Noam Scheiber asks why there are so many more affluent people -- like Ned Lamont -- embracing "economic populism":
[T]he number ... has roughly doubled over the last six years... Can this bizarrely self-defeating brand of politics continue? Over the long-term, are liberal Democrats likely to keep denouncing corporate plutocrats as stridently as they denounce foreign policy hawks and religious scolds?
In the old days, poorer people voted Democratic and richer folks went for the Republicans. But, per Scheiber, the 60s shook up that stability, and plenty of poorer people shifted to the Republicans and a lot of upper income types became Democrats. But are they "Cesar Chavez-style liberals" or "New Democrats"?
A 1999 Pew study found that New Democrats accounted for about 10 percent of the voting public--and just under one-quarter of the Democratic coalition--making them equivalent in number to liberals. According to Pew, the New Democrats were sympathetic to business, somewhat skeptical of government assistance to the poor, and relatively supportive of trade liberalization, capital gains tax cuts, and Social Security privatization. On the other hand, they tended to have a favorable view of government in general and were open to some regulation. They were also pro-environment and tolerant of gays.
But an interesting thing happened between 1999 and 2005, when Pew conducted another detailed analysis of the electorate: The New Democrats had entirely disappeared as a group while the liberals had doubled in size.
Scheiber has a Bush-did-it theory that seems all garbled to me. He doesn't mention 9/11, which is clearly "an interesting thing" that "happened between 1999 and 2005." I think Pew would have counted me as a New Democrat in 1999, and I've certainly felt that the Democratic party has redefined itself in a way that has actively ousted me. We just saw them ousting Joe Lieberman. History has forefronted national security questions, and the Democrats are closing ranks and eliminating the "liberal hawk" category. It's no suprise that if you do that what remains is a high concentration of "economic populists." Call it what it is. It's the Left.
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64 comments:
It depends how much the left want to get elected.
Making themselves an anti-war single-issue party might make activists feel good, but it won't get the Democratic party re-elected.
Politicans ought to want power! parties wanting to get elected is the basis of democracy. That's what makes them try to offer something that the public want to vote for.
Democracy knows better than the experts. The public don't vote against their own interests, or for them - they vote for the party/ person they prefer from the options on offer.
Activists would rather be pure than get elected - that's probably why they never miss an opportunity to criticize real-world democratic processes.
Scheiber's analysis seems overly centered around the Democratic Party. How many New Democrats headed Left, and how many became Republicans or non-voters?
I do think that 9/11, the War on Terror, and, in particular, our invasion of Iraq, is what is really going on here. If you look at Lieberman's voting record, when you get outside of national defense, he is very liberal. Yet, he fails at the one litmus test issue in the Democratic Party today - national defense. He is for a strong one, and the rulers of the Democratic Party are not. As Ann said - he is a liberal hawk, as is apparently she.
But what has to be remembered is that probably as many who have moved towards the Republicans here because of national security concerns, just as many have moved the other way. Not the religious conservatives, but rather, the country club / Rockefeller Republicans. These are to some extent the mainstream Protestants who are relatively liberal on social issues (as evidenced by the liberal stands taken by the traditional mainstream Protestant Churches - for example, the more fundamental churches aren't fighting about whether to ordain gays, but the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, et al. are).
So, really, no surprise that the voting in Fairfield County, Conn., has shifted so dramatically - many of these were Country Club Republicans who now oppose the War in Iraq and find themselves happier with the Ted Kennedys now than the George Bushes.
My theory on why all these people have abandoned the Republican Party is that they are more cosmopolitan, more worldly, than the average American. As a result, I suspect that they put more store in internationalism, and less in American exceptionalism. And, as a result, come to the conclusion that the answer to terror is diplomacy, and not armed might.
"Economic populists" are not infrequently poorly schooled on economic matters as a whole.
Their focus is entirely on the 'distribution' of wealth, and hence their policies favor efforts that redistribute money from rich to poor. And it's not at all 'against their interests' to support such policies. Such a notion exposes a narrow understanding of what one's interests are. Altruism, power, guilt, ignorance, fairness, paternalism, religion ...all are interests as vital to people as mere monetary gain, maybe moreso.
Regardless, such populists seem unaware of one major issue: distribution is one thing, but where does the wealth come from that they seek to redistribute? On the whole they seem remarkably agnostic or even militantly ignorant on the subject.
