TFT: As the economy improves, do you foresee a swing back to bedrock values?
CS: If you change the incentives, you change the culture and the character. The expectation of getting handouts began before this recession. And a lot of the policies we've put into place are intended to be in place long after. So we have to ask, "At what point does this country stop running trillion-dollar deficits? When are we going to understand that now's a good time to become fiscally responsible?" We have lived off our children and grandchildren long enough. It's time to turn things around. But like other binges, the debt binge is difficult to stop.
TFT: Do you hope that in this presidential election year some pragmatic solutions take hold and move forward?
CS: I'm somewhat frustrated by some of the dialogue right now. I know that the president would like to make this society fairer between the rich and the poor -- the 1% and the 99%. But rather than a discussion of class warfare, I hope we make this a debate about the makers versus the takers. We won't get ourselves out of our economic problems by increasing spending and debt, and increasing the number of people who are dependent on others. And no matter how responsible our young people are -- and I have two kids in college right now -- my generation is leaving our young people with an economy of crushing debt. They're going to inherit a completely different country than what we inherited. We've spent it all. That's tremendously worrisome.
TFT: Your commentary, in a chapter entitled "Step Away from the Trough," attempts to change this. How?
CS: We can say no to the things we want but can't afford. We can't have everything. But I don't know that we have the political will to do that right now. Europe is the distant mirror for us. That's not a talking point -- that's reality. We have to change the dynamic in which everybody is at the trough. People won't step away from it until everybody else steps away, everyone else from Goldman Sachs to farmers to Hollywood celebrities. It needs to be a culture-wide understanding that this is just not sustainable. But if the notion of intergenerational transfer of wealth takes hold, then we might have a more serious willingness to make that distinction between needs and wants.
TFT: Who among the current presidential candidates would accomplish that, in your view?
CS: Unfortunately, the person I'm politically closest to is not running. That's Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). He's just about the only political figure who has tried to grapple with this and say, How would we slow this entitlement world -- slow the growth of spending? And if it proves to be the third rail of politics in this election season, then I think we will have squandered one of the best opportunities we've had in a generation.
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