When you hear a politician say "This is good for America", or "This is good for the working man", do you buy it?
I'm turning 55 next month, but years ago I figured out a basic principle about politics - I'll call it "The Law of Tradeoffs".
Simply put: There is no one way for any government to do things right. All poltical decisions have tradeoffs".
This is true for your condo board, your county government, your school system, your state government, the federal government, and even the United Nations.
Every decision, poltical or economic, has winners and losers. Always keep this in mind as you hear a proposal or read a budget.
For example - this is an easy one - let's take tax policy. If President Obama wishes to cut taxes for the "average American", but raise taxes on the upper income bracket, it would appear that the middle and lower brackets are "winners" and the upper bracket the "loser". The Republicans, on the other hand, want to make the Bush upper bracket tax cuts permanent and give some additional tax cuts to businesses. Here the list of winners and losers are different (the Republicans claim a "trickle down" effect, but it's not clear that the trickling actually occurs).
Most of the time, the tradeoffs are more subtle. Let's take health care for example. There are a number of proposals out there. If we go to a single-payer system like Canada, who are the winners and who are the losers? I don't know for sure, but I can tell you with certainty that there will be some people on both sides of the win-lose fence. And it's not black and white, there are shades of gray. The "biggest" winner would probably be those who have the most medical needs and the least money, those who could not be insured. The biggest loser would probably be one who never felt he/she needed insurance and now has a mandate to pay for it each year. (Some are saying that this system can cause long waits, so maybe those affected would be losers as well.) But what about most of us, who have either private insurance that we pay for or is subsidozed by our employers or the government? Who will be the winners, who will be the losers? It's hard to tell.
Now sometimes you'll hear (even from me) that a policy is "win-win", as if everybody benefits. That may look right at the surface, but if you dig in, you'll find someone who will be worse off. I don't mean to be cynical, I will heartily support some policies that benefit many but adversely affect a few, but I just want to warn that we should never be misled.
So what do I do with this realization? If you look at my opening blog entry I spoke of "PatBuchannanism" and "Universalism". I stated that I do not share the former, a viewpoint that looks narrowly at self-interest at all levels of decision making. I'm more on the side of the Universalist, who wishes for decisions made for the the overall good. But I always have to remind myself of the "tradeoff" rule. Some people will be worse off by a policy. So I have to identify the winners and losers. Can I (or we as a nation) live with this choice? If the policy involves self-sacrifice for the overall good, can I accept it? (yep, even I will act out of self-interest at times, but I'll at least try to catch myself).
As we go through our current economic crisis and solutions are proposed, it will be wise for us to keep the tradeoff rule in mind. Who will bank bailouts help? Who will they hurt? Is the massive spending on infrastructure going to help one group but hurt another? If so, who and by how much? What sacrifices will I need to make to go green? Will it help my child (who is 8 months old)?
If you take a budget for your association or government, there are inflows and outflows. If it changes, ask about who pays more, who pays less, who gets more, and who gets less? It's quite that simple.
I think this is a better way to look at our politics than to assign labels such as "right-wing", "socialist", "liberal", or "conservative".
What I ask of all politicians is that they be honest - that they adopt the principal of "tradeoffs" and accurately identify to their constituents the potential winners and losers in any new policy proposal or budget change. With this information we will have what we've always wanted to have in America, an informed, engaged public, using our democratic institutions to make our lives and this country (and the world) a better place.
Thanks for reading.
