Waking Up

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
--Buffalo Springfield

A silver lining in our growing mass of problems is that the worse things get, the more likely it is that people begin to wake up and question the ill conceived actions of present day government. The gestation of the Tea Party movement is likely grounded in this phenomenon.

People can (and do) argue endlessly about the goodness or badness of government policies using personally held values as a basis. Because they are based on moral, religious, or other value judgments that vary among individuals, such debates can never be resolved.

What can be resolved is the effect of our current policies on economic outcomes, because economics is grounded in a set of natural laws that can be applied predictively. Applying these natural laws to our current set of policy choices suggests that we are likely headed toward dramatically lower living standards if not outright economic collapse.

Recent Bloomberg/BW data suggest that people continue to wake up to that fact. Nearly 2/3 of the country think that we are headed in the wrong direction and that level of pessimism is increasing. More than half believe that government spending is out of control and threatens our future.

It will likely take more pain before a substantial degree of social power can be truly harnessed. (Un)fortunately, more pain is likely in the cards.