Honesty Really Not the Best Policy

The other day someone or another made a pretty funny argument about the way in which politicians use the future to enslave the present.  It is true that the promise of a better tomorrow for the children of today, or the older us of then, plays an important role in convincing all and sundry to put up with all manner of nonsense.  The key, however, is always to present the kind of future you would want to inhabit, even as it realization is put off for another week or so.  You know, better jobs, more money, less war, etc.

Today, however, in a rare burst of honesty about what his refusal to interfere with the world as it is, Matthew Yglesias pens a quick note designed to convinced those without that their future lies as the body servants of those with. To wit:

As people get richer, they eat at fancier places where service is more labor-intensive so we’ll have more sommeliers and waiters. Not only will there be more old people in the future, but the richer old people of tomorrow will be better cared-for and have more caretakers of various kinds per capita. People will go on more frequent and more ambitious vacations with all the extra commerce that implies.

I suppose standing in front of the US Congress and saying “imagine the extra stuff your family would do if it were 15 percent richer; now imagine some more people providing those services—that’s how we’ll win the future.” But sometimes the truth is a little boring.

No go out there and deregulate for the children, fully-employed sommeliers and  body servants of the future.