Meandering Along, Going Nowhere

Who knew that interesting times could be so dull? All the dangerous excitement of our great crisis and the exhilaration of erstwhile recovery has given way to an enervating nothingness. We are meandering along going nowhere. Deliberately.

And that is both infuriating and frustrating. Because it need not be this way.

The incompetence that flourishes in Washington is matched only by the cussed and cowardly way in which the politicians there have stalled any, and all, serious attempts at saving us from stagnation. Even some of our more hardened and grizzled political players are now opening up about their fears. Bill Gates, a loyal Republican appointee retained by Obama as a bi-partisan token, apparently quivers when he considers the deep divisions and ineptitude that pass for governance in contemporary America.

We are doomed.

We are doomed because there will be no resolution any time soon to the division. The clash of ideologies is now crippling. The crescendo of right wing radicalism has reached its peak as the attempt to roll back the New Deal and Great Society has spiked to fever pitch. The right senses the immediacy of this crisis. The mess created by our binge of debt and the extraordinary stupidity and greed of our banks has opened an opportunity to fulfill every right winger’s dream: smash social programs and let every citizen fight for themselves. This they call individual freedom. It will devolve further into plutocracy. It always does. Which is why our ancestors fought so hard to establish a democratic system to offset the concentration of power and wealth that inevitably accompanies unfettered capitalism.

This right wing revolution will meet its end in the appetite that ordinary Americans have for the social programs the right so hates. Up until now the right has had the sense to avoid broaching the topic. It knew full well that running openly in opposition to such popular programs was suicidal politics. So they learned to wrap their goals, Russian doll like, within more palatable policies. Tax cuts designed to unbalance the budget were sold as returning tax payer money; voucher programs with low caps were sold as introducing choice; and now the great recession has opened the door to the ultimate weapon: we can no longer afford those programs, just look at the debt we are piling up.

Mixed in this brew is a melange of social issue politics such as anti-abortion and anti-science movements, coupled with a resurgence of extreme religion with its own toxic blend of intolerance, paternalism, and rigid adherence to archaic interpretations of religious books. It is this melange that provides the right with the fervor and righteousness typical throughout history of people filled with the certitude of faith. It is anti-modern. It is anti-rational. It is powerfully intoxicating.

And it is undermining America because, like all faith driven movements, it is uncompromising. Why compromise when you are completely certain you are right?

Instead you obstruct. You wear down the opposition. You exploit the opposition’s willingness to compromise. You proselytize. You convert followers to the true path. You prevent debate. You destroy and attack ideas that do not conform to your faith. You demonize the other. You stall. You delay. You create facts to support your case. You ignore or debase facts that deny your truths. Fervently. Absolutely. Relentlessly.

When marshaled along these lines even a small group can grind as large a nation as America to a halt. Especially if the majority remains complacent or ignorant of your intent.

It would help, I suppose, were there reservoirs of ideas untainted by these divisions. Then the majority could call experts into play to refute and ridicule the zealots. But, nowadays, the experts are all riven through by the same deep divisions. Society has no elite to call upon to resolve the conflict. Indeed the elite is caught up in the storm. It contributes to the division.

This is why modern economics has become so irrelevant. It is not a body of knowledge with enduring social value capable of being neutral, objective, or sanitized of ideology. Far from it. It is socially constructed. It is political to its core. It is an adjunct to the divisions and is called into play as a bulwark against compromise. Economists provide expert witnesses for both sides in every fight. Its contradictions laid bare modern economics wriggles to find some coherence, but surrenders any hope of being stable enough to stand against the onrush of ideology.

Deficits are either good or bad. Government intervention is either helpful or a hindrance. Markets are either perfect of imperfect. Trade is either beneficial or harmful. Consumers are hyper rational despite the evidence. Centralization is a curse despite its pervasive stranglehold on business. The list goes on until it reaches such absurdity that it vectors into a kind of ‘whatever-you-want-it-to-be’ neverland so distant that the phrase snake oil doesn’t seem to do it justice. Its great virtue is that it can be sold to anyone of any political stripe. Somewhere within economics there is a strand or an idea that suits every antagonist.

Yet it absorbs the lives of a great number of bright and well meaning people. They, like society at large, are meandering along going nowhere. They persist. They endure. They research. They write. They publish. They argue. They resolve nothing.

Economics is currently embroiled in a re-hashing of arguments last held at this same pitch during the 1930’s. In many ways the two eras have an almost eery resemblance. But there is a great difference. Back then the combatants were titans: Hayek, Keynes, Schumpeter, Fisher and the others still stand as major figures and contributors to the development of economics. Today we have no equivalent people. Instead we have extraordinarily gifted pupils of those figures. We have people who interpret seminal books, but do not write them. We have updated and modified versions of those alternative theories. We have had to resort to brushing off those seven decade old ideas because in the interim we produced nothing of similar stature.

We have meandered and gone nowhere.

So just at a moment when economics is in the limelight. Just when society calls upon the discipline for help. Just when its value should be stark. Just at its moment of greatest relevance, economics fumbles. It dropped the ball along the way. It became so self referential that most dialog within the academy seems utterly divorced from its putative subject matter. Technical virtuosity substituted for insight into actual economies. The chimera of rationality was too powerful to be ignored, and the demon of uncertainty was too complex to tackle.

When we visit doctors we expect them to do no harm. When we enlist an economist we have no such assurance. None. Instead we are exposed to opinion. Educated, yes. Informed, certainly. But opinion nonetheless. Economic “truths”, it turns out, are in the eye of the beholder. Economics is an art. And like all art it reflects and holds a mirror up to the society within which it is created. It can be interpreted. It can be controversial. It can be contradictory. It can be vulgar. It can be inspiring. It can even be beautiful. But it always contextual. It is deeply embedded within the social and political swirl that it tries to illuminate, justify, or explain.

Contemporary economics is thus like our economy and our society. It is meandering along going nowhere.

And that, I doubt, is of much help to the unemployed workers whose lives have been disrupted and potentially permanently diminished by the failure of the ideas that dominated policy over the past three decades.

It’s time to progress once more.