Simpson-Bowles Commission Lecture featuring Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles at Wake Forest University 09/25/2012

Simpson-Bowles [National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] lecture was held last evening 09/25/2012 at Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Forest University with the lecturers being none other than Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles. 

The lecture was merely a rehash of their findings/recommendations from the original report issued by the commission. Nothing new that can‘t be found in the original report. Was more of an infomercial for their recommendations.

Three items that might be of interest from the lecture were: (a) the use of the word “crazy” used many times to describe the overspending vs. tax revenue available, (b) the failure to explain what phenomena was/is at work that brought us to the point of having the commission in the first place, (c) the whining that they [Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles] are "lashed out at" by everyone who would suffer a cutback of their government sponsored privilege via the Simpson-Bowles recommendations.

The “crazy” depiction consisted of:

(1) how can we spend more than what we bring in (crazy),

(2) how can people believe that the system will not go bust (crazy).

What they fail to recognize is the phenomena of rational-irrationality. They call it a catch-all “crazy” and leave it as a murky phenomena rather than in fact explaining rational-irrationality. That is, politicos through the mechanism of government have created an economic system of government privilege as a political constituency building exercise that is going broke. On one hand politicos dispense privilege knowing the system will go broke while on the other hand people accept privilege knowing the system is self destructing. Hence it becomes rational to gain from the purposely built system (politico and recipient class) while simultaneously knowing it is irrational to gain from a system that can not last. It boils down to the old expression of “get it while the getting’s good”.

They completely failed to explain what underlying phenomena was/is at work that brought us to the point of having the commission in the first place. Their position is explained from the starting point of: here we are and this is how to fix it. If one is to “fix” something what exactly went wrong in the first place that caused one to have “fix”? Which then begs a question of: if one “fixed it” why would the something that went wrong merely manifest itself again? That is, the chronic condition is never addressed, only a particular cure is addressed. Completely left out of the discussion is James M. Buchanan’s observation that a purposeful system of government privilege has been created by politicos as an ongoing political constituency building program. That a free market model has been supplanted by politicos with a government privilege model.

The failure to explain the underlying problem leaves them whining about being ““lashed out at“ by everyone who would suffer a cutback of their government sponsored privilege via the Simpson-Bowles recommendations. That is, the “lashed out at” is depicted as “woe is me” for telling the truth. Nay, nay. If they explained the underlying problem and the purposely built government privilege system then they would know such a system generates special interests that have their own politically built constituency that require the privilege to continue or else the special interest and associated constituency disappear. Hence the special interest and associated constituency are rational in lashing out as they want to retain privilege and the “woe is me” proposition misses the point completely.