Happy New Year 2019

Welcome friends!

Well, looks we made it through another year and not the best we’ve seen that’s for sure.  I suppose for the sake of tradition I should deliver an optimistic greeting of the new year but honestly with Lord Voldemort still entrenched in the White House, his fanatically loyal death eaters controlling the Senate, and dementors from the frozen wastes of Durmstrang helping the Dark Lord’s oleaginous minions in the Ministry of Misinformation exert their dark influence over the army of witless, greedy, bigoted, drug addled muggles of the worst sort imaginable who make up a rather alarming portion of the American population, I can’t really even muster the strength to give a hearty show of optimism right now.  (Yes, it was yet another Harry Potter Weekend at my house over the holidays.  I suppose the latest installment must be in theaters but really without the cute kids cavorting about what’s the point?)  So let’s keep it real and resolve to just do our best to get through 2019 some old way and do what we can to bring about a happier 2020.  This year I thought I’d use my end of the year post to tackle some interesting issues raised by Larry the Cable Guy in a holiday movie offering from some years ago now: Jingle All the Way 2.  Yes, I watch way too much TV.

If you’re never seen the movie in question, which I can readily understand, I can tell you it’s a bit of generally harmless albeit forgettable family fluff featuring a sanitized and unrealistically benign version of a conservative American redneck in the form of the aforementioned Larry.  Although it’s quite clear the sort of person Larry is meant to represent he certainly isn’t very similar to any real redneck I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet and let me tell you I’ve met a few in my lifetime.  Did I mention I lived for some time in the great American interior?  Well, I did, and Larry is much less unreasonable, rude, bigoted, violent, drunken, and just in general offensive than any real American redneck you’re likely to encounter on let’s say a road trip through the great American Midwest or South.  But on the other hand the character is clearly not cut from whole cloth either.  There is a kernel of authenticity there that allows potential insight into this most confounding and disturbing of American subcultures.

The plot such as it was involved the divorced Larry competing for his young daughter’s affection against her wily, scheming, and incidentally very rich new step father.  Shortly before the big day they both mistakenly come to believe the little girl requires a certain toy for Christmas and the rich jerk promptly tries to buy and hoard all locally available instances of the object in question so he and he alone can present the coveted prize.  Hilarity or at least mild amusement ensues as he and Larry do battle.  Turns out the preternaturally angelic daughter had no such crass materialistic wishes.  Silly adults.  No, it was all a big misunderstanding.  The kid didn’t want a toy: she just wanted everyone to be happy.  The end.  Kind of cute in a weird sort of way.  But the plot wasn’t really the interesting bit for me.  No, the interesting bit was a scene near the end in which Larry and the evil step dad engage in some verbal sparring that touched on the sort of distributional issues I find interesting but so few other people appear to do, although I guess in this case the writers thought enough people might be interested they wrote it into the script, which is weird.  I wonder?  Am I just not bringing it up the right way?  Too serious?  Oh well.  In the words of the old song I’ve got to be me.

To get back to the movie, Larry’s contribution to the discussion in question involved two noteworthy lines of argument.  First, he suggested the reason he was struggling economically compared to his wealthy opponent was that he simply chose to not work very hard and indeed only part time to have more time for fishing and his daughter.  He rejected the insinuation or really I suppose preempted the insinuation this lifestyle choice rendered him in any way inferior to the rich guy, for example in terms of discharging his responsibilities to society, by noting he “pays his taxes” like anyone else and has never taken a “handout” from anyone.  He chooses to be poor and is happy he has the freedom to do so.  Second, he clarified he doesn’t “begrudge” the rich guy his relative wealth and power; indeed, he’s happy for the guy.  They’re just two different people living different sorts of lives.  No class conflict here!  It’s the sort of philosophy or perspective one supposes might appeal not only to rich Americans who likely wish all the poor people of the USA could be as sensible as Larry but also and this is the interesting bit for me the many poor people in the USA and elsewhere who seem never to mind when rich people arguably take advantage of them every way possible.  So let’s break it down a bit and let’s see where the disconnect is coming from.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the very specific basis of Larry’s relative poverty.  He simply chooses to not work very hard.  Tomorrow he could presumably choose to work hard and be rich, or so he appears to believe.  It’s an interesting coincidence this most unlikely and implausible scenario is the one that provides what most people would surely consider the most ethically plausible case for economic inequality.  Larry’s situation has nothing to do with the myriad of factors outside his immediate control that may nonetheless apply in other people’s economic situations that make the issue of wealth inequality so ethically vexing for some people, so for example nothing involving his innate talents or abilities, his intelligence, his physical, mental, or emotional health, his early childhood experiences and environment, the quality of his early education or lack thereof, his family’s emotional and intellectual support and wealth and connections, government policies such as tax policies, macroeconomic trends particularly at various significant moments of his life, unpredictable changes in technology, etc.  The troubling thing of course is that one rather suspects although Larry may believe his relative poverty is entirely a matter of his own choosing he might one day decide to give wealth a try and find out otherwise.  One can’t help but suspect Larry’s psyche may be on rather thin ice.  One hopes for his sake he sticks with fishing.

The second noteworthy element to Larry’s worldview is he appears to accept the distributional system in place so completely and uncritically it never even occurs to him to challenge it.  When he explains his acceptance of the rich guy’s relative economic power he doesn’t say he accepts the ethical argument in favor of that result but that he doesn’t “begrudge” the man his situation.  Although the word “begrudge” can imply simply looking upon something with displeasure the usual connotation is that the displeasure is not rooted in one’s ethical beliefs but envy.  One doesn’t typically say something like one begrudges the wealth of a thief who just made off with one’s money; one might object to it or oppose it or whatever but generally something a little more forthright than begrudge.  So although open to interpretation Larry’s language certainly make it sound as though he thinks the only reason he might conceivably object to the rich guy’s relative economic is the unfortunate emotion of envy.  This is surely a common view of rich people absolutely convinced of the ethical basis of their wealth no matter how they may have come upon it but it is always somewhat noteworthy coming from a poor person.  One can’t help but wonder if Larry is simply aping the rich fellow’s worldview and trying to head off a likely retort or criticism or if he really cannot imagine harboring any more substantive objection to the man’s relative economic power.  The latter possibility seems particularly unlikely in this case because the movie makes clear the rich fellow in question was basically born into his position by inheriting the family business, gives no indication the man engaged in any particularly laudable behavior to keep it going, and makes it quite clear the man used his economic power in what many people would probably consider a rather unethical way, to manipulate the market to harm the father’s relationship with his daughter.  One might reasonably suspect all is not as it should be but not Larry.

It’s the same story with Larry’s other claim to dignity.  He proudly proclaims he dutifully “pays his taxes” but evinces no particular concern at all about what those taxes are, who devised the tax system, or how much he pays relative to other for example wealthier people.  It’s just a part of the distributional background.  Taxes appear.  He pays them.  That’s his claim to dignity.  Just the sort of person rich people devising a tax code would surely most appreciate.  One hopes he can continue to pay his taxes in the future.

