Looking at my responsibilities as a mostly upstanding citizen of this great land, I can feel overwhelmed. It's easy to pine for the days when my bills were paid by someone else, when my only jobs were to learn and avoid a criminal record. Life's just so damned complicated now.
The daily responsibilities of a career, a relationship, homeownership, pets, laundry, and keeping in compliance with the rules of daily life are all manageable on an individual basis, but are tough to shoulder all at once. I haven't even had kids yet! No wonder people are willing to pay a premium for the convenience of someone else doing their taxes, cooking dinner, even raising their kids.
Life is more complicated than it was. In the nineteenth century, I may have lived in squalor, worked a menial job, and paid half my salary towards the rent with no prospect for retirement. I may not have expected to live that long in any case. But life was simpler. How many bills could I have been responsible for? How many monolithic bureaucracies could there have been involved in my life? How many decision points would I face on a daily basis compared to today? Would I worry about career advancement? Sending kids to college? Would I think about the DMV, pizza or Chinese food? Calories? Cavities? IRAs? Gas mileage? My commute? What to watch on TV?
I'm hard pressed to imagine a life in the 19th century that I'd pick over one in the 21st. For every emperor, cowboy, pioneer, and swashbuckler there were many thousands of forgotten, nameless, short, painful lives. But it's easy to be nostalgic when it's you in the modern drudgery compared to the guys that actually got written about sometime in the past.
So much of the discontent of modern times in America is fueled by nostalgia. Nostalgia offers a highly distorted view of bygone days, but within that view is a kernel of truth. The world really was simpler.
People are pragmatic. They understand, for example, that terrorists like to use planes as projectiles against landmarks. In boarding planes, they understand the necessity of security. But that understanding has limits. Walking through a metal detector to get on a flight is no big deal. You tell me there are bombs in people's shoes? OK, I'll take mine off to be x-rayed. Bombs made from liquids in bottles? All right, I'll put my shampoo and conditioner measuring 3.4 ounces or less in a clear Zip-Loc bag, and place it on the belt. You want my laptop to go through too? Whatever. You want me to take everything out of my pockets and stand there while a machine looks through my clothes, or get groped by someone in a blue shirt? Hold on. People have limits.
People don't want to get in trouble. They understand, for example, that an IRS audit, tax evasion charges and all the rest are not worth the cost of a visit to H&R Block, or an update to their TurboTax. At the same time, when they factor in their clothing donations, mortgage interest, gains and losses from investments and a dozen other things, they're happy to get a refund from Uncle Sam, even if it was their money to start with. You tell me I need to prove that I have health insurance too? Even after I spend a whole weekend in February sorting through receipts, 1099s, W2s, and bank statements to try and recover some of the money I'm owed? Hold on. People have limits.
The government has a lot of power to make life better. It can prevent religious zealots from crashing planes. It can raise the money needed for security, roads, power lines, education, health care, food safety, and a dozen other things we take for granted in daily life. We can even add to that list and make the world better in doing so. But none of it will be appreciated if it's a headache on people. No matter what the upsides may be, nobody wants to get photographed naked, or spend all day on esoteric forms under penalty of law. We pine for simpler times, forgetting what all this complexity has given us.
But it could be simpler. The wise politician should think about the experiences of daily life, and look for ways to make it easier. I can picture a simpler, clearer and fairer tax code that relieves a lot of stress, pays down the deficit, all while providing massive incentives to hire people and grow wealth. I'd bet we could even raise taxes if only it were simpler than it is today. I'd imagine that there's another way to handle airline security that leaves me alone as I try to get to my flight. Policymakers should look at the activities of daily life, the responsibilities of citizenship and ask themselves, how can we make this easier on people?
The world's complicated enough. Simplicity and clarity are the missing mantras of our time. Don't just make my life safer, cleaner, more enlightened or privileged. Make my life easier. I'd vote for that.
No comments:
Post a Comment