Jeffrey Sachs—a leading liberal quitter

Before the first yellowed leaves of fall, about this time every four years, a world-renowned American intellectual will throw in the towel: this election is a hopeless distraction, a gaudy sport for those without the guts to give up on America.

With the two presidential tickets complete and after barely one week on the road, Jeffrey Sachs tells the world: “America has lost the Battle over Government.” His case in the Financial Times against his home base rests on its fiscal aggregates and it’s two-party system:

“Mr Ryan’s budget is nothing short of heartless in the face of the dire crisis facing America’s poor. It is also reckless, guaranteed to leave millions of children without the quality of education and skills they will need as adults. Yet the sad truth is that the Democrats offer no progressive alternative. Both parties are accomplices to the premeditated asphyxiation of the state.

“Viewed from an international perspective, the constricted range of the US fiscal debate is striking. Total US government revenues (combining federal, state and local governments) in 2011 came in at about 32 per cent of GDP. This compares with an average of 44 per cent in the EU and 50 per cent in northern Europe.

“Only a big political realignment, perhaps spurred by a third party bold enough to campaign on free social media rather than expensive television advertising, is likely to break the status quo. Until then, the demise of public goods and services will continue apace.”

The man’s pessimism is highly selective. 

Sachs found it worthwhile to make a living through the 90s advising post-communist Poland and Russia—and their entrenched bureaucracies—about how to create modern capitalist democracies. 

He’s doing the same today in nearly a dozen states in Africa. 

America, somehow, is different. 

It’s strong enough to keep being poorly governed and too stupid to do anything about it. It’s progressives—Sachs and his unaligned and uncontaminated students—might as well wait for Ryan’s reckless promises to make matters work. After all, there’s no worthy progressive alternative asking for my help. 

Sachs’s macro numbers on public spending prove next to nothing and offer no excuse to give up. Progressive Canada can run an enviable public health care system with almost exactly the same level of public spending as in the US. Furthermore, spending in government (plus or minus a percent or two) a third of the biggest economy in the world still matters, desperately.

Each spender and each decision-maker elected by the people still makes a serious difference.

If numbers bore you and leave you depressed about the USA, recall what happened yesterday in Chicago. Tens of thousands of young people joined a mile-long line to enter the Obama government’s temporary and limited amnesty program for illegal immigrants.

The status quo for those young people still includes the American Dream and terrible dangers. 

Sachs, with his consultant’s notebook, should ask a few of those kids, and a few public health care providers as well, whether the 2008 presidential election mattered and whether this November’s will matter too.

Jeffrey Sachs and Niall Ferguson: duelling visions, in person

One thing that made the 60s exciting—and great—was the vivid personal animosity between many of its best protagonists. Gore Vidal and William Buckley, Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson ripped into one another in public and openly feared what the other’s ideas would do to America, and the world.

Now rising above the incoherence of statistics and pup-tents in parks, we finally have a duel of egos worthy of that earlier era of danger and change.

A week ago, on America’s blue-ribbon public affairs show GPS, Fareed Zakaria asked world economist Jeffrey Sachs and world historian Niall Ferguson what they thought of the OWS movement. Almost instantly, they went for each other's throats. A week later, Sachs made it clear in an interview in The Toronto Star that he at least has no desire to patch things up:

Star: You described the top 1 per cent as lazy. They’ve stopped trying, you said. That’s quite an indictment.

Sachs: Well, I was saying that many behaved to game the system. And I was specifically talking about Wall Street. The CEOs. The people who wanted the easy way to phenomenal wealth, even if that way was not through their economic prowess but through financial fraud or through corporate lobbying.

Star: On Fareed Zakaria’s show, GPS, historian Niall Ferguson accused you of overstepping the mark, moving from academic to demagogue. What is your response?

Sachs: Well, I thought he overstepped the mark moving to a blatantly inappropriate ad hominem attack.

Star: You seemed upset that he was calling you names.

Sachs: I thought he was obnoxious.

Star: What does Ferguson not get?

Sachs: He has long represented powerful interests. He works with financial companies... I don’t know. Those are his choices. They’re not my choices.

            Click on: www.thestar.com/news/article/1086149

Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t need to exaggerate to get attention. Furthermore, he’s not a trivial outsider with nothing to lose. He enjoyed tremendous influence during the glorious early days of neo-liberalism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Government of Russia and other post-totalitarian states turned to him for ready advice on how to create markets and appropriate regulatory infrastructure.  

Desperate places and big problems don’t intimidate him. Before writing his latest book, The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics after the Fall, he wrote The End of Poverty. He has twice been identified by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Sachs perspective on today’s problems is surprisingly radical. He doesn’t say that simply revving up the recently collapsed capitalist culture will be enough. Here’s his American agenda in today’s New York Times:

“Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making. This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.”

Click on: www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-new-progressive-movement.html?_r=2

The prospect of thinkers like Ferguson and Sachs publicly fighting over what are the obligations as well as the competences of entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and politicians only makes it more likely that the next year of US national politics will be forward-looking as well as bitter.

Bring it on.