The Process of Elimination

In my north Texas high school, one of the strategies we were taught for taking the ever present standardized test was the process of elimination: since there were a limited number of options on each question, if you didn’t know the right answer, you could start by trying to rule out all the answers that were obviously not right. After crossing off a number of the options, it would, theoretically clarify the decision making process and, perhaps, give you a greater chance of guessing correctly. Of course, for this strategy to work, there have to be a very limited number of options and you have to be able to eliminate some of those options right off the bat. Nevertheless, since it is presented as a viable option during those days before the test prep, it keeps you from having to learn too much ahead of time: you can just forge ahead with what you already know to be true, eliminating obviously false answers to a question.

Earlier this week, we witnessed Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan using his own process of elimination for how to handle the astounding deficit our charming president and his skilled plutocrats have produced for the coming year. Since we now live in a world where the logic of neo-liberal monetarism prevails, there were a number of options that were eliminated right off the bat. For instance, repealing the tax cuts given to the upper class was seen as an obviously wrong answer: we can eliminate that one without thinking because it is obviously the wrong thing to do.

Why is it the wrong thing to do? Well according to this line of thinking, tax cuts are designed to pump up the economy because, if rich people have more money, they will do something productive with it and we will all get a slice. Of course all of this is assuming that they use the money (not just putting it in savings or in a tax shelter offshore [it’s not a coincidence and Bermuda and the Cayman Islands are just behind the USA in per capita GDP— http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html]) and they use it here (not setting up production in another country with a lower “competitive advantage” on labor.) But that is not for us to say: once the government gives them back “their” money, there isn’t much we can say about it. Nevertheless, the repeal of these cuts is eliminated as an option.

Likewise, cutting expenditures on the military is also off the table. The $430 billion combined expenditures of Homeland Security and the Defense Department which represent increases of 9.7% and 7.1% over last year, are not considered excessive (though $3 billion in veterans’ benefits did make it on the cutting room floor). No, despite the fact that defense is our largest discretionary expenditure, Reaganomics dictates that one must build that military ever larger, year by year (though now this military Keynsianism is again crippled since defense contractors can outsource their work to other countries with cheaper labor so even the argument that it creates jobs isn’t available: it’s just another hole in the sieve.) The current culture of fear seems to legitimize this expenditure—though it would seem much more likely to the average American that they will lose their home to a foreclosure due to job loss than in some weird scenario where someone brings a nuke into the country through an insecure port.

So, by process of elimination, Greenspan looked to one of the largest non-discretionary spending programs (i.e the mandatory program of Social Security) and recommended cutting those expenditures. One can look at this highly unpopular recommendation in several ways. One is that Greenspan is simply avoiding any critique of tax cuts or military expenditures because he is cowed by his term nearing an end. To continue as his role as the most powerful man in the world, he needs to be reappointed by Bush when his term ends on June 20. Thus he is trying not to say anything too overly critical lest he be deposed. This is a fairly cynical proposition, but not one I am prepared to fully dismiss. He may be an Objectivist, but the kind of power he has is rare and the prospect of having it revoked must be a heavy burden upon his shoulders: in this case, he shrugged. Its not that surprising since, even if he doesn’t get reappointed, he probably won’t be trying to make it until his next SS check comes.

On the other hand, one could read Greenspan’s message against the grain: in saying that we should keep the tax cuts, he doesn’t give Bush or his economic advisors any overt static and he stays the neo-liberal course. On the other hand, he gives them a very unpleasant option as a fixer. If we have to eliminate the elimination of the tax cuts, he seems to be saying, that’s fine: but in order to do that, we’ll just have to cut out the benefits that we’ve all been paying through our payroll taxes for years. By making what should have been an absolutely wrong solution (it’s a mandatory program) the only possibly answer, Greenspan could be indicating that, perhaps, he eliminated one answer prematurely. And, of course, whether he meant to say this or not, that is the message we should be reading from his proposal.

Of course the ultimate problem is that, as any educator worth their salt will tell you, all standardized tests are in some way biased. This one gives us a very limited number of options for fixing a slow economy so that the real process of elimination comes in the options that are not presented at all. The post-war economic models of using deficits to increase domestic production and purchasing power are off the table completely. Why not increase the minimum wage so that more people are included in the national economy and then there is a higher percentage of money flowing into the social security system? In the current free market system, this risks sending those corporations packing, off to other, more exploitable sources of labor (we should, of course, accept this movement of corporations as natural, inevitable, and unquestionable and any attempt to question it is a form of nationalist protectionism which we should now outgrow as it is outmoded and unscientific.) It helps this argument that people are already witnessing this happening even without raising minimum wage. Finally, right now, everyone who makes over $87,500 pays the same amount into Social Security: why not make people who earn more pay a higher percentage into Social Security? Well that’s a silly proposition: if we were going to do that, we might as well repeal that tax cut we gave a few of those people earlier this year.

No it would seem that, in the current era of standardized thinking, process of elimination tells us that this government can do little to help the current workforce: when the only recommendation to the current deficits is that we take money away from people who’ve already worked, process of elimination tells us that this government will probably do very little to help people who want to work now. Process of elimination should tell all of us that the first thing we should eliminate is a government such as this.