Are We a Society, or a Group of Individuals Out to Get While the Getting Is Good?

When did we become such a timid nation? We have become politically inept, ruled by fear that comes in many flavors, our leaders unable to govern our nation in the face of overwhelming facts that indicate a change, dramatic change is needed. We elected Barack Obama and gave him the mantle of change. But he seems to be cowtowing to get consensus from the most backward of our other elected officials, rather than driving change and using the power we gave him. Perhaps I'm not giving our new president enough leeway. 

But I'm with NYT Columnist Bob Herbert when he says that collectively we are Risking the Future by not putting 21st century infrastructure front and center in our plans to change. 

The society gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of D and said it would require an investment of $2.2 trillion over five years to get it back into decent shape. When you juxtapose this tremendous national need with the wholesale destruction of employment that has occurred over the past several months (and that is expected to continue for some time), you have to wonder why President Obama and Congressional leaders are not moving with extraordinary quickness to put together an infrastructure investment program that is both vast and visionary.

Instead, we have infrastructure spending in the Democrats’ proposed stimulus package that, while admirable, is far too meager to have much of an impact on the nation’s overall infrastructure requirements or the demand for the creation of jobs.

Among those who have expressed their concerns publicly is Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat and persistent advocate of infrastructure investment. Just prior to President Obama’s inauguration, Mr. Rendell said of the stimulus package being considered by the House: “Anybody who thinks — if the president-elect thinks, or the team thinks — that this is the answer to America’s infrastructure needs is in a different universe.”

The big danger is that some variation of the currently proposed stimulus package will pass, another enormous bailout for the bankers will be authorized, and then the trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits will make their appearance, looming like unholy monsters over everything else, and Washington will suddenly lose its nerve.

Bankers get far too much attention and care these days. Bankers, who started out as clerks who minded our money and moved it back and forth between those who would save and those who would invest - valuable middlemen, mind you, but never the most important. Somewhere over the past several decades we came to focus exclusively on the money, always the money and the fascination with getting rich and spending - so that we forgot that money, and getting money, was simply a means to an end. And that end that we should all hold up as a collective goal is building a future that is sustainable, that has a firm foundation, and that provides good jobs and a rising standard of living. Too many label that as Socialism and look away.

Somewhere along the way, we became focused on trying to live like millionaires, rather than trying to live like human beings in communities. I think these two trends are tied together, focusing on money and finance, and focusing on trying to live like millionaires. 

If we are to pull out of this nose dive we're in (for we are really going down fast, when you stop and open your eyes), then we'll have to recognize reality when it hits us across the face like a 2x4. Our lives as individuals and our collective lives as a society depend on making investments in ourselves and working together. That means: 1) collectively spending on the infrastructure that is the foundation of our modern economy, which benefits us all - roads, water/wastewater systems, the internet, and the electric grid; and 2) collectively spending to create jobs that keep us all in sound financial health, not just a few lucky ones (that means you, Wall Street!).