The Great Debate

We are careening toward Dec. 21, 2012, the date of the Mayan apocalypse, when the world is supposed to come to an end through a series of cataclysmic upheavals, according to assorted astrologers and mystics ‑ though not the Mayans themselves, who said it was merely the end of their calendar. We are also hurtling toward the Jan. 1 “fiscal cliff,” when the American economy could re-enter a devastating recession ‑ a man-made mini-apocalypse.

What has motivated people, across so many civilizations and centuries, to devise and believe in an apocalypse? Understanding this might help us address the ideological gridlock now propelling Republicans and Democrats toward this fiscal “end of days.”

There have always been groups who believe in a coming apocalypse, suggesting this is inherent in human nature. People who experience life as traumatic, devastating or chaotic are prone to project such nihilistic visions onto the world at large. Anxiety about one’s own death can also evoke a catastrophic apprehension about the end of the entire world.

Yet virtually every story of the apocalypse contains a belief in a rebirth or renewal just before or after the end of days. The apocalypse destroys all that is bad in life, wiping the slate clean for a second chance ‑ like the Second Coming of the Messiah.

This is particularly true in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the Book of Revelations, the apocalypse is a battle between good and evil, in which the earthly world is destroyed and replaced by an otherworldly paradise. In the New Testament, the horrific pain of existence is replaced by the second chance of being resurrected and joining Jesus, God the Father and the angels in an eternal heaven.

I enjoyed reading Reuters’ textured survey of the nature of inequality in America, and how government shapes it, shrinking the gaps between us through some of its actions and widening them through others. One comes away from the series with an appreciation for the complex blend of factors — federal policy, technology, unevenness of educational opportunity, the evolution of the market — that has helped propel some of us to where we are today, while failing to lift others.

High and rising inequality is more tolerable, of course, if everyone is getting ahead.  And it is less troubling if mobility up and down the ladder is free and easy — in particular if the children of those at the bottom can readily climb upwards, and if the children of those at the top do not remain there as a birthright.  But neither of these conditions inheres strongly in the United States today.  Over the past decade or more, median incomes have been stagnant. And intergenerational mobility in modern America is actually lower than it is in Europe, notwithstanding America’s reputation as the land of opportunity.

The Reuters series touches briefly on the growing bifurcation of family culture in the United States. Increasingly, college graduates marry each other, pool their relatively high incomes, and, in a variety of ways, push their children ahead. Lower-skilled, lower-income Americans lead less secure lives, and — partly as a result — they marry less and less. In a variety of ways, their children fall behind.

Fear and loathing of income inequality is both totally understandable and ultimately misplaced.

It’s understandable because everywhere around us it seems as if top income earners ‑ those latter-day kulaks vilified as the “1 Percent” by the Occupy crowd and populist politicians ‑ are gaining while the rest of us seem barely able to hang on to a lower-middle-class standard of living.

It’s misplaced because it glosses over strong evidence that the ability to rise above your starting place ‑ the American Dream, by most accounts ‑ is better than it was 40 years ago.

Reuters reports [“No sign Congress meant to limit health exchange subsidy: CBO,” Dec. 6] that a recent Congressional Budget Office letter “could complicate” efforts to stop the Internal Revenue Service from imposing “Obamacare’s” employer mandate in states that refuse to implement a health insurance “exchange.”

In fact, the CBO’s letter devastates the IRS’s already weak case.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act imposes a $2,000-per-worker charge on employers only if one of their employees receives a “premium assistance tax credit,” and the act authorizes those credits only if states create their own exchanges.

If a state opts instead for a federal exchange, as more than 30 states have, the IRS has zero authority to penalize employers there. “As even some health law supporters concede,” Kaiser Health News reports, “the claim that Congress denied to the federal exchanges the power to distribute tax credits and subsidies seems correct as a literal reading of the most relevant provisions.”

Has the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre shifted the gun control paradigm? It certainly looks that way. The outcry for tougher gun laws is reaching a fever pitch.

But it may not be that easy.

The debate over guns has been paralyzed since 1994. That was when gun owners came out in massive numbers and shocked the political world by giving Republicans control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. They were seeking retribution for the Brady handgun control bill and the assault weapons ban passed by the Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Since 1994, Democrats have not dared challenge the status quo on guns. Especially since the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to own a firearm. President Barack Obama rarely mentioned gun control in the 2008 or 2012 presidential campaigns. New gun control laws have never been high on his policy agenda.

This essay is a response to the Reuters special report The Unequal State of America.

Income inequality is a difficult story to get your arms around, and I think Reuters has done a splendid job. I was particularly intrigued to read about the hollowing out of middle-class jobs within the federal government in D.C. I wasn’t aware that the government had so thoroughly followed the private sector’s lead in this regard.

It is important to acknowledge that while government has played an enormous role in creating the trend toward growing income inequality in the U.S., surprisingly little of that role has involved the most obvious ways government affects income distribution, i.e., taxes and benefits. Overall, the federal government redistributes about one-quarter less today than it did in 1979. But the inequality trend is more pronounced when you look at changes in income before taxes and benefits are taken into account. For example, the share of the nation’s income going to the top 1 percent of households more than doubled from 1979 to 2008. For years economists concluded that such findings meant that income inequality was market-driven. But they failed to ask whether government policies might be shaping the course of the market.

It is never acceptable for elected officials to put partisan politics and special-interest pledges ahead of their country. But when the stakes are great, as they are with the fiscal cliff negotiations, it is reprehensible.

People who talk about the political benefits of heading off the cliff need to have their heads examined. The blunt ax of massive spending cuts, along with huge across-the-board tax increases, would be irresponsible, possibly triggering another recession. It’s offensive for some Democrats and Republicans to suggest their party could “win” under this scenario, since the country and the American people would be sure losers.

Both parties say they want a deal. The key question is whether they will resist their respective wings, special-interest pressures and short-term political considerations to achieve one.

HSBC’s $1.92 billion payment to U.S. authorities to avoid prosecution for money-laundering practices, including transferring funds for Mexican drug cartels, raises serious questions about the flow of narco-cash in the international banking system. The time has come to tackle the culture of impunity that allows these illegal transactions.

The illicit drug trade remains international organized crime syndicates’ most lucrative source of income. Drug traffickers may be laundering up to 70 percent of the estimated $320 billion they make from illicit drugs annually, according to United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Yet officials have been able to seize less than 1 percent of this.

In Central America, for example, we have all seen the effects of crime and drug trafficking. When criminals fight, it is innocent bystanders who often die. The homicide rate in El Salvador is 69 killings per 100,000 citizens; in Guatemala it is 39 per 100,000; and in Honduras it is 92 per 100,000. By contrast, in Great Britain, the homicide rate is roughly 1.2 per 100,000.

Barack Obama may finally be defining himself as president. The question is: What took him so long to seize the narrative and find his character as “leader.”

Obama now has strong public support in the fiscal crisis faceoff. Even as the House Republicans scramble to find a way into the argument, the president has a tight grip on the storyline.

This is a big change from the fierce healthcare reform fight and the 2011 debt limit crisis. The chattering class then continually asserted that Obama had “lost control of the narrative.”

Quite frankly, thoughts and prayers can only go so far. They have limited ability to protect our families.  The time has come for our elected leaders – including President Barack Obama – to stand up and fight for our families and children, and their safety.

Obama’s comments Friday after the shooting tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 little children were killed along with six adults in the Sandy Hook Elementary School, were personal and touching. Yet the president’s only allusion to something like gun control were his words about taking “meaningful action.”

But the American people support stronger gun safety measures more than he believes or cares to say. Polls now demonstrate this to be true.