know.
Why? Because, as a homeowner, we know that it is the cost of servicing a line of credit, not just the size of it, that is of practical significance. A $100,000 line of credit at 5% interest costs the same to service as $200,000 at 2.5% but the $200,000 can make the difference between a home that immediately meets the needs of a growing family and one that will have to be enlarged or traded in for a larger one in a few years. As a homeowner with a young family, you have the option to borrow either of those amounts of money. I suspect you would take the larger because, while the service costs would be the same, the advantages of the larger loan would be worth the added debt load. It's not the size of the loan but the size of the hicky that matters! [We need to remember that bankers make money that is on loan, not sitting in their vault gathering dust? So they want their money out there earning intestest. ]
The other element of this issue is found on page 6 of the "Sunday Money" section...down there on the right hand bottom where it charts the interest rates of federal securities, where the cost of servicing that "$4,100 per person line of credit" is set and guess what it shows. If that $4,100 debt was funded by 2-year Treasury Notes it would cost $41.00 a year or $3.41 per month to service...that's about the cost of a good cup of Starbuck's coffee a month. If it was funded by 10-year Treasury Notes it would cost $123.00 a year or $10.25 per month...about what I paid for a meal at Taco Grill down in the West Village on McKinney. If we split the difference it would cost $82.00 a year or $6.82 a month or the cost of a swing through McDonalds.
Keep in mind that the people of the world (individuals, countries and companies...domestic and foreign) are willing to loan Uncle Sam trillions of dollars at a average of less than 3% interest rate. Why? Because we have never failed to pay them. And yet there are those in this country who are willing, for pure partisan reasons, to sabotage our economy in order to push a fiscal policy that no one can defend and that riskes jeopardizing our historic good credit rating. And we are listening to them????? Why????
Sooooo we are getting our knickers in a wad because we are taking on line of credit that will cost us as little as a cup of coffee or, at most, an enchilada plate at Taco Grill...per month????? And to save that horrendous expense we are willing to risk a "lost decade" of economic growth like Japan experienced a while back??? To keep from taking on that amount of debt we are willing to risk a decade of more lost jobs, lost homes, lost health, lost educations and lost lives????
Help me here, folks. What am I missing?