The Costliest Casualty

That old song, once our unofficial national anthem for a hot minute, doesn’t play anymore. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” was a chart-topper after its release in 1977, then experienced a resurgence a decade and a half later when it was adopted as the theme of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone

Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign had no musical theme. The president had long since stopped thinking about tomorrow, enlisting Republican consultant Dick Morris just to get him through the day, politically speaking. Uplifting music gave way to cynical maneuvering. Morris advised Clinton to “triangulate,” a fancy way of saying he should take his opponents’ ideas and make them his own. Clinton did, and won. But there were casualties.

Ever the mercenary, Morris eventually boarded the Trump train, appearing equally at ease with both men, only differentiating that with Clinton he “was able to mold him a little bit more.” As our society races down this road that these three men had a substantial hand in paving, it’s hard not to notice it’s strewn with carcasses. Honesty lays lifeless on the shoulder. Decency’s corpse is in the ditch. Optimism is sprawled across the median, rigor mortis setting in.

These are jarring losses, incalculable harms. But it’s not the roadkill that’s most troubling, it’s the direction this road leads. From it, only where we are now and where we’ve been are in sight. Tomorrow is nowhere to be seen. No one had more to do with building this road than those three men and they’ve each gained much by traveling it. But there were casualties, imagination being the costliest one.

Home ownership has always been a central feature of the American Dream, but today most Millennials and Gen-Zers have little or no hope of being able to afford to buy a home of their own. Yet what passes for a housing debate is so impoverished that those in charge can only think to label current federal programs “dysfunctional” to justify a 40% cut in rental assistance, while the opposition holds out hope of preserving some semblance of Section 8 and other existing housing programs. None of them strive to get to the root of housing unaffordability. Bold steps like prohibiting hedge funds, private equity firms and other speculators from buying up houses and driving up prices for families are not up for discussion.

With the rich getting richer by the day and now controlling a record share of the nation’s bounty, it bears recognizing that the wealthiest among us are not industrialists as was the case for generations, they’re technologists. That’s not to say they invented the technology; they take what others create and employ it in ways that replace human labor and bloat their own net worth. Unless we are content with becoming ever more economically and socially stratified, the fruits of technology need to be broadly shared with each and every American in the form of some kind of technology dividend. No one on Capitol Hill is giving this even a passing thought.

Workers are on pins and needles, wondering when AI and robots might put them out of a job. While the U.S. is in wait-and-see mode, other countries are taking worker anxiety and vulnerability seriously. Six years ago, Iceland started testing the effects of moving to a four-day workweek with no cuts in pay. The results have been downright thrilling, from improved mental health to enriched family life, without hamstringing businesses. There is no such experimentation in the U.S. despite an epidemic of clinical depression and rising suicide rates. The terms and conditions of employment here were established 87 years ago and have changed little since.

There is no greater stress on family life in America than health insecurity. Tens of millions are uninsured, far more than that are underinsured. The vast majority in this country are a pink slip away from being unable to get themselves or loved ones medical attention should they fall seriously ill. Still, the national debate is largely confined to whether two 60-year-old programs—Medicare and Medicaid—should be preserved or dismantled. No serious attention is being paid to what ought to be at or near the top of our society’s to-do list, namely bringing health security to all Americans, not just the elderly, disabled or destitute.

Speaking of stresses, the spiraling cost of child care is wrecking family budgets throughout the land, and all a tone-deaf administration offers up is a $5,000 baby bonus as an incentive to have more children. Opponents have not proposed anything more notable. There is a poverty of thinking about how we might reimagine the structure of our society to bring it into line with current needs and tomorrow’s challenges. The centerpiece of our national investment in children is a K-12 education system that was a 19th-century invention, before industrialization, when most Americans were living off the land.

Based on how we live today, how our economy now works, what tomorrow will surely bring, a K-12 system no longer cuts it. Waiting to start meeting the needs of children and their families with kindergarten at age 5 and ending with the prospect of a high school diploma after 12th grade is woefully inadequate to the current task at hand. We would be wise to invent a replacement suited to our times, a P-14 public school system providing preschool services beginning at infancy or shortly thereafter and continuing through at least two years of post-high school instruction or training. We are showing no inclination toward such wisdom.

America is stuck at the moment, as if in a state of suspended animation. Few are satisfied with where we are at right now, making many long for yesterday. But yesterday’s gone. Tomorrow, it’ll soon be here. Might as well get to imagining how it could be better than before.