Alan Murray thinks America’s big problems are fixable, but not anytime soon because of “the total failure of our political system.” In a talk today to the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, the Wall Street Journal online editor said that to bring down its deficits, the U.S. should lower the corporate tax rate and bolster its skilled labor force in order to sell a whole lot more goods internationally. “We are not Greece; Greece can’t pay its debts,” Murray said. “We can, pretty easily.”
The biggest stumbling block is that “common-sense solutions” to get there are stymied by a political system that doesn’t work, Murray added. For this he blamed three decades of redistricting — which protects incumbents in safe “political ghettos” — and the rise of ideologically driven media choices, where there’s no longer a common set of facts. Getting the house in order will take either a crisis or an “act of extraordinary leadership,” Murray said, but, these days, that sort of leadership is in very short supply.
