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« The Environment and the Economy | Main | A Nation of Immigrants » April 21, 2006PerspectivesI was actually visiting Kevin's site to review this piece in which he agrees with Jacob Heilbrunn that In reality, though, conservatism hasn't really changed all that much. The Christian right has certainly infused it with moralism and anti-Darwin mumbo-jumbo, but what's more striking about the GOP over the past 100 years or so is its continuity. The party's main, almost sole, purpose has been to ensure that as much money as possible goes to those who need it least and that as little as possible goes to those who need it most. In a party of moneybags, Theodore Roosevelt was the exception, not the rule. Whether Bush manages to extricate the United States from Iraq or not, his avalanche of tax cuts has already justified the main reason that Republican pooh-bahs selected him to become their candidate for president.This excerpt seems to almost perfectly encapsulate the philosophical differences between the economic left and right. (Warning: as with all such discussions, this is obviously a generalization. There are no doubt many examples on either side of the fence of people who don't fit the general mold.) For those on the left, there is a limited amount of money out there and so it's vital to distribute it evenly for fairness' sake. This ranges from the extreme of communism to the more typical American stance that people should all have certain basic needs cared for (the third of FDR's Four Freedoms springs to mind). Government has to do this, because the pie is fixed, and if government doesn't step in and make sure that everyone has at least a certain minimum-sized piece, then a few greedy individuals will end up with almost everything while the rest of the world is left to fight over scraps. Fairness is very important for those on the economic left, with fairness of course being defined by them. And that scarcity mentality leads to the class warfare that is prevalent among many on the left. The poor aren't just poor because of bad luck or bad choices. They're poor because the rich are actively conspiring to prevent them from getting a piece of the economic pie, because if the poor make more money, the rich will make less. On the right, conversely, there is the belief that the pie has no limit. When a business opens, that doesn't just peel off a certain size slice from the pie; it makes the pie larger, by creating jobs and encouraging new spending. People will have different size slices from the pie, naturally, because some people will do more to cause the pie to grow than others, but by setting the conditions for the pie to get bigger and bigger, everyone will be better off in the long run. This belief tends to make the right less sympathetic to redistributionist arguments, since they believe that taking money from those who create it and giving it to those who do not only discourages further wealth creation. The right also tends to give short shrift to questions of wealth distribution, noting that the poor in America are still exceedingly well off by global standards and rarely if ever considering the question of whether there is a point at which, however large the pie, the balance is so skewed that it may affect the balance of society. I've read Drum long enough to know that he's a lot more complex than either of the brief sketches listed above (as are most of us). But it's clear that he does lean rather heavily towards the description of the economic left given above. This worldview tends to reinforce the problem I addressed a few days earlier about mutual respect. Drum and Heilbrunn think that conservativism means trying to prevent poor people from getting ahead. That's not a caricature of their views: it's Heilbrunn's own words, agreed to by Drum. I can't speak for Drum and Heilbrunn, but I would find it very hard indeed to really respect a person whose goal in life was to prevent people from having a fair shake at getting ahead in the world. I suspect they do as well, which is why there can really be no meaningful dialogue between them and conservatives. First, they can't possibly respect the other side's arguments, because they're immoral. Second, it's unlikely they can even communicate with conservatives because they've reduced their beliefs to caricature. (This is hardly a problem of the left alone. It would not take much effort to find numerous conservative writers who believe that all lefties want nothing more than pure communism, or that they're all anti-American, etc.) If Drum bothers to respond to this (I say bothers because I suspect the number of links he gets on a given day makes it quite impossible for him to respond to even a small fraction of them), he will doubtless note that I have oversimplified his views or mischaracterized them. That's almost certainly the case, although I will note in my defense that I have attempted state his views as best I understand them based on my reading of his writings. But because I lean towards the right end of the economic spectrum, it's hard for me fully understand those on the other side just as it is difficult for them to understand me, and this has almost certainly rendered some of my analysis above flawed by a failure to properly lay out the beliefs driving those on the left side of the economic scale. So, Kevin, if you do take the time to read this, consider the possibility that my errors in trying to understand where you're coming from are probably of a piece with those you are making in trying to understand what those on the right side of the economic philosophy spectrum believe. Posted at April 21, 2006 07:42 AM
