The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics

The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics

Thomas Byrne Edsall

Language: English

Pages: 272

ISBN: 0307946452

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.
 
In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners.
    
Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.

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Budget—Representative Ted Poe of Texas took the floor with an amendment to bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from further attempts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “Probably no Member of Congress represents more refineries than I do in Southeast Texas, and the regulatory process, the overregulation of the EPA coming in and trying to now regulate the State of Texas regarding greenhouse gases is a detriment to the industry,” Poe told colleagues. “We’re in the midst of a massive.

Shifted decidedly to the left by a 40.5 to 26.5 percent margin.21 The same pattern emerges on another ANES test question: “Some people think the government should provide fewer services, even in areas such as health and education, in order to reduce spending. Other people feel that it is important for the government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending.”22 In the seventies and eighties Democrats took the liberal side by roughly a two to one margin, 40–18.

House that is in foreclosure, give it to people who might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water? This is America! How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills.… It’s time for another tea party. What we are doing in this country will make Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin roll over in their graves.34 The Santelli message caught fire with millions.

The reduction in national saving will raise interest rates, reduce investment and reduce future national output. Increased capital inflows from abroad can mitigate or eliminate the increase in interest rates and/or the decline in investment. This in turn will offset some of the decline in future national income, but of course the inflows create increasing claims on the domestic capital stock and hence still reduce future national income. In either case, under the gradual scenario, sustained large.

Force, Part II, Profiles for Selected Federal Agencies,” Washington, D.C., accessed March 21, 2011, available at http://www.eeoc.gov/federal/reports/fsp2009/profiles.cfm. 37. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, State and Local Government Information (EEO-4), 2007 Employment Summary by Job Category,” Washington, D.C., accessed March 21, 2011, available at http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/employment/jobpat-eeo4/2007/us.html; U.S. Bureau of.

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