I do think that the poplulism of these new converts is suspect. Not the movie stars, but the Fairfield County, Conn. "liberals" outlined in the article - because, deep down, they are still the Rockefeller Republicans they always were. And that is why I think that the title of the article has merit - their populism is only skin deep because, at heart, they are elitists.
I think that the Democratic Party has had this problem for quite awhile - it is run to a very great extent by very rich blue-bloods who (IMHO) pretend populism in order to get elected by the working class that has traditionally formed the bulk of the Democratic Party. Yet, they retain their elitist lifestyles - their private schools (while opposing school choice), country clubs, mansions, etc., while voting to tax the estates of the upper middle class upon death (while their own, much larger, fortunes are protected from this through elaborate, expensive, estate planning).
I do think that the poplulism of these new converts is suspect. Not the movie stars, but the Fairfield County, Conn. "liberals" outlined in the article - because, deep down, they are still the Rockefeller Republicans they always were. And that is why I think that the title of the article has merit - their populism is only skin deep because, at heart, they are elitists.
I think that the Democratic Party has had this problem for quite awhile - it is run to a very great extent by very rich blue-bloods who (IMHO) pretend populism in order to get elected by the working class that has traditionally formed the bulk of the Democratic Party. Yet, they retain their elitist lifestyles - their private schools (while opposing school choice), country clubs, mansions, etc., while voting to tax the estates of the upper middle class upon death (while their own, much larger, fortunes are protected from this through elaborate, expensive, estate planning).
Freder Frederson
I disagree with your suggestion that the average Republican / Conservative is in favor of big government to the extent that it helps him. Rather, most of us are in favor of much less government, for the very simple reason that government is a highly inefficient means of resource allocation. But when faced with the reality of big government, many are willing to get their own. Besides, there is a lot of "my program is good and essential, and yours is a waste" sort of thinking going on. Note farmers, many of whom oppose big government fervently - except for farm subsidies.
And, this, of course, is one of the problems of big government, that the marginal cost to A of B's program is minimal, since it is spread out across the country, and visa versa. So, A doesn't oppose B's program, if B doesn't oppose A's. But then we get C, D.. X, Y, and Z, each with their own program, all getting together to get their own. The result is a death of a thousand cuts, where each program alone doesn't affect the bottom line (or our individual taxes) much, but the cumulation of all these programs does.
Freder says, "Republicans have convinced (mostly white) poor and middle class people to vote against their economic self interest..."
1. You make an egregious mistake in supposing that your sense of what the economic interests of 'poor and middle class ' should be actually correlate with their actual interests or how that might translate into policy. Marx attributed this to the non-existent idea of 'false consciousness' when in fact it suggests you, like Marx, have no idea what their interests are or how they might be met. You will remain 'baffled' as long as your view is thus limited.
2. Of course, no one gets wealthy "all by themselves". But then again, no one has really made that claim, either.
Isn't part of this the classic NY Times style disconnect? The Editorial page is filled with pity for the common man- "Something must be done to make our country more egalitarian!" Meanwhile, the Lifestyle page reads like a SEx and the City primer- What rising property values means for buying your dream home in the Hamptons" or "Why are wealthy women attracted to contractors?"
Dave,
I don't disagree with what you said. But I will suggest here that there is a basic difference between someone who is apparently somewhat liberal socially because they got very lucky, as is the case of the movie star, and someone who got there because they got a good start in life, worked hard, etc. The later is where I think the big shift has been - like I suggested, the Country Club Republicans. Many tend to be socially liberal, but not egalitarian. These are the Republicans (or their descendants) who freed the slaves, gave women the vote, and, yes, enacted the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The point about "cosmopolitan" is that it is a mind set, and not a reality. I suspect that there is at least some correlation between how often someone has traveled to foreign countries and how much they see other cultures having equal merit, and the effectiveness of international relations, and international travel to a very great extent equates to money - You just can't afford to pop over to Europe once or twice a year if you don't have the money for it.
So, I am not suggesting that wealth translates into any real knowledge of anything, but rather, may translate into the belief that you have such knowledge.
Freder Frederson
So, you seem to be suggesting that the primary purpose of tax policy is to send the coded message that passive income is better than income earned through work. Rather, the message being sent is that investing is better than spending. And that message is sent because it demonstrably is - it creates more and better paying jobs.
The person that the lower dividend rate is aimed at is not really the worker living off of his income, but rather, the person who has some extra money, and is faced with the decision of whether to spend it on a new car or on a financial investment, and the goal is to get him to invest the money and not spend it on consumption.