Comment policyI apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog. Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsI'll go with not even close. I think Dsquared said it bet in this post with People seem to be faintly drawn to the idea that there might be more political dimensions than just "left" and "right". Bullshit. Being in favour of allowing other people to take drugs, shag each other or read what they want isn't a political position; it's what we call "manners", "civilisation" or "humanity", depending on the calibre of yokel you're trying to educate. The political question of interest splits fair and square down a Left/Right axis: either you think that it is more important to provide a decent life for everyone in the world, or you think it is more important to preserve the rights of people who own property. You can hum and haw as much as you like about whether the two are necessarily incompatible, or whether the one is instrumental to the other, or what constitutes a "decent life" anyway, but when you've finished humming and hawing, I'm still gonna be asking you the question, and your answer to it will determine whether or not we're gonna have an argument. its from a 12-31-2002 post over on http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/ (I'm being lazy) I think it's the real argument, for US policy you can read world as mostly people in the United States. Kevin himself makes a pretty robust case for this being the truth in the United States Drum and Heilbrunn think that conservativism means trying to prevent poor people from getting ahead. That is what all the evidence indicates right wing economic policies do (By the standards of us poliltics), and by poor, we mean everyone not in the top 20% Posted by: Asteele at April 22, 2006 01:50 AM Interesting. If you think that is what conservatives believe, why do you bother coming to sites like this? Just curious what the enemy thinks? (I'm not being snide, I'm genuinely curious why, if you think conservatives want to do nothing more than keep the poor down, you would bother associating with them.) Posted by: Andrew at April 22, 2006 08:13 AM Andrew, Conservatives "in general" don't really interest me. As to your specific case I assume, because you say so, that you are not interested in keeping poor-people (everyone not in the top 20%) down, yet the economic polices you advocate will do exactly that. This doesn't mean you are a bad person, it just means your coming to the wrong conclusion. Dsquared's question is the operative one. If you believe in improving the lives of all Americans regardless of class then were on the same side, we're just having an argument about how best to do that. If your all about protecting current property holders, and you can read that as protecting the privlege of very rich (mostly) white (mostly) guys at the expense of everyone else, then we don't agree, and I really wouldn't want to associate with you. Assuming we do agree, I'm just trying to argue the case, that the economic polices you advocate are advancing the other sides cause, not ours. Posted by: Asteele at April 22, 2006 03:52 PM "...because they've reduced their beliefs to caricature." Which is what you've done here. (Sincerely, however, I'm sure.) The idea that "For those on the left, there is a limited amount of money" is completely cuckoo. Nuts. Unconnected to reality. At least, as regards most any "liberal" American. Believing in a minimal "safety net" isn't in the least incompatible with believing in capitalism, and a growing economy, and pretty much every Democrat believes in both. Posted by: Gary Farber at April 22, 2006 10:06 PM Asteele, I suspect we're going to have to agree to disagree. If Dsquared's question actually lays out the only two options (and I'm not convinced it's not a false choice), then yes, I'm going to side with protecting individual rights, because without those material prosperity doesn't mean much. Not to mention that societies that withdraw people's rights in search of social equality seem to stabilize with people with no rights and all equally poor (except the privileged few at the top). Your question implies that we can't improve the lives of everyone unless we take away people's rights. I'm afraid I don't accept that premise. I seem to recall someone named Kennedy talking about how a rising tide lifts all boats, and I'm quite sure that the poor in this country are a damn sight better off than the well-off in a lot of countries. That doesn't mean that I think we should simply tell the poor that they should count their blessings, but it also doesn't mean I think we ought to start playing Mugabe and taking things from the rich white folks in order to distribute them to the poor. Gary, Had you bothered to read the entire piece you would have noticed that I had doubtless made errors in my characterization of his views. Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be that the left is more worried about how the pie is divided up than in how to see that the pie gets bigger. In any case, it provides a valuable example of how each side fails to understand the other, which is why we rarely are able to communicate effectively. I'm curious what you would define as a minimal safety net, however, since I suspect you don't consider the safety net currently in place in this country sufficient. Posted by: Andrew at April 22, 2006 10:20 PM ... either you think that it is more important to provide a decent life for everyone in the world, or you think it is more important to preserve the rights of people who own property Outside the modern 1st world, I'm not sure you can have a decent life without owning property. Why else would land reform be so important? How come all these environmental Land Trusts aren't buying up Del Monte plantations (or Del Monte itself) in South and Central America and partitioning them out to the peasants? If the US, I'm not sure if he means land or wealth redistrubution. My question for 'liberals', what happens after you've redistributed all wealth? How do you create new wealth (tax income, whatever) to redistribute? Or do you think just writing one big check to the 'poor' will do it? Or what level of tax 'justice' do you think the body of high income earners will bear? Sure, maybe there's a pareto optimal somewhere between Reaganism and McGovernism that people could function with, but that never happens. One side is going to get greedy. Either the 'rich' think they're getting fleeced, or the 'poor' don't think they're getting enough. Americans will always want more. Consumerism is our culture. Until you fix that, your measurement of wealth and poverty will just adjust to create a disadvantaged class. Posted by: srv at April 22, 2006 10:59 PM Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out) (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) |
