Columns on Politics
1) Japan bashing: the newest form of American whining (The Daily Collegian, Monday, Feb. 10, 1992)
2) Social Security: Helping elderly or draining U.S. resources? (The Daily Collegian, Monday, March 16, 1992)
3) “Twenty-something generation” pigeonholes 79 million people (The Daily Collegian, Tuesday, March 30, 1993)
Japan
bashing: the newest form of American whining (The Daily Collegian,
Monday, Feb. 10, 1992)
George Bush's vomit is powerful
stuff.
Ever since he yacked on Japanese
Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, Japan's leaders can't seem to do anything
right.
With U.S.-Japanese relations
already fraying, Miyazawa touched off another round of economic isolationism by
mentioning the loss of the American "work ethic." (While watching a
recent episode of CNN's Crossfire, I got the impression Miyazawa was talking
more about CEOs than American workers.)
"Buy American" signs
are popping up again, and -- surprise, surprise -- many of the signs are
appearing in the windows of auto dealerships. And last week, a car dealer in
Latrobe set up a union fundraiser in which people bashed a Honda with a
sledgehammer.
Our enlightened and wise
political leaders, always quick to smell possible votes, are playing off the
anger and frustration being directed at Japan.
On the far right, Patrick
Buchanan continues to rant about how "we've been supporting them for so
long, and they're putting nothing back . . . I want America to become first
again" (which, I guess, means Japan would be last).
On the far left, Senator Tom
Harkin has a similar message. "We're going to reduce our trade deficit
with you, Japan, down to zero in five years," he says. "Two ways you
can do it: buy more or sell us less."
Smoking. I'm glad our leaders
are tough guys, but as usual, they've managed to confuse me. Are they telling
the Japanese to either buy more American cars or sell less Japanese cars?
One option means the Japanese
consumer buys a probable lemon; the other means that the American consumer gets
stuck with the "prize." Let's face it -- the average Japanese car is
a better buy than most, if not all, American-made vehicles. It's a lose-lose
situation.
I'm also confused about why
we're wasting so much energy bashing the Japanese. Overall, they've been great
friends and good business partners (in spite of the fact that none of our
politicians will stoop low enough to learn Japanese).
The Japanese spend at least a
billion dollars on McDonald's cheeseburgers and another billion on Coca-Cola
soft drinks every year. And last year, three million Japanese tourists blew
over $10 billion in our hotels, casinos and amusement parks.
More importantly, according to
an article in Time magazine, Japanese companies employ more than 600,000
American workers here in the United States, and Japanese investors bought $180
billion in bonds to finance our deficit spending.
"It's hard to blame Japan
for the recession in the U.S.," said Sadahei Kusomoto, chairman of
Minolta's U.S. operations. "Ford, GM and Zenith are moving their plants to
Mexico . . . while Sony, Toshiba and Mitsubishi are coming here and opening up
major plants."
President Bush isn't stupid. He
knows our economy depends on a working relationship with Japan. That's why he
mostly restrains himself to quiet mumbling about free trade, open markets and
creating American jobs.
He was in a difficult position
on his recent trip to Japan, a country with some of the most stringent quotas
and import barriers in the world. Anytime he raised the issues of free trade
and open markets, the Japanese could point here and say: "But look at
you."
Here in the land of the free and
the home of the brave, we supposedly have a free market economy. But
unfortunately, there is a difference between what's good for our businesses and
what's good for the general consumer. Our politicians often bow to special
interest groups and screw the consumers and taxpayers.
The prices of milk and just
about any product with sugar in it, for example, are kept high in large part
through the efforts of the dairy and sugar lobbies. According to estimates by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American consumers would save over $2
billion per year after deregulation of the dairy industry and another $2
billion per year if we could buy sugar at world market prices.
Peanut butter, cable TV and
health care (we'll hear more about this one) are just some of the products and
services where a lack of competition is costing us billions upon billions of
dollars.
But if anything, we should feel
sorry for the Japanese people because their government is screwing them much
worse than ours screws us. Their cost of living is incredibly high because of
trade barriers.
So it's no wonder that President
Bush threw up at that state dinner. Here's a man who said for the record that
he'll do whatever it takes to get re-elected in November. But he's being
squeezed between the interests of two constituencies -- businesses and
consumers.
If he takes the steps that his
CEO advisers want him to, the consumer pays more money for goods and services.
If he does what consumers should want him to do, he hurts businesses.
As members of a supposedly
populist society, we have to ask ourselves the following question: Do we want a
President who shares our priorities? (It's debatable if such an animal exists,
of course, but still . . .)