Because, remember, when tax policy is used for this sort of thing, it operates at the margins - which means it affects the guy who has disposable income who is trying to figure out what to do with it, and not the guy who doesn't.
RogerA also makes an extremely good point about tax policy - contrary to liberal orthodoxy, it is not a zero sum game. Good tax policy increases the pie, whereas bad tax policy can even shrink it, if it is bad enough (such as, for example, such high marginal individual rates that not only is work discouraged, but the talented leave).
Dave,
The article is subscriber-only, but I am not the least bit surprised. I worked for a French company, that used to be owned by the French government until it was mostly privitized, and have seen some of the problems first hand. Even most of a decade ago, the company was doing almost all of its hiring outside of France, because of French labor laws, and, in particular, that it is almost impossible to fire anyone there. And this from a company that not that long before had been fully owned by the French government.
One thing that was always humorous was that about the first of August, everyone would wish everyone goodbye for the monty. I would point out that, no, I wasn't leaving for the month, because I had a much more limited amount of annual leave than they had. It never did any good - they continued to work under French rules and laws, and we worked under American rules and laws. They got a lot more time off, and shorter work weeks, but we got the new work.
Why are so many wealthy people adopting economic populism? It's an interesting question and one that has puzzled me for several years. Professionally, I work with wealthy individuals on their tax and other personal wealth management issues. Many of my clients have been quite liberal, or “populist” as I guess is the current term of choice, on economic issues. Certainly not all have had this view, but a slight majority fell (or fall) into this category. Since redistributionist policies tend to work against the self-interest of my clients, I've often wondered how they can reconcile their policy preferences with their life style. I've come up with two explanations:
First, they don't understand that they are rich. In 1994, I delivered the personal income tax return for the prior year to one of my clients. The return showed a large amount of tax due and my client was very upset. I listened to him vent for several minutes. When he started to redirect his diatribe from the IRS and started to focus on my competence, I pointed to the picture on his wall of him with Bill Clinton -- taken at a fund raiser hosted by my client -- and said, "Don't blame me. You helped elect the guy. When Clinton said he'd raise taxes on the rich, who'd you think he had in mind?" My client was stunned into silence. After a few moments, he mumbled, "Not me.” This man, with a multi-million dollar AGI, did not think he was rich. He honestly thought of himself as upper middle class.
The second explanation is that they don’t think the policies they advocate will adversely affect them. A few years ago I had a client who had made his fortune in technology, starting a company while he was still in school. His personal household budget was over $3 million a year. He understood he was rich. He also understood he’d made his money ethically. He had not taken advantage of or ill-used anyone. This was in contrast to others whose business practices were not as beneficent. He was in favor of raising the minimum wage. (None of his employees were paid the minimum wage.) He was confident that his policy choices would simply require others to do what they should be doing (and what he was already doing). He wasn’t in favor of raising taxes – regulating wages and benefits was a better way of helping the poor. He would not tolerate anyone using government’s regulatory powers to interfere with the way he did business. He simply could not imagine such a thing. What he did was right and proper. Enlightened regulation would reinforce what he did, not interfere with his desires. Because he was smart enough to make so much money, he was sure he was smart enough to make the right policy choices. If only he, and like-minded people, were given enough power, all our problems could be solved.
Wow, that was the clearest declaration of political alignment I've ever seen on this blog! Joining the dark side, are we?
More seriously, I hope anyone who takes Islamic terrorism as a real ideological threat comes to the same conclusion. I wrote this on Brendan Loy's blog (for non-Instapundit readers, he recently quit the Democratic party):
...But almost all Republicans agree on one thing [despite differences in domestic agenda] - the US must pursue an aggressive foreign policy to combat Islamic terrorism. There is nothing inherently wrong with US power, and there is no shame in strength. While we must be vigilant to avoid abuse of our power, we are completely justified in destroying those who seek to destroy us. There is no moral equivalance... One side seeks to protect the innocent from harm, the other uses the innocent to protect itself from harm.
We may disagree on tactics - the invasion of Iraq, and Afghanistan, diplomacy towards Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine - but it seems to me that you hold the same moral understanding of this war [GWOT] that most conservatives do, and if only on that fact alone, I think you will find "this side" quite hospitable. Link
FF: Republicans want to end social security???
No, no, no, no no! Republicans were in favor of privatising social security. See, there is a difference. I want the money the gov't takes out of our paychecks to actually be productive and accumulate wealth. I would never put my 401K in a mutual fund that earns 2%. Why should poor people, who need that wealth even more, be forced to put what is sometimes their only retirement fund in something with such pitiful returns???? The reality is, under the guise of protecting the poor's retirement, the democrats effectively crippled it!
altoids1306
But that is the thing - a lot of life long Republicans don't agree with the WoT as it is being fought by the Administration. My suggestion is that a lot of the voting shift in that county in Conn. are a result of some of these people jumping ship. It makes a lot more sense that a lot of Republicans shifted to the Democratic Party than that so many Republicans moved out to be replaced by anti-war Democrats.
I say this from some personal experience - I know a number of life-long Republicans who do oppose the war, and are now much more accepting of the Democratic Party point of view than they ever were before. And this is showing up in their voting - being willing for the first time in their lives to vote for a Democrat. I should add that some of these now get a big chuckle out of Bush jokes, despite having voted for him the first time.
With respect to the labor vs. capital dispute, the undeniable reality is that the balance of power is continuing to shift towards capital. Two billion people are joining the world economy, creating a huge supply of labor. The cost of capital is rising with each Fed Reserve meeting, showing the relative scarcity of capital.
It simply must be so - billions of dollars flow electronically from country to country daily, seeking higher returns and lower risk. The flesh-and-blood of labor is not nearly as mobile. Labor, just like everything else, will be packaged into tidy, interchangeable, standardized units. The efficency of the global market demands it.
How then, do we maintain the standard of living in the US? There is the standard Friedman line of more-skills, more-education. But also, perhaps more importantly, spreading capital to more people. Why should corporate profits only be enjoyed by the rich? Everyone should own stock, own a piece of land, own part of the US economy, however small.
Democrats can sneer all they want at the "ownership society", but the answer to the middle-class squeeze isn't more protections for labor, it is more participation in capital. US unions will suffer from Chinese factories, 401k's will not.
Well, as one who came up from rank, rural property to the middle class rather late in life, I have to call bullshit on the Marxian crap being spouted by Freder. I can't tell if he got contaminated in college by the Marxist bullshit or if he's just jerking us around.
Of course, if nobody (well nobody but the high-up Marxits poobahs such as Castro or Kim) owns anything, then the govt has to 'take care' of them.
And the inheritance tax is flat immoral. If I earned it legitimately and paid the necessary taxes on it at the time, the govt should have no right to take a big bunch just because I died.
I'll start buying Freder's argument on this one as soon as I start seeing wealthy Dem and liberal families dodging the tax. (Are you listening Kennedys and Krocs et al??)
As for Northeasterners being more cosmopolitan, it *must* be true because they keep telling me it is. As they sneer at the people I grew up with it is obvious how much more accepting of other cultures they are.
Bruce:
I see your point. I think we can all disagree about how the GWOT is being fought - should we have invaded Iraq, how many troops, withdrawal, etc ... It is possible to have a principled anti-Iraq-war stance.
If that were the only differences between Democrats and Republicans, I would be voting Democratic much more often than I do now.
But I think the differences between the Democrats and Republicans is far more fundamental. They question our moral imperative - not how to fight GWOT, but if it should be fought at all. Kerry lost me when he said terrorism is a law enforcement problem. It's a matter of worldview. Is US power trustworthy? Is a weaker US a good or bad thing? Do we have the right to kill terrorists? Does the US have the right to ignore the UN and act in self-preservation and self-interest?
These are fundamental questions of national sovereignty and the moral nature of this war.
I can understand the frustrations of traditional Republicans seeing Bush spend a trillion dollars on Iraq. Tax and spend is for Democrats. Tax-cut and spend is sheer idiocy. Social security and Medicare are are going to implode soon. China is running circles around the US in East Asia. But we have limited resources, and we can only solve so many problems at one time. If you believe, as I do, that Islamic terrorism is the greatest threat right now, then you should be voting Republican. I wish it were not the case, but it is.
There are lots of problems in the country and the world. But first, we must survive. There isn't a lot of room for error here. It doesn't take much imagination to see how jihadists could get nuclear weapons.
We won the Cold War by taking it seriously. We made mistakes, but we never, as a nation, questioned our moral right to prosecute that war. Similar effort is required now.
Dave:
Capital is anything but "relatively scarce." Witness the billions being raised in various hedge funds and private equity funds.
So what? There are billions of barrels of oil sitting in the US strategic reserves, yet we are still short on oil. Giving an absolute quantity of a some commodity says nothing about it's scarcity.
