The Economics of Enough_ How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters - Diane Coyle [136]
In the United States, President Obama was elected by 53 percent (with an increased voter turnout of 61.7 percent) on a platform including health reform. In opinion polls, 34 percent of Americans said they wanted him to go ahead—higher than the proportion of the population (15.8 percent) with no health insurance.11 The reform bill struggled to pass Congress, and the president had to compromise on his plans. Normal enough, but conservative opponents of the president, both elected representatives and sections of the media, were unabashed about telling lies to try to kill the reforms—including some extraordinary inaccurate statements about the UK’s National Health Service.12 There’s nothing at all wrong with partisanship per se as there are so often trade-offs and tensions in public decisions. But a country in which the public interest of extending health insurance coverage to all its citizens figures so little in the decisions made by politicians and in which the media have no sense of the obligation of impartiality is in a sorry state. Health reform was passed in the end, but American democracy looks much less inspiring than it did when I lived there twenty-five years ago.
The United States is certainly not alone in having a dysfunctional formal political system, though. The pervasive difficulties of all the advanced democracies involve the roles of elected politicians, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the media. Also in play is the vulnerability of decisions to lobbying by powerful interest groups and the use of legal challenges to political or official decisions, whether by businesses or campaign groups. In most Western countries, it is increasingly difficult for either bureaucrats or elected politicians to get anything done. Special interests have a stranglehold on many aspects of policy, all the more so in countries where fundraising for frequent elections is required. The heat of partisanship, of personal interests, of bitterness in politics, is torching the possibility of holding political or public office with an impartial, objective sense of public service. This is not necessarily the fault of the individuals taking part in the processes, most of whom certainly start out motivated by the idea of serving their fellow citizens. But the system is broken. Voters have no respect for politicians or the political system, bureaucracies are increasingly ineffective, the law seems progressively further removed from the administration of justice, and there is scant sense of responsibility in wide swaths of the media.
This is all reflected in the evidence, cited in chapter 5, of the loss of respect and trust people have for the formal institutions of politics and government, and for much of the media too. It is reflected in the cynicism of voters and political classes alike. On the whole, citizens ignore the political world as much as they can, and the political world ignores the citizenry as much as it dares. When 44 percent of members of Congress are millionaires, compared with an average income of $39,751 in the United States, the chasm is clear.13 So too when Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom claim taxpayers’ money for cleaning their moat or buying a second home far from their constituency, and are aggrieved at the subsequent public disgust because they all believe they’re underpaid. Their salary (before expenses and allowances) is £64,766 compared with the national median of £20,801. Perhaps the job is worth more—but equally, perhaps too many MPs are benchmarking themselves against bankers and corporate lawyers rather than others working in the public service such as teachers or doctors.
The loss of political capacity is hardly a new complaint. But it matters for the Economics of Enough because not only are the current challenges huge, as will be clear from this book, but in addition the role of the state in the leading economies will be forced to change dramatically. Government budget deficits are already large, and in the short term big cuts in government spending will need to be introduced. Longer