Will America Become Detroit, Part 6: The World Police Turn in Their Badges

"Beware of entangling allances"
-Pres. George Washington

"A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One"
- From "The Pirates of Penzance" by Gilbert and Sullivan

Now that U.S. presidential nominees are decided by primaries, the party conventions have become pointless, predictable bores. They are little more than rallies disguised as deliberative bodies. Both conventions are so scripted that the few moments that stand out are those where some participant tosses down the script and improvises. One of those moments this year came from Senator Rand Paul's Republican convention speech. At a convention where military one-upmanship was the coin of the day, Sen. Paul made the case that to balance our budget, "Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well spent". This is a brave admission; even Democrats such as Leon Panetta argue that even the recent slowing of military spending increases threaten our security. Although Sen. Paul's views on military spending are in the minority, soon the debt crisis will bring these views into the mainstream. When we absolutely must make the hard choices, it will soon come to light that much of our military spending has nothing to do with defending our nation, and some of our military efforts actually damage our security.

Defending Everyone Against Everyone Else

The 2012 U.S. military budget accounts for 41% of all military spending done on this planet. Our military spending is more than that of Russia, China and our NATO allies combined. Why does it cost so much to defend a nation surrounded by two oceans, and bordered by two very friendly neighbors? The answer is that much of the U.S. defense budget goes to defending other nations. America maintains 900 military bases in 130 countries. Our nation has 119,000 troops in Europe, 37,000 in South Korea, and 45,000 in Japan. There 44 American military bases in Germany alone. The average American taxpayer pays more for these bases than the average German taxpayer does.

A large part of why the U.S. defense spending is so high is that it includes a huge ersatz foreign aid program where we take on the defense duties of many of our allies. This is a great deal for the countries we defend: their tax burden is lessened, this in turn gives them a competitive advantage over us, and fewer of their young people are asked to sacrifice their lives. But is this a good deal for us? And if not, how did we end up in this situation?

The Diplomatic Equivalents of the Helium Reserve

We are all aware of Department of Defense programs that were continued far beyond any practical purpose. The National Helium Reserve, originally set up to make sure we had helium for our dirigibles, continued until 2007. The horse mounted cavalry was maintained as late as 1942. And don't forget the Mohair subsidies ooriginally enacted during WWI guarantee enough wool for soldiers uniforms. These subsidies continued until recent years, in spite of the fact that no uniforms have been made from mohair for more than half a century.

The State Department has its own share of programs that go on far past the time where their original rationale made any sense. The prime example of this is NATO, started in 1949 to help European nations rebuilding after the devastation of WWII to defend themselves against the Soviet bloc. This treaty was originally intended as a temporary measure, to help out until these nations could defend themselves. Dwight Eisenhower, as NATO Supreme Commander said that “if in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.” As a perfect illustration of the Reagan maxim that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program, NATO is still going strong after more than six decades, long after all the member nations have recovered from WWII, and even long after the Soviet threat has disappeared into history.

A similar situation exists in South Korea. After the end of the Korean war, one could make the case that it was in America's best interest to help our war-torn ally defend herself against communist aggression. But more than half a century later, South Korea now has a GDP 20 times the GDP of North Korea. If South Korea cannot defend herself now, when will she be able to do so?

When Defense Works Against Security

It is bad enough that American taxpayers are forced to pay for defend nations other than their own. What makes matters worse is what the CIA calls blowback, where the unintended consequences of American military ventures actually worsen our security. Major security failures such as 9/11 were retaliations for U.S. wars fought on foreign soil.

What Rand Paul said about defense spending may be controversial in 2012, but as the debt crisis comes to a head and every tax dollar needs to be accounted for, Paul's call for a closer look at defense spending will become more mainstream. Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution points out the need to provide for the common defense. But this meant the defense of the United States, not that of the world. It is time to end our role as world policeman, and concentrate on protecting our own citizens.

Will America Become Detroit, Part 4: The End of the Victimless Crime Spree

"Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."
- William F. Buckley, Jr.

"Oh what a delight to
Be given the right to
Be care free and gay once again"
- From "Cocktails for Two" by by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow

Some of humanity's greatest advances emerged from severe crises. As bad as the looming U.S. debt crisis is, it will force badly needed reforms in our criminal code. This nation devotes and a tremendous amount of resources prosecuting victimless crimes, especially the war on drugs. This relentless pursuit of adults engaging in consensual behavior is wasteful, ineffective, and frequently violates our civil liberties. But this particular form of government overreach will almost certainly end, and it will do for a rather mundane reason: the state simply won't have the funds to continue.

