Priorities

You can tell a lot about a person, a media company, or a nation by the things he or it chooses to prioritize.

For a person, priorities are often driven by limits of time and resources. There is only so much time in a day. There is only so much money in a bank account. Priorities can also be affected by our attention span or by the effort we choose to put in. They tend to change as we age. And every once in a while, our priorities need to be realigned either through self-reflection or, if we are lucky enough to have them in our lives, good people around us brave enough to point out when we’ve lost our way.

I’ve been thinking about priorities lately as someone in my family is recovering from surgery. Thank God she is doing great, but our family’s priorities have changed while we help out during the recovery. Gone is the ability to prioritize luxury or leisure. Medicine schedules, laundry, meal preparation, and keeping enough ice on hand to soothe the swelling are the priorities of the day. The beautiful flowers on the front porch have wilted without her usual fastidious attention. The once immaculate house forgives piles of post-surgery instructions, surgical supplies, and empty food containers belonging to amazing neighbors.

Last night, we watched what I haven’t in many years…the national evening news. And with all that is going on in our nation and in our world, the lead story was the death of Ozzy Osbourne. Now, God rest his soul and give comfort to his loved ones and all, but really? The lead story? Certainly the news anchor would brush by this quickly and move on to weightier coverage, right? Yep. The next story was surely more consequential. Coke, as President Donald Trump urged, is going to release its Mexican formula, made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup, in the United States. And then on to yet more coverage of the deader-than-Elvis Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing merry-go-round of which party not in the White House wants the party in the White House to release the files that either definitely exist and are sitting on someone’s desk or never existed in the first place. Eventually, the news turned to Gaza – two million internally displaced people and 500,000 facing starvation. Starvation. Which Coke do you think they would prefer?

Media, the fourth estate, is a vital part of a free society. And I have great respect for those that do it well. I miss Tim Russert and Chris Wallace on Sunday mornings. And I miss Neil Cavuto on weekday afternoons. The danger of media done wrong isn’t in the way they cover a story. After all, most of us are smart enough to see a bent to the coverage and calibrate accordingly. The real danger lies in the selection of which stories to cover, or not to cover. Additional dangers of late are the consolidation of media outlets under a few large corporations, corporate censoring of their own reporters’ independent coverage, and media companies settling lawsuits or canceling programming to appease someone or smooth the wheels of regulatory approval for a pending merger. Media done well, media that contributes to protecting our freedoms, must be fearless, not fearful.

Media isn’t to blame for all our problems. In fact, traditional media is now a very small piece of our media intake. Social media is where one third of Americans get their news, and where more than half get some of their news. Influencers have a growing and outsized impact on what we consider important and how we engage with it. The fact checking inherent in traditional media is increasingly replaced with none in social media and podcasts.

This changing landscape of how we get our information is why politicians have completely left behind the art of spin and gone instead to straight out lying. They can, without repercussion (at least in their minds). Their base believes the lies. The lies get them votes. To hell with the repercussions. But the repercussions include a continued erosion of shared facts and civil discourse. The repercussions include citizens believing we are a failed nation when we are not. And with a nation, much like with a child, telling them they are no good enough times will convince them of it and ensure that outcome. We are being led masterfully toward failure.

Magicians distract us with misdirection over there so that we miss the sleight-of-hand over here. Our current politicians and extreme partisans are no different. Shiny objects – the things they use to draw attention away from other issues – so easily distract because they are easy to digest and opine upon. They are often those that drive an emotional response, because emotion stirs people to action and, more importantly, raises money. But emotion ratchets up divisiveness as well. And we are paying the price.

To be sure, we as a nation have countless important issues to tackle. We may disagree on how to prioritize those issues. But a broke nation can’t address anything on your list or on mine. A broke nation can’t secure borders, combat terrorism or crime, or make Social Security and Medicaid payments. It can’t invest in cancer research or in art. To do anything a government must do, or whatever you think it should do, it must first be solvent. So, when are we going to prioritize the fact that we are $37 trillion in debt instead of prioritizing either tax cuts or spending increases?

We pay over $1 trillion a year in interest expense on our debt. Our debt load has grown faster than the demand for that debt, as evidenced by foreign investors now owning just 30% of our debt verses the 50% they owned 15 years ago. The long end of the yield curve – which predicts future interest rates – isn’t coming down with short term rates; it is actually rising. As a result, our interest payments are going to rise dramatically even if we don’t borrow more. But we will borrow more, in a big and beautiful way, won’t we? And if our borrowings continue to outpace the demand to buy that debt, we will need to increase interest rates further to entice people to buy it. That will have requisite ripple effects, like driving up the rates we pay for mortgages.

Scarier still, what happens when we have an economic downturn, as surely someday we will? Consumer spending, which makes up 70% of our economy, will slow causing corporate earnings to fall. Corporate tax payments will decline. And even with that reduced government revenue, government spending will necessarily have to increase to stave off further recession or, worse yet, depression. The government will need to borrow more to do so. And no one will be around to buy our debt, so rates will have to increase further to entice them to buy it. Cue the snowball effect.

We are broke, and the debt collection phone calls are about to begin. Perhaps we should focus because each of us owes $108,311. Alternatively, we could just let the calls go to voicemail.