The degree to
which our elected officials will avoid change and use greed and fear to
manipulate the electorate has never been so obvious or so egregious. What is most unfortunate is that these tactics
can only work when citizens do not take the time to understand the issues in
play or when they permit their desire for short term gratification to overcome
any long term gain.
Elected officials know what the morally
correct and/or better long term solutions are but they still continually chose
to encourage the misinformation that will keep things as they always were. There is simply no easier path to reelection
than to support and encourage the greed and fear of the electorate. Greed and Fear are much easier to promote
than the politics of long term change for the better. I will give three examples of this unsettling
trend, all of which are in the news and on our minds.
My first example is the reassessment
debate which has finally come to a forced legal resolution in Washington
County. Never have I seen elected
officials play on the greed and fear of the electorate with more success. It is an easy game when such officials have
unpopular school districts and the Courts as their foil. Taxpayers (who are also voters) hate property
taxes to begin with. They see their
younger neighbors, with children and in smaller homes getting all the benefits
from property taxes while they pay the larger tax burden. They see new schools or old ones with
enhanced facilities being built with little pay back for them. They know that their assessments are too low
but are unwilling to consider that they may not be paying their fair
share. Most of all, they fear a large
increase in their property tax bill and believe that taking no action is in
their best interest.
On the other hand,
our elected officials know the truth about reassessments but will never admit
it in public. They know that a higher
assessment does not necessarily mean a higher tax bill until the new median is
calculated and the appropriate millage set by each school district. They know that under existing law and with
further actions officals can take, reassessment will not produce unjustified
windfalls for school districts. They know that the poorer residents of
Washington County living in over assessed communities are paying more than
their fair share. They know that
property owners who end up paying higher taxes after reassessment should thank
their officials for unfairly saving them money over the last two decades while
those with reassessed lower tax bills should be mad as hell for incurring years
of unwarranted expense. They know that
most property owners will end up paying the same in property taxes once all the
post assessment calculations and adjustments are completed.
Of course, the
real issue that should be debated is the use of property taxes to fund public
education, when other alternatives are available. But here again, the public officials know
that replacing property taxes is a non starter at the State level. Better to pander to the greed and fear of
your misinformed voters and make a bad system even worse and more expensive to
rectify. Better to fight reassessment
until forced to take action under threat of legal contempt and sanctions. The thankful voters will be sure to pull the
lever of the politician who supports greed and fear at the next election.
The second example
is the much maligned Affordable care Act also known as Obamacare. The Republican scare tactics feeding on the
greed and fear of the electorate has been ramped up as the start date
approached on October first.
Socialism! Death Panels! A jobs
killer! Americans do not want it!
Again, our elected
Republican officials know the truth, but will not share it with the
voters. They know that most of the ideas
for the Health Care Bill came from conservative think tanks like the Heritage
Foundation. They know that the law
passed muster in the conservative leaning Supreme Court. They know that no program of this size can be
perfect and that there will be revisions as the roll out continues. They know that republican obstructionism at
the state level only makes it harder to implement the law and to save money.
Unfortunately,
getting elected trumps responsible leadership.
Stubbornly fighting the new law while invoking greed and fear will get
republicans reelected. Working on how to
improve healthcare will not.
Lastly, let us
consider the stock market (where greed and fear have always been the order of
the day) and self directed retirement funds.
In this case it is the liberals who have promulgated the greed and fear.
The wise investor,
who follows the advice of Warren Buffet and others who have made their mark,
knows that the time to buy financial products is when fear is prevalent and the
time to sell is when run away greed has created valuation bubbles, as in 2000
and 2007. The average middle class
investor, who directs his own retirement account, tends to do exactly the
opposite.
Progressive pundits are wrong in blaming
financial policy, implemented to save the banks and corporate America from the
2007 crash, for degrading the working middle class in America. In essence they argue that the common man
must fear the greedy capitalists who are building empires on top of their own
broken dreams. In fact, the working
middle class have harmed themselves, by greedily buying up financial
instruments at the top of financial bubbles and selling their ravaged holdings,
out of abject fear, at the bottom. Those
individuals who did not sell at the bottom and who simply rode out the sell-off
and maintained diversified, rebalanced index funds since the crash would be
well ahead on their retirement accounts.
While this approach requires discipline, it is not difficult to perform.
Ignoring the much needed debate on the “lack
of investment skill” among middle class Americans and replacing it with the
more flamboyant greed and fear based argument that present economic policy is: “saving
the big guys at the expense of the little guy” is doing the middle class a
grave disservice. With the financial markets, the game is fear and greed and either the middle class must learn to play by
the rules, or retirement savings must be governed by a safer passive annuity
based system. The markets are what they
are. Maybe Uncle Joe is never going to
be able to invest like Goldman Sacks, but he can certainly buy stock in Goldman
Sacks.
These
three examples, and there are many others, highlight how politicians from all
levels and both parties stay in office by encouraging the greed and fear of the
electorate, rather than acting as leaders and seeking long term solutions. Of the many possible explanations for this
trend, short term election cycles are certainly high on the list. If election cycles were twice as long and
limited to one term, our elected officials might actually get down to solving
problems rather than seeking reelection.
