Peter Pan Politics

While the country experiences once again the closing of its own government because its two parties play "chicken" withholding funds to pay for the functions they were entrusted to oversee, it's hard not to see government institutions operating as high-school playgrounds.

With a President that communicates by tweets and brags about himself as an old adolescent and public officers and CEOs turning their offices in frat houses and having public temper tantrums, it is not illogical to think that power turns Americans into versions of Peter Pan -that eternal child invested with magic powers that refused to grow-. 

Or perhaps it's the other way around, and Americans vote for Peter Pans that promise to take them away from hard choices in magic trips to Neverland: MAGA, the Great Society, and so on.

In the meantime, back into reality, things don't change. They only get worse.

Government shutdowns are a perfect example of what happens when bad behavior isn't punished. 

There are no punishments for this obvious dereliction of duty. Nobody gets fired, sued or  goes to jail. Government is allowed to stop working without penalties but the governed keep being fined or even serve jail sentences for not paying the taxes. And our soldiers can face court martial for not showing up, even if their paycheck is retained.

Sooner or later, of course, the consequences of not keeping the basic services will come back to affect us and then, adult behavior will return briefly to clean the mess left behind. Moreover, it will be adult behavior what will keep basic services running on the backs of unpaid public servants.

Psychologist Erik Erikson defined adulthood as the sixth and seventh of eight stages in the life cycle. Unlike children, adults' focus is on providing care to others, taking responsibility for those who can't provide for themselves -the too young and the too old-.

Psychoanalist Eric Berne added an interesting explanation: adult behavior is defined as negotiating between our "wants" or impulses and our duties dealing with the constraints of reality.

We would love to double our spending, but we can't do it unless we increase our income before. We cannot hold a debt that exceeds our possibilities of repaying and making a living at the same time. We can't stop eating for too long, and our creditors can't keep loaning additional money to us  indefinitely.

We know we cannot lose our control with our neighbors in ways that will generate retaliation and turn our daily life in constant confrontation and stress.

As adults, we know all that, but as partisan voters we seem to prefer Peter Pan and pipe dreams such as self-paying tax cuts or entitlements. Even more:both parties in the United States now support both options at once: tax cuts AND increased spending.

All of course, will be solved by issuing IOUs  and passing them to the next government  each four years arguing that "growth" or "well-being" fairies will take care of reducing it.

What we did as a society with our last budget surplus speaks volumes. Paying up the debt? Well, not. Neither what Milton Friedman recommended at the time (2000). Friedman considered debt relief politically unfeasible (he knew Americans better) but economically correct, but thought that individual Americans would know better how to allocate the surplus than the Peter Pan government. 

Friedman was half-right and half-wrong. American voters decided for giving themselves a "tax cut" but authorized their government  -POTUS and COTUS- to balloon the spending with a 2 trillion dollar debt war of choice in Iraq for the following 8 years. 

The newly added debt established the foundations for the current 19-trillion-dollar debt.

Winston Churchill's comment on American's behavior seems to describe also that of a Peter Pan:

Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

Partisan voters are played by their faction leaders into Peter Pan politics merry-go-rounds.

The last time adults were asked to take the floor was, arguably, when the Bowles-Simpson Debt Commission issued its report (2001). 

With Peter Pan politics and politicians in full swing, it's good and sobering giving them the last word to remind reader that reality hasn't changed but in size -quite like tall adolescents-: