Madness

Kevin Drum can't figure out why our society is so blinkered.

How did we get to this point? How did we convince ourselves as a society that raising taxes by a small amount in order to keep Social Security benefits at a barely livable level is literally unthinkable?

Someday our children will look back on this era and wonder what kind of madness overtook us. Healthcare costs are spiralling out of control, we're spending $100 billion a year on an unwinnable war overseas, the combination of budget deficits and trade deficits threatens to ruin us, and yet somehow what really matters is that we have to cut Social Security benefits today — today! — in order to avoid the mere possibility of a small tax increase decades in the future.

It's madness. And yet we live in a time when madness has become conventional wisdom. I wonder what it will take to wake us up?

Good question. And when we finally do wake up, will we realize that we are all giant bugs?