Reality check

The United States is neither poor nor weak. It doesn’t have to sell out its most treasured traditions, its longest-standing allies and its reputation as a generous, law-abiding and cooperative nation in order to put the screws to its own people, to its allies and to those who depend on it for survival.

Cutting social programs, foreign aid and basic functions of government is a choice

The USA is the richest and most powerful country that has ever existed. Yet it has somehow convinced itself that it is poor and has been taken advantage of by everyone. It has the capacity (financial and political) to pursue social justice and even generosity in ways unimaginable both in history and in our current world. But it is acting like it can’t afford to provide healthcare to its people or aid to others or to buy rare earth minerals at fair market prices from a country in a fight for its very life.

Why is this? There are many reasons, but the key one I want to focus on is economic/fiscal. The U.S. has convinced itself that low marginal tax rates (benefiting the wealthiest the most) are the key to its prosperity. That means two things:

First, that it starves its governments of the means to pay for social programming that provides benefits for all. This makes it seem like “we can’t afford” Medicare or SNAP (food stamps) or what have you because of budget deficits. But those deficits are a choice – a choice not to generate revenues (via taxes) that would cover these things.

Second, that it cuts taxes for those well-off and does not provide sufficient support for the rest of the people, which exacerbates massive economic inequality. That means that – even though the per capita GDP of the U.S. is over $80,000 – lots of people really are living on not enough while others are so wealthy they can essentially buy political office.

So you end up in a situation where – partly because a lot of folks really are struggling to make ends meet – the powerful can convince a majority of the public that the nation is poor and needs to use its power to shake down friendly nations, deprive its own people of necessary supports, and continue to cut the taxes of the well-off.

But this is all a choice. When politicians shrug and say “we’d love to fund __, but we just can’t afford it,” they are being dishonest. Collectively, the nation is rich beyond the dreams of even our grandparents. If it decides to act like it’s poor (and subject many of its people to poverty) that’s a choice. And it’s probably not a choice that benefits you.

And before my fellow Canadians (especially Albertans) get too smug, this applies to us as well as the U.S.: we choose to act like we are poor and powerless in ways that benefit only a few of us.

Red tape exists for a reason

So what does benefit us collectively? What is a good use of our collective power?

You’ve likely heard the term “administrative state” (AS) used lately, mostly by political actors who want to portray it either as a form of corruption and waste, or as a threat or impediment to “the Will of the people” (code for a president or premier doing whatever s/he wants on the grounds that s/he narrowly won an election). You may have heard the term associated with others like “bureaucracy” and “deep state.”

The administrative state is a real thing. It names the increased state functions that emerged over the course of the late 19th and 20th centuries. During that time, governments took on more and new roles in society – from providing certain forms of social insurance (health insurance and deposit insurance, for example) to creating and administering public services (such as public pensions, public education, research and development investment in science and technology), to creating regulations and regulatory agencies to ensure things like food safety, financial honesty, safe vehicle manufacturing, preventing pollution and much more. All of these things do cost money and so the share of the national income (GDP) that is state expenditure is much greater now than it was in the late 19th century.

However, to properly understand the AS you need to know why it developed and what it does for society. The fact is that – as industrialization and mass society developed – it became clear that there were necessary things that only the state could provide and necessary protections that only the state could ensure.

Bureaucracy benefits you

Take food safety, for example. Until governments passed regulatory legislation, you had no way of knowing that the prepared food you bought was safe or even that it was what the label said it was. As more people depended on prepared food (and we all do for a huge portion of our diets), just telling customers to beware of what they bought was increasingly pointless – “caveat emptor” was not something consumers could feasibly do, and the big food corporations weren’t going to regulate themselves. This is what economists call market failure, a situation where the free market and individual choice are not going to provide a certain good or prevent a harm. In such cases, it falls to government to step in. And that’s a good use of our collective wealth.

I could tell a similar story about workplace health and safety, avoiding old-age poverty, making sure our waterways aren’t so polluted that the water catches on fire, and so on.

All of this bureaucracy, though, is still overseen by and responsible to the people’s elected representatives (primarily the legislative branch). It gets no funds and is not allowed to act or spend money unless permitted, allocated or mandated by congress (in the U.S.) or Parliament (in Canada). It is not an autonomous power centre bent on confounding the “Will of the people.” It’s not perfect and – like all human systems – it’s in need of reform and accountability, but much of that is already built into the system.

Don’t let people scare or bamboozle you with dark mutterings about a corrupt and unaccountable deep state bureaucracy.

It‘s very easy to take the functions of the AS for granted, because when they are functioning well their effect is as often as not about what you don’t experience (horrible pollution, runs on banks, mass poisonings from tinned beans) and these things only come to notice when they don’t work or when they are obstacles to our doing what we want.

But there’s no doubt at all that you’ll miss the AS when it’s gone.