
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 5, 1990                   TAG: 9004060710
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEMOCRACY/ AMERICA CAN'T AFFORD TO GET SMUG

IT WOULD be easy for the United States, the prototypical democracy, to kick back and bask in all the good news from around the world. Socialism and authoritarianism are in headlong retreat. Self-rule is breaking out all over: in Eastern Europe, in the Philippines, in our own hemisphere. It's not yet entrenched in those areas, but the trend is unmistakable. We must be doing something right.

And so we are. But this is no time to get comfortable and smug. There is a mismatch between what those other countries are striving for, and what the United States is today. As New York investment banker Felix Rohatyn put it in a recent speech: "In many ways, communism was defeated by the ideal of America, rather than by our reality. We should try to become what those countries think we are and what they are trying to become."

Idols always have clay feet. We should expect that in many ways, the United States will not conform to the glowing image that many others have of us; we should, ourselves, always reach for something higher.

But we should also ask whether budding democracies should model themselves closely after us. If they do, they will put much less effort into governing themselves than into getting richer and consuming more goods. They will gradually relinquish control of their fiscal and economic future because it is too difficult and painful to pay the needed taxes and make the needed investments in their own countries.

There's bad news and good news. The bad, as outlined by Rohatyn:

"Our country today has gigantic problems - a lack of infrastructure, deficient public education, drugs, runaway health-care costs, lack of housing and many others. Dealing with these problems is inhibited by the federal deficit and the need to remain within the artificial arithmetic of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law. . . . [T]he social, `[C]ommunism was defeated by the ideal of America, rather than by our reality.' physical and economic problems we face are daunting and deep-seated . . . "

The good news, according to banker Rohatyn, is that dealing with our fiscal problems would not require much real sacrifice. He calls for a 15 percent cut in defense spending, so as to realize the anticipated "peace dividend"; increases of up to 50 cents a gallon in gasoline taxes and a one-third increase in the maximum income-tax rate; and slowing the growth of entitlement programs. From this he foresees $1 trillion in new resources, half for reducing the federal deficit, the rest to help state and local governments.

It is not an unreasonable goal, but it is inhibited by fear. Politicians nowadays are afraid to advocate tax increases or take other stands for which they may be savaged by their opponents and repudiated by their constituents. The overriding goal is to win election and re-election, not to serve the country's true needs. Meantime, regions such as the Pacific rim and Western Europe gain the economic ascendancy.

"If," warns Rohatyn, "we continue on our present road - borrowing and spending, selling our national assets, neglecting our environment, our cities, our children [and] giving up one industry after another - we will surely see a decline in this country's position in the world."

Democracy is based on a shared stake in society's future and a willingness to take the responsibility to defend that stake. While others are learning our lessons, are we forgetting them?

by CNB