Of taxes and time machines

[alberg]

I saw a movie the other night about time travel and it got me thinking about the Bush tax cuts.

It’s not so much the tax cuts specifically I was thinking of, although why something as obviously right to do as letting them expire is part of the idea. No, the tax cuts were just the entry point to a long chain of thought about how bankrupt the entire dialogue is regarding the economy, our social structure and how to best manage our country, our resources and our lives.

It’s as if a catastrophic error occurred somewhere in our past that has led to the current state of irrationality and misinformation that passes for public policy discussion.

Any practical analysis of the facts of economic life would have to conclude that a mixed economy – one that combines a certain amount of state control, regulation and central planning with a vibrant and innovative free market model for the majority of commercial activity, provides the best opportunity to build a society that maximizes wealth and happiness for the largest number people. The data is out there. The experiment has been run on a global basis since the 1930’s. Yet the word still hasn’t gotten around.

So what gives?

Somewhere, sometime an event occurred that bent the future line and sent us all down the wrong path. Maybe it was the Simpson trial or the death of King and Kennedy. Maybe it was something before all that - less noteworthy, like a bad pop record that went to number one or a missed telephone call by somebody you never heard of.

But here’s the thing, with a time machine we could go back. We could find that inflection point in the curve and bend it back. The world could be like most of us imagine it could be – a better world for more people without so much greed and hate.

Of course, this is all just idle speculation. There is no time machine and we’re trapped in this nightmare that seems to be getting worse with each passing week.

But there is another possibility.

Maybe there is a time machine somewhere in the future – and our time, this time, is the inflection point.