[Mb-civic] World is witnessing the dawning of the age of ennui >By Adam Posen

[Michael Butler]

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World is witnessing the dawning of the age of ennui
>By Adam Posen
>Published: April 9 2006 18:57 | Last updated: April 9 2006 18:57
>>

We have had four years of solid global growth, of minimal economic shocks,
of low inflation, of easy credit ­ and therefore four years of room for
policy to respond to those shocks that did occur. We have also seen years of
every country but China and the US exporting to China or the US without
protectionist or exchange rate pushback. As far as macroeconomics goes, this
is as good as it gets.

Despite this prosperity, the response of citizens over the past year or two
has been to throw the incumbent rascals out, be it in Canada or the
Philippines, India ­ or possibly Thailand and Italy ­ and even to seek out
actively governments with long-failed populist policies as in Bolivia,
Venezuela, Belarus and, to a lesser degree, Poland.

Why so much popular disdain when the times are good? Fiscal and monetary
rectitude have had the desired effect, but the desired effect has been far
from broadly satisfying. Could it be that there is more to life or at least
to politics than economics? Well, there are those who talk about
³happiness². But none of these votes or protests is in support of parties
offering spiritual meaning or even more leisure time. Often, in fact, it is
the religious parties that lose the elections. Is it nationalism or, more
benignly, desire for sovereignty and autonomy? No, at least not enough to
motivate any of these people to push for policies that would require them to
give up anything economic for the sake of la belle patrie.

Is it that individual anxiety outweighs general prosperity? This is the
frequent claim of globalisation opponents, particularly in the advanced
world. But for developing world workers in countries that are part of the
global economy, the recent increase in global integration of production
(that is, outsourcing), the absence of financial crises and the rise in
commodity prices accompanying China and India¹s growth ­ as well as low
interest rates ­ has meant less uncertainty, not more.

In the developed world, the average low-skilled or unemployed worker whose
income security is most at risk from globalisation is not the one protesting
or voting. The university students on the barricades who do have the
political pull are the same people whose relative incomes and security are
rising as a result of globalisation that rewards the skilled and the holders
of capital (from whose families the university graduates still mostly come).

No, the politically-expressed disdain for prosperity reveals that we now
live not in the ³age of anxiety² but in the ³age of ennui². Thanks to
television and the internet, in democracies everyone above the poverty line
has already experienced true wealth virtually. Many are never satisfied with
the performance of their economies ­ and certainly never unaware of the
foibles of their governments. Yet, they are also too jaded to have
unreserved faith in mass movements as did their forebears.

Thus, the greatest threat to continued economic prosperity is the failure of
the beneficiaries to recognise its benefits ­ or the tendency to simply
become bored with bloodless technocratic policy. The dangers from
anti-modernist Islamic fundamentalists should not blind us to the fact that
the frustrations and ³sell-outs² of the 1968 generation have made Daniel
Bell¹s ³the end of ideology² reality for the vast majority of democratic
publics outside of the Islamic world (and even some within it).

It is unfortunate that low interest rates and macroeconomic stability do not
make good television. Perhaps the International Monetary Fund and other
institutions need to start public service announcements a la ³Save the
Children², or get a Bono for the bourgeoisie. Ultimately, however, there is
a gap between the policies that produce good macroeconomic outcomes and the
politics of an aware but blasé electorate. Even Bill Clinton was unable to
bridge the gap between economic policies that brought low interest rates and
growth, and motivating a clear majority of Americans to vote for sustaining
those policies past 2000.

Our current age of ennui is thus a period of repeated turnover in elected
governments with little turnover in policy. It is an age where economic
performance will not be a dependable predictor of election results; but no
ideological or spiritual programmes will replace it ­ instead, reports of
corruption and the rise and fall of politicians¹ personal popularity will
drive voting. And it is a period where globalistion will continue to be
scapegoated for more vague dissatisfactions by those who are globalisation¹s
beneficiaries.

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The writer is senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and
author of the forthcoming book Reform in a Rich Country: Germany
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