Who’s the BOSS?

As the presidential election heats up in the United States, most of the pundits–as usual–will be missing the fundamental issues. How can they not miss them? The pundits are merely trees in the same forest that everyone else is in.

From this distant perspective, by contrast, maybe a few valid observations can be ventured. And observation numero uno is this: Americans want to be told what to do. Corollary: They will vote for the man who is inclined to boss them around the most.

And the word “boss” is no idle little monosyllabic term. In America, the government is everybody’s boss. It takes more money from you than any other expense; it tells your kids what to believe; it tells you what you can and cannot do with your property. It rewards groups it likes, and punishes groups it dislikes (nutso Christian head cases in Waco, for example).

I can’t think of any aspect in life where the government isn’t now the boss. Health care? The government is the largest player. Employment? The government is the nation’s largest employer. Education? Government. Retirement savings? Well, the government squeezes so much money out of you on that big ripoff it’s a joke amongst those who can add and multiply, which is a disconcertingly small segment of the electorate.

The only aspect of life I can think of that the government doesn’t lord over is the Internet, and this is sure to change. It can’t NOT change. (Hmm, awkward sentence, that, but I’ll stick with it).

Americans want to be saved from themselves, from their neighbors, from foreigners, and, soon, I’m sure they’ll demand safety from asteroids and space monsters, too. In all such cases, they want the iron fist of Big Bro to provide this safety.

Which is where economists have watched their train fall off the track. When you consider that most people would rather give the government their money and have the government make their decisions for them, you can’t try to explain things using knee-jerk free market theory. You have to adjust the premises behind this theory and account for the fact that freedom of choice is not some universally valued ideal, not some bedrock given on which we can build our economic towers.

And this is why the economic pundits are largely missing their calls for the election. A good economist simply can’t relate to the mental processes of the mob. Economics deals with raw rationality, the mob deals with raw emotion. The rub comes in where emotion drives ballot boxes, where ballot boxes power the government, and where the government is–here’s that word again–the BOSS. And the boss controls a larger segment of the economy than anyone else does.

Americans aren’t electing a chief executive to merely keep the barbarians at bay while allowing the free to pursue their freedom. No, Americans are electing their new boss, who will command the millions of sub-bosses who wield ever growing authority. If I can figure that out from way out here in Micronesia, you’d think someone in America would have gotten that by now.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address: ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.