The Badger Herald: Opinion: If you only had responsibilities

Updated Saturday, November 21, 2009, at 6:41 p.m.

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Opinion

If you only had responsibilities

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Also by Peter Gruett:

Taxpayers' Bill of Rights not what it seems (February 9, 2004)

Monday, January 26, 2004 12:00 a.m.

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Whenever I have a conversation about money and politics with anyone, two things inevitably come up: 1. In the grand scheme of adult life, I’m very young; and 2. I have no money. Once I get out into the “real world,” I’m told, the scales will fall from my eyes and I’ll finally see what a dead weight around the neck of society I have been all these years. The average taxpayer is simply too financially overburdened by more important matters to spend such exorbitant amounts of money on state programs. What good are they, anyway?

One thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve never been given this admonishment by anyone whom fate has been less than kind to. My relative poverty and naiveté is pointed out, fittingly enough, by individuals with giant, vinyl-clad manses in the suburbs and SUVs larger than my apartment. They worked their ways up. They owe nothing to anyone, least of all the state.

It’s at this point that I usually get a little uncomfortable. It’s obvious that they see me as a freeloader. I’ve spent two years longer than the magic four-year number completing my degree at an institution more or less (usually less) subsidized by the state. Who am I to be telling them they’re not spending enough money on education? I’m trying to spend less myself.

What I say in answer to this question would probably cause the individual I’m speaking to a massive heart attack, if he or she didn’t think I was kidding, or insane. The Baby Boomers are the first generation since perhaps the Depression who cannot say to their children, collectively, “You’re better off than we were.”

See? It sounds ridiculous. We had video games, cable television, computers, even cars! How are we not better off? To figure that out, you have to stop doing something you’ve been “trained” since childhood to do. You have to disregard the message sent to you by everyone from Bob Barker to the president. You have to stop thinking in terms of consumerism … no, I’m not a communist.

Every measure of “wealth” I mentioned was a consumer item. They provide comfort, entertainment and even transportation, but can we really be expected to build a life and a career on our stuff? Public schools are laying off staff, higher education becomes progressively less affordable and an increasing number of Americans have no insurance to cover health-care costs that are rising almost exponentially. As we sit surrounded by our piles and piles of consumer crap, our public institutions continue to falter.

This is not a simple “capitalism: bad” argument. It’s a “moderation: good” argument. It is, by and large, good for the economy when you purchase consumer goods, but does that investment in a big-screen TV have a near 1000% economic return, like a similar investment in the university? Is the bigger SUV to drive the kids to school worth it if the school has to cut programs?

America has become a nation built on consumer excess. We’re encouraged to travel more, buy more, even waste more; and we’ve got an astronomical level of consumer debt to show for it. We’ve also racked up a governmental debt equivalent to nearly $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. In response to this, or perhaps in spite of it, our government has lowered the national tax rate to its lowest level in almost 50 years.

The tax cuts were overwhelmingly aimed at the wealthy, creating an economic recovery that spelled a banner year for the well-off and another year of limbo for the rest of us.

I’m not suggesting we step on anyone’s American Dream. Americans see the prospect of living the good life as a birthright. I’m simply suggesting that those who’ve found the good life give something back to the system that made it possible. The lure of the American Dream is its universal attainability, the promise that everyone has a shot. An America free of financial rewards for merit, hard work and a generous portion of luck would be a betrayal of that dream. I simply fear we’re creating an America where entire classes of people at the financial bottom of society have no real chance of moving up and even those of us who do make it will have scant means to deal with the crushing public debt left to us by previous generations.

In my opinion, the great institutions that safeguard American prosperity and have forged the country into the superpower it is today are somewhat more important than reveling in the excesses that prosperity affords. But who knows. Perhaps someday I, too, will be so overwhelmed with high-end, luxury responsibilities that I’ll simply be unable to afford the frivolities that made them possible.

Peter Gruett (pjgruett@wisc.edu) is a senior majoring in music.