It may be true that the cost of borrowing funds has gone up (via the Fed's interest rate hikes) but cash is not a commodity like oil or gold: it does not increase in price as its supply decreases and demand increases. The cost to borrow funds is independent of the supply of money.
I don't know where to begin. It's simply not true. Interest rates are the cost of capital. Cost goes up when something becomes more scarce. What is inflation? Too much capital competing for too few goods. How to deal with it? Raise interest rates, which makes capital more scarce. I can't make it any simpler. If you don't understand this, I give up.
Dave:cash is not scarce by any measure. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
LOL. Ignore all arguments to the contrary, and simply state, arbitrarily and without evidence, that you are correct. Glad to know that it's business as usual for the Left.
Chris0: There's a common tactic at play here, which is to state an opponent's position in the most distorted, caricatured way, then taking the opponent to task for not being consistent with these supposed "beliefs."
Agreed. I think the larger issue is one of "personal credentials." Al Gore can't talk about global warming because he travels on business jets, non-vets should shut about about the war, etc, etc. It's ridiculous. Should only vets set foreign policy? Should only parents whose kids go to public school be allowed to vote on vouchers? I agree with the strawman argument problem, but I think both parties are equally guilty.
Where is it written that liberals are required to shed themselves of all of their wealth in order to somehow be consistent with their political philosophy? ... The assumption seems to be that if only we had vouchers, then everyone would be able to send their children to St. Alban's.
Proof of my previous assertion.
Freder said, "Gee, that sounds positively Marxist. The workers should own the means of production."
You're all over the map, Freder. Owning shares of multiple companies via a mutual fund is a far cry from Marx's rdiciulous and boneheaded dictatorship of the proletariat. And you know it.
Marx was a terrible economist, and so was John Kenneth Galbraith. Leftist economists have never been able to figure out how to create wealth except by assuming it as a constant.
Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore and Dan Rather and John Kerry are elitists who want to rule, who want to show their great compassion for the unwashed masses by taking care of us. They, however, are different, and remain in the Platonic model of educated rulers, meaning they get to cut in front of the line ('don't-you-know-who-I-am?').
They are all idiots.
We just saw them ousting Joe Lieberman
No, we saw his lose his party's primary, that's all. Since when do we all hate the voting process so much? He ran, he lost. That's not being ousted, or purged.
altoids1306
My point I think is that we are undergoing a major political realignment right now, and the WoT is a lot of the impetus for it. Maybe you can think of it as a tipping point. But we have proud Democrats moving towards the Republican Party, and visa versa. It almost seems as if a major blockage has been removed.
It sure feels to me that a lot of socially conservative Democrats are finally moving into the Republican column, and a lot of socially liberal Republicans are moving into the Democratic column. I suspect for many of them, they had been stuck in their old party through loyalty, tradition, and inertia.
Part of this seems to be that socical conservatism seems to go better with a strong stance on the WoT, and social liberalism seems to go better with an internationalist, accomodationist viewpoint about the global WoT.
This may be a result of social conservatives being more comfortable with a black and white view of the WoT, whereas social liberals are more into moral relatism.
As I said, this is just a theory. We may find a lot of the Democrats who are supporting Bush right now moving solidly back to their party when the WoT is finally won (if ever), and Republicans who oppose it moving back to their old party too. But I doubt it.
If I am right though, I will suggest that the title of the article: "The populism of Ned Lamont and the netroots runs only skin deep" may be somewhat accurate, in that my suspicion all along has been that much of the populism spouted for years by the liberal elites is faked (like Lamont talking about Wall-Mart, while owning its stock), used to manipulate their blue collar followers, and that, in truth, many of these elites are truly elitist. Without the bluer collar of their followers, the need for this will evaporate, and the pandering will become unnecessary.
Say Freder, just for kicks, define "greed" for me. And be specific. What does it actually mean? Since even union members expect to be paid for their labor, why isn't that also considered 'greedy'? Is wanting to pay lower prices for food greedy? Why not?
Re "It is just amazing that advocating maximum marginal income tax rates in the mid-30 percent range, a balanced budget, decent wages, healthcare, retirement security, and strong unions, makes one a raving Marxist."
It all depends on how you "advocate" them.
Do you mean a "living wage"? National health care like in Canada? Government-supplied-only retirement? Strong unions like in France?
Well, yeah. that makes you a Marxist.
Re: But I look at WalMart and ask "why do so many people have no choice but to shop at WalMart?"
And thus is a bad economist born. The very framing of the question suggests an invincible ignorance regarding wealth creation, as if one took dialectical materialism to be something other than the pure piffle it is known to be.
