Under the Spreading Banality

Regarding my recent post, “The Banality of Catastrophe”, it didn't take long to come up with an example. In Sunday's paper, in an article entitled “Social Security day of reckoning closer to reality”, it is made clear that Social Security will already start running in the red this year – i.e., annual costs will exceed revenues for the first time. So what will make up the difference? Why, the Social Security “trust fund”, of course – which is basically a bunch of IOUs, and nothing more. Well, they are IOUs from a government that is bankrupt; in other words, the cupboard is bare. And even all of those IOUs added together, if turned back into actual cash, would not keep the system afloat indefinitely. Hopeless? Well, yes – but not totally, according to Andrew Biggs of AEI, and a former deputy commissioner for policy at the Social Security Administration. He says, “Some people say the government will default on the trust fund and won't pay. That won't happen. [This would be the catastrophe model.] If they don't want to repay it, (the government can) simply cut Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age, raise taxes... It's all under control of the government, basically.” And, “It may not be paid back in time in the sense that we'll pay promised benefits through 2037 – my sense is that we'll cut benefits way before the trust fund runs out.” The point is that something will be done before the point of utter collapse... which is, of course, always the political solution – keep shoring things up and maintaining the illusion of soundness, even as the rot spreads within. So Social Security will end with a whimper and not a bang, according to these prognostications – and that's the point I was trying to make about this as well as everything else of a “time bomb” nature in the economy (or anywhere else).

But isn't it true that things _ought_ to end in a great crashing cataclysm – for this would better satisfy the aesthetic and moral senses? However, they seldom do. We take delight in "disaster movies" because, on some level, we feel that this is what ought to happen -- we are all Jonahs at heart, pronouncing curses and condemnation on a sinful world. (But then when a disaster movie comes to life -- as on 9/11 -- then we're not so sure it's such a good idea.) “Unconditional surrender” is a rare thing in war, for example – although you'd never know it from reading just 20th Century history. People do survive plagues and famines; otherwise there would be no one left to tell the tale.

And if one accepts that our economy is constantly being manipulated by much higher powers than any elected official or aggregation thereof... well, then it makes sense that a sudden catastrophe will occur only when and where they wish it to. For example, 9/11 served a purpose -- "mission accomplished" -- but that doesn't mean we need a 9/11 every other week, any more than most of us need to live our lives in intensive care units. Again, the program is not to exterminate the American people (at least not physically), but to render them helpless and under continual stress, thereby exacting obedience. If you're willing to starve slaves to death, then clearly having no slaves is more important than having slaves, right? The sign that read “Arbeit Macht Frei” over the entrance to Auschwitz was only a bit of gallows humor – the Third Reich was certainly not depending on any great amount of productivity from the camps. What it really meant was that the “Arbeit” -- i.e. work – of the camps was that of getting rid of undesirables, i.e. rendering the German people “frei” -- free – of the sorts of people they didn't like. But for every camp inmate there were many more “free” people on the outside, who were, in fact, slaves... and the same could be said of the Soviet Union and its gulag. There were prisoners, and then there were slaves – and they were separated by barbed wire, watch towers, and a few minor details like the quality of their food and clothing. Our enlightened society, on the other hand, has prisoners – but they are all in jail for a good reason, right? -- and those well on their way to becoming slaves... depending on how high a taxation rate you think constitutes slavery.

Of course, one could also point out that, as in the case of Social Security, there is really, ultimately, only one pot of money. In other words, it's all “fungible” -- nothing is set aside, nothing is protected, there are no “lock boxes”. One government agency can stage a raid on the budget of another agency any time it likes – not that they always succeed, but nothing keeps them from trying. I saw this many times in my time with the “feds” -- a budget item that seemed as secure as eggs in an Easter basket was suddenly pillaged by some obscure Congressman in order to pay for a memorial for fallen Pea Pickers of America – or some other equally idiotic chunk o' pork. And no one objected! You just took the hit, because (1) it was useless to protest; and (2) the next time around it might be your turn to pillage someone else. So each agency was operated as a sort of fiefdom, under the command of a war lord – it looked more like medieval Japan than any Kurosawa movie. People would, literally, go out on raiding parties, appealing to someone high on the food chain to rob someone else and pay them -- and they quite often had a specific target in mind -- a "soft target", if you will -- for pillaging. And this was, mind you, long after budgets had been approved and funds allocated for specific programs. In other words, it was never too late to lose money – or too early to try and lay claim to money years into the future. Now, can you imagine the impact that nonsense like this had on multi-year programs? It made about as much sense as each agency head taking his funding, in cash, down to the local Indian casino every Friday night and hoping he'd come back with more on Monday morning – after having sat around the roulette table with all the other agency heads the entire weekend. Yeah – it made exactly that much sense. But that's really how things work... and it's a miracle that government is not even less efficient and effective than it is.

But setting aside that predatory, jungle-like, “red in tooth and claw” aspect of things for a moment, it remains true that, as Mr. Biggs said, the government can do whatever it wants – in other words it's not truly constrained by any laws, regulations, or “entitlements”. What happens is that it abides by the letter of existing laws and regulations, but then comes up with programs and new regulations and laws that effectively neutralize the old ones. Anyone wonder why the U.S. Code just keeps getting bigger? The truth is that much of it is obsolete and no longer in force... but it's way too much trouble (administratively and politically) to actually remove a law from the books, so they're just, basically, painted over and new structures are built on top of the old – so only the new stuff shows or matters. You know how, every once in a while, some “seldom-applied” or obscure law makes an appearance in a court case? For every one of those there are hundreds, or thousands, more lying dormant – ready to cause trouble if ever called upon, but more likely to rest in peace for perpetuity.

So what we have here is perhaps not proof, but a nice piece of evidence for what I call the "banality" of catastrophe -- the real-world, business-as-usual, non-boat-rocking, go-along-to-get-along aspect of things that eventually takes over even the most high-profile, controversial area of government operations. Today's take-no-prisoners battle becomes tomorrow's dull bureaucratic drill; that's just the way things evolve. Nothing stays "hot" forever, and I guarantee that ObamaCare won't either. It will slowly morph into a great, gray mass like Social Security, farm policy, defense acquisition -- you name it. It's dull, it's inane, it's... banal.