There’s much wisdom that can be taken from literature, movies and song lyrics. From All You Need is Love to Catch 22, there’s many an apropos quote that comes from others’ creativity. While my go-to tends to be the utterings of Mark Twain and Winston Churchill, sometimes I have to delve into other sources.
I’ve been musing on movie quotes today in reaction to this week’s budget speech. Now I try hard to be apolitical so my comment isn’t about the various policy approaches of the right or the left. Rather it is a reflection on the very real difficulty that comes from running a country where knowledge is, at best, unequally distributed (and, at worst, the populace has been massively dumbed down through social media and an under-commitment to self-education and civic responsibility).
The quote I’ve been ruminating upon comes from the classic movie from 1992, A Few Good Men. In the movie Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, played by the great Jack Nicholson testifies in court and says to the Tom Cruise’s character:
you can’t handle the truth!
The quote seems timely given this week’s budget. Not because of any decision or lack of decision, but more in light of the context of political and civic discourse in this country. My editor suggested that perhaps I write an opinion piece about the budget announcements from the perspective of a business owner.
Through that very binary lens, the assessment is always going to be similarly binary: budgets should reduce expenditure on anything that doesn’t support business aims. It should all be about reducing compliance costs, reducing business taxation, and investing in the various things that businesses like (research and development tax credits, innovation funding, business support and the like). IN that context, the budget should help shift the focus from the value of labour, to the value of capital.
Of course if I was looking through the lens of a left-leaning individual with a social conscience, I would suggest that there should be far more investment in social welfare, higher levels of spending on education, and a step-change in providing funding for health. That perspective considers that labour (and the environment) should be the priority, not capital.
Neither of these perspectives are fundamentally wrong, but by not having a conversation that reflects upon tradeoffs and fundamental constraints, we reduce everything to ten-second soundbites that simply pitch the right against the left. Again. I need to reiterate that this isn’t a criticism of politicians from either side of the spectrum, rather it is a reflection on where we, as a society, currently sit. We don’t really want to hear difficult truths, we find it hard to accept that in order to fund something on one side, we have two options. Either we defund something else, or we increase revenue.
To put a scientific perspective on it, we’re all very eager to develop hypotheses, but we’re far less eager to actually face the reality that comes from testing of those hypotheses. Or, to put it another way, whereas when it comes to our own health we’re quite enamored with evidence-based decisions, when it comes to making policy and, in-turn making budgetary decisions based on those policies, we’re less eager on an evidence base.
Of course this is where we need to look at ourselves. A detailed conversation about tradeoffs, priorities, our shared vision for the future of our country and the various levers that policymakers have to pull is a deeply complex topic. It’s a topic that covers the legislative process, economics (both macro and micro), fiscal realties and consensus-building. All of which is very difficult to shoehorn into an Facebook post, an Instagram pic or a TikTok video.
It requires conversation, critical thinking, analysis, deep reflection and the acceptance that these things involve win and lose – both for the individual and society at an aggregate level. While we’re all addicted to a social-media driven perspective that we can “have our cake and eat it,” win/win situations rarely occur in the real world. Rather, much like when we’re playing on a see saw with our tamariki, we need to shift weight in order to find balance.
While there are absolutely opinions on this weeks budgets and where priorities might have been right or wrong, the real conversation needs to be far more macro than that. Around our long term vision for our society and what things we’re prepared to give ground on and what issues remain non-negotiable.
I fear, however, that much like Nicholson’s character accuses in the movie, that we can’t actually handle the truth. Without the deeper conversation, I fear we can’t even understand the truth. That’s a sad indictment on us, not on our politicians.
