The probability of severe social turmoil in the United States seems to me to be quite high over the next few years. I would mark the important factors as:
1) The most important factor is the impending collapse of the US Federal government's ability to pay its bills. In 2007, before the last two years of orgy-like spending, USA Today reported:
Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.2) While in a sense all debts are promises, there is a significant difference in debts from one institution to another, and debts between the government and a vast array of individuals and families. This betrayal will be fundamentally destabilizing.
Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities.
3) The fact that, though the impending collapse has been evident for some time, even today the political class simply refuses to admit and plan for the reality. Neither Congress nor the President, this year or in the previous few, is doing anything to mitigate the collapse.
4) Indeed, they are doing the opposite: vastly increasing spending and debt, much of it on frivolities, while promising that there is nothing to fear. Indeed, they are promising that we can further expand government entitlements! The increases in spending speed the arrival of the moment of crisis; the promises will deepen the shock when it does arrive.
5) The fact that we are entering this period inside of a recession is likewise troubling.
The admission of the problem would be a positive first step, but the scale of the problem makes it hard to address even in an honest environment. The USA Today article points out that liabilities are such that we could cover them by paying an extra eleven thousand dollars per household in taxes starting this year, but that repaying debt over time is more expensive: "Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to [meet these debts over] 75 years." The same year the article was written, 2007, median household income was about $50,000.
This may be academic since we aren't going to be making an effort to resolve these problems anyway, but are instead going to carry on with new spending up until it all falls apart. So, let's talk about what the period of instability might look like, drawing on the piece below (about forging new coalitions) and this article on the 1848 revolutions, which has some interesting parallels. Consider:
Dramatic changes over the early 19th century and the long shadow of the French Revolution set the context for 1848. The system established after Napoleon's defeat sought above all to prevent general wars among states and revolutions within them, but the means of achieving the latter made for inflexible politics. Particularly in France, barriers to political office and professional advancement left talented, ambitious young men alienated from a regime dominated by their elders. Abrupt economic cycles brought periodic unemployment, which in turn sparked acute social tension. But governments lacked the resources to handle the pressures generated by population growth and industrialization. Britain had faced the problem in the decade after Waterloo, but the problem spread across Europe more acutely in the "hungry forties."How much does this resemble the upcoming period? There are apt to be severe economic shocks associated with the government's final admission -- whether in advance or, as seems more likely, when the fact can simply no longer be denied -- that it cannot pay its bills. Older people who have been basing their plans for retirement on the question will be furious. Younger people, asked to pay tax increases and largely abandon the hope of retirement, will be furious. Poor people, in the face of serious cutbacks to services, will be furious. Richer people, in the face of confiscatory taxes, will be furious. The world economic system, so long reliant on the United States as a rock of relative stability, will be shaken.
Social conditions by 1848 had piled up tinder for a conflagration. Resentments over everything from unemployment and taxes to labor demands on peasants -- not to mention the aspirations among regional elites for greater autonomy -- had rallied support for revolution. But transforming myriad grievances into positive program proved difficult. Tocqueville saw France drifting in June from political struggle to a social war of proletariat against the propertied classes. The specter of social revolution turned many toward accommodation with governments that, however imperfect, would at least provide security.
Many older accounts of 1848 depict the year's events as a flowering of liberal nationalism crushed by the forces of order. A.J.P. Taylor described abortive revolution in Germany as a turning point that failed to turn, thereby directing Germany on a separate path -- toward authoritarianism rather than liberal democracy. In "1848," Mike Rapport sympathizes with European liberals but nonetheless offers a fully nuanced portrait of a tumultuous year. Ethnic conflict and deep social tensions, he notes, complicated the task of constructing liberal, constitutional regimes. Different interests had their own agenda, and Otto von Bismarck, the German statesman, grasped an essential point when he argued that liberalism appealed only to the urban middle classes. That fact gave the revolution a narrower foundation than its architects had expected.
Ethnic conflict had a major role in the events of 1848 because nationalism served to exclude as well as unite. Liberal nationalists were caught in a now familiar dilemma: whether citizenship would rest on pluralism or require the assimilation of ethnic and religious minorities. Smaller nationalities looked suspiciously at German and Hungarian aspirations, especially when nationalist leaders spoke of Slavs with disdain. The Czech liberal Frantisek Palacky argued that Austria protected the Slavonic peoples from both internal strife and Russian domination. Localism, and loyalty to the Catholic Church, remained a strong counterweight to nationalism in Italy. Even Giuseppe Garibaldi came to see "how little the national cause inspired the local inhabitants of the countryside."
This suggests a period of social turmoil. In 1848 the competitor with the traditional social systems was liberal republicanism; today it must be said to be relative authoritarianism. I say "relative" for this reason: the house of the competing model is probably China, with Russia, Iran, and Venezuela as regional advocates. Though less free than America or Europe, all of these places house relatively free populations who are met with authoritarian responses only if they try to interact with the political system. If they are willing to keep their heads down and do what they are told, most of the time they are left alone. This is a softer sort of authoritarianism than that used by the Soviet Union, old Communist China, or the facist states. There are already some movements within the United States that point to these other states as models, particularly Venezuela (and Cuba); and they are likewise aligned, as in 1848, with certain urban elites whose interests are advanced by the alliance (although currently only through normal electoral politics -- these elites use the alliance to muster voting blocs of relatively poor and alienated voters, not for any dishonorable purpose).
Now, what of this question of ethnicity as a barrier to revolution? I think it also holds, though it will appear at first not to do so. Garibaldi would find today that the rural areas are the remaining hotbeds of nationalism. Yet I think in a very real sense that nationalism is the old ethnic sentiment: for the ethnicity is now "American," rather than Italian or whatever. Nationalism among Americans is almost precisely a display of ethnic tribalism. I mean, in modern America, nationalism is now firing along the same circuits of the brain that were occupied by "Serb" or "Italian," etc., in 1848 Europe.
Assuming that model for a moment, what can we say about the road forward? Specifically, if conflict should break out along these rough lines, does it not harmonize neatly with the political coalition suggested by Murray below? Such a conflict would be a civil war based on insurgent models, which means that counterinsurgents will require a political model in order to rebuild the authority of the government. I think Murray's model, with a few tweaks, suggets a very stable coalition that could arise out of the conflict. It would restore the government's authority by rebuilding the republic along more traditional constitutional lines; taking advantage of the nationalism that is now a form of "ethnicity," and thus enjoys a very natural form of authority. It would also put the future government on a more sustainable and responsible model of governance, and one that is closer to the republic that the Founders envisioned.
You might reasonably say: instead of planning for the war, why not plan how to avoid it? Indeed, that's a reasonable question, but a troubling one. As in 1848, there is insufficient political flexibility to make the changes we'd need to make to avoid the collapse. It's not clear that, even if the President and Congress were united on admitting the problem and fixing it, there is a way to do so without fundamental disruption -- and although now would be far better than later, the President and Congress are not so united. The 2010 elections may provide a new Congress, but not a new President; and so the effort among the government to address this basic fiscal problem will be divided at best through 2013, unless President Obama is sufficiently flexible to recognize the failure of his basic ideological model and move strongly in the direction of repairing the government's standing. It would be remarkable if he were -- if any many were -- quite so flexible as that.
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