Send in the Adults

Professor J,

Good to hear there was some shinkage of spending and the deficit.(I'll admit that the word shrinkage always makes me think of George Costanza in the pool.) :)

Well, you have a plan better than the ones spouted by actual candidates. And I think at this point when people are tired of the nonsensical platitudes being offered up by both sides that you might get more support for things like pain, shared sacrifice, confronting fear, and confronting fear than you might imagine. I often feel that the populace is in the same mood as the child who has had too many sweets and television over a holiday and longs for someone to rein them in. The child never admits this, of course, but when it is imposed upon them there is a relief in the return to more healthy and productive ways. Not without tears and complaints however.

The question is--are we mature enough to impose those painful, yet healthy limits on ourselves?

I especially like that you  threw in "confronting irrational and excessive fear." We are a people who are conditioned to now be afraid of everything. We are paying a heavy, though often unrecognized, price for that in many areas of life. From bringing up a generation of over scheduled constantly supervised children to the willingness to vote for the Patriot Act. When did we lose our spirit of courage? How might we work to get it back? Sadly, it seems one of those things which once lost, is gone forever.

The tax code is a big part of the problem and needs much correction as you have pointed out. You make several suggestions for tackling what is wrong with it now. Can you explain why you fall short of endorsing a flat/fair tax? Or is it just that a complete overhaul would be too big an endeavor in the current political and economic climate? OR perhaps your  answer is in your post when you said that our political system "doesn't lead it follows. Right now, it follows the selfish plutocrats."

I hear you echoing Hedges in pointing out that we are better off coming up with a plan and demanding that our "leaders" implement it. I'm remembering him saying that we shouldn't expect solutions to come from the top down, but from the bottom up.

Very interesting point you make about the "global stability of the core" and the world being more low risk than is sometimes thought due to the"desire of the non-core countries to join the core." It always strikes me that for most of these seemingly irrational despots and nefarious troublemakers that it is much more fun to run around and talk about blowing the world up than to actually do it. As we saw recently it can gain you a week's worth of attention at the UN no matter how crazy you are.