Watching financial news and reading opinion pages has been rough the last year. America's financial system is teetering on the brink, our auto manufacturing industry is in shambles, and nearly every other segment of America's red-hot economy of a couple years ago has nearly ground to a cold-gray standstill.
Many of these disasters have taken a while to build up and explode. Some are just the natural consequence of a market system that rises and falls. But what is most distressing right now is that so many segments have collapsed all at the same time. That's why we are all feeling the pain right now.
Fixing these disasters is clearly complicated and might even lead to controversial solutions. We should ask tough questions about all possible solutions. But we should also be skeptical of over-simplified criticisms and personal attacks upon people who offer solutions.
The latest labels to be lobbed into the media echo chamber include "wealth destroyer" and "socialist." We're in the midst of a financial meltdown, and there is yet to be a sustained examination by news organizations about the smartest way to rip rotting subprime mortgages out of the gully of the banking system while sparing people from being kicked out of their homes en masse.
But somehow, certain people have managed to deposit the term "wealth destroyer" into the national media echo chamber. Talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and talk radio are already parroting in unison. Writers for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and even some local newspapers are also on the job echoing "wealth destroyer" through the daily loop of news and information.
Attempts to save gigantic banks from sinking into the financial abyss and taking their customers' savings with them are being called "wealth destroyers" because of proposals to make bank executives forgo their multimillion-dollar bonuses and settle for $500,000 yearly salaries. Investor stock values would also essentially be wiped out if the U.S. government continues to take bigger stakes in banks, essentially nationalizing them. But what the parrots don't mention is that all efforts to save banks would be null and void as soon as banks rebound, hopefully in the near future.
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Now, if an effort to save monolithic banks from their self-inflicted destruction by nationalizing them got the talking heads screaming, they are now shrieking over a proposal to raise taxes on high-end earners. And so a second word has been deposited into the echo chamber: socialist. Nearly everyone agrees that some sort of stimulus bill is necessary. You need to look no further than lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill who readily took big handouts to their home states. The problems arise when leaders talk about how to pay for stimulus.
And so the audacious plan to hike taxes on earners who make more than $200,000 a year is being pegged as socialist. The punditry on cable news and talk radio call this proposal a "re-distribution of wealth" from the rich to pay for health care, education, transportation, etc., for the poor and everyone else.
The solutions being offered by the powers look different to everyone based on their own perspective, and we should consider those different perspectives. The executive making a mid-six-figure salary may see a bigger tax bill. His perspective is vastly different from a laid-off factory worker who may get to ride a bus to the local community college so he can learn a new trade.
We should also consider proposals offered on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
Tax cuts and further deregulation are two ideas often regurgitated by the parrots on cable programs when they are pressed for solutions to our economic problems. They theorize that tax cuts would help jump start the economy by keeping more money in our pockets. And less regulation would make it easier for companies to be innovative and thus would provide another jump to the stalling economy.
The only glaring problem with these two ideas is that they have been the hallmarks of our economic model for the last 30 years. As our economy crumbles, so does the credibility of these two ideas. So, now is a time for healthy debate and new ideas. We should welcome ideas from every corner of the political spectrum because, given the pickle we're in right now, our country surely needs it.
We should be wary of anyone who makes it into the media echo chamber and resorts to sophomoric attacks on proposals with bombastic words like "socialist" or "wealth destroyer." They are no more productive than people who hurled labels like "Nazi" to describe a previous leader who considered suspending certain civil liberties in an attempt to preserve freedom.
Sergio Quintana is a UNM alumnus with a bachelor's degree in political science.