It’s a similar story when it comes to claiming his share of the output of the government sector.  Larry takes great pride in never having accepted a “handout.”  But one does have some concerns.  Might he consider public services funded by his and other’s taxes handouts?  What if he pays less in real terms than another person, let’s say a rich person?  Would he then be accepting a handout from that person?  Is he therefore a supporter of those non-graduated flat income tax schemes in which rich and poor pay the same tax so that proportionately the opportunity cost of the tax is many multiples higher for the poor than the rich?  Or does he solve the issue some other way say by rejecting or avoiding all public services paid for by taxes?  Does he for example drive only on toll roads?  Does he turn up his nose at public parks and other amenities?  Does he distrust the police and instead pay for protection from local street thugs?  Even then may he have benefited from minimum wage laws or consumer protection or worker health and safety regulations that arguably raise the price of goods for other people?  Is he indirectly receiving what amounts to handouts from his fellow consumers?  Has his dignity been wounded without his ever realizing it?  Or is whatever we’re doing now just fine and not a handout but if we do anything more then the increment would represent a handout?  One can’t help but suspect Larry is again on shaky ground.  One hopes he never inquires too deeply about how real societies work or the pros and cons of real market systems and so on.  But again isn’t Larry’s worldview the sort any rich person concerned to combat incipient socialism might appreciate?  How annoying for them when poor people start going about asking for ethically unjustified handouts in the form of government services.

We’ve been having some fun with Larry thus far but let’s not just do the easy bit shall we?  Let’s flip it around and look at the one plausible aspect of Larry’s worldview: the notion that one very legitimate reason for economic inequality including even extreme economic inequality is that some people may be willing to do certain things society values while other people may not.  That does sound like a legitimate and plausible distributional view.  If someone simply isn’t interested in working on anything society values doesn’t it make sense he or she would receive nothing from society in compensation or if he or she did then only in the form of handouts based on charity rather than any plausible ethical claim?  We’ve already discussed the fallacy involved in assuming there’s something ethically special about the pattern of demand for labor falling out of any random distribution of economic power at least from the perspective of economic theory, but let’s say we address that problem and set up a distributional system we think allocates economic power in a way we think is fair, which may or may not correspond to what we have right now.  What if even under those conditions someone simply doesn’t wish to participate?  Surely he or she should have that choice even if it leads to relative poverty.  In that sense an ethical distributional system that reflects the value we place on freedom would arguably need to leave room for possibly even extreme economic inequality, which suggests that when liberals discuss what they see as the problem of economic inequality they really should be a lot more specific and in particular talk about economic inequality resulting from certain unacceptable sources.  That’s actually a pretty useful insight I think.  One may not suppose Larry’s situation is very common and that few poor people simply choose poverty but one should be aware that for some other people this is the one and only scenario that springs naturally to their minds.  

We could just end it there but maybe we should quickly consider what the argument against economic inequality even from this particular source might look like just for shits and giggles.  We’re talking about the market power of other people under what we consider an equitable and ethically correct distribution setting up a certain pattern of demand for labor and someone rejecting those incentives so to make it most plausible let’s imagine someone whose innate talents and abilities and education and so on suggests he or she can best contribute to society’s collective demand by digging ditches but who decides instead to go write poetry on a windswept hilltop.  Well, I suppose that’s the genteel version of the issue.  At this juncture we could equally imagine someone who insists upon smoking crack and playing video games or writing snarky blog posts all day long.  Doesn’t matter.  The funny thing of course is that some people with such inclinations would in fact be perfectly capable of engaging in their chosen lifestyle without any particular hardship, for example, people who inherited a big old pot of money, while others might experience a bit more difficulty pulling it off.  One’s feelings on this state of affairs must depend in part I suppose on one’s opinion about the fairness of the distributional policies that make such results possible, in this case inheritance, and in that sense perhaps the notion one may have concerns contradicts my assumption of an ethical distributional system.  I suppose if one wanted a system based more on individual merit and less on fate or accident of birth and one wanted everyone to start life with the same range of choices then perhaps one might consider eliminating inheritance or maybe instituting one of those minimum income arrangements as I understand some countries have tried relatively recently.  However, I suspect there may be an argument even beyond distributing freedom fairly.  Let’s say for example one attributes some value to whatever the person is doing that is not currently recognized by the market as particularly valuable, video game playing seems unlikely but maybe writing snarky blog posts or poetry or more generally writing or philosophizing or making art.  In that case one may have some reservations about a system in which only spoiled rich kids engage in such activities.  One may wonder if society may gain some sort of benefit if other people were given similar opportunities to follow their talents and inclinations even when they prove inconsistent with current market incentives.  Again, I suppose we’d be talking about eliminating inheritance or instituting minimum incomes or at least programs for aspiring writers and artists and so on but maybe not based on conventional notions of talent or merit so we don’t lose the sense of going against the grain.

Not trying to resolve anything here of course.  I never am really.  Just talking.  Remarking.  Commenting.  Why?  It’s interesting.  We don’t want to end up sounding like a comical simple-minded cartoon character like Larry do we?  Well, if you agree you’re in luck because I have every intention of returning in the new year with plenty of random thoughts and observations to get the old neurons fired up and working again.  Happy new year my brothers and sisters!

Sticking It To The Little Guy

Welcome friends!

Have you been following the news at all about those protests in France relating to some previously scheduled albeit apparently now abandoned plans to increase taxes on fuel?  Quite a commotion.  Apparently a few people even died from the odd accidents and mishaps that can attend such chaotic goings on.  Of course, if you live here in the USA you’re probably thinking what the heck do I care?  Who knows what the French people or their government get up to?  What’s it got to do with the all-important moi?  I care as much about popular unrest in France as I do about all the political chaos surrounding Brexit in the UK.  Well, yes, there is always that perspective.  Other people.  I’m telling you.  What can you do?  However, I couldn’t help but notice certain parallels between the current political situations in France and the USA.  I wonder if, like Brexit in the UK, the news out of France may be the sort of thing a few more people here in the USA might want to think about for a few moments.  Let me explain.

It seems many French voters fell and fell hard for President Emmanuel Macron in the last election.  Why?  No idea really, but perhaps it involved his promise to implement the usual “sweeping economic reforms” center right politicians routinely tout to improve a nation’s economic well-being likely involving tax cuts, reduced regulations, and just in general promotion of market solutions.  Pretty standard stuff.  As residents of the USA understand very well this sort of thing generally turns out to be great news for the well-to-do who don’t really need or want anything anyway and are more than happy to have government sit around and do a whole lot of nothing beyond enforcing their own property rights (let’s not go crazy in the minimizing government department; there must be limits!), but it usually represents a bit of a mixed bag for everyone else.  Typically what happens is some national level economic metrics might rise a bit in the short run if you’re lucky, maybe GNP goes up a notch and unemployment falls a notch, but most of the longer term economic gains go where anyone who understands real economics and how real markets work would expect them to go: the already very rich or in the case of the USA the already very, very rich.  Precious little of any gains from these sorts of policies tends to trickle down to the little people, by which I mean people like you and me and even more financially unfortunate cogs in the great machine of modern post-industrial life.  In a few years the little people generally end up back where they were but relatively poorer and a little more desperate.  Whenever one sees a faux populist politician rallying the people for sweeping economic reforms of the center-right variety one should prepare to deal with some rather cranky people sooner or later.  We have a roughly similar dynamic going on here in the USA where a certain portion of the vast multitude of economically struggling people in this most wealthy of nations voted for corrupt conservative fat cat and old time faux populist politician par excellence Donald Trump presumably at least in part in response to his call for sweeping economic reforms designed to “make America great again.”  Well, I suppose in Mr. Trump’s case it wasn’t all about a pretend interest in shifting some money toward economic struggling people in certain regions such as the Midwest and South and certain industries such as fossil fuels and manufacturing; he also had some racist, nativist, and religious claptrap in there as well to accommodate a range of right wing opinions on what made America great in the past in their eyes, but anyway I think a good deal of his campaign blather involved the usual sweeping economic reforms.  As one might expect America post-election is basically the same as before albeit a bit more polluted, a bit less functional, a bit angrier, and with some very, very rich people who are even more satisfied with themselves and some struggling people who are apparently happy enough at the moment but likely soon to see their quality of life decline yet again and probably rather precipitously this time I’m afraid given the number Mr. Trump and the Republicans have done on the national debt.