Prohibition Repeal as the Ultimate Rent Party

There is a historical precedent for the immanent demise of most victimless crimes. Consider the Volstead act, commonly known as prohibition. This forerunner of the war on drugs banned intoxicating alcoholic beverages. Even though the failures of this act became apparent soon after the act's passage in 1919, it was not repealed until 1933. What happened in 1933 that finally did in the Volstead act?

In part, prohibition was ended by the great depression. At a time when the economic downturn was drying up tax revenue, governments were saddled with the substantial costs of enforcing prohibition. Moreover, keeping bars and liquor closed also closed off a badly needed source of tax revenue. When it became clear that prohibition could only be continued by asking an impoverished public to tighten their belts still further, the prohibition repeal effort passed overwhelmingly.

The Volstead Act on Crack

If 1930's depression era America found prohibition too dear a luxury, then twenty-first century debt crisis America will almost certainly reject its even more expensive offshoot, the war on drugs. Essentially, the war on drugs is the Volstead Act on Crack. Consider these expenses:

Jail House Rock

Key element of the war on drugs is harsh minimum sentences for drug offenses and extremely aggressive enforcement. Since President Nixon kicked off the war on drugs in 1971, American incarceration rates have more than quadrupled. We now hold the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. We have more prisoners than all of China, which has four times our general population. We jail a larger portion of our black population than did Apartheid era South Africa.

The costs of all these prisoners is straining state budgets.
California pays $45,563 a year to keep a man in prison, so now the Golden state spends more on jails than it does on universities. And that does not even could the loss of tax revenue from taking these prisoners out of the economy. Longitudinal studies show an even greater expense: those serving lengthy drug sentences are less likely to ever become a productive member of society.

In the past, the mantra of the drug warrior has been that it is important to "send a message" to users of illicit drugs. But as states such as California and Michigan face the threat of default, they are bound to ask if we could please send this message via Western Union.

Putting the War into "The War on Drugs"

The war on drugs quickly took up a large portion of law enforcement efforts at all levels. It even has its own enforcement agency, the DEA, which has spend $536 billion on drug enforcement since its inception in 1973. (See the suitable tacky DEA museum gift shop). But victimless crimes are notoriously hard to enforce. When this effort fell short, harsher tactics such as SWAT teams and no-knock raids were tried. Some police departments have even acquired military equipment from the DOD. When they called it the "War on Drugs", they were not kidding!

Like most wars, this one has had plenty of collateral damage. There have been raids on the wrong house that have resulted in innocent people or even pets getting shot. To be fair, raids on real drug dealers are highly dangerous operations, so police are bound to make mistakes in these high stress situations. But this is a danger of our own making. The day prohibition was repealed, the bootlegger gangs went out of business, and with their demise, there was a marked decrease in gang violence. Drug decriminalization would likely have the same effect, saving us both money and lives.

Too Poor to Keep Screwing Up

Due to budget constraints, Detroit has had to make cuts in its police force. In order to protect themselves, some of this city's citizens have formed a citizen's group called Detroit 300 that patrols the streets that Detroit's finest used to patrol. Not surprisingly, all the crimes that Detroit 300 deal with are crimes with victims: rape, robbery, assult, murder, etc. They are not chasing down dope smokers. When hard choices have to be made, enforcing victimless crimes is the first thing to go.

As the nation's debt crisis comes to a head, we will forced to take the same approach as Detroit 300. There are many better reasons to end the war on drugs, but it will definitely end for one reason: we cannot afford it. Lack of funds will force our government to do the right thing.

Speaking of victimless crimes, check out the documentary Derrick J's Victimless Crime Spree, where one activist gets into an amazing amount of legal trouble for peaceably protesting his local public officials.

Will America Become Detroit, Part 3: Paul Ryan, Rambo, and J. Alfred Prufrock

"We fail far more often by timidity than by over-daring."
- Ray Stannard Baker

"Do I dare eat a peach?"
- From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot

The most controversial deficit reduction plan was put forward by Wisconsin Representative and Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. In 2008, he introduced H. R. 6110, entitled "Roadmap for America's Future Act of 2008", as a plan to balance the budget and create jobs. This proposal has garnered both high praise and scathing condemnation.

• Democratic co-chair of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform called the Ryan plan “sensible, serious . . , and honest”.
• In April at an Associated Press Luncheon, President Obama denounced Ryan's plan as "nothing but thinly-veiled Social Darwinism."
• New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote "Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes"
• Even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have blasted the Ryan plan, writing that it fails to meet a basic moral test.

