Practicality

The primary elections for this mid-term cycle start in early August here, and so the yard signs are starting to go up, the new Voters' Pamphlets have been delivered and postcards from candidates are arriving in mailboxes.

One such postcard landed in my mailbox this morning, from a Democrat running for the state legislature. I spent a bit of time looking at it, just to glean a basic understanding of who the guy was; as with most campaign postcards, it was a blend of personal story, endorsements and platitudes. Like the following:

I'll focus on practical solutions to bring down the costs of housing, childcare, groceries and other everyday essentials so people can get ahead, and build a future here.

So far, so boilerplate. And that's the problem. Everyone says they'll focus on "practical solutions" to whatever items their focus groups have identified as being the problems most likely to drive feelings of poverty. When was the last time a serious candidate for office vowed to spend their time investigating impractical solutions?

Part of the problem is that "practical solutions" tends to be candidate-speak for some magical process that makes the problem go away without anyone actually needing to pay anything for the fix. Because it's been understood how to lower the cost of housing for the past 20 years now: increase the available land that can be built on, to allow the supply of housing to expand. But that would have costs; not least of which for current homeowners, who would see the equity in their properties diminish if housing costs dropped.

And that's part of the problem with politics; the tendency to ignore the fact that many of these problems have stakeholders on the other side of the transaction who benefit from (and in some cases rely on) the status quo. Take child care. The fact that it's expensive for many parents doesn't mean that the providers and workers are making loads of money. Even if their living expenses could be lowered, it doesn't follow from this that they'd want to pass that savings on to parents. The immediate answer to get around this would be that the state could subsidize child care, but where would the money for this come from? And housing is even worse in this regard; lowering housing costs means homeowners loosing part of the value of their asset.

Big picture, this is why "practical solutions" to these problems have yet to really surface. Not because the last bunch of legislators were unwilling to engage with the problem, but because political solutions that don't come with costs for someone are few and far between. And the low hanging fruit is quickly picked, boxed and shipped for the easy win. But no-one has ever won, at least as near as I can tell, on a platform of making difficult trade-offs. And if the postcards I'm receiving are any indication, no-one will try it in this cycle, either.