Remember the Future

Forgetting the future is how we got into this mess.

In the 80s, taxes were cut to give people more money to spend in the present--particularly wealthy people. It started in California and went to Washington with Reagan. And for awhile, nothing bad seemed to happen. But the future was starved and wounded. And now that's our present.

California went from the best schools in the nation to among the worst. Lots of people knew that would happen when education was starved of funding, and eventually it did happen.

Taxes were cut in many states and by the federal government from the 80s on, so there was less money to fix bridges and roads. They didn't fall down immediately. But we're now faced with over $2 trillion in needed repairs. We're living the future that they forgot.

Cutting taxes, especially for corporations and the wealthy, meant less money for the federal government, which was part of the point for people who advocated lower taxes and "less government." But what less government meant was fewer people to safeguard America's health and safety, and prepare for emergencies.

For awhile few connected bad things that happened with these changes. If you were poor and services for your immediate needs were cut, you noticed. Or your schools were falling apart. But then came Katrina, and the whole country sat up and took notice.

Less government meant less regulation and fewer people to enforce regulations. For awhile, it didn't look like there were bad consequences But first the unregulated savings and loans, then the unregulated Enrons hurt a lot of people, and now the unregulated banks and Wall Street are hurting almost everyone.

All of those things looked good in the present, especially to the people who benefited the most. But they forgot the future, and their future is our present.

It wasn't just the government. Corporations became more and more fixated on their stockholders and the quarterly earnings report. They cared less about the communities that supported them long-term (they could always go offshore) or even about their own futures. The businesses that traditionally take the longest view--the banks--joined in a present-centered feeding frenzy.

All this is selfishness not only of the moment but in time. That's why the old stories warn against greed. It destroys the future.

Now we are presented with the need to stimulate our economy through spending. Some say we should give people money by cutting their taxes, and let them spend it. Others say we should spend money on creating jobs right this minute, by funding only those projects that are ready to go.

The first proposition, argued by Republicans, is opposed because people--particularly well-off people--don't spend so much of the money they get back from tax cuts. The second proposition is supported because it will get money into the economy, and it multiplies the effect of the money government spends by employing people who spend their pay on products and services that employ other people, etc.

President Obama doesn't agree with the first proposition. To depend on tax cuts alone, he says correctly, is part of how we got into this infernal mess. "Don't come to table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped create this crisis," he said Thursday. He has offered a plan that stimulates the economy with spending--almost 80% of it in the next year and a half. It creates jobs. As he said: "Let's put Americans to work doing the work that America needs done. "

But different theories on how to get money into the economy isn't the only issue that separates these approaches. The first is all about the present, and damn the future. The second remembers the future while rescuing the present.

The ordinary sort of infrastructure spending is future-oriented. Fixing roads and bridges is work in the present that has good consequences for the future. Some 75 years later, we are still using bridges and roads, post offices and parks, that were built during the Depression with federal money. Some 50 or more years later, we are still driving on interstate highways built with federal money. Their future is our present.

But even infrastructure spending can get fixated on the present--on repairing existing infrastructure the same old way. The Obama plan remembers the future even more dramatically and directly, and this cannot be allowed to be dropped from this plan: alternative energy, a 21st century electrical grid, more energy-efficient schools and homes, and other projects to end our enslavement to oil and move towards saving the planet. Computerized medical records, rural broadband and other projects that build for a more efficient and better future.

This future will someday be our present, and especially the present of our children and succeeding generations. As bad as things are now, if we don't make these kinds of investment, life will be far worse in the future. And not just the distant future.

If we don't build now for that future, with this recovery and reinvestment money, I fear we never will. There's been a lot of talk about wasting money. What could be a greater waste of money than not to use it to build a better future?