Capitalism is, and always will
be, a basically ruthless system. We've forgotten that fact and are trying to
keep all our companies happy.
But if we really want to narrow
the U.S.-Japanese trade gap -- the United States was $38.45 billion in the hole
in 1991 -- then we have to force our companies to become competitive again.
Instead of bashing the Japanese,
we need to clean up our own house. When our automakers can build a dependable
car at comparable prices, people will "buy American" again. (In any
case, conservative columnist George Will recently pointed out that 40 percent
of the Japanese cars sold in this country are made in this country.)
Until we clean house, President
Bush, or his successor, will probably continue having problems keeping dinner
where it belongs.
Meanwhile, the least we can do is stop blaming Japan for all our problems.
Social
Security: Helping elderly or draining U.S. resources? (The Daily Collegian, Monday, March 16, 1992)
I looked in the mirror yesterday
and realized that my hair is falling out. (Blame it on stress, I guess.)
"Nick, you're getting
old," I told my image. "It's time to start thinking about Social
Security."
Now whenever I think about
Social Security, my personality usually splits into several identities. In this
case, it divided into three distinct ones.
"You will have no worries
in your Golden Years," Idealistic Nick said. "You're entitled to
Social Security, Medicare and anything else you can get from the
government."
Exactly right, I told the
mirror. In 1991, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 percent of our homes
got a government payoff -- everything from Social Security to student loans. So
I want my share, my thirty pieces of silver for my vote.
"You're scum,"
roared Cynical Nick. "You're a leech on society, just like all those
ancient relics you saw in Atlantic City last week. They're a bottomless pit
sucking up all your tax dollars."
Exactly right, I admitted. A
third of all government spending last year went into programs for the elderly,
like Social Security. By the year 2000, it'll probably reach the one-half mark.
There's absolutely no way to significantly reduce our $400 billion-a-year
deficits when we throw away that much money.
"It's not a money
matter," Idealistic Nick responded. "Many of those people can't
survive without Social Security. What kind of nation allows its elderly to freeze
to death in decrepit old houses? We need a touch of human decency."
"But why do human decency
and human greed seem to go hand-in-hand?" asked Cynical Nick. "What
about all those people who don't need the money who still collect their Social
Security checks?"
He's got a point, I decided. The
statistics are tricky, but 92 percent of the over-65 crowd collect Social
Security, even though a third of them have a net worth of at least $100,000.
Eight-three percent don't have mortgage payments on their homes, anymore. For
them, it would appear, old age is one long government-subsidized vacation.
"Calm down, guys,"
said Laid-Back Nick, the third person in my head. "It's not worth the
worry. Let somebody else deal with it and just enjoy life. After all, we could
be burnt toast on the face of the planet any day now. So lighten up."
(Laid-Back Nick laughed almost the whole way through Wayne's World.)
Sounds good, I decided. I can be
oblivious. I'll just pop in Nirvana and breath in that teen spirit. Apathy is
better than alcohol any day.
But then, Cynical Nick kicked me
in a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. The pain was incredible, and it
transformed me into a very angry young man.
"You stupid idiot," he
ranted. "How are you going to enjoy life if half of your income gets
sucked up by the government? That's exactly what will happen if fools like Bill
Clinger keep running the show."
Our government is already
seriously overextended -- remember that $400 billion-a-year deficit? -- but
U.S. Representative Clinger and other politicians are bowing to pressure from
the elderly vote and making it worse. They're working to abolish any form of
earnings test for Social Security recipients.
"The earnings test must go
and I'm going to do everything possible to see that this happens," Clinger
was quoted as saying in his newsletter. "At the very least, the Congress
should raise the levels of income that senior citizens can earn."
Bill, pull your brain out of
your butt. We can't afford it. But hey, 70 percent of the elderly vote, while
only 35 percent of us eighteen-to-twenty-four types stuff the ballot box.
"The bottom line is that a
liberal democratic republic has to provide a safety net for those who need
it," Idealistic Nick shouted down from his altar. "We can't just toss
aside the elderly."
Of course not, I agreed. But
when Social Security was established in 1935, the majority of the elderly were
poor. That's no longer the case, but Social Security still rolls along partly
because we don't like the idea of investing time and money to take care of our
parents.
But we have to stop pretending
that Social Security is a retirement program and start forcing people to plan
ahead for their own financial security. Now, when we still have enough time and
control of the system to make some reforms.
I don't have all the answers
(and you have no idea how much that annoys me). But a time is approaching --
perhaps forty years from now -- when there will be less than two wage-earners
for every person on Social Security. That's when the Social Security tax will
swallow half of a paycheck. That's when things will fall apart, unless we make
some changes.
