“Being a voter these days is no bed of roses; the quality of public debate has declined shockingly since the days of Lincoln and Douglas. Bombarded on all sides by alleged experts uttering flatly contradictory advice on (say) economic policy; bewildered by the intricate ballet of such terms as “inflation,” “stagflation,” and “slumpflation”; knowing for sure only that he and his family are feeling the pinch—is it reasonable to expect even comprehension, let alone self-restraint, from such a voter? Yet that is the leaky vessel in which 20th-century democracy has set sail … The mechanisms of borrowing and inflation have been used and abused by a series of profligate administrations until the interest alone on our national debt exceeds $30 billion every year … The day of economic reckoning is very near, and is bound to be painful.”
Source: The Making of the New Majority Party (1975)
Keywords: public-discourse,economics,governance