As conservative free market ideology contains a rather high percentage of what is known in the vernacular as bullshit they must of course find some rhetorical approach to deal with the curious fact that even after sweeping economic reforms the government sector seems to have an awful lot of work to do in terms of fixing up market outcomes.  They could of course always just tell the little people to go to hell as the powerful economic / political elites did in the pre-democratic good old days of traditional pre-modern conservatism, but I guess that’s typically not now considered “center right.”  I think that’s now considered more “hard right.”  Medieval king / rich guy worship revisited.  Fascist self-styled ubermenschen.  Pouting mafia dons with silk suits striking stirring poses.  That sort of thing.  If we’re talking about “center right” and we’re saddled with a still somewhat functional government sector trying no matter how half-heartedly to make life bearable for the little people we’re left with an intriguing question.  Who’s paying for all that socialistic largesse?  Funny you should ask.  Well, in the case of President Trump and the conservative Republican Party here in the USA no one is paying for it.  They’re running massive deficits and appear entirely content to leave a bloated national debt to young people to handle some old way some old time in the future presumably after our glorious orange leader has taken his final jet to that great gated community in the sky.  (I meant the one with the Pearly Gates, not his palatial condo in Manhattan.)  So that’s one way to do it.  Apparently, his soul mate President Macron hit upon a different response to the old, old question of who’s paying the bill for improving market outcomes in this case not only in terms of expenditures but also in terms of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels: squeeze some cash out of that portion of the population the French conservative elite apparently consider least able to defend themselves in any meaningful way and who are anyway considered unimportant and disposable if not positively undesirable under global conservative economic ideology: the little people, the  non-rich, the ninety-nine percenters.  So, instead of leaving a big old mess on the carpet for future generations to clean up a la the American Republican Party he paired what one must suppose were the customary huge tax cuts for businesses, banks, CEOs, stock owners, themselves, and basically just rich people in general with an offsetting tax hike on the sort of things the little people have little choice but to consume such as fuel for example; one example of the sort of tax known in the trade as regressive, in this case a consumption tax that affects little people disproportionately because the item being taxed and the resulting tax itself represents a greater proportion of the available budget of the little people, as opposed to a progressive tax such as for example a graduated income tax or an inheritance tax, both understandably despised by one percenters and their conservative lackeys and cheerleaders.

On the one hand, I suppose one must respect Mr. Macron’s attempt at relative honesty and forthrightness on the issue of taxes.  It’s almost as though he thinks center right political ideology and the flawed or really conventionally misinterpreted economic theory on which it is based are real and might actually work as advertised, as though he sincerely fails to understand one cannot really take up important economic matters of this sort without dealing in some way with the inevitable distributional issues economists and conservative pundits work so strenuously to sweep under the carpet.  It’s all rather endearing in a naïve sort of way compared to the snarky, winking, self-serving “I know I’m lying and you know I’m lying and my followers know I’m lying but I have to say it anyway so let’s just get on with it” sort of thing we’ve been getting recently from conservatives here in the USA.  Rather an odd reversal of the usual roles isn’t it?  How unfortunate and embarrassing for Americans to be ahead of any European at all in the snarkiness rankings let alone the French.  Ouch!  But yes many conservatives here no longer even bother espousing the old “we’re being neutral on distributional issues” wink-wink nudge-nudge line of claptrap they learned from academic economists any longer.  They just let it all hang out.  The people who have economic power, the wealthy elite, the one percent, should have it because they’re very special people indeed.  The poor on the other hand can do everyone a favor and drop dead the sooner the better.  If we need to deal with some social issue like global warming or anything else really then obviously it should rightfully come on the backs of the disposable, worthless poor rather than the deserving, meritorious rich.  Given the choice between the two I probably prefer the genteel albeit faux neutral approach to the aggressive, in your face, anti-social, Ayn Randian conservative approach so common today.

On the other hand, one struggles to understand how Mr. Macron and his center right buddies came to think of the little people of France as politically weak and defenseless chumps.  Ask people anywhere in the world to name a country where average citizens are likely to stand up for themselves and take to the streets and barricades if necessary and one of the most common answers would probably be France.  Honestly.  The image of the busty lady and the little lad with a pistol charging down some cobblestoned street all hell breaking loose around them must surely pop into most people’s heads immediately.  I guess with French conservatives not so much.  In the case of President Macron I imagine a sharply dressed fellow relaxing on some ornate divan in a drawing room in the Elysee Palace, adjusting his cufflinks perhaps, sipping his roasted to hell and back coffee (just the way I like), then noticing all the mayhem on TV and proclaiming, “Wha…?  Street protests?  Here?  In Paris?”  I mean, it’s a funny sort of image.  One wonders if he wouldn’t have been better advised to follow the lead of President Trump and just put off the inevitable day of reckoning as long as possible.  Pass the buck as we say here in America.  Pull a fast one.  Slip one over on people.  Grab as much cash as you can carry and hope enough water passes under the bridge before the bill arrives that the hapless little people will be unable to put two and two together and figure out why despite all their enthusiasm for coddling and advancing the interests of the poor billionaires of the nation their own quite often rather precarious economic situation continues to decline.

