The Price of Civilization
Page 17
Climate change is likely to exacerbate resource scarcities.
Demand is likely to outstrip easily available supplies (of strategic resources, including energy, food, and water) over the next decade or so.
Lack of access to stable supplies of water is reaching critical proportions.
The above trends suggest major discontinuities, shocks, and surprises.
What is most alarming, though, is that the government made such dire forecasts without recognizing the need for substantive policy responses. The alarm bells were sounded, but nobody responded and nobody seems to care.
This is an increasingly common pattern. Careful work is carried out by countless agencies and scientific academies, including the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering, as well as leading research universities and think tanks. Yet the studies are ignored as soon as they are issued. Expertise is ignored, and the agenda in Washington remains dominated by what is convenient for politicians and the interest groups that support them. Difficult issues, such as climate change, water scarcity, and the transition of energy from fossil fuels, are kicked down the road to later years.
A new mindfulness of the future would take seriously the responsibility to link expert forecasts with appropriate policy actions. The government would be charged with regular reporting on the main future national challenges, with a time horizon of ten to twenty years. Such reports, by the National Intelligence Council or other agencies, would then be discussed and debated by the president and Congress. The White House would be required to issue a policy paper in response, and Congress would be charged with taking up that policy paper. A cycle of deliberation and policy design would ensue, and the future would be viewed with the moral and political seriousness that it requires.
Politics as Moral Responsibility
Mindfulness of politics is needed to provide an antidote to the dead end of corporatocracy. Americans must regain a proper understanding of the complementary and balanced roles of government and the marketplace. Though we support the crucial role of private businesses in the market economy, we must also insist that powerful corporations stop their relentless lobbying and propagandizing so that society can address serious problems on the basis of evidence, ethics, and long-term plans.
Our politics will work again when we overcome three crises. The first is ideological, the mistaken belief that free markets alone can solve our economic problems. Only markets and government operating as complementary pillars of the economy can produce the prosperity and fairness that we seek.
The second is institutional, involving the political role of the large corporations. We must maintain a judicious view. Our major corporations are invaluable to society as highly sophisticated organizations that manage large-scale, technologically advanced operations all over the world. Yet they have become a threat to society by using their lobbying power to dictate the terms of legislation and regulations. The license to operate as a company does not include a license to pollute our politics.
The third is moral, concerning the nature of modern democracy itself. In America today, there is little systematic public deliberation, and the public’s views are rarely taken seriously in the political process. One key policy decision after another is adopted behind the backs of the public, often in direct contradiction to public opinion. We need to return to a spirit of true deliberation at all levels of society, one that reconceives politics as honest group problem solving, grounded in mutual respect and shared values.
Toward a Global Ethic
The eighth step toward economic recovery is mindfulness of the world, and most importantly the recognition that today’s world is deeply interconnected economically and socially, albeit with considerable discord and confusion. No significant economic trend in any part of the world leaves the rest of the world untouched. The 2008 Wall Street crisis quickly percolated to all parts of the world economy. AIDS and the H1N1 flu virus similarly spread quickly around the world. An El Niño fluctuation in the Pacific climate causes weather disturbances worldwide, and these in turn trigger sharp movements in global food prices, such as the surge in grain prices in 2010.
Just as we’ve created a national economy riddled with advertising and propaganda that threaten our well-being, we’ve created a globalized economy that lacks the necessary cooperation to keep it stable and peaceful. The combination of unprecedented economic interconnectedness on the one hand, and the deep distrust across national and regional borders on the other, may be the defining paradox of the world economy today. Many of our major global problems—climate change, global population growth, mass migration, regional conflicts, and financial regulation—will require a much higher level of political cooperation among the world’s major powers than we have so far achieved. Without sufficient trust across national borders, the growing global competition over increasingly scarce resources could easily turn into great power confrontations. Without trust, there is little chance for the coordinated global actions needed to fight poverty, hunger, and disease. Without trust, governments will be at the mercy of footloose global corporations that move their money to tax havens around the planet and pressure governments to lower tax rates, labor standards, environmental controls, and financial regulations. Mindfulness of the world therefore really amounts to a new readiness to adopt global norms of good behavior that aim to protect poor countries as well as the rich, weak countries as well as the powerful.
