The precarious politics of prosperity

摘要

A Mericans love "having it all". So does everyone, of course, but nowadays Americans seem to have a better shot at it than most. In politics, having it all means getting lower taxes and higher spending simultaneously—and still running a budget surplus. This seems possible now because every time Americans inspect their government's figures, the numbers keep getting better. What to do with this treasure is one of the biggest questions of the presidential campaign. It is also muddying one of the few clear differences between two otherwise markedly similar candidates. When it came to economic policy, George W. Bush always seemed the radical reformer, keen on big tax cuts and bold (or crazy) enough to offer a reform of Social Security, America's huge and popular public pension programme, that included the creation of individual retirement accounts. Al Gore was Mr Prudent: determined to use any budget surpluses to pay down the national debt, and unabashedly dismissive of Mr Bush's schemes.