Finding our marks

 The "Inflation Reduction Act"

August 18, 2022

I think the social and material conditions of life can be hugely improved by a green energy economy. To that effect, I think the passage of significant green energy provisions in the "Inflation Reduction Act" should be celebrated. Taking a long view, the passage of the CHIPS Act and our newfound commitment to high-tech manufacturing vindicates the forward-thinking Gen X-ers, and the commitment to some Green New Deal provisions should placate some Leftist Millenials. But generationally speaking, this does have to be admitted; acknowledged. This does leave Gen Z-ers in a bit of an identity crisis. These issues interested, but did not define us. And the powers from on high are starting to be curious - what are our issues? I think that we have been playing catch-up for so long, and for decades if not longer, the key word in politics has been "access" - access to technology, access to green energy, access to the ballot box, even. Access has come along with promises to distribute the new wealth fairly and evenly, but this has not always been the case. But maybe the time has come to not think about transactional politics but to shift our thinking towards distributing this political access as widely as possible. What other acquisitions do we need to make in order to give humanity the raw materials it needs to make life as ideal as possible? Perhaps housing is the only thing we can reasonably fix, and that is certainly a need. But I am open to exploration of needs in general beyond what might seem apparent. Sen. Sherrod Brown's work on the housing issue seems especially relevant, now, but this is a slow, very slow, fix, by nature. If I may make a point that may still be controversial to partisans, it is still nonetheless my opinion, that so much radical change has happened in recent decades, that, the radical thing to do may be to spread the wealth around. We've certainly gotten our priorities straight, on climate change, the high-tech economy, and people are really concerned about democracy now, enough that it's literally a political issue, that the wise thing to do might well be to make sure the programs that we've gotten work now and for good. Figuring out the housing issue is going to really take some time, but that kind of slow change is going to be radical too. It's important to note that we've been playing catch-up to the new millenium, and we're so close that it's crucial to find our marks for the next race.