Brexit of course is a rather different beast based more on scapegoating than on instituting sweeping economic reforms per se, which ironically makes it rather similar to the other big project President Trump and the Republican Party have been pursuing here in the USA: demonizing foreign nations and their nefarious agents immigrants of both the legal and illegal variety.  I suppose if you’ve already done your sweeping economic reforms, rich people are metaphorically swimming in money, the government is barely functioning, and the little people are still tanking, even the slowest witted village idiots may want to hear some bedtime story beyond the call for yet more sweeping economic reforms.  They want a story explaining why despite what they’ve been told the market isn’t really doing all that much for them.  It seems the story conservatives go to in this case is that market systems are fabulous, mystical works of Mother Nature that must not be tampered with for any reason (unlike, let’s say, the climate), and would of course quickly solve everyone’s economic issues were it not for devious scoundrels acting behind the scenes rigging the system and making it not work out right.  Like who?  Well, I guess the modern version of the story they tell in the UK these days is all about Europe and European immigrants.  Actually I suppose here in the USA it’s also about Europe, but also Asia, and Africa, and other parts of the Americas and …. well, let’s just say the whole world.  Honestly, how can one expect the market to work its magic when we have so many scoundrels interfering with it?  President Trump recently fashioned himself “a tariff man” and has famously done as much as he can to whip up right-wing hysteria over the veritable army of desperate and impoverished immigrant children invading the country and so on.  It’s like we got in a time machine and went back to 1920.  Exactly how old is the man anyway?  It’s all rather odd, but I guess to look at it from their perspective conservatives have to say something.  They can’t just sit there like dummies with silly grins on their faces throwing diamonds in the air and laughing hysterically.  (Yes, some dummies do that.  Not all of them, but the fancy ones.)  One supposes after the economic golden age Mr. Trump’s followers confidently predict will result from his trade wars and tariff schemes and tear gassing of immigrants fails to materialize on schedule we might just see a few street protests ourselves.  Could happen in the UK as well once the Shangri-La of post-Brexit Britain turns out to be rather less impressive than anticipated.  Well, no, not really.  Cancel that.  I suppose I have a little trouble imaging British people taking to the streets or manning a barricade for any reason except perhaps to throw bouquets of flowers to the Queen or Prince or what have you.  I think they probably just keep a stiff upper lip, drink themselves into a stupor, put on a funny costume and serve tea to the lord of the olde manor, then knife their neighbor on the way home and steal his or her wallet to make ends meet.  Actually, I guess I don’t really see many citizens of the USA doing much agitating either.  Probably just take some sort of illicit drug then shoot their neighbor and steal his or her wallet to make ends meet.  It’s one of the things I think many Americans and British people have in common: a complete and ingrained inability to directly confront self-serving elitist claptrap in any unified or politically significant way.

Thinking about the various ways the wealthy and politically powerful elites of the USA, the UK, and France attempt to play their respective populations just now has made me think how in olden days the rich folk of the world seemed rather better coordinated.  I’m thinking of rich and powerful autocrats and their kin and hangers on strutting about fairy tale castles chopping peasants’ heads off and so on.  That was pretty much all of Europe wasn’t it?  Or really the entire world I suppose.  In those days they really knew how to come together and royally screw the little people.  Watching the different national tribes of rich folk trying to find creative ways to screw their respective populations these days is like watching some sort of cat parade.   I suppose they’re trying to a certain degree.  President Trump and the Republican Party are clearly doing the best they can to seek commonalities with the wealthy elite in at least some nations, such as Russia, going so far as to coordinate with them on propaganda techniques, fake news, alternative facts, and so on.  And President Trump at least plays well with that Prince of Arabia who had his goons murder and dismember that journalist a while back.  The man has also reported falling in love with the murderous dictator of North Korea.  I suppose the conservative elite of the USA has even tried to make common cause to a certain extent with the Conservative Party of the UK in terms of excoriating immigrants and playing around with trade barriers and tariffs as weapons in what they apparently now perceive or wish to portray anyway as a zero-sum war between national economies.  And in terms of political rhetoric relating more to domestic markets they agree in a broad way with their French counterparts as far as waxing eloquent on the beauty of the free market and the need for sweeping economic reforms.  But then we get the funny just run up the deficit versus tax the hell out of the poor schmucks debacle.  Don’t these people ever talk to one another?  Get your act together folks!  Or could it be coordinated in the sense of we’ll try this and you try that and we’ll compare notes later?  Or are these sorts of policy inconsistencies part of their grand strategy to confuse the little people?  You know, we French conservatives are nothing like our American cousins.  We take our national debt very seriously and are very concerned about global warming.  Also, we don’t eat so many cheeseburgers.  If that’s what’s going on I’m afraid it’s not really working.  Well, OK, maybe it’s working in general right now but it’s not working in at least one case.  I’m a little guy, and I just can’t see that all that much difference between the two.  And you know what?  I think the fog may be starting to clear just a bit for others as well.  One happy day the little people of all democratic nations will use their voting power to construct societies that work well for everyone and not just for those at the top.  It could never be otherwise in the long run because the liberal ethos is eternal.  The desire for a just, functional, and well-ordered society is an enduring element of human nature itself.  The rich elite have long liked to fashion themselves akin to sharks and lions and hawks and other solitary predators but the human race is really more akin to the ant and the bee.  Our power comes ultimately from communication, cooperation, taking what those in the past have given us and adding a little something of our own for the yet unborn.  A human being living the life of a solitary and all devouring predator is a waste, a farce, a tragedy, an affront to nature.  Love live the liberal ethos!  Long live the human race!

Addendum

Recently President Macron has been in the news discussing how the concerns of the protestors are in many cases justified and floating the notion of raising the minimum wage, which should have his center right buddies all in a tizzy.  American conservatives would rather throw themselves from the parapets of Trump Tower than address an issue like ethically unacceptable wages at the low end of a market determined pay scale.  Seems Mr. Macron may not be as studiously dismissive of distributional concerns as one might have reasonably supposed.  Nice recovery.  Vive la France!

Conservative Economic Ideology and Socialism

Welcome friends!

I know I was supposed to stop talking about economic issues for a little while but I wanted to follow up a bit on a point I mentioned last time (and most likely any number of times previously): the intellectual relationship between “socialism” broadly conceived and neoclassical economic theory on the one hand and the conservative “free market” economic ideology sometimes associated with economic theory or anyway with certain flawed interpretations of economic theory on the other hand.  Hey, what can I say?  It’s my thing or one of my things anyway.  I think it’s interesting.  I might be the only one, but still.  Allow me to indulge myself once again and I’ll be back with some non-economic content next time.  Maybe.  Or maybe the time after that.  Let’s just say soon to be on the safe side.  That’s the thing about the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservative: spend too long staring into the empty unblinking eyes of any one head and next thing you know one of the other heads might just take a bite out of your backside.

Let’s do neoclassical economic theory first.  I know I’ve done a couple of posts about how President Trump and the Republican Party have diverged recently from conservative economic orthodoxy in the direction of national something or other, not national socialism per se but something very much like.  What were they calling it?  Economic nationalism?  Something like that?  Anyway, that’s not what I’m talking about this time out.  I’m talking about the supposed basis of conservative economic ideology in it’s purest and most traditional form: neoclassical economic theory.  If you’re familiar with economic theory you’ll know it talks or purports to talk an awful lot about what is best for society at large.  The ostensible endpoints of interest are presented correctly or incorrectly as “socially optimal outcomes” or “social optimums.”  If one considers accepting the objective of attending to the overall welfare of society the hallmark of “socialism” at it’s most fundamental level, which I think is really the only sensible way to interpret the word, then neoclassical economic theory must I think be classified as a form or variant of socialism.  As I (and even more eloquently Mr. Kranekpantzen) have pointed out repeatedly the funny thing of course is that economic theory doesn’t really work as advertised.  It attempts to derive recommendations for socially optimal economic arrangements without considering the distributional aspects of those arrangements; however, it doesn’t and logically never could.  Everyone has beliefs relating to fair or optimal distributions or mechanisms of distribution and hence there’s really no way to talk about social optimality in any meaningful way without getting into those types of issues.  And economic systems inevitably distribute goods one way or another whether we like it or not.  We can’t set up an economic system that is agnostic between all possible distributions.  So really there’s no way to support particular economic arrangements without also supporting particular distributions unless one breaks out those economic arrangements that relate to distributions, which is a bit awkward to say the least since those represent a pretty big chunk of what we consider economic arrangements in the first place (most notably the labor market but also taxes, inheritance laws, etc.)  The notion that economic theory can establish the case for perfectly competitive markets without taking up distributional issues is all a big misunderstanding or if you’re of a more conspiratorial frame of mind a load of purposefully misleading claptrap, which provides a convenient segue to the slow-witted cousin of economic theory: conservative "free market" economic ideology.

