ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE USING GREED AND FEAR TO STAY IN OFFICE

 

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.