Bruce:
Hmm, I don't like the way you've framed it, but I see what you're saying. What I call a "moral understanding" of GWOT might be due to social conservatism as you said.
But I think the larger point is that the two parties are realigning along disagreements about the moral nature and fundamental rationale of the GWOT, and I'm not sure there is a good correlation of that with social conservatism. There are plenty of pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, pro-legalize-pot, pro-sex-ed Republicans. (The Governator, for one)
IMHO, Republicans provide a much more consistent platform for believers in classical liberalism and humanism. The anti-war Left can't stop shilling about Gitmo while white-washing Saddam. To turn a parable on its head, the Dems want us to obsess over the sawdust stuck in our eye while ignoring (or even excusing) the planks being shoved by jihadists into the eyes of others.
I am not sure either if there is a really good correlation between social conservatism and a support for the WoT as being fought by the Bush Administration, and, the converse. I may be stretching a bit too far here.
And, I will admit that my personal experiences don't translate that well here. I think that I am fairly close to the middle on most social issues, yet stronly support the Administration's WoT, esp. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, family and friends who share very similar social views, but oppose the Administration's WoT, are now voting for a lot of Democrats.
Yet, I still get the feeling that we are seeing a major political reallignment right now, and that the WoT is just the impetus for the reallignment. I seriously doubt that that county in Conn. moved so quickly from Republican to Democrat because of emmigration/ immigration, but rather, suspect that a lot of Republicans have jumped ship over this issue. And there are plenty jumping the other way. But if the WoT were all that was involved, most wouldn't be switching political affiliation. You would have more Joe Liebermans.
I appreciate Ann providing a venue to work on this theory and those of you who have poked holes in it. Thanks.
The problem with ad hominem attacks in a forum like this is that they don't work. They aren't persuasive. All they do really is get Ann upset and the poster banned from her blog.
I suspect that part of the reason is that this is a pretty much middle of the road forum, where people of different persuasions can meet to hopefully discuss these issues intelligently. The sites far on either side of the political spectrum attract a lot more invective, but for the most part, they are preaching to the choir, and no one is really trying to convince anyone.
Re: "Yet for some reason, your spouse's lack of health insurance is the fault of statists."
Well, it is. Too much to discuss here, but Sippican points out a crucial point you skipped right by.
State and Federal laws make the purchase of simple cheap catastrophic insurance illegal, and mandates huge coverage that prices most of the uninsured out of any market at all. Pricing Medicare and Medicaid fees under the market similarly drives prices up for everyone else.
Whenever you run into a shortage in modern societies, one can be certain that the dead hand of government is to blame.
The two ways to analyze "economic populism" are the socialist-leaning way and the libertarian-leaning way. Let's see their conclusions:
1) "Economic populism" takes money from the rich and uses it in the benefit of the less well off, and so is in the self-interest of the working and middle classes and against the interests of the affluent. Accordingly, with the current voting pattern, it is clear voters don't understand their own interests and must be educated in them.
2) "Economic populism" causes poor economic growth, job loss, and a stifling of class mobility. It accordingly directly harms the working and middle classes. The well-connected affluent remain largely unaffected, at worst trading a few luxuries for the power that their connections gives them over the flow of government money. The current voting pattern represents an expression of those interests.
Are your expectations really that low?
My expectations for you are gettin' lower all the time.
To add to what Sippican says so brilliantly above... A member of my family was diagnosed with terminal cancer about one month ago. Terminal, in that there is no long term chance of survival, no "cure" rate. Yet this member of my family is receiving treatment for this cancer at a wonderful, state of the art cancer center, treatment which may prolong his life and make the prolonged life more comfortable and more "normal". This family member has good insurance from his employer, which is fortunate since 400 ml of one of the three drugs is 8 thousand dollars. One of the things that goes through my mind when he's at the treatment area is "none of this would exist in a socialist/socialism lite system. The drugs and treatment my family member is receiving could only have been developed in the medical and research system that we have, only with the expectation of profits, and only through a mix of co-operation and competition between research and the pharmaceutical industry. The amount of both intellectual and financial capital needed to develop these fiendishly complicated and amazing drugs could not be mined from the finite shaft of statist medicine. One of these drugs has only been on the market for a little over a year. The science of understanding and treating cancer moves fast, something government-run projects are not noted for.
You can crow all you want about free medical care, but as Sippican notes, in the socialist dream utopia, I imagine going up to the grim counter after a 4 hour wait: "Hello, here is my family member who has cancer X with metastases. We are here for his treatment."
