I would describe my current outlook on the world as 'worried, but weary'. That is, I know what is wrong with the world, I can describe it in some detail and with the important numbers. I can cite the important policy questions and possible alternatives. And yet, at every juncture, I am unable to pick any of the proposed policies, since none of them is promising.
On the economy, things are looking more and more like a depression. The recession will technically end, but our growth will be, well, depressed. Current long-term joblessness is double what it has been at any time in the last 50 years. Production capacity is huge compared to actual production, meaning that a return to employment is nowhere in sight. In fact, if the current job production was to continue, and it may not, it would be a staggering 12 years until anything like full employment. Foreclosure rates are still sky-high.
What should we do? Nothing but lament, in my view. The real answer is that we should invent a time machine, and go back and pass a stimulus that was in proportion to the GDP of this nation and the severity of the conditions. At the same time, we should show Ben Bernake the 2010 inflation numbers and explain to him that his managing of the liquidity trap will be woefully inadequate, and that monetary policy needs to buck the icon of Carter-era money-printing stagflation. These two things, even within my time-traveling scenario, are likely impossible anyway, because 1. Congress couldn't have passed a larger stimulus for political reasons and 2. the Fed currently lacks the legislative backing to throw money out of helicopters, which is what they need to do. All of the current policies are set, they really can't be changed even if the right path ahead was clear. Pile on top of these the fact that a lot of Obama's economic team is in favor of ghastly fiscal austerity, and the doom really begins to set in.
On energy, we have been unable to move public opinion on anything. A huge majority continues to support expansion of offshore drilling, despite the fact that it is not of the scale that allows for energy dependence, entrenches a regime that leads to global climate change, and has literally poisoned our coastal waters. One wonders precisely what would have to happen in order to move opinion on this. The number of people who understand climate change is pitiful and the number who believe in it is equally pitiful and simultaneously declining. Here, too, the way ahead is unseen. We could mount a massive campaign to change public opinion, but the public is caught up in denialism and the Senate majority leader has said he no longer has the words "cap and trade" in his vocabulary. Even cap and trade, if it were in Fairy Land going to pass through congress, would not really be sufficient to stop catastrophic global climate change for two reasons: one is that there is no suitable energy substitute, meaning that policy would have to be marginal to allow for industrial growth; the other is that in absence of a replacement, it would be difficult to get the biggest consumer of energy and CO2 emitter, China, to go along with it. Some have suggested a Manhattan Project for green energy. The problem with this is that the Manhattan Project was to invent something no matter the cost. For our current situation, cost is the only consideration. Cap and trade would certainly help, and is a good idea, but it's not going to happen, and even if it did, it's not a whole solution.
Our legislative process is currently paralyzed. The senate rules cannot be changed. Well, they can, but they won't. For a procedural change, the party in power would have to want to pass the changes, but since they are in power they would rather pursue their own policy agenda. By the time the pendulum is swinging the other way, it becomes politically untenable. Imagine the democrats emerge from the 2010 midterm elections with a majority (which has about an 85% chance of happening), but has lost 4-5 seats. They then propose to change the rules so that they can, in the public's view, repudiate the recent election and ram through legislation. It's a nonstarter.
As for the public at large, they don't give two shits about what politicians say, what policy is about, what's happening in the news. They care about one thing: how high is the unemployment rate, how much are wages growing. Witness: Joe Barton, the GOP congressman who disgracefully apologized to the CEO of BP, has no credible electoral opposition. Neither does Joe Wilson, he of "YOU LIE!" fame. Sharon Angle, the republican senate candidate in Nevada who endorses dissolution of Social Security and the Department of Education, is leading Harry Reid by about 5 points. So too is Rand Paul handily ahead in his senate race, despite the fact that he proffers the frivolous (not to mention hateful) notion that the Civil Rights Act was unjust.
So we come to the paradox that "elections matter", but that policy decisions and personal conduct don't matter to those who participate in said elections. What's the solution? I don't know.
But perhaps nothing has affected me so acutely as Dianne Ravitch's statement that she no longer knows the way forward on education in America. That is, she has no suggestions, nothing that she would personally endorse. The administration is trying charter schools, which have been shown to produce no better students than regular ones. Old conservative staple, school vouchers, has been a manifest failure in Milwaukee, which instituted the policy over a decade ago. Our children aren't getting dumber, the data say, but the rest of the world is getting smarter. Merit based pay looks to be in the future of the current administration's education push, which is about as incoherent a position as I can fathom. Why in the world would you assess a teacher's current students versus other teacher's current students? Wouldn't you want to assess the teacher's past students' performance in other classes? Wouldn't that be a good measure? I don't know.