The wisdom is as old as history. It survives in homilies and platitudes repeated so often as to go unnoticed by many, but it is intuited if not understood by a variety of people: a student working to gain an education, an athlete training to excel, a child saving to buy a bicycle (or an iPod) or a parent saving to send that child to college. The wisdom is this; that great things are accomplished by sacrificing a measure of immediate gratification to make small, incremental changes oriented towards a future goal.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. “Slow and steady wins the race,” said the tortoise to the hare. Our parents’ generation understood this. They opened savings accounts when they were young. They bought bonds and annuities. If they invested in the stock market they chose companies with solid fundamentals which paid dividends. Back in the “old days” nation building was funded by a country’s savings. The WWII Generation used their savings to build the strongest nation in the world with the best schools, the best infrastructure, the best science and the most innovative businesses.
If civilization survives us, historians may argue indefinitely about where we lost our way. If you compare today’s economy, infrastructure and educational system with those of the previous generation, we begin to look like one of those before and after posters of a meth addict. Our drug, it seems, was gratification. Born into the affluence created by the previous generation, we lost the will to sacrifice anything for our own future. Some say that we allowed the moral fiber of the nation to weaken, but we might also understand it this way: Our dissipation weakened our immune system and made us vulnerable to an array of predators and parasites.
Parasites and predators have been with us since we lived in caves, but today we exist in a tapeworm economy while the vultures circle overhead. If we are lucky enough to have a dollar, an incredible array of devices exist to entice or to extort it from us. All forms of communication and commercial media are infested with tapeworms. The Internet is becoming one endless marketing campaign. Radio and television attempt to shout us into submission. Even the old fashioned telephone is not safe from the computer generated sales pitch.
Our largest and most venerable institutions have also turned parasitic. If we want to save for the future, our bank pays us almost nothing for the use of our money - but if WE want to use it, transfer it or, so it seems, even look at it – they charge us a fee. We can’t drive an automobile without paying an insurance company – and who can afford to have a tooth filled or visit a doctor without insurance? But of all the institutions great and small, the hungriest, the greediest, the most intrusive and by far the most parasitic is none other than our own government.
In such an environment sacrificing and saving for the future becomes difficult when our best efforts are barely sufficient to keep up with our obligations. We are living with the consequences of our choices and unfortunately we are only in the beginning stages of what some have called the Great Recession or, as Bill Bonner coined, “The Great Correction.” Like a drug addict beginning to detox, our society is in for some unpredictable behavior as we experience withdrawal symptoms from being denied the instant gratifications we can no longer afford. Working Americans are becoming savvy to this situation. Our savings rate has grown rapidly as we learn to spend less and save more. But in the process we are starving many of the parasites which have thrived for so long on our indiscretions.
Think of it this way – our economy is being “wormed,” and like the dog or cat unfortunate enough to have experienced this process, we will feel a little sick for a while as the parasites struggle to stay alive. Our biggest challenge will be “worming” the government, which has bored very deeply into us, feeding heavily on our vital processes.
In our growing frustration it may make us feel better for a moment to consider the similarity between government institutions and tapeworms. In the final analysis, however, we are dealing exclusively with human beings; human beings who share many of the same addictions that have plagued the general population. The difference is that the people in government are in a position to leverage their addictions. We feel the momentary rush of power when we are able to satisfy our desire for instant gratification. In government the rush of power is more long lasting. It is, perhaps, a more serious addiction. Wresting power from such an addict will not be any easier than taking the car keys from an alcoholic, but it must be done. We have allowed Washington to drive drunk for too long.
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