"Sorry, we don't waste expensive drugs on terminal cases, besides the stocks of those drugs are dwindling since we can't produce them anymore post-revolution. Go to the state pharmacy across town and get some laudanum. Here's your voucher."
I would also note that one of the drugs was researched and produced by an Israeli company. I'm sure that the Hezbollah drug companies will produce much better 13 step synthetic monoclonal antibody cancer drugs once they win the war.
My point was that those countries and ours would not have the health systems they and we do if it weren't for the free market medical industries in the US and other countries. Socialized medicine takes advantage of the advancements of countries that have more market-geared systems. And I would argue that you would not get the same quality of care in those places that you get in the US. I'm not saying our system is perfect but I think the advanced (and advancing) state of medicine and care is thanks to the US and similar countries. European socialized medicine takes advantage of that, just like they take advantage of our military protection because they can't, for the most part, defend themselves.
What I find maddening about the Left and Progressives is their refusal to admit that the economics of socialism are an absolute fraud. It destroyed the Soviet Union. It brought England to its knees in the 1970s, when it was so broke from its failed nationalized industries it received a loan from the IMF in 1976 in order to remain solvent. It is, in fact, no longer an arguable assertion, except in the way that astrologers and conspiraciy theorists deny reality, that socialism is a viable way to run all or any portion of an economy.
Socialsim imposes the impossible burden of replacing the intricate information available through prices with a centralized bureaucracy that must somehow learn what people want and provide it by orders and protocols. Mises correctly predicted it would be "impossible", and it is. The planned economy relies on the unrealizable goal of omniscience by central management about supply and demand, and invariably results in unproductive incentives and a vicious circle of declining output. As a result, “it is intrinsically impossible”* to successfully implement any such plan. “It can’t be done, not even by an army of wise saints, let alone by normal people exposed to the normal pressures and temptations of official power. *"
The feminist writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulic described the debilitating effects of the Soviet version of socialism on the daily lives of women and the poor. “Every mother in Bulgaria can point to where communism failed, from the failures of the planned economy (and consequent lack of food, milk), to the lack of apartments, child-care facilities, clothes, disposable diapers, or toilet paper. The banality of everyday life is where it has really failed, rather than the level of ideology.” The failures are evident from newspaper headlines declaring “No Bread”, to “the lack of sugar, oil, coffee or flour”, even decades after World War II. “After all these years, communism has not been able to produce a simple sanitary napkin, a bare necessity for women. So much for it’s economy and its so-called emancipation, too.” She asks, “What can one say except that it is humiliating?” Communism failed, she concludes, because it resulted in fear, distrust, and shortages, “a system that was continuously unable to provide for its citizen’s basic needs for forty years or more,” a condition of egalitarian poverty that “cannot be changed by words, declarations, promises, or threats from politicians.”
Following the Great Depression and World War II, Britain nationalized multiple industries, as socialism appeared to be the answer to the widespread misery of the times. By the 1970s, the telephone and water systems, the National Health System, British Steel, British Airways, British Gas (which also made stoves), British Coal, British Rail (which owned gas stations, highways and hotels) and the massive state electric power monopoly controlled huge sectors of the economy. And they were failing. Inflation and unemployment were high, taxes were punitive, and labor strikes were frequent. In 1973, coal and power supplies were so disrupted that British businesses only operated three days per week, and families spent their evenings by candlelight. When hospital workers struck, medical care had to be severely rationed. Work stoppages resulted in uncollected garbage and unburied coffins. By 1976, Britain was forced to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund in order to remain solvent. *
These examples should serve as a warning to those who, despite all evidence, refuse to believe that Marx was horribly wrong. I understand that anti-capitalism is regularly taught in public schools in France, but even there attitudes are beginning to change. I wish US Progressives would have already learned that lesson.
Anyone who extolls the virtues of universal healthcare has not done much reading on it. Or has never lived in Tennessee, where our "universal" TennCare system has never been anything but a bureaucratic nightmare and devours more and more of the state budget every year. They closed open enrollment over ten years ago, and it is still metastasizing.
Get sick in Canada and get ready to start bribing receptionists, nurses, pharmacists, and everyone else within sight to get timely appointments and necessary meds. You don't get to choose a doctor, you don't get a second opinion, and they will not let you go see a private practitioner even if your assigned doctor is too busy to get you necessary treatment/surgery/etc.
