Dave Roberts writes a dia­logue on the notion of growth in mod­ern pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics. On one hand, he notes that eco­nom­ic growth has been the most pow­er­ful engine for gen­uine­ly improv­ing human well­be­ing, and on the oth­er hand, that it’s doomed to run out, and that even as it can improve well­be­ing, it typ­i­cal­ly cre­ates mas­sive inequal­i­ty, hurt­ing peo­ple rather bad­ly. There’s no viable alter­na­tive to growth to keep the world turn­ing, but there’s no viable expla­na­tion of how we can con­tin­ue grow­ing faster than our resources can recov­er. Ulti­mate­ly, we wind up with this dilemma:

The idea that we’re going to become rad­i­cal­ly more egal­i­tar­i­an, with sub­stan­tial­ly more mod­est mate­r­i­al expec­ta­tions, and we’re going to do so vol­un­tar­i­ly and peace­ful­ly, in less than a cen­tu­ry … that’s uni­corn porn. 

I hear lots of hap­py ideas from the anti-growth folk, but I’ve nev­er heard any­thing even close to a prac­ti­cal polit­i­cal plan to get from Point A — a coun­try gripped by fears over the deficit, sus­pi­cious of gov­ern­ment, hos­tile to tax­es, leery of social engi­neer­ing — to Point B, a vision of the future that would make John Lennon blush. “Imag­ine there’s no growth …” 

Until that plan emerges, I’m going to stick with try­ing to wring incre­men­tal gains for jus­tice out of social demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ism. It does­n’t work as well as one might like, but noth­ing else seems to work at all.

On so many polit­i­cal issues of the day, I find myself tak­ing that same stand, the prag­mat­ic I‑wish-that-rad­i­cal-plan-exist­ed-or-was-plau­si­ble-but-for-now-let’s-do-this-thing-that-will-work stance that gets me labeled an accom­mo­da­tion­ist in some cir­cles, and an Oba­ma-wor­ship­per in others.

That isn’t to say there’s no place for ide­al­ism in pol­i­tics gen­er­al­ly or in my own pol­i­tics. Thore­au urged us to imag­ine our cas­tles in the sky, after all. But he also told us to build our foun­da­tions under them. And some­times there’s sim­ply no foun­da­tion capa­ble of sup­port­ing an idea.

And so we come to the Pres­i­den­t’s speech tonight. He pro­pose a pack­age of pay­roll tax cuts and small busi­ness tax cuts and unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fit exten­sions and assis­tance for laid-off teach­ers and cops and fire­fight­ers and con­struc­tion work­ers, all paid for not with free mon­ey the glob­al mar­kets are offer­ing us, but by clos­ing tax loop­holes for cor­po­ra­tions. I don’t think that’s enough. I think we need mas­sive invest­ments in infra­struc­ture. I think the Pres­i­dent need­ed to lay out a plan to tax the hell out of car­bon emis­sions, that mon­ey spent to build wind farms and solar facil­i­ties and geot­her­mal gen­er­a­tors and high­ly effi­cient trans­mis­sion lines and high speed rail across the coun­try. And also to fix and upgrade bridges across the coun­try. And to build new schools and fill them with mod­ern labs and com­put­ers, the facil­i­ties to learn 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nolo­gies includ­ing mol­e­c­u­lar bio­sciences. And heck, build more post offices and parks and mon­u­ments, any­thing that gets peo­ple working.

No plan that can be paid for by clos­ing some tax loop­holes can do the job. A big tax on incomes over $1 mil­lion would help. So would a hike in cor­po­rate tax rates, and cap­i­tal gains rates. Cor­po­rate income is up late­ly, but indi­vid­ual income is down, sug­gest­ing that it’s worth more for cor­po­ra­tions to keep their mon­ey than it is to invest in work­ers. That’s a prob­lem of tax incentives.

That’s what I want­ed to hear from the Pres­i­dent. A plan that would be rem­i­nis­cent of what FDR offered when he swept into office, not one like Bill Clin­ton sug­gest­ed in 1993. Because this econ­o­my is a lot more like the Great Depres­sion than it is like the first Bush reces­sion.

But that plan would­n’t even uni­fy the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in 2011. FDR came to office with mas­sive majori­ties, and with a pub­lic on the verge of overt rev­o­lu­tion. Her­bert Hoover, cam­paign­ing for anoth­er term in 1932, encoun­tered crowds urg­ing, “Hang Hoover!” After Hoover lost, and a wave elec­tion tossed out 158 incum­bents (the sec­ond wave elec­tion in a row), vet­er­ans and the unem­ployed marched on Wash­ing­ton, chant­i­ng “Feed the hun­gry! Tax the rich!” In addi­tion to the Hunger March in DC, thou­sands marched on Colum­bus, Ohio, to sack the capi­tol and “estab­lish a work­ers’ and farm­ers’ repub­lic.” Thou­sands occu­pied the Nebras­ka state­house, and marchers in oth­er cities took over munic­i­pal build­ings and banks. In Iowa, farm­ers joined togeth­er to lay siege on Sioux City, Des Moines, Coun­cil Bluffs, and Oma­ha, bar­ri­cad­ing roads and tear­ing down jails to free their arrest­ed com­rades. Judges and lawyers who approved fore­clo­sures were lynched or beat­en. Then the banks ran out of mon­ey, leav­ing depos­i­tors pen­ni­less and farm­ers reliant on loans unable to plant crops.

Robert Caro quotes James Mac­Gre­gor Burns on that long stretch between the Novem­ber, 1932 elec­tion and the March, 1933 inauguration:

Cri­sis was in the air-but it was a strange, numb­ing cri­sis, strik­ing sud­den­ly in a West­ern city and then in the South a thou­sand miles away. It was worse than an invad­ing army; it was every­where and nowhere, for it was in the minds of men. It was fear.”

The Con­gress elect­ed first in 1930 and then in 1932 was over­whelm­ing­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic, and was ready to act. For two years, they’d passed bills to aid farm­ers, home­own­ers, and the unem­ployed, with each pro­pos­al vetoed by the indif­fer­ent Hoover. As soon as he was out of office, Con­gress and the Pres­i­dent could act quick­ly to estab­lish all of the pro­grams they agreed were necessary.

That’s not the sit­u­a­tion that faced Pres­i­dent Oba­ma in 2008, let alone today in 2011. While he had a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress, his mar­gins weren’t wide, and many of those Democ­rats were unwill­ing to take strong action. The pub­lic was­n’t uni­fied in demand­ing any par­tic­u­lar actions; con­fused by the TARP mess, they weren’t even sure which par­ty stood for what. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has wound up tak­ing the blame for a reces­sion start­ed by his pre­de­ces­sor, and wors­ened by the aver­sion of con­ser­v­a­tives in Con­gress toward stim­u­la­tive spending.

So while I wish the Pres­i­den­t’s speech were much stronger, I also know that he set his sights low because he knows that even the small pota­toes he’s ask­ing for are too much for this Con­gress. I want a bold, pro­gres­sive plan, but the sort of plan that would excite me will encour­age con­ser­v­a­tives in Con­gress to dig in and demand their own super­crazy ideas, and then where are we.

So how do we get from A to B? What can I, or the Pres­i­dent, or you, do to cre­ate a move­ment that will demand a new New Deal, the sort of real change the coun­try needs?