Future Me or Present Me

In the midst of the epic dysfunction known as the 16-day government shutdown, we lost sight of the fundamental issue whose inescapable logic cuts across politics and party lines: We are feeding the gluttonous appetites of our current at the dire and escalating cost to our future selves. If that sounds unworkable and unsustainable, it is.

If government spending continues at this pace, feeding the monster known as the national debt will swallow the resources of our future selves, whether we personify that concept as ourselves at retirement or our children who will inherit an astronomical bill for our rash, compulsive and unnecessary spending.

We cannot expect Washington to solve these problems, because politicians are, by definition, creatures of the moment who want to please their current constituents who will re-elect them, rather than worrying about future constituents who cannot vote. It’s up to us to advocate for our future selves.

As simple and logical as this might sound, it is near impossible to do. We simply can’t help ourselves, because of our human nature and a behavioral concept, applicable to most everything in life, called time inconsistency, or hyperbolic discounting. Simply stated, we discount the present now more than we expect to later. That is, we act one way now, impatient, demanding our appetites be met at all costs, while deluding ourselves that, in the future, we’ll somehow be patient and better able to act rationally and take care of problems. But when later becomes now, we are just as impatient. The easiest and most universal example is dieting. We indulge our appetites now, telling ourselves we’ll diet tomorrow. The parallels to our bloated spending and ballooning debt are too obvious to mention.

Our only hope to stop the battle between present and future selves is to adopt a more roundabout perspective, seeing time differently in an intertemporal dimension. When we are no longer hyper-focused on the moment, we can pursue proximal aims that look across slices of time. We avoid eating, drinking, acting, and spending as if there is no tomorrow, so that we can, indeed, have better, healthier, and more prosperous tomorrow.

Admittedly, grasping these concepts about our human nature and our perplexing time inconsistency requires a mental leap. By becoming more aware, though, we give ourselves a roadmap with which to navigate the minefields of our own human nature. With an intertemporal perspective we can avoid the mad scramble for 11th hour solutions, which in politics always equals crisis.

Since we cannot expect Washington and its stable of political animals to do the work, we must press for it ourselves, by sending the message to Capitol Hill: Taking on ever bigger amounts of debt is mathematically unsustainable. Using the Federal Reserve and its zero-interest-rate policy to kick the proverbial can down the road only postpones the pain, which intensifies with the passage of time. The reckoning will be excruciating.

When another shutdown looms in the months ahead, we have to keep in mind who the battle is really between: our present selves versus our future selves. We who can think, act, and vote now, must advocate for the currently disenfranchised who will pay the bill.

Empty Driver Seat

The Federal government is almost completely isolated from the public; basically the concept of who can I deal with or who's driving this thing? And the reality is that there really isn't any one person driving. If there's no one driving, then there's no real representation or relationship between people and the government.

Here's an article on the out of control federal government and bureaucracies by Philip K. Howard:

American government is a deviant subculture. Its leaders stand on soapboxes and polarize the public by pointing fingers while secretly doing the bidding of special interests. Many public employees plod through life with their noses in rule books, indifferent to the actual needs of the public and unaccountable to anyone. The professionals who interact with government, lawyers and lobbyists, make sure every issue is viewed through the blinders of a particular interest, not through the broader lens of the common good. Government is almost completely isolated from the public it supposedly serves. The one link that is essential for a functioning democracy, identifiable officials who have responsibility to accomplish public goals, is nowhere to be found. Who's in charge? It's hard to say. The bureaucracy is a kind of Moebius strip of passing the buck. The most powerful force in this subculture is inertia: Things happen a certain way because they happened that way yesterday. Programs are piled upon programs, without any effort at coherence; there are 82 separate federal programs, for example, for teacher training. Ancient subsidies from the New Deal are treated as sacred cows. The idea of setting priorities is anathema. Nothing can get taken away, because that would offend a special interest.

The institutions of democracy are dedicated to the status quo:

• Congress has created rules that require herculean effort to make easy choices, say, confirmation of officials, and render meaningful change impossible. The filibuster rule assures stalemate in the Senate. Committee rules make it almost impossible to bring a new proposal to the floor of the House. Bright new people get elected and find themselves suffocated and powerless.

• The Executive Branch operates in a dense jungle of accumulated law. The president can't approve a new power line or wind farm without a decade or so of environmental review. The president can't even appoint a committee to clean out the legal jungle without complying with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which is so laden with conditions on membership and public process that a meaningful recommendation is almost impossible. The Simpson-Bowles proposal, for example, didn't have a chance of approval by the appointed committee, so Simpson and Bowles just took it upon themselves to present their own proposal.

• Special interests are not principals but agents, motivated not to solve problems but to "work them." Actually solving a problem would eliminate their jobs. An entire industry is built around the conflict between "pro-life" and "pro-choice" factions. The more polarization, the better off both sides are. The political parties each fill their campaign coffers by milking this conflict for all it's worth. Even if some pure-minded lobbyist wanted to solve a problem, the dynamics of special-interest groups would keep driving positions toward the lowest common denominator. Senior environmentalists have told me that it would be desirable to radically streamline environmental review to enable rebuilding of our country's power grid, but they could never join with industry to support such a speedy process, because their "base" would think they were selling out.

• Democracy's goals have changed. Government is played as a game, not as a fiduciary responsibility to get things done. Running the country is not what political leaders mainly think about. They wake up every morning calculating how to beat the other party. You think this is too cynical? Hearings for completely unobjectionable judicial candidates are held up for years because of unrelated partisan bickering. A chief of staff for a Democratic senator once told me that a bill that perfectly reflected Democratic policy was rejected because it was introduced by a moderate Republican.
  

Insiders don't even pretend to be motivated by doing what's right. A few years ago, trying to solve the country's medical malpractice problem, I helped organize a large group of consumer groups, patient advocates, and health-care providers behind the idea of creating special health courts. The proposal enjoyed almost unanimous support from legitimate health-care constituencies, as well as broad editorial support. Polls showed that the public strongly supported it. We had bipartisan sponsors in both houses of Congress. All we needed was a pilot project to see how it would work. Who could object to that? Here is what I was told:

A leader of the Democratic caucus in the House said he understood why this was such a good idea. Then he asked, "How do the trial lawyers feel about it?" They hate it, I answered, because they feed off the unreliability of the current system, which consumes almost 60 percent of awards in lawyers' fees and administrative costs. "Then we can't support it," he replied. But whom do they represent, I asked -- AARP and leading patient groups are on our side. "It doesn't matter," he said frankly. "The trial lawyers give us the money."

I went to the White House and made my pitch about how great it would be for President George W. Bush to stand on the lawn with consumer groups and propose a legal reform that would actually be better for patients who were injured by mistakes, as well as for doctors unfairly accused. The senior staffer with whom I was talking understood the virtues of the proposal. But, he said in somewhat guarded language, "It's better for us to propose traditional tort reform capping damages." But that doesn't solve the problem of defensive medicine, I argued. "I understand that," he acknowledged, "but we benefit that way." What are the odds of traditional tort reform passing? I asked. "Oh, about one in 100," he answered. A junior staffer had to translate what was happening: The White House wanted to propose a reform it knew would fail so that Republicans could blame the Democrats for not solving the problem.

This behavior by high-ranking public servants should be considered scandalous. People in Washington consider it business as usual, and don't even raise an eyebrow.


Right and wrong no longer matter in this deviant subculture. Sealed off from personal responsibility by accumulated bureaucracy and thick walls of special interest money, our government is covered by a putrid mold of cynical gamesmanship and everyday hypocrisy. People scurry around its baseboards seeking short-term advantage, but big change is so inconceivable as to be laughable.

Even reformers have given up. What is politically feasible, they ask? The answer is clear: nothing.

Change will nonetheless happen, political scientists tell us. How? Through a crisis. (See my March essay "The U.S. Government Is Too Big to Succeed.") The main challenge then will be not merely to reform Medicare and other unsustainable programs. The challenge will be to change the culture of government.

Fixing democracy certainly requires toppling the walls of the status quo: constitutional amendments to reform campaign finance and to require programs to sunset every 15 or 20 years; empowering spring cleaning commissions to turn the junk pile of regulatory law into coherent codes; scrapping civil service as we know it, to end the presumption of lifetime careers and to revive public accountability; and eliminating the revolving door between Congress and K Street by banning lobbying for at least five years after public service.