As one might suppose based on flawed economic theory or at least certain conventional but flawed interpretations of that theory one can find conservatives (of the economic variety) who seem a little confused by that theory and honestly feel not only that a “free market” equates to a perfectly competitive market but that a perfectly competitive market equates to the best we can do as a society.  From a liberal perspective these conservatives may be considered the “good” or at least better sort of economic conservatives in the sense they agree with liberals on the ends although obviously not the means.  This is the type of economic conservative who tends to have a superficial knowledge of neoclassical economic theory from sources like the ubiquitous Econ 101 and to take it very, very seriously albeit entirely uncritically.  In the vernacular, they accept the theory or anyway the conventional flawed interpretations of that theory hook, line, and sinker.  These particular conservatives tend to have a condescending air toward liberals and leftists because they view them as basically rather silly uneducated or irrational people whose hearts may be in the right place but who just can’t or don’t understand the mathematical and geometric intricacies of economic theory.  It makes them a little annoying particularly for liberals who have studied economics in a rather more serious way but not usually insufferably so.  This type of economic conservative tends to take a relatively narrow view of “socialism” that equates it to particular economic arrangements such as government ownership or shared ownership of businesses and so on.  One assumes they would generally take umbrage at the notion their own ideology is based on what must ultimately be considered a particular formulation of the socialist ethos because it suggests the welfare of society at large in fact matters.  However, it’s not all relative goodness and light even with this lot.  These conservatives like their less wholesome brothers and sisters have a dark side.  In particular, they tend to harbor a profound fear, distrust, and sometimes even abject hatred for democratic government because they believe ignorant people, such as liberals or progressives or leftists of all sorts, may use their democratic voting power to force government to “interfere” with existing market arrangements to make them more stable or equitable thereby unwittingly harming society by shifting it off its supposed optimum.

The bad type of economic conservative from a liberal or leftist perspective rejects the goal of attending to the welfare of society at large in favor of viewing the world as a vicious dog eat dog affair in which the only ethically acceptable objective is to do the best one can for oneself and perhaps one’s loved ones and let everyone else fare as they may.  These are the conservatives of the Ayn Randian, ubermensch, Me Generation, greed is good, unbridled egotism variety.  If they appear to support the findings of economic theory it’s because they understand perfectly well it doesn’t really work as advertised and in particular don’t take the flawed arguments in that theory about “social optimums” seriously even for a moment.  No, they believe there are inevitably winners and losers in human society and they’re doing everything they can to ensure they’re one of the former.  They don’t see the point of worrying about the fate of the “losers.”  They don’t harbor any romantic notions that market economies work out well for everyone or even that one should speak honestly and seriously about political or economic or philosophical matters so we can work together collectively and collaboratively toward common ends like what’s best for society at large but instead view communication as a rhetorical tool to obtain or maintain power of both the economic and political variety.  This is the sort of conservative that has recently taken center stage with all the Trumpian double-talk and fake news and “alternative facts.”  They sometimes espouse a rather mangled or cherry picked version of economic theory not because they believe it has any intellectual merit but because they think it might muddy the water enough to keep the better sort of more civic-minded economic conservative on board while providing them with what they want themselves: an attractive rhetorical defense of their own economic power.  These conservatives tend to view liberals and leftists in general as not just silly uneducated people who may mean well but simply don’t understand economics but rather as wily and quite often overly educated people who understand economic theory rather better than they ought but who are essentially evil people with flawed ethics and in particular adherents of “socialism” defined as the incorrect and dangerous ethical proposition what happens to one’s fellows matters.  Their relatively broad view of socialism means they tend to see the dangers of socialism everywhere because of course socialism broadly defined as a concern for one’s fellows is everywhere in most functioning societies including our own.  These conservatives are intensely and blatantly opposed to democratic government unless they have an effective way to control it and use it to their own personal advantage, as they do currently with the Trump administration.  This group’s shifting positions on practical economic issues like tariffs and deficits and so on can take the well-meaning but relatively slow-witted “good” economic conservatives by surprise and has led to a lot of hand-wringing among the latter tribe about what it means to be a “real” economic conservative.

So what’s my point for today?  Difficult to say.  People who believe in democratic government and have certain beliefs relating to social welfare or economic justice need to fight economic conservatism in both forms but perhaps there’s something to be gained by keeping in mind it’s not always about one’s values; sometimes it’s about ignorance.  Liberals and leftists need to fight the economic head of the multi-headed monster of contemporary conservatism on both fronts.  We need to keep banging on about the shortcomings and illogical bits of neoclassical economic theory as well as pointing out the errors in the flawed interpretations of that theory one finds in popular conservative economic ideology on the one hand, and we need to argue the case for our ethical beliefs regarding one’s responsibilities toward one’s fellows against the stylings of the conservative anti-social disciples of personal greed and all consuming egotism on the other.  So let’s get to it!

Brexit, Trump, and the Anti-Social Tendency of Conservative Ideology

Welcome friends!

How about those Brexit negotiations?  They seem to be shaping up into what our British friends might call a bit of a shambles.  Actually I suppose that’s what we Americans might also call it, which doesn’t seem very clever.  I wish I knew another expression for a shambles that would be more unique to the UK in honor of their apparently perpetually wounded sense of nationhood.  I tried to look it up online just now but I ended up back at shambles.  Oh well.  The point is I think pretty much everyone agrees at this point it is indeed a bit of a shambles although I did read Prime Minister May is gamely attempting a Pee-Wee Herman-esque “I meant to do that,” just not sure anyone’s really buying it.  But you know maybe it was fate the best word to describe the thing would be common to American English and English English or I suppose more properly the rather clunky sounding UK English (some days you just can’t win).  Indeed, I can’t help but see certain similarities between the waving of the old red, white, and blue on both sides of the Atlantic and to see shades of Brexititis in President Trump’s rejecting trade treaties and savaging our traditional allies and trading partners.  Maybe it’s just me but I wonder if they might be related in some way such as for example the pervasive undercurrent of conservative economic ideology in both the UK and the USA.  I know I’ve written about economics the last few times out but here I am again.  I must have economics on the brain just now.  There’s a scary thought.  Well, let me try to get it out of my system so I can talk about something totally different next week.

As I’m sure I must have pointed out before many, many times one of the distinctive and conceptually funny things about conservative economic ideology is the hoary image of the national economy working like an old eighteenth century Deist gentleman’s watch.  We might need to collaborate as a society in constructing the watch or to be brutally literal the legal institutions and conditions associated with the “free market” (or to be theoretically correct the all too elusive perfectly competitive market but never mind) but once we collaborate to get things set up we will all do as good as we can and everyone will ostensibly get exactly what he or she deserves if we all just focus on our own greed and spare nary a thought for our fellows.  Properly considered or anyway as originally conceived by our bewigged ancestors the system was meant to serve everyone originally in the utilitarian sense of bringing the greatest happiness to the greatest number and later, when they eventually realized that argument doesn’t really hold water, in the more Old Testament sense economic justice will be served.  “Free market” economics was considered the natural accompaniment to political democracy because surely everyone would demand that system which would serve them best if not materially as originally thought then at least in the sense of a shared satisfaction that economic justice will prevail.  In that sense one might think of old time conservatism as an offshoot of other socialist ideologies that take as their ultimate objectives the welfare or at least interests of society at large.

Of course as fate would have it a funny thing happened along the way.  In their zeal to prevent other people mucking up the gears trying to help the less fortunate conservatives began to stress more and more the second step of their two step program for attaining social nirvana.  All too soon the institutions and conditions associated with the market were not something we could count on others to understand or to agree with.  We were no longer all on the same page.  As a defensive reaction the rationale for the institutions began to take on a non-human and other worldly air.  They became associated with natural laws but not those of the god of the Deists looking after his flock with a system plain to all who cared to look but with the cold hard inhumanity of outer space.  The free market was good and fair whether other people understood it or agreed with it or not.  Political democracy became suspect as the mechanism by which do-gooders and leftists of all description might foolishly thumb their noses at the universe and meddle in things that ought not to be meddled in.  Democratic government became dangerous and something to be minimized and neutered.  People who cared for other people or had different notions of economic justice became the “socialist” bogeyman of the conservative intent on enslaving others and destroying economies and societies.  Co-operation with other people and indeed even thinking of other people became suspect.  The Me Generation was born with boundless greed, egotism, and hubris hating the thought of ever compromising with or indeed acknowledging the existence of any other living being.

When this twisted monster child of once noble conservatism encounters any form of society it cannot control it strives mightily to throw it off in a rage of righteous indignation.  Here in the USA conservatives have long raged against our democratic federal government.  While that sentiment appears to have subsided somewhat not being based on any principle really beyond their perceptions of our government’s ability to give them what they want when they want it there are yet other groups determined to enforce their will upon the Great I.  International groups like NATO, trade organizations, allies trying to trap us into their little treaties.  It’s an outrage conservatives simply cannot abide.  Their ancient clock says its time for personal greed and the unbridled lust for power not the time to work with others people toward common goals.  In the UK they have Brexit.  They don’t need no stinking EU!  Here in the USA we have that great orange man-child President Trump pouting and stamping his little feet in the White House, followed everywhere by his weak and sycophantic toadies in the Republican Party rushing to find his blanket or binky in the hopes he may vomit out more coin their way.

Does that sound about right?  Maybe I’m seeing things.  Societies don’t always work out.  Civilizations fall.  Nations fall in love with themselves and go to war on behalf of their beloved.  Happens all the time.  It’s a story as old as time.  But hard to avoid the feeling those unfortunate events are a great deal more likely to occur if one starts with the conservative anti-social sentiment that giving a thought to one’s fellow man is the root of all evil than with the notion we humans are at heart social animals and that the wealth and power cooperation and coordination brings is both our essence and our destiny.  Long live the Liberal Ethos!

Does Economic Conservatism Still Exist?

Welcome friends!

As the conservative movement here in the USA has increasingly taken up nativism, racism, nationalism, and other bits and pieces of European-style right wing fascist-style claptrap one may reasonably wonder what remains of my original characterization of the domestic conservative movement as a two-headed monster composed primarily of economic conservatives on the one hand and religious conservatives on the other.  (I believe I later revised that to a three-headed monster to give equal billing to what I called political conservatism although later still I speculated political conservatism was likely simply economic conservatism in a political guise so I wasn’t entirely sure it warranted its own head on the beast.)  I’ve always been particularly and possibly inordinately interested in economic conservatism because as a one-time student of economics myself I’ve long considered economic conservatism to be rooted in both limitations and misunderstandings of neoclassical economic theory as summarized by my kindred spirit Hansel Krankepantzen in his You Tube video and Kindle e-book on economic theory and distributional issues.  Briefly economic conservatism is the notion government activity should be restricted to trying to bring real world markets acceptably close to the perfectly competitive ideal (although how close is close enough is of course left conveniently indeterminate) after which all will ostensibly be right with the world and in particular everyone will get exactly what’s coming to them at least as long as democratic government doesn’t muck up the works.  The great bugbear of economic conservatism is that one will object to the distributive results of a perfectly competitive market system or really the inevitably flawed market system we actually have and hence be tempted to use government to revise those results by providing some sort of assistance to those who may be struggling economically, which is forever characterized by conservatives as “socialism” and thought to lead directly and inevitably to communist authoritarianism, a less than optimal economic output, and a whole host of social ills generally involving the ostensible disappearance of incentives and personal responsibility. 

The curious fact now as I’ve mentioned various ways in various previous posts is that the vast bulk of conservatives no longer appear to take this theory very seriously, which suggests quite strongly what we liberals have long suspected: traditional economic conservatism long ago ceased to function as anything other than empty political rhetoric not taken seriously by those proclaiming it or those receiving those proclamations.  For example, one important component of contemporary American conservatism is apparently the notion American workers must be protected from immigration of both the legal and illegal variety by such Draconian measures as separating young immigrant children from their parents, calling out the US Army to defend the border against what is marketed at least as an invading horde of poor and threatening foreigners, and building a Great Wall along our southern border.  This theme is of course in direct and rather stark contrast to the importance placed on the free movement of labor and capital within economic theory.  According to traditional economic conservatives with their mangled understanding of economic theory a so-called Nanny State protecting a nation’s workers from competition from more highly qualified or cheaper labor arriving from abroad via caravan or tunnel or boat or indeed any other route or mode of transport would represent socialism at its most menacing and destructive.  

The same phenomenon can be seen in the so-called economic nationalism of contemporary American conservatism in which government is expected to set up tariffs and engage in trade wars and so on to protect and encourage American industry.  Again, traditional economic conservatism based on neoclassical economic theory would suggest if foreign competitors have a competitive advantage on whatever it happens to be we should be perfectly happy to allow capital and labor to move there.  

In addition one of the great irritations of traditional economic conservatives has long been the apparent success and hence acceptance of Keynesian economic thinking in which fiscal policy including deficit spending can be used to offset market contractions.  The implied usefulness if not necessity of activist government in keeping the economy on an even keel is of course inconsistent with the traditional images of invisible hands and cosmic clocks and everything running smoothly with no need of human intervention that haunted the imaginations of traditional economic conservatives for so long.  And yet today American conservatives gleefully run up the deficit with tax cuts with no commensurate reductions in spending in an apparent attempt to goose the economy and preempt the sort of catastrophic economic failure that has long been a hallmark of conservative administrations exemplified most recently by the Bush administration in 2008.   

In place of the happy albeit unfounded and profoundly misleading message of traditional economic conservatives that everyone will be made better off if we simply encourage perfectly competitive markets and shrink the economic and social role of democratic government the prevailing conservative economic vision now appears to be a rather darker and more sinister affair of national against nation, industry against industry, worker against worker, with government serving as a sort of feudal overlord dispensing and withholding economic favors based on one’s fealty to the king.

