It seems that we spend more and more time these days figuring out why the wheels seem to be coming off society as we know it.  The morning reading today was quite discouraging.  The front page of the Hartford Courant brought home the words of Governor Jodi Rell discussing more than $6 billion dollars in budget deficit over three fiscal years.  The USA Today carried the words of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and the pleas of Detroit’s Big Three – GM, Ford, and Chrysler – as they have their hands out asking the federal government to bail them out yet again, and the economic news continues to be shockingly bad, with jobless claims at a seven year high.  Meanwhile, Republican leaders are gathering to figure out how to get our Party’s mojo back.

How is it that these problems have all come to pass?  While each of these topics are worth full examination on their own merits, it is well argued that one constant thread is the long-term rejection of concentrated influence by social institutions like government, corporations, or political parties.

Since the imposition of the income tax in 1991, Connecticut’s level of government spending has increased from approximately $6 billion to more than $16 billion in less than two decades.  It doesn’t seem that bad until you realize that it took twenty years to get from $2 billion to $6 billion in spending, and almost 200 years of statehood to get to $2 billion.  According to the Governor yesterday, the State budget will face a $5.9 billion deficit over three years if current service levels are maintained.  There will be definitely be dramatic spending cuts and almost certainly big tax hikes to make it balance out – but the solution won’t deal with the reality of a government so mammoth that it suffocates the economic growth necessary to support it.

Three bulwarks of American capitalism – General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler – are looking over the precipice of catastrophe without dramatic government intervention to salvage their corporations.  Long the poster children for inefficiency, corporate greed, and unionized extremism, Detroit automakers resorted to consolidation to survive in past decades.  But with no one left to plunder and the continued ability of Japanese and European manufacturers to clean Detroit’s clock, the Big Three have no where left to turn except Uncle Sam.  A mix of Detroit surrogates has made every argument under the sun for federal bailouts, and with UAW resurgent again with an all-Democrat Washington, they’ll get their money.  But it won’t address the structural flaw of having as much as 10% of the nation’s economy tied up in the hands of so few corporations.

And after eight years of Republican White House and twelve years of Republican dominance in Congress, the tide has shifted dramatically to the inverse in the space of just two years.  The flaws that the Party exhibited during this time are many, and are more fully addressed in the space of dozens of blog posts as opposed to just this one.  But perhaps most telling is the Republican change from being the Party of the ownership society, limited government, hard working individualism, and small businesses to a Party of bloated government, profligate spending, and indignant anti-intellectualism.  Looking at it through that prism, its no wonder that we are where we are.

The solution in all three cases, it seems, is the same: a return to core principles.  We need smaller, more dynamic and innovative businesses that benefit the individuals that own them and the employees that those owners work next to for the benefit of the entire community.  We need limited government that delivers services efficiently, effectively, or not at all while promoting economic vitality.  And we need a Republican Party that returns to the preach and practice of Republican values.  Until then, we are all worse off.

(Title borrowed from Mountstuart Elphinstone and the Times of London Online)