Policy Futures

A couple of articles caught my attention this week.

The first one was in the WSJ on May 19, "The Next American Frontier" by Michael Malone. Malone explains the economic transformations our society has experienced over the past generation and the implications this has for social and political organization. Our capitalist culture has become more entrepreneurial, breaking down some existing institutions of business and labor, while empowering individual innovators. This resulting shift toward apolitical market metrics for success and failure is lamented by some nostalgic for the past, writers like Thomas Frank. But the transformation is occurring because it plays to the wealth-creating strengths of a free society. We are becoming more a society of ideas than one of control over resources. We should figure out how to embrace the change for its opportunities, rather than impede it because of its uncertainties.

The second article appeared two days later in the WSJ by Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, titled "How to Tackle the Entitlement Crisis." Rep. Ryan suggests a principled program of policy reforms to address health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and the tax system. He offers an excellent roadmap for aligning our politics with the transformation outlined in the Malone article. In essence, his reform proposals focus on empowering the individual and freeing citizens to provide for most of their own needs. This is falsely derided as the YoYo society (for You're On Your Own) by the Democratic left, but individual initiative and self-reliance have always and still do underpin the American frontier spirit. We need only realign our more recent entitlement culture.

In a previous blog post (How to Win in 2008....and Beyond), I argued how our future politics would need to meet citizens' demands for individual autonomy, freedom of choice, and protection from risks we can't control, what is called systemic risk. (Such risks would include financial meltdowns, terrorist attacks, environmental disasters, currency runs, disease epidemics, etc. - all other risks can be managed by private insurance and asset diversification.) Technology has empowered our sense of autonomy, free choice and control. It's how we conduct our lives in product and service markets and what an entrepreneurial society demands from government. The protection aspect is where we've got more thinking to do.

In this respect, Rep. Ryan's proposals provide a consistent vision and any voters who believe we are headed in the wrong direction today should really give serious consideration to how they envision the future differently. No matter what anyone thinks, the New Deal is not coming back - it makes no sense in 21st century America.