A comparative study of death rates from stroke and heart disease put England’s NHS thirteenth out of 15 European countries studied. In a 17-nation cancer study, the five-year survival rate for lung cancer in England was the worst of the 17, for colon cancer 12th, and for breast cancer England was eleventh out of 17 (just above Slovenia, Austria, Estonia, Poland, and Slovakia). In the early 1990s Britain had fewer radiotherapists per capita than Poland, and fewer medical oncologists than any country in Western Europe. OECD figures for 1996 show that the UK had 1.7 practicing physicians per 1,000 population Germany had 3.4 per 1,000, France 2.9 and Poland 2.4. The only countries with a lower proportion among the 29 studied by the OECD were Korea (1.2), Mexico (1.2) and Turkey (1.1). Total NHS spending on health care is low by international standards. In 1997 total expenditure on health care in the UK was 6.9 per cent of GDP. The German figure was 10.7 per cent and the French, 9.6 per cent. Of the 29 advanced countries studied by the OECD, only Hungary, Ireland, Korea, Mexico, Poland and Turkey spent less. *
In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) rated health systems around the world and ranked Canada 30th, well behind top-rated France. Criteria included efficacy of health care spending, preventive care and how fairly the poor, minorities and other special populations are treated. Virtually all of the industrialized countries that ranked higher than Canada allow private health care purchases and have a mix of public and private suppliers of care. * Further, a report on the 2003 SARS outbreak found Ontario's public health system to be “unprepared, fragmented, poorly led, uncoordinated, inadequately resourced, professionally impoverished, and generally incapable of discharging its mandate.” As a result, the report called the structure and capacity of its public healthcare “woefully inadequate.”* Even food quality has suffered as Canada’s Medicare applies cost-saving measures to hospital meals. Manitoba hospitals cut expenses by using frozen meals shipped from 1300 miles away. However, the reheated meals were unpalatable and so widely reviled, the matter became a major regional political issue.*
According to analyses by McKinsey, an economics and management consulting firm, the United States is more productive in the treatment of breast cancer, lung cancer and cholelithiasis than Germany and the United Kingdom. The reasons for this result can be traced directly to their respective health systems. For example, “the United Kingdom has not invested as quickly in technologies that have dramatically improved the diagnostic capabilities of medicine and significantly reduced recovery time.” Germany, on the other hand, “has a system more like the United States had twenty years ago. In Germany, medical expenses are paid for on a task-by-task basis for services of doctors and hospitals. As a result, hospitals in Germany have no financial incentive to reduce length of stay.”*
For reasons I cannot fathom, Blogger ate my html.
Here's the links in ugly form.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cw55.pd
http://www.aims.ca/library/notromanow.pdf
http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FRTGAM.20040420.wsars0420%2FBNStory%2FFront&ord=1155660744762&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true
http://www.mackinac.org/print.asp?ID=2748
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226476987/sr=1-1/qid=1155660991/ref=sr_1_1/002-9465337-4764020?ie=UTF8&s=books
But Mike, it did eat my homework, or it was consumed in a spontaneous and evil wind, or lost while trying to saving a starving man. Or something.
Health care, like money, does not grow on trees. If "insurance paid for it", that means some sucker paid for it.
The role of insurance isn't to decrease the amount of money you spend (see 1st point, health care does not grow on trees), it is to smooth it out. Let's say I have a 5% chance per year of developing a disease that will cost 50,000 USD to fix. Then my health insurance premium should, theoretically, be 2,500 USD/year, plus the overhead and profit margin. If the market were perfectly efficent, the insurance premiums you paid over your lifetime would exactly equal your medical bills.
Your insurance premium should be based on an individual assessment of your personal risk. If I don't smoke, the premium will be lower. If I get married, have two kids, my premium will be lower - because I am less likely to engage in risky behavior. This isn't discrimination, this is called an accurate assessment of risk. In a free market, if an insurance company refuses to recognize my lower risk and lower my premium, I can switch to a company that will.
The only argument for national health insurance is that it will eliminate some of the overhead "single-payer, yada yada". However, in my opinion, that is vastly outweighed by the drastic loss in choice, as Sippican pointed out. Only the free market can make provide a multitude of products for all life styles at all price ranges. Only in the free market, can risk be securitized and sold - if I buy a share in an insurance company, I am essentially buying risk. In this way, consumers can hedge against risk, and basically transfer their risk to investors, who assume it willingly for a price. A far better system than just forcing that risk on taxpayers.
This thread would drive me to drink if it weren't for so many astute responses to the madness. Nothing terrifies me like