Everyone says affordability is the big issue and wants government to make goods and services cheaper to buy. But the polls don’t ask us what we want done to make things we need more affordable, from groceries, to fuel to education.
We could impose price controls. I believe President Nixon was the last president to try that. The downside is that would decrease supplies, leaving long lines of people waiting for things.
We could increase supplies. President Biden tried that but it seemed to take too long and cost too much because, to get supplies flowing, government had to invest in new facilities and industry.
The Federal Reserve could manipulate interest rates. The Fed brings inflation down by raising the interest rate. That limits business growth and their demand for goods and services. The downside is that people will lose jobs to bring prices down. Are you ready to support the homeless?
We could change immigration rules to make more workers available. Immigrants are often willing to work at wages well below what native born Americans would. They could increase supply and decrease prices at the same time. But many workers believe that gives them the shaft in favor of foreign workers. Many economists don’t think so overall but it may be true in some places.
The choice of how to make things more affordable isn’t simple and no method is without cost. There’s no free lunch on affordability.
And dealing with rising costs is the central problem of dealing with climate change and global warming. There’s no such thing as not dealing with it. And it’s harder because bringing down the cost of fuel would make global warming much worse.
We’ve been letting nature take its course with wildfires, tornadoes, severe storms, droughts and floods. Some describe that as not dealing with the problem. I’d say that’s a bad solution. We made a choice by letting nature pick its victims, to kill, starve, burn and otherwise dispose of them. It looks like nature’s choice, but it’s us and the fuel companies that insist we have to run on fossil fuels.
The simplest and quickest solution, instead of Trump’s “drill baby drill” would be to shrink the flow of oil and gas from refineries. That would distribute the costs of global warming much more widely, but it would have very unequal consequences unless we help those who aren’t in position to buy and to rely on new, cleaner technologies.
Another choice is to try to increase the supply of cleaner fuels. But that’s slow, plus people might burn more if prices came down, until and unless the supply came down.
The rage of fires, floods, and drought should already have made it clear that we can’t avoid sharing the burden. Fundamentally, the problem is how we share the burden. If we don’t share the costs, some of us will lose everything. We’re putting our children and grandchildren in position to lose heavily, while complaining about leaving them a piece of the national debt. I think there’d be a lot less tears and a lot more joy if we figured out how to share the benefits and the burdens.
Demagogues who have no idea what they’re doing can promise to solve the whole thing painlessly and make us feel better. But it won’t be better unless we’re willing to share the pain to provide for our children and each other.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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