Recommended: The Politics of Loss

Another very good, very long, thoughtful article worth reading is Jay Cost's The Politics of Loss on the National Affairs website. Cost argues that we have had decades of robust growth, when politicians of both parties had enough revenue to parcel out goodies to the favorite issues of both the left and the right, so that compromise was possible, and regularly occurred.

Now, he argues, we no longer have enough for both guns and butter, to fund the favorite issues of both the left and the right, and so now, he predicts, politics will get much nastier and compromise much more rare.  It is no longer a case of dividing up the federal largess, but rather now fights over who will have their benefits and entitlements cut first and most, and both sides will fight to the death to preserve as much as possible of the federal goodies flowing to their own voting bases.

This is a good article.