LET’S SPEND LOTS OF MONEY, APPOINT A COMMITTEE, HAVE SOME MEETINGS AND TELL PEOPLE WE’RE WORKING ON IT

6/12/10

The Gulf oil spill, along with the last, or next depending on one’s perspective, post got me thinking about our approach in this country to problem solving and its ramifications for GDP.

The spill seems to have been brought under control, but maybe not. In any event, it seemed to take a long time to solve a problem that never should have occurred in the first place. At the same time, the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City remains, for all intents and purposes, empty; it will still be years before a replacement for the World Trade Center is in place. On a larger scale, we still have a large, and some might argue growing, underclass that seems to be sinking into greater despair on a daily basis. In our inner cities, high school graduation rates are pitifully low. Even in our nicer suburbs, one wonders how much “education” high school graduates get.

The larger point is that in this overly politicized, bureaucratized, and regulated country, in which leadership has been replaced by sycophancy and pandering, we have a difficult time solving any problems or even getting anything done. To use an overly clichéd analogy, it has taken us longer in the first decade of the new millennium to replace the World Trade Center than it took us to put a man on the moon in the 1960s.

On the other hand, we have no difficulty, hiring people and spending money attempting to solve problems and get things done. And those in most cases unnecessary and futile expenditures are counted as additions to GDP. Kind of makes one think.