The great theologian Hans Küng has undertaken a profound effort during the past quarter century to identify a global economic ethic based on the world’s leading religions. Küng found that diverse religious traditions share fundamental ethical standards regarding economic life and behavior, which can enable the world to identify and embrace a truly global economic ethic. According to Küng, the common thread of conviction is the Principle of Humanity: “Being human must be the ethical yardstick for all economic action.”14 The economy should fulfill the basic needs of human beings “so that they can live in dignity.” From this basic humanistic principle, Küng identified several ethical themes with universal standing: the importance of respect and tolerance for others; the right to life and its development; sustainable treatment of the natural environment; the rule of law; distributive justice and solidarity; the essential values of truthfulness, honesty, and reliability; and the core value of mutual esteem.
Küng’s findings, and their recent embrace by many other ethicists, are heartening. They show us the way to harness global diversity yet find common touchstones across what to some appear to be impenetrable divides. They give us the confidence to envision economics not only in technical terms but also as part of a global human framework guided by humane principles. The global market economy must remain guided by humane purposes and not be regarded as an end in itself.
Most important, the Principle of Humanity bids us to respect one another through a renewed and heightened appreciation of our common fate as human beings and our common hope for dignity, solidarity, and sustainability. Küng’s studies of the world’s religious traditions reaffirm the key point that what unites humanity is vastly more important than whatever might divide us. They also remind me of the eloquence of President John F. Kennedy in his remarkable search for peace in the year after the Cuban missile crisis, the final year of his life. Kennedy reminded us that
Across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.15
How, then, to find the path to peace? Kennedy was ever pragmatic and idealistic at the same time:
So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final ana
lysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.16
Those words, and the powerful vision behind them, led to the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in the summer of 1963, which helped to pull the world from the nuclear abyss. Today’s sources of tension—terrorism, instability, extreme poverty, climate change, hunger, and shifting global power—may be different from before, but the path to peace through mindfulness of the world, built on common interests and mutual respect, remains the same as in Kennedy’s time.
Personal and Civic Virtue as an Approach to Life
The mindful society is not a specific plan but rather an approach to life and the economy. It calls on each of us to strive to be virtuous, both in our personal behavior (regarding saving, thrift, and control of our self-destructive cravings) and in our social behavior as citizens and members of powerful organizations, whether universities or businesses. Our current hyperconsumerism on a personal level and corporatocracy on a social level have carried us into a danger zone. We have become like the rats that press a lever for instant pleasure, courting exhaustion and ultimately starvation. We have created a nation of remarkable wealth and productivity, yet one that leaves its impoverished citizens in degrading life conditions and almost completely ignores the suffering of the world’s poorest people. We have created a kind of mass addiction to consumerism, relentless advertising, insidious lobbying, and national politics gutted of serious public deliberation.
The mindful society, with its eight areas of mindfulness—toward self, work, knowledge, others, nature, the future, politics, and the world—aims to help us refashion our personal priorities as well as our social institutions, so that the economy can once again serve the ultimate purpose of human happiness. By itself, mindfulness will not end our self-destructive consumer addictions or the political bind of corporatocracy. But it will open the way to a reenergized, virtuous citizenry, one that is ready to rebuild American democracy and put it back into the hands of the people.
CHAPTER 10.
Prosperity Regained
The aim of this chapter and the next is to chart a path from here to 2020, one that restores hope, direction, and decency to American society. We are on the wrong track, Americans shout in unison. Then let us steer back to the right track and show clearly how we can restore prosperity and purpose. The starting point should be clearer goals for society and pragmatic ways to achieve them.
Setting Goals
In Table 10.1, I suggest a set of economic goals and timelines. The first goal addresses the current jobs crisis. Today’s 9 percent unemployment rate should be 5 percent by mid-decade and sustained at that lower level until 2020. There will be many policies to help get us there, involving labor market reforms, greater leisure time, and a long-term boost to worker skills. We’ll look at those alternatives in a moment.
The second goal, which is closely related, is to address the education crisis. By 2020, at least 50 percent of those aged twenty-five to twenty-nine should hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, up from 31 percent in 2009.1 That is the sine qua non for competing successfully in the twenty-first-century global economy. To get there, today’s students will have to perform better in the key subjects of math, science, and reading. Here, too, we should set goals, based on global benchmarks. America needs to end its long slide in school performance. It should certainly be able to score within the top ten countries in those three subjects by the year 2015 and the top five by the year 2020.
Table 10.1: Goals and Targets, 2011–2020
Goal 1. Raise Employment and the Quality of Work Life
Reduce unemployment to 5 percent by 2015.
Improve governance of CEO compensation.
Guarantee paid maternity and paternity leave in all firms of a hundred employees or above.
Goal 2. Improve the Quality of and Access to Education
Raise the share of twenty-five- to twenty-nine-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree to 50 percent by 2020.
Raise the U.S. ranking in global test scores to within the top five in all categories: reading, science, and mathematics.
Goal 3. Reduce Poverty
Cut the national poverty rate to 7 percent by 2020, half of the 2010 rate.
Reduce the share of America’s children growing up in poverty to below 10 percent by 2020.
Goal 4. Avoid Environmental Catastrophe
Reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2020 by at least 17 percent.
Ensure that low-carbon energy supplies account for at least 30 percent of U.S. power generation by 2020 and 40 percent by 2030.
Have 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020.
Goal 5. Balance the Federal Budget
Reduce the budget deficit to below 2 percent of GDP by 2015.
Eliminate the budget deficit by 2020.
Stabilize government health care outlays at 10 percent of GDP.
Goal 6. Improve Governance
Provide public financing for all federal elections.
Limit corporate financing of campaigns and lobbyists.
End the revolving door.
Consider constitutional amendments on term length and limits.
Goal 7. National Security
End the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rebalance the outlays on defense, diplomacy, and development.
Create by 2012 a national security strategy in line with the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025.
Goal 8. Raise America’s Happiness and Life Satisfaction
Establish national metrics for life satisfaction.
Raise life expectancy to at least eighty years.
Move from twenty-second to top five in least corrupt countries (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index).
Third, we need an honest approach to poverty, not one that blames the poor and leaves them to their fate. We know that the single most important key to ending the cycle of poverty is to enable today’s children growing up in poverty to reach their full human potential. That in turn requires that America as a society invest in the human capital—meaning the health, nutrition, cognitive skill, and education—of every child in the nation, whether born to wealth or poverty. By 2015, every child in the country should be enrolled in comprehensive early childhood development programs, ensuring the access of poor and working-class parents to quality child care, nutritional monitoring, safe day care, and quality preschool. As I describe below, no investment in our children will be more important for the long-term health of the nation.
Poverty rates stagnated for three decades and then began to increase after 2008. One-fifth of today’s children are growing up in poverty. By 2020, let us make that no more than 10 percent. Overall, more than 14 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line in 2010. By 2020, let’s cut that rate in half. There will be no single key to success: education, training, high employment, and health care must all play their role.
Fourth, none of these gains will last long if we continue to hurl headlong into an environmental and natural resource catastrophe. America has cause to overhaul its infrastructure in any event: the roads, bridges, levees, water and sewerage systems, and power grid are antiquated and dilapidated. But we have further reason to reinvest in the core infrastructure: it needs to be overhauled decisively to introduce smart and sustainable energy use and transport for the twenty-first century, to achieve three interlocking goals: efficiency, reduced dependence on imported oil, and the transition to a low-carbon economy. Obama has set an emissions target for 2020: a cut of 17 percent relative to 2005. I will add another goal: a revamped power grid and transport infrastructure to ensure at least 5 million electric vehicles on the road by the end of the decade, on the way to a “tipping point” at which electric vehicles become a commercially viable proposition without special government support because of the services that they deliver.2
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Fifth, we must get the soaring public debt under control. The budget deficit in 2010 was around 10 percent of GDP. Part of that was cyclical, caused by unusually low tax collections and unusually high unemployment insurance and other transfers due to the weak economy. Yet even with some recovery, the medium-term budget deficit is stuck at around 6 percent of GDP, enough to cause a devastating accumulation of debt and the potential for a budget crisis within a few years. Taxes will need to rise, especially on the top income earners, who have enjoyed an unprecedented bonanza in the past thirty years.
Sixth, we need to make government function effectively once again. Not only is our government in the hands of corporate lobbies, but its basic administrative machinery has collapsed. Policy making is relentlessly short term; there is little planning; and America’s vast expertise is not properly tapped. Without effective public administration, even a well-financed government is doomed to failure.
Seventh, a key to success will be much smarter foreign policy, especially a shift from “hard” power (military) approaches to “soft” power (diplomatic and assistance) strategies. We are squandering trillions of dollars in useless wars, breaking the budget and the national morale in the process. By ending these futile wars and redirecting our energies to the core reasons for conflict—widespread insecurity, extreme poverty, a scramble for resources, and rising environmental stresses—we will enhance our security at a tiny fraction of today’s military outlays. By 2015, we should be able to slash the military budget by at least half, from 5 percent of GDP to between 2 and 3 percent of GDP, and redirect a part of those savings to better investments in global stability.