This has led to the creation of a curious sort of creature one might characterize as the Wooly Headed Ancient Conservative: men and women who failed to appreciate the insincere and rhetorical nature of traditional conservative economic ideology and now haunt the world lamenting that conservatives are no longer conservative and so on.  These people never got the memo that conservative economic ideology was never real; that it was only a simplistic and flawed fable that proved useful to some people at for a while in the development of modern conservatism and has now served its purpose; that it’s not now and never was a real thing.  The wealthy conservative elite no longer feels it must hide its lust for power with studiously muddled thinking and pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo.  They’ve found a new stratagem.  There’s a new game in town.  It’s time conservatives put away childish things like traditional conservative economic ideology and embraced the brave new world of European-style anti-democratic, racist, nativist, nationalistic, authoritarian, elitist, religious, plutocratic, proto-fascism.  And it’s time all right thinking Americans turn and face the conservative threat to our way of life head on in words and at the ballot box.  Long live American democracy!  Long live the liberal ethos!

Democratic Socialism Part Two

Welcome friends!

Funny how often this sort of thing seems to happen but as soon as I finished my post on democratic socialism a couple of years ago now (Democratic Socialism, February 2, 2016) I ran across an example of exactly what I was talking about.  I didn’t want to do a follow-up at the time but I made a note of it so maybe I’ll just do it now.  If you recall in my earlier post I discussed how the word “socialism” is a big red flag for conservatives even though it’s rather obvious they generally have in mind something rather different from what anyone who might actually describe himself or herself as a “democratic socialist” (such as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders) has in mind by the term.  Indeed I suggested what some conservatives have in mind when they talk about socialism appears rather different from what some other conservatives have in mind by the term.  It can all get pretty confusing.  Lots of opportunities to equivocate on terminology and make other sorts of logical errors.  Of course from a rhetorical standpoint I suppose that may be the whole point.  If there’s anything any conservative intellectual worth his or her salt knows how to do it’s muddy the water and obscure the truth.  Some conservatives are clearly of an Ayn Randian temperament and see incipient socialism in the most mundane and hence surprising of places.  You know the sort of people I have in mind.  How dare anyone tell me to stop my car for a red light!  Oh the humanity!  I stop for green lights!  Other conservatives particularly of the economic sort spend a great deal of time talking about maximizing social welfare and so on, which certainly sounds a lot like some form of socialism broadly conceived.  One suspects they don’t really mean it and are just dabbling in rhetoric but the point is those conservatives tend to reserve the despised socialist epithet for those who disagree with them on means rather than ends or anyway what they prefer for one reason or another to represent as their ends.  Well shortly after I wrote that piece I read a short item by President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donahue, on Mr. Sanders’s victory in the New Hampshire presidential primary.  I hope I’m not giving the game away but basically I found what he had to say simplistic, misleading, and at times just plain wrong.  As perfect an example of conservative political / economic rhetoric as one might hope to encounter.  Anyway, it’s a short piece so I thought I’d just break it down point by point and let that be my post for this week.

Mr. Donahue started by stating “Socialism is a wrong and dangerous path for America.”  As he didn’t waste any time defining what he meant by “socialism” one can’t help but wonder what he might have had in mind.  I mentioned before the most fundamental definition of socialism is simply the proposition what happens to other people, that is to say one’s society, matters.  The opposing position to this most fundamental concept of socialism is there’s no such thing as society or anyway nothing of the sort we need think or care about so if for example some people who happen to be living around the space you inhabit drop dead because let’s say they don’t have jobs or food or medical care or what have you then that’s entirely their business and none of your own.  If that’s what he has in mind, socialism as the proposition one should care about what happens to the other people living in one’s society, then I suppose it’s fine with me if his opinion is it’s ethically “wrong” but I wouldn’t say he made a particularly strong case as opposed to having simply registered an opinion on the matter.  I for one certainly wouldn’t agree it’s ethically wrong and in fact I would suggest it’s probably the only ethically acceptable way for humanity to proceed.

On the other hand the allusion to danger makes me suspect he might have a rather different definition of socialism in mind.  Personally I’ve never found anything particularly dangerous or alarming about people being concerned for other people although I understand the Ayn Randian perspective on the phenomenon is once one starts down that path it can’t be long before someone is cooling his or her heels in a Russian gulag in Siberia.  Of course there are non-democratic version of “socialism” variously defined that might appear dangerous to most reasonable people for example something along the lines of the right wing anti-democratic “National Socialism” of mid-twentieth century Germany or perhaps the authoritarian left wing anti-democratic communism of the Union of Soviet “Socialist” Republics.  And of course here in the USA we do have a healthy subculture of Neo-Nazis and fascist sympathizers who have been in the news recently because of their rapturous and fanatical support for Donald Trump and the Republican Party.  I haven’t heard of any comparable underground of authoritarian communists but it’s a big country so what do I know.  However, those sorts of anti-democratic extremists have precious little do with the democratic socialism endorsed by Mr. Sanders as Mr. Donahue surely understands all too well.  A more relevant model would be the sort of democratic socialism one sees in contemporary Europe.  I have to say I’ve never thought of the countries involved as particularly dangerous compared to the USA although it is quite common to hear conservatives raise the specter of Europe as some sort of bogeyman so perhaps he did have the frightening aspect of Scandinavian hygge in mind.  Who knows?  My point is simply it’s rather difficult to make head or tails about what he might have been talking about in that sentence.

He carries on with the observation, “It’s failed everywhere it’s ever been tried, bringing shared misery rather than shared prosperity.”  The first bit is rather comical for those who believe the phrase “democratic socialism” is a reasonable description of a good portion of what we have been doing here in the USA for many years and which our conservative friends rail against on a frequent basis.  I’m talking about social welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare, worker safety regulations, etc.  Even more to the point is what our friends in Western Europe have been doing this past century or so often invoking very explicitly the mantle of democratic socialism.  Indeed, if one wants to think about economic systems that have failed everywhere they’ve been tried one of the main systems must be the sort of simple minded free market capitalism one infers Mr. Donahue prefers.  Both the USA and many countries in Europe and indeed around the globe gave that a go in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century and it didn’t really work out all very well.  Some people did just fine and then some but of course some other people tanked, we ended up with all manner of funny labor market issues and social unrest, the economic system itself become unstable and eventually stalled out entirely and no one had any ideas of how to get it going again, nations imploded, authoritarian populist crackpots proliferated, and after many years of toil, hardship, and bloodshed we eventually got to the democratic socialist systems we have now.  I don’t really relish the idea of going back and doing it all again, do you?  Because I’m pretty sure that’s what conservatives like Mr. Donahue have in mind.  

The latter part of Mr. Donahue’s sentence about shared misery gets to the conservative penchant for associating sharing exclusively with misery and never with shared prosperity.  According to conservatives prosperity is the rightful domain of a relatively small number of people in the wealthy elite and any suggestion anyone else might benefit from economic development must necessarily backfire.  Yes, we’re back in the Ayn Randian realm of every person for himself or herself.  Again, opinion noted, but nothing there that would make me suspect his conclusions were based on anything I might find convincing.  As far as I know we had a much more equitable distribution of resources in this country a few decades ago when we had a stronger unionized work force and more reasonable pay for top management as well as a reasonably progressive tax code and inheritance taxes and so on but I don’t really remember people being noticeably more miserable in general than they are now.   Of course I was young then so maybe I just wasn’t paying attention but still I’d like to see some data or information to back that claim up.  I suspect it’s something Mr. Donahue just made up on the spot.  And of course there’s nothing in economic theory suggesting altering distributions brings misery to all, as Mr. Krankepanzen takes some time to establish in the You Tube video series I mentioned in my last post.