As is often the case, the truth lies between the extremes. Paul Ryan's plan would not produce a future ripped from the pages of Oliver Twist. On the other hand, the plan would also not succeed in its primary mission of eliminating the deficit. The reason why the Ryan proposal would fail is that, contrary to what both his supporters and critics contend, this plan is actually too timid to be effective. Contrary to popular rhetoric, the senator who is likened to Rambo is much closer to J. Alfred Prufrock. 

Bill Clinton, Social Darwinist?

One of the more popular attacks on the Ryan plan is that it would cut spending much too quickly, threatening our fragile economic recovery. President Obama even went so far as to call the plan a "prescription for decline". Everyone agrees that spending cuts are inevitable, but Obama asserts that these cuts must be done more gradually to preserve both the safety net for the poor and this nation's greatness.

This argument focuses its line of attack on the notion that Ryan's plan spends considerably less than recent federal budgets, a major talking point for the plan's proponents. So how does the Ryan plan compare to federal spending levels, or for that matter, how does it compare to Obama's proposal? An analysis of the numbers shows how Washington's definition of a cut differs from the rest of the nation: the only sense in which Ryan's budget for the next 10 years can be considered a "cut" is in the sense that spending will not increase a fast as politicians originally planned:

• Even after adjusting for inflation, Ryan's plan for the each of the next ten years would be 46% higher than Bill Clinton's last budget; and
• In this 10 year period Ryan plan spends only 5% less than Obama's proposed budget.

If Paul Ryan is a Social Darwinist, wouldn't that make Bill Clinton one as well? And if we are to believe that the Ryan plan would put us on the path to decline, why should we have any confidence in a plan that only differs from the Ryan by only 5%?

Voting for the Party That Will Throw Granny Off a Cliff

The most contentious issue with the Ryan Plan is the entitlement program reforms. As an alternative to the current defined benefit program, Ryan proposed block granting the program, and an opt-out for younger people who wish to vest in private retirement plans instead of Social Security and Medicare.

The imminent debt crisis has finally forced a senator to touch the "third rail" of American politics. And predictably, his opponents have played upon the public's fear of changes in these popular programs. The Agenda Project produced an infamous ad depicting Paul Ryan throwing an old woman off a cliff. The Romney campaign responded by producing its own ad, attacking Obama's plans to divert Medicare "savings" to pay for Obamacare. So which party will really preserve Medicare as we know it?

The honest answer is neither party: no matter who wins the elections here and in the next few decades, our entitlement programs as we know them will come to an end, period. These programs are completely and utterly unsustainable. As early as 2008, the trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare place their unfunded liability (that is, what they are obligated to pay out minus anticipated revenue) at $101 trillion. Given that our annual GDP is around $14 trillion, this is a hole that even a 100% tax rate cannot fill. A health care economist put the Medicare situation in far stronger language (warning: possibly NSFW) here.

Ryan's plan is probably insufficient to fix the entitlement crisis, but it is better than the current administrations' non-plan. In reality, the most likely outcome for the entitlement programs is that they will become means tested. But saying that is not politically popular (ask Ron Paul and Gary Johnson), so the two major party candidates will continue to argue over which one will push granny off the cliff.

Watching the Glaciers Speed By

For all the hoopla about the rapidity of the Paul Ryan's cuts, what is amazing is how agonizingly slow this plan is in terms of solving the debt crisis. CBO projections show that the plan won't even produce a balanced budget until 2040. Even this is based on optimistic assumptions, such as that no other national crises will arise in the next 28 years, and that congress will remain committed to this plan for nearly three decades. Part of the problem is that Senator Ryan has his own sacred cows: he leaves the budgets for defense and the war on terror untouched. Given the severity of the debt problem, everything should be on the table. The Pentagon and the Office of Homeland Security both have a lot of waste that could be eliminated.

To really fix the debt crisis, what is needed is a plan far more bold than the Ryan plan. But since Washington views this plan as reckless, what will actually be implemented is something weaker, and therefore even more inadequate, than the Ryan plan. This is the strongest evidence yet that no serious remedy will be attempted until it is too late, i.e. in financial terms, America will become Detroit.

What we are facing is nothing short of default of our nation. Granted, the consequences of this will be terrible: treasury bonds are frequently purchased because of their reputation for stability. Many who are depending on these bonds, including some who were dependent on them for their retirement, will be devastated. But there will be a few upsides to this crisis, as will be detailed in the next installments.