The Shape of Things to Come

"Preparing Minnesota for the Age Wave," a report released this summer under the combined aegis of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Minnesota Department of Health, and the Minnesota Board on Aging, folds into several hundred pounds of familiar material numerous fascinating insights.

Here's a passage that cites data from the Rand Corporation's wittily titled 2007 report, Obesity and Disability: The Shape of Things to Come:

[D]isability rates among non-elderly are on the rise, with obesity as the suspected cause of these increases. "If historical obesity trends were to continue through 2020 without other changes in behavior or medical technology, the proportion of individuals reporting fair or poor health would increase by about 12 percent for men and 14 percent for women, compared with 2000. Up to one-fifth of health expenditures would be devoted to treating the consequences of obesity. And rising disability rates could offset past reductions in disability." (They also expect that the nursing home population would likely grow 10-25 percent more than historical disability trends predict.)

In other words, there'd be two health-care cost crises: an aging population and a heavier one. In fact, the latter could someday outweigh the former (sorry).

One partial solution to the coming economic challenge of the aging population is to allow people to work longer. Many employers are already embracing this. My own father worked almost to the day he died, at age 80. He enjoyed it, and his employer was very flexible about his hours and time off.

Certainly, many older workers are going to need the money, given how little they're saving for retirement.

And why is that? Because we're spending more than we make. The most recent data show that Americans have a negative saving rate, for the first time since the Great Depression. That has led some to propose a wildly radical solution—thrift.

It's not a panacea. The poor don't have any money to save. And people like Yale's Jacob Hacker have suggested that saving has declined because there's less and less money that middle-income people can save, given the rising housing, health-care, and other costs they're having to bear.

Still, I'd like to find out how the majority of people, who could put some money aside, actually spend their cash, in order to account for the negative savings rate. I have my suspicions—for instance, too much dining out. (That could also account for the rise in obesity.) But I haven't found any hard info. Any help out there?

Two other questions: Has the health of the U.S. economy become too dependent on buying stuff? What would happen if people started saving, say, 10 percent of their income rather than spending that amount? The short-term answer is, probably, recession. But long term?

One thing seems obvious: We have to watch our consumption calories.

The Gas-Tax Increase May Have Run Out of Gas

After the I-35W bridge collapse, there was a brief moment when everyone, it seemed, favored a gas-tax increase. After years of activism and resistance, its moment seemed to have finally arrived. The collapse dramatically revealed that we needed to fix and update roads and bridges; and for that, we needed additional revenue. Even the ardently anti-tax governor seemed to be in favor.

But then the brakes shrieked. Suddenly, the momentum was gone.

The reason why, I think, became apparent in late August. Polls showed that more than 60 percent of Minnesotans were against an increase, collapse or no collapse. I suspect that the people most against it are those living outstate, where public transit is rarely an option and long-distance driving is common.

It’s possible that a charismatic leader could have sold an increase. He or she could have successfully pitched it something like this: For only a buck or two per fill-up, we can fix our bridges and widen roads throughout the state. Improved roadways mean economic benefits. In the long run, we’ll make money, not spend it.

The governor certainly has the charisma, but his heart will never be in such an effort. Meanwhile, most of the people in favor an increase typically have served up the idea with an MPR-like earnestness, a bowl of oatmeal, without raisins or brown sugar. It’s good for you—just eat it, as you’re told.

By now, it should be clear that the bridge collapse won’t do the difficult work of persuading most Minnesotans of the tax increase’s worthiness.

What’s more, the Star Tribune’s recent Minnesota Poll suggests that the governor’s anti-increase stance hasn’t hurt him. His approval rating was 59 percent, the highest in four years. Given his squeaker victory last November, dude’s doing something right, and not just right-wing. Perhaps his transportation commissioner (and lieutenant governor), Carol Molnau, is taking all the bullets. And even those bullet holes may turn out to be Fearless Fosdick flesh wounds for her.

But we still have the same problem: How do we pay for repairing our infrastructure? The governor’s favored solution, bonding, isn’t really a solution. It’s just a way of making his successors’ administrations come up with the solution. And right now, there’s no sign that the DFL-controlled legislature will be able to get the issue moving. Legislators (as usual) will throw darts at the governor, who’ll quietly smile (as usual) and veto any real money for our crumbling roads and bridges.

And there we’ll be. In the middle of a fallen bridge.