Mr. Donahue then hits us over the head with the following litany of issues: “It [socialism] undermines personal initiative and responsibility, stunts innovation and growth, makes people serve government—not vice-versa—and robs individuals of the dignity of earning their own success and charting their own course.”  OMG!  One at a time, please.

I’ve mentioned before I agree incentives are important but I would suggest market systems themselves can generate some pretty peculiar incentives at times and I would suggest further there’s plenty of room for the more helpful sort of incentives to operate even if we pay a bit more attention to social fairness than we have been doing recently.  Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we could improve on the incentives a bit by linking outputs more to laudable behaviors and not accidents of birth and happenstance.  Anyway, it seems clearly not the all or nothing proposition Mr. Donahue suggests.  So that misses the mark for me.

As far as stunting innovation I’m not sure Mr. Donahue knows what he’s talking about.  From what I’ve read technical innovation has often come from the sort of big government involvement Mr. Donahue and his ilk spend so much time fretting about.  Indeed quite frequently technical innovations have had their start in the realm of national defense.  Internet ring any bells?  But no reason to get all technical about it.  Perhaps it’s enough to say that with democratic socialism we’re talking about harnessing the power of the market while paying attention to distributional concerns not setting up a Stalin era ten-year plan or whatever.

Moving on we then have the notion socialism is all about people “serving” government rather than the other way around.  Again, I don’t really know what that’s about.  The USSR perhaps?  Because I don’t think that’s what anyone discussing democratic socialism is talking about.  As far as I understand it democratic socialism is about government serving people by addressing distributional concerns and regulating markets so everyone gets a fair shake.  The notion that socialism involves becoming a slave to government sounds like a bit of a straw man to me.  And while we’re on the subject I’m not at all sure the flip side, government serving people, is very consistent with the conservative vision in which government activity beyond defending the property rights of rich folk and enforcing contracts and so on is presented as invariably unnecessary and counter-productive.  Well, I suppose if you equate serving society with doing nothing to help anyone who isn’t part of the wealthy elite then maybe but otherwise no.

Then we have the idea if we make things more equitable we will “rob individuals of the dignity of earning their own success and charting their own course.”  The idea here is there is that under our current system individuals do whatever they like and earn their own success but in some hypothetical democratic socialism scenario they would not.  Sounds a bit looney tunes to me.  I’m not sure what sort of system Mr. Donahue has in mind but I would suggest all real democratic socialists support variations of financial success within reasonable limits perhaps to accommodate monetary incentives so I don’t see why people would be unable to earn their own success even if we paid a bit more attention to distributional issues.  Indeed if we’re going to talk that way there seem to me a great many financially successful people today who certainly have loads of dignity but whose role in their own success seems to me a bit murky, such as people who inherit a boatload of money, people who had a privileged upbringing or who were set up by their parents, people who happened to be born with some unusual talent or ability, people of average ability and habits who were in the right place at the right time, and so on.  At the same time other people with loads of personal merit may find themselves struggling financially for any number of reasons.  In other words, I suspect if we changed things around a bit we might find a heck of a lot more dignity from earning success floating around.  Ditto for people being able to chart their own course.  This gets to a peculiar feature of conservative ideology in which the practical constraints we all face in a market economy are made to appear different in nature from the practical constraints that might appear if we changed anything about the market such as for example trying to make the results more equitable.  We have practical constraints now.  We’ll have practical constraints in the future.  Again, I suspect if we paid a bit more attention to distributional issues a great many more people might find they are able to chart their own course in a practical sense than is the case now in which some people find themselves able to chart courses all over the place while others seem unable to even exit the harbor.

He then quotes approvingly one of the bon mots of the always beloved by conservatives Margaret Thatcher, aka the Iron Lady, that the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money.  Since we’re not really talking about distributing a set sum of money that’s liable to run out one presumes she must have been referencing the conservative belief that any change whatsoever to our distributional system will cause such havoc all further economic activity will grind to a halt.  Doesn’t sound very plausible to me.  Nothing in economic theory would suggest addressing distributional issues would cause economic activity to cease.  Even in terms of changes in total output setting aside distributional issues such as the number of people living in the woods behind the old convenience store, which one supposes a conservative like Ms. Thatcher would waste little time thinking about, the argument is rather weak.  Nothing to suggest total output would necessarily decline if we address distributional issues.  Indeed I wrote some time ago about a Nobel prize winning economist who argued adjusting our distributional system to make it more equitable would likely lead to a more robust consumer demand and thus greater economic growth.

Mr. Donahue concludes by encouraging Americans to reject this “failed, antiquated, and discredited economic system.”  Again, I have to say it’s just not really very clear to me what system he’s talking about.  Democratic socialism is very successful, current, and popular.  Many democratic nations pay much greater attention to social matters and distributional concerns than we do here in the USA and they tend to rank more highly than the USA along any number of quality of life dimensions.  Indeed, the surprising thing to me for many years now has been how the USA manages to rank so low in various quality of life rankings despite our impressive total economic output, which is of course the true legacy of conservative ideology in which only total output is recognized as relevant to economic wellbeing and where all that output goes is meant to not really matter.  It’s why the average citizen of the USA is so much worse off than the average citizen of so many other countries across the globe.

Well, OK, he had one more thought, which is there’s no place for democratic socialism “in a country that strives to be free, prosperous, and always looking to the future.”  Fine with me if that’s his opinion but in my opinion there’s definitely a place for it.  Indeed I would suggest if we want freedom and prosperity to flourish and to benefit everyone in our society rather than a select few then some form of democratic socialism is really the only way to go.  If we’re looking to the future I can’t help but suppose that’s where we’ll be one day.

Anyway, that’s the sort of thing democratic socialists are up against in this country.  I know it would be easier and indeed more traditional for us here in America to just talk about the policies in question without mentioning the dreaded s word at all, which would accomplish the same ends and give Mr. Donahue and his ilk less of an opening to wax idiotical but must we really remain so childish?  Can we begin to use words the way reasonable people in other countries have been using them for many years?  Can we stand up and declare like Harry Potter we’re not afraid of a name?  If we talked a bit more about socialism and what the term means to different people we might improve the quality of our conversation on important issues like distributional issues.  So let’s get to it.  Democratic socialism, democratic socialism, democratic socialism.  There I’ve said it.  So hard to discuss things when one fears saying the wrong word might make the bogeyman emerge from under one’s bed so let’s stop doing it shall we?  

References

Donohue: My Thoughts on Senator Sanders’ Victory in the New Hampshire Primary.  Thomas J. Donahue.  February 10, 2015.  https://www.uschamber.com/above-the-fold/donohue-my-thoughts-senator-sanders-victory-the-new-hampshire-primary?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=Wallpost&utm_campaign=Status