Thomas Byrne Edsall
One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming yearsâ€”and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles., Â , In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislationâ€”and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachersâ€”have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choicesâ€”or worse, choices with no winners., Â Â Â Â  ,Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few yearsâ€”long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvementâ€”suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.
Politics,Nonfiction,Economics,Politics,Political Science,Culture,Society
The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics