Today's Top Issue

Scott Hardie | May 3, 2015
I ask because I'm surprised by the top answers given by Republicans and Democrats.

A majority of Republicans said that national security and terrorism is the top issue. What more can be done that isn't being done already? What further efforts could America reasonably undertake to prevent acts of terrorism? There will always be isolated incidents like the Boston marathon bombing, but we've made them few and far between. I don't propose to scale back our military or intelligence, but to ask what further spending would accomplish.

Meanwhile, a majority of Democrats said that job creation and economic growth is the top issue. While growth is potentially unlimited and always welcome, is the economic situation really dire enough to warrant this being #1 on the list? We have fully recovered to a pre-recession joblessness rate, and the stock market is doing better than ever. How many more Americans want to work that the government could actually put to work?

It's like we're all stuck in the mindset of last decade. Democrats still think it's 2008 when the ruined economy left millions out of work, and Republicans still think it's 2001 when terrorists were capable of killing us by the thousands. Am I wrong about these issues?

What do you think is the most important issue facing America?

Scott Hardie | May 15, 2015
No discussion here yet, but I can see from the poll results that we're quite mixed in our opinions.

I don't especially care about climate change as an issue. I feel no love nor sense of protection towards nature. It's a nuisance that we should even have to deal with this issue since climate change is a self-inflicted problem. But I have to conclude that it's the most important issue facing every government, because there isn't much of a point in solving any other problem if the world becomes dramatically less inhabitable within a few generations. I consider it a major abdication of responsibility that so many of our leaders refuse to address it. Florida could eventually cease to exist, and yet its governor forbids anyone from naming the problem. Shame on them all.

Beyond that, I'd name the second biggest problem to be the sprawling national debt (specifically the outsized share of it held by our biggest rival China and what power that gives them over us), and the third biggest problem to be the severe underfunding & underprioritizing of education (which, if sufficiently corrected, might enable solutions for many other problems by itself), because of the way that both problems endanger our growth over the rest of the 21st century.

What do you think?

Erik Bates | May 15, 2015
[hidden by request]

Samir Mehta | May 15, 2015
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | June 11, 2015
Erik: You're right; these issues are all important in their own way. And we have the good fortune to be such a wealthy and prosperous nation that we can afford to address them all. Forcing us to pick one "top issue" divides us.

Samir: Also good points. The decline of the meritocracy has been concealed in part by the romantic notion of the "American dream" that pervades our culture to this day. Some poor people are indeed too lazy to improve their lot in life by working harder, but ignoring the systematic oppression stacked against the poor is what permits the rich to continue fleecing them. Let's stop doing our part of the injustice by pretending that anyone can still make it if they just work hard enough, if that was ever completely true.

Scott Hardie | July 3, 2015
Having just watched the excellent Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, I'm far more convinced of the primacy of climate change as an issue. When we're a few generations away from making Earth uninhabitable, every other issue seems irrelevant, and every politician who brings up other issues seems like part of the problem. Why waste time talking about anything else? Baby steps in the direction of reducing CO2 output aren't going to help; this is an enormous problem that requires an enormous solution. Here's a whole episode devoted to the subject.