Copyright Arkansas Online
One of the practical problems with divisive partisan polarity is that it tends to focus attention on the extremes. Each party tries to define the other by its most radical wing, giving inordinate attention and weight of discourse to far-left and far-right positions and issues. Even though most of the country is nearer to the middle, the subjects of most news headlines and political ads aren't. Add to this the fact that government size and intrusiveness is at an all-time high, which makes political dysfunction more socially detrimental now than in times past when government was more limited. There's no way to know the point when drastic social change (in attitudes as well as actualities) begins to undermine our national concept of self-government. What we know for sure is that some recent changes are radical and unprecedented. Marriage and home ownership represented aspirational social norms coming out of World War II. Statistically, the nation reached a peak in 1960 when more than half (52 percent) of Americans age 30 had reached both milestones. Today it's about 12 percent. That kind of dramatic decline can't help but create consequences our social, economic and governmental structures are unprepared to deal with. Single-parent households have tripled since 1960, and the rate of two-earners among married couples has more than doubled. That kind of rapid change meant neither our school systems nor our day-care resources had time for much groundwork preparation. Public education, particularly, already had a good half-century of inertia behind it when major social changes picked up steam in the 1960s. It's really no surprise that a school system designed around two-parent, single-earner households would not function well in places where single-parent families (often working two jobs) have become the rule. But as with many government bureaucracies, change is hard and entrenched practices die hard for schools. Their lethargy in adapting has resulted in skyrocketing costs without accompanying achievement gains. The day-care industry barely existed in 1960, when its costs represented less than 2 percent of parents' income (today it's 18 percent or more). It's also on an accelerated growth trajectory, with increasing costs outpacing inflation. In 45 states, parents with two children pay more on average for center-based day care than their mortgage payment. That's especially astonishing because the national median house price in the U.S. increased by more than 160 percent since 2000. Depending on locality, some increases are even higher. For families in metropolitan areas, even with two incomes, the combined cost of a mortgage and child care can consume close to two-thirds of their monthly income. Fifty years ago, college tuition was much more affordable (average public college annual cost: $542), and college loans were minimal. The average bachelor's degree graduate in 1975 owed $1,070 in student loans, compared with $31,000 of debt today. For young people starting out, the repayment requirement on such a balance can and does affect other major life decisions in ways very differently, and often negatively, from decades earlier. On top of borrowing for college, Americans today also borrow more in general, and pay dearly for it. Only one in six U.S. households had a general-purpose credit card in 1970, and if they carried a revolving balance at all (most didn't), the average was $78. Today the average person has three or four cards in their wallet or purse, and is paying interest on an average balance of $6,500. Among different age groups, Gen-Xers have the highest average credit-card balance, at $9,600. The national debt is beyond comprehension, which may partly explain why immense personal debt has become so acceptable. The domino effect is obvious. Higher home values result in increased property taxes and insurance premiums, which raise mortgage payments that escrow those costs. The cost of raising a child to age 18 has increased exponentially, with no correlation in earnings growth. An entire generation is struggling to afford life as their parents knew it. All of these trends portend peril. The continuation of unsustainable conditions leads to collapse, not reform. Public policies are complicit in much of what's gone badly, mainly because the government rarely gets ahead of anything. At a time when the need for national legislative effectiveness is great, for instance, Congress can't even keep the federal doors open. New York City is hardly a microcosm of American centrism (it hasn't voted Republican in a presidential election in 100 years), but the easy victory of an openly socialist mayoral candidate did not occur in a vacuum. Zohran Mamdani's answer to unaffordable costs of living is to simply make many of them free. That has never been the American way, and the willingness of a million New Yorkers to choose government control as the best solution over private enterprise is troubling. In other places where authoritative, redistributive socialism has been tried, the power necessary to control such things corrupted those governments. And citizens learned too late how subtle the slope from dependency to domination is. Maybe NYC will be the wakeup call the rest of the country needs. We have big things that need fixing. Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