My only suggestion is to put the
people on Social Security to work. They could be the drill instructors at
government-sponsered schools -- Basic Training for New Parents -- since most
new parents know absolutely nothing about raising a child.
Then, Social Security would
almost be an investment, instead of an inefficient waste of our increasingly
limited resources.
Then, we could celebrate the
return of self-reliance.
“Twenty-something
generation” pigeonholes 79 million people (The Daily Collegian, Tuesday, March 30, 1993)
I am irked, peeved, annoyed.
Recently, I was reading a slew
of articles in the news magazines about the twenty-something generation, and
the experience turned my stomach.
My roommate looked up as I
rampaged through my apartment babbling incoherent curses and inflicting pain on
my issue of U.S. News & World Report.
"What are you doing?"
he asked. "Or should I say, what is it this time?"
I took deep breaths. I counted
to 10 several times. "I'm waiting for the bile in my stomach to
settle," I said. "Then, I'm going to kill someone."
He shrugged. "It works for
most paranoid white males."
I waved the magazine.
"Listen to this crap: 'The twenty-something rebels' battle plan is to
repair the damage their elders wrought and chart a new course."'
According to the article, the
people born between 1961 and 1981 are the Repair Generation, the 13th
Generation since the Founding Fathers decided to kill English troops instead of
American Indians for a while.
The members of this 13th
Generation supposedly share certain traits, and the article provides a list:
-- They want to beat the
system.
-- They rewrite the rules.
-- They are masters of
technology.
-- They are world travelers.
-- They value cultural diversity.
-- They seek service to
community.
-- They are post-partisan.
-- They will wage
intergenerational war.
Aside from the obvious absurdity
of characterizing 79 million of our peers in only seven sentences, there's very
little valuable truth to this type of formulation.
Read Emerson's and Thoreau's
essays; read just about any social commentator from previous
"generations." Everybody always thinks the world is totally
screwed-up, probably because it is, and everybody always blames it on the
previous "generation."
Look at our generation's current
plight. We are the underachievers, the slackers. We have feeble brains filled
with grunge music and low culture, minds and morals burned out by our drugs and
our sexuality. We are apathetic and unmotivated, mere breathing blanks on our
beloved planet. Who tells us these hard facts? Why the baby-boomers, of course,
our predecessors in time.
Luckily, we have peers like
Wendy Kopp, the 25-year-old creator of Teach for America cruising the national
scene blowing huge holes in the fabric of the myth our parents created about
us. She's one living, breathing proof that we are individuals, not an easily pigeonholed
mass of human organisms.
Still, I try to refrain from
shoving that fact down the throat of anyone who is 20 years older than me.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, gained by viewing our society as a
collection of hostile, warring generations.
I think our more scummy
politicians actually relish playing off the fears of the different age groups.
Democracy, though, works best when voters vote principles and approaches, not
when they climb on each other's backs to get a larger piece of pork.
But if you don't agree that the
whole idea of "generations" is a Bad Thing, if you consider yourself
a twenty-something cosmic janitor with a mission to clean up the assorted
refuse and disasters of the baby boomers, I have a question for you.
Why aren't you putting your
effort, your attention, where your rhetoric is?
Look, for example, at this fine
community called State College. Students represent about 70 percent of the
borough's population, and our money is this town's lifeblood. But there isn't a
single student on the seven-member borough council, and we're kidding ourselves
if we believe any current member represents our interests.
It's not just a matter of the
students vs. the non-students. I've lived here for six years; I consider State
College my town, too, and the people currently in charge obviously need
our moral and ethical guidance.
I could give many examples. The
local school board voted to allow Seldon Whitaker, the retiring superintendent,
to pervert the entire concept of an educational sabbatical by accepting half
his salary -- $50,000. The police can't seem to keep young criminals off the
streets after they steal our car stereos and CD players. The realtors can't
seem to resist treating students like second-class citizens, perhaps because
we're stupid enough to pay their inflated prices. (If you live in an apartment,
you know what I mean. If you plan on living in an apartment after moving
out of the residence halls, you'll soon find out. Count on it.)
There are two students -- Adam
Bender, a 22-year-old pre-law major, and Joe Schultze, a 21-year-old
agricultural business major -- running in the borough council primary on May
18. They are the best bets to represent our interests.
So if you live in a fraternity
house, if you have those pragmatic, "let's fix it" impulses, if you
believe we're an action-oriented generation, please do everything short of
parting the Red Sea to get to the polling booths. (I wonder if State College
hands out absentee ballots; I'm going to call the Municipal Building and ask.)
Hell, if we have two students
sitting on borough council in November, I may even start buying into this
twenty-something fervor.