Even all these changes, possible only in the desperation of a crisis, might not be enough to change a culture that is terminally cynical. Somehow we have to change how people in government behave. I had a fantasy in my last book that America should move the national capital. It wouldn't matter where, as long as government is run by new people not infected by the current culture. Almost no current public employees would be able to move to the new capital ... because they wouldn't be able to sell their homes. Just imagine it: a sea of "For Sale" signs up and down the streets of Georgetown and Chevy Chase, with no takers because there are soon to be no jobs. I ended this riff with Disney taking over Washington as a theme park and rehiring everyone to do just what they're doing now -- pretending to do something.

If we can't move the capital, the only way to change the culture is to put public employees on the spot. Today, with the exception of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, it's almost impossible to identify a government official who actually has responsibility to make choices. Democracy can never work until we bulldoze the current bureaucratic model and replace it with individual responsibility and accountability.

American culture is still strong, but our democracy is broken. It cannot be fixed by this reform or that. Its failure is now embedded in a subculture that is devoid of individual responsibility. Government needs a complete makeover -- not only new rules, but a transformation of how public choices get made. We'll never have a responsible government until identifiable people have the responsibility to get things done and can be fired if they don't.

Federal Government Spending

We can all agree or at least most of us agree that government spending at the federal level and in some cases the state level is out of control. The economic downturn in our country and the world has affected us all but what approach should be taken to address the problems behind the present situation in some states and the federal government. There is no doubt that various segments of our society are hurting and have been hurting for some time but is government always the answer to solve all the problems. The answer is clearly a no.

Each state with financial problems must or should compare themselves with states that are on a sound financial status and ask themselves what is different and what can be or should be changed. Clearly there are differences in population backgrounds, location and sometimes weather but comparisons should be made as to where the income being received is allocated.


Clearly the federal government has an impact on required allocations of money the government provides and in some cases does not provide associated with government programs. Changing this allocation is not within the power of the state but the federal government.

There are many government programs which individuals have developed the opinion they deserve the income they receive though they have not earned the right to the income. There are programs which based on the principles of our country as it was established is taking care of individuals who cannot take care of themselves. This may be in a supplemental perspective or in some cases government funds are the only source of income. In the past wages were not as high as they are now but comparing percentage there appears to be not much difference. This fact often gets ignored when looking at the spending deficit which now exists.

In terms of government funds there needs to be some priorities established as to programs and the costs to keep them in existence. One key point to remember is that individuals should not be penalized for the spending habits of government. The security of our country is another area which should be a priority. The current situation with sequestration looming will greatly affect every segment of our country if it goes into effect. In reality it must not take place. The problem with government spending is not how much is received but how it is allocated. Government needs to create a balanced approach to current spending levels while not impacting critical programs for our country. This may seem like an impossible task but individuals who are elected need to balance the government spending like they balance their checkbook. Individuals must spend within their means or at least allocate funds to pay their debts.

One thing is certain government needs to have the capability of paying its debts whether it be at the federal government or state government level makes no difference. Clearly income levels needs to rise for the federal government but how that need is accomplished will be critical in turning our financial situation around. Increasing taxes is not the answer but creating an environment where individuals and businesses have the confidence and incentive in the financial soundness of our government. In relation to this it has been evident that there has been uncertainty in what government will do from year to year in terms of requirements within current laws and regulations. Uncertainty in government operations must be eliminated. This may be somewhat improbable to accomplish but it is not impossible.

One last point to make is in relation to our current tax system. The current system is both cumbersome and confusing. The fact that tax laws are constantly changing based current political winds is a condition which must be changed. Our tax system is in need of an overhaul to make it more efficient and simple. The tax brackets need to such that individuals and businesses are not penalized for earning more. Increasing the tax rate for individuals who have made the effort to be successful should be encouraged not penalized. This kind of change would increase the incentive for businesses and individuals alike to increase their efforts for success. In reality from past examples when taxes were lower revenues did not decrease but increased thereby providing additional revenue for necessary government expenditures. Let us hope the decisions to be made in relation to the upcoming sequestration will be the right decisions for individuals, businesses and our country.

Poverty and Welfare

Here is an informative article on welfare and poverty by Avik Roy:

Since 2009, the Fair Labor Standards Act has dictated that the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Some people think that’s too low; others think it’s too high. But it turns out that, in 35 states, it’s a better deal not to work, and instead, to take advantage of federal welfare programs, than to take a minimum-wage job. That’s the takeaway from a new study published by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes of the Cato Institute.

“The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” Tanner and Hughes write in their new paper. “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit,” which offers extra subsidies to low-income workers who take work. “In 13 states [welfare] pays more than $15 per hour.”

Losing ground in the war on poverty

The welfare system, at its best, is a system that gives people a way to live when they can’t find work for themselves, when they’re down on their luck. At its worst, the welfare system rewards people for not working, and incentivizes people to develop habits that make it harder for them to find work in the future, miring them in permanent poverty.
In 1984, a predecessor of mine at the Manhattan Institute, Charles Murray, published the definitive book on this subject, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980. Murray found that despite the fact that we were spending trillions of dollars on anti-poverty programs, poverty was not improving; indeed, on many measures, it was getting worse.

Things had gotten so bad that a Democratic presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, campaigned in 1992 on a platform to “end welfare as we know it, to make welfare a second chance, not a way of life.” In 1996, Clinton signed into law a landmark welfare-reform bill called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which, among other things, required recipients of cash welfare payments to seek work, or lose their benefits.
But though the 1996 reforms did shrink the cash welfare rolls, other programs have grown substantially in the last 17 years, so much so it appears that the significance of the 1996 reforms may have been overstated.

The welfare system has grown since 1996

In 1995, Cato published The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, which examined the value of welfare benefits in every state. They found that, in 40 states, welfare paid more than $8 an hour; in 17 states, welfare paid more than $10 an hour. Tanner, the principal author of that study, decided to reexamine the numbers in the context of 2013.

In Cato’s new 2013 study, welfare paid more than $10 an hour in 33 states; 17 paid less than $8 an hour. Comparing the two data sets and accounting for inflation, 18 states saw a decline in the total value of welfare benefits; 32 states and the District of Columbia saw increases.

Tanner and Hughes award the national welfare championship to Hawaii, which offers $60,590 in annual welfare benefits, once accounted for the fact that welfare benefits are tax-free to the recipient, compared to work-related wages. That’s the equivalent of $29.13 an hour. Rounding out the top five were D.C. ($50,820 per year and $24.43 an hour), Massachusetts ($50,540 and $24.30), Connecticut ($44,370 and $21.33), and New York ($43,700 and $21.01).

States with the lowest welfare benefits were Idaho ($11,150 and $5.36), Mississippi ($11,830 and $5.69), Tennessee ($12.120 and $5.83), Arkansas ($12,230 and $5.88), and Texas ($12,550 and $6.03).

Vermont increased welfare payments by the largest amount
The biggest jump in welfare payments between 1995 and 2013 was enjoyed by Vermont, where annual pre-tax-equivalent benefits jumped from $31,580 to $42,350 in 2013 dollars: an increase of $10,770. Other big gainers were D.C. ($6,850), Hawaii ($5,589), New Hampshire ($5,299), and Oregon ($5,288).

The biggest decrease was in Alaska, where benefits dropped from $48,655 to $26,400, a difference of $22,255. The other major belt-tighteners were Virginia (-$20,035), Maine (-$18,718), Colorado (-$16,830), and Idaho (-$16,048).

Tanner and Hughes count 126 distinct federal means-tested anti-poverty programs in force today. For the purposes of their study, they looked specifically at: (1) Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the post-1996 cash welfare program; (2) the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps; (3) Medicaid; (4) housing assistance; (5) utilities assistance; (6) the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC), and (7) the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).

Not all of these benefits apply to every welfare beneficiary, and some are time-limited, like TANF. But it remains true that an alarming number of welfare beneficiaries do not have an economic incentive to find entry-level work.

Also striking about the Tanner and Hughes study is the degree to which this problem would be much worse without the Earned Income Tax Credit, which offers subsidies to working low-income individuals. In effect, the EITC serves as a negative income tax for those with little-to-no income tax liability. It ameliorates the disincentive that welfare recipients have to seek work.

The Swedish solution: Tax welfare benefits

A better way to address this problem would be to treat welfare benefits like taxable income. Even low-income workers with no income tax liability have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. But welfare benefits are entirely tax-free.

As Reihan Salam has noted, Sweden has a generous welfare state. But Sweden treats welfare benefits as taxable income. This gives even welfare beneficiaries an incentive to support efficient government, providing a welcome blur between “makers” and “takers.” In Sweden, according to Tino Sanandaji, “an astonishing 85 percent of working-age native Swedes work and pay taxes, far above the European average of 70 percent.”

You could even increase the scale of welfare benefits, in order to ensure that the taxable net income to welfare beneficiaries remained similar. Such a change would allow for more straightforward comparisons of income from work and income from welfare, and reduce the disincentive for work.

Obamacare is doing much to make it harder for Americans to find work, especially full-time work. At the same time, the aging of the Baby Boomers and the growth in welfare payments is making it easier for Americans to give up on looking for work. Absent reform, this won’t end well.

The Problem with Large Government

Here is a combined opinion piece summarized by myself that illustrates a major problem with the present administration/government: In short, American government and entitlement programs have grown so large that no one is willing to work it off. With over 50 million people on food stamps, and 11 million on disability, programs that were once designed to aide the helpless have become a wheelchair that people never rise out of instead the intended crutch intended to help walk again.

America has painted itself into a corner.  The nation is faced with trillion-dollar deficits, but most political leaders are unwilling to propose real solutions for fear of alienating voters who want it all. Special interests maintain a death grip on the status quo, making it hard to fix things that everyone agrees are broken.

Where is a path out? 

Little has emerged from the campaign season to address the reality that government is unsustainable in its current form. Conservative candidates pledge smaller government, but no candidate has solutions to crippling healthcare costs. Pledging to create "a leaner government," President Obama has asked Congress to reinstate presidential authority to reorganize federal agencies. Rearranging the deck chairs will do almost nothing, however, to rescue the foundering ship.

Insiders say changing the system is hopeless. No democracy has ever been effective at clawing back promises. America can't even purge benefits that long ago outlived their usefulness, like farm subsidies from the 1930s. Somehow we'll muddle through. Doesn't it always work that way?

Change is not a remote contingency, however. The next president will likely have an historic opportunity, thrust upon him by necessity, to remake the operating system of government. It's time to get ready for tough choices.

Change occurs not incrementally but in big shifts. The relative stability over the past half century is misleading. What appears to be an immutable way of governing, according to political scientists Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, is just a temporary lull between episodes of big change, which they call "punctuated equilibrium."

A society hums along for a few decades, as pressures build up in one area or another. Then, because of a scandal or some outside crisis, the status quo gives way to this accumulated pressure. At that point, like the "stick slip" phenomenon of earthquakes, the tectonic plates shift in dramatic ways, changing the social contract and political equilibrium. Who would have thought that a man who set himself on fire in Tunisia would have unleashed the Arab spring?

This pattern is revealed clearly in American history. Over the past 100 years, America has made three dramatic shifts in the role of government: The Progressive era at the turn of the last century, ending laissez-faire; the New Deal in the 1930s, instituting social safety nets; and the rights revolution of the 1960s. Each of these represented a radical expansion of the reach of government into society.

The challenge of the 21st century is to pull government back from daily choices while still allowing it to provide regulatory oversight and safety nets. We must discipline government's appetite for social control, and push it away from the heaping table of unaffordable mandates and bloated regulation.

But the inertial forces of government, as the cynics suggest, don't often turn back towards self-discipline. The parallels to history are unsettling. The Greek historian Polybius, writing in the second century BC, famously outlined the cycles of government from monarchs to aristocracies to democracies and back again. Each form of government works well until it loses its founding values, generally when heirs grow fat and greedy, and is then overthrown. Democracy failed, Polybius wrote, "once people had grown accustomed to eating off others' tables and expected their daily needs to be met."

The problem of "collective action" ,  getting people together to act in the common interest ,  is notoriously difficult. Short-term selfishness prevents any significant change until, Polybius would predict, it's too late. The people who inhabit our national and state capitols, not only politicians but bureaucrats and special interest lobbyists, see themselves as agents, not principals. The job is to do what their "base" wants, not do what they think is right. Interest groups continue to cling to the status quo, even though they know something has to give.

Like it or not, America will change its way of governing. The growing crisis of authority will force us to start over. But how?  Change in a crisis usually follows a new vision of a better society, often overthrowing either a tyrant or a discredited social norm.  Identifying the culprit requires answering this question: What is it that prevents a fundamentally sound society from making practical choices?

The villain that keeps America stuck in a swamp is an underlying presumption about government decision-making, no less insidious because it rules from our preconceptions rather than from a palace. To get out of this mess, we must depose it, and embrace a new way of making public choices.

America is mired in what philosopher Hannah Arendt called "the rule of nobody." The president's powerlessness to reorganize the executive branch, supposedly his constitutional responsibility, is just a symptom of a core structural flaw. After decades of legal accretion, government is out of anyone's control. Government is run by a giant legal blob, crushing society and public employees under a mass of mandates and bureaucracy.

Under blob rule, no human is in charge. Who's in charge of balancing the budget? No one, the budget is largely pre-committed to programs made in political deals decades ago. Who's in charge of running the school? No one, the principal is crushed by federal and state mandates, and tied in knots by union work rules. Who's in charge of approving the power line to take energy from the wind farm to the urban areas? No one, the bureaucratic process goes on indefinitely, at the mercy of whoever cares to challenge official judgment.

Americans know that something basic is broken. The dysfunction is manifested in the daily choices of doctors, educators and officials unable to act sensibly.  The accumulation of countless skewed choices results in runaway healthcare costs, failing schools and impractical bureaucracy.

We must restore individual responsibility as the organizing principle of government. Putting people in charge again is much more radical than it sounds at first. It requires replacing the unknowable mass of bureaucracy with a simpler framework of goals and pragmatic authority. Real people, not a viscous goo of complex rules, would take back the responsibility to meet our public goals.

The litmus test for a functioning government is this: Is the person in charge free to make a sensible choice? If not, nothing will work sensibly.

The challenge is how to make responsibility trustworthy. What if the teacher is unfair, or the official is on the take, or the President is just helping his cronies? Personal accountability is one protection: people caught misbehaving should lose their jobs, or be sent to jail for crimes. But distrust is pervasive, and Americans will want some protection up front against bad decisions.

This can be done with human checks and balances, not thousand-page rule books or legal proceedings that drag on for years. For important decisions, give oversight authority to an independent official or group, say, a school-based committee of parents and teachers with authority to veto a decision to dismiss a teacher. Unlike today's legal tar pit, however, these checks should be based on human judgment. One person makes a choice, another checks it. Government can move forward.

Accountability today means mindless compliance, not doing what's right. The overall effect is profoundly immoral. By what right do we think we can make the children of tomorrow pay for trillion-dollar deficits today? This is  called "the banality of evil" in bureaucratic systems: the law made me do it.    

   

Putting people in charge again is hardly subversive. Our founders designed our Republic not to avoid human judgment but to give officials freedom to use their independent judgment. Better that we embrace a new vision consistent with democratic values than the alternatives provided by history.

'The Rule of Nobody'

Inefficient Large Government - This is article summary on Phillip K Howard's piece, as well as my own writing. Please check out his articles in the Atlantic as he is a thought leader in seeing the big picture. 

America is on an unsustainable path.  The nation is faced with multi-trillion dollar deficits, but most political leaders are unwilling to propose real solutions for fear of alienating voters who want it all. Special interests maintain a death grip on the status quo, making it hard to fix things that everyone agrees are broken . . . is there a way out?

I know this graphic is from Heritage foundation but the figures check out.

The reality that government is unsustainable in its current form is fast approaching and little is being done about it. Conservative candidates pledge smaller government, but no candidate has solutions to crippling healthcare costs.

Most Washington insiders say changing the system is hopeless. No democracy has ever been effective at clawing back promises. America can't even remove benefits that long ago outlived their usefulness like farm subsidies from the 1930s. Change is not a remote contingency, however. The next president will likely have an historic opportunity to remake the operating system of government. It's time to get ready for tough choices.

Change occurs not incrementally but in big shifts. The relative stability over the past half century is misleading. A society hums along for a few decades, as pressures build up in one area or another. Then, because of a scandal or some outside crisis, the status quo gives way to this accumulated pressure.

This pattern is revealed clearly in American history. Over the past 100 years, America has made three dramatic shifts in the role of government: The Progressive era at the turn of the last century, ending laissez-faire; the New Deal in the 1930s, instituting social safety nets; and the rights revolution of the 1960s. Each of these represented a radical expansion of the reach of government into society.

The challenge of the 21st century is to pull government back from daily choices while still allowing it to provide regulatory oversight and safety nets. 

We must discipline government's appetite for social control, and push it away from the heaping table of unaffordable mandates and bloated regulation. But the inertial forces of government don't often turn back towards self-discipline. Each form of government works well until it loses its founding values.

The problem of "collective action" or getting people together to act in the common interest is extremely difficult. Short-term selfishness prevents any significant change until it's too late. The people who inhabit our national and state capitols, not only politicians but bureaucrats and special interest lobbyists, see themselves as agents, not principals. The job is to do what their "base" wants, not do what they think is right. Interest groups continue to cling to the status quo, even though they know something has to give.

America will change its way of governing. The growing crisis of authority will force us to start over. But how?  Change in a crisis usually follows a new vision of a better society, often overthrowing either a tyrant or a discredited social norm.  Identifying the culprit requires answering this question: What is it that prevents a fundamentally sound society from making practical choices?

America is ensnared in what is called "the rule of nobody." 

After decades of legal accumulation, government is out of anyone's control. Government is run by a giant legal blob, crushing society and public employees under a mass of mandates and bureaucracy.

No human is in charge, government is like Stanford's self-driving car picture below, but definitely not as finely tuned. Who's in charge of balancing the budget? No one, the budget is largely pre-committed to programs made in political deals decades ago. Who's in charge of running the school? No one, the principal is crushed by federal and state mandates, and tied in knots by union work rules. Who's in charge of approving the power line to take energy from the wind farm to the urban areas? No one, the bureaucratic process goes on indefinitely, at the mercy of whoever cares to challenge official judgment.

Americans know that something basic is broken. The dysfunction is manifested in the daily choices of doctors, educators and officials unable to act sensibly.  The accumulation of countless skewed choices results in runaway healthcare costs, failing schools and impractical bureaucracy.

We must restore individual responsibility as the organizing principle of government. Putting people in charge again is much more radical than it sounds at first. It requires replacing the unknowable mass of bureaucracy with a simpler framework of goals and pragmatic authority. Real people would take back the responsibility to meet our public goals.

The question at hand for a functioning government is this: Is the person in charge free to make a sensible choice? If not, nothing will work sensibly.

The challenge is how to make responsibility trustworthy. What if the teacher is unfair, or the official is on the take, or the President is just helping his cronies? Personal accountability is one protection: people caught misbehaving should lose their jobs, or be sent to jail for crimes. But distrust is pervasive, and Americans will want some protection up front against bad decisions.

This can be done with human checks and balances, not thousand-page rule books or legal proceedings that drag on for years. For important decisions, give oversight authority to an independent official or group, i.e a school-based committee of parents and teachers with authority to veto a decision to dismiss a teacher. These checks should be based on human judgment. One person makes a choice, another checks it. Government can move forward.

Accountability today means mindless compliance, not doing what's right. The overall effect is profoundly immoral. By what right do we think we can make the children of tomorrow pay for trillion-dollar deficits today? If ever called out the accused will say, "The law made me do it."   
   
Putting people in charge again is hardly a ground-breaking or earth-shattering idea. Our founders designed our Republic not to avoid human judgment but to give officials freedom to use their independent judgment. Better that we embrace a new vision consistent with democratic values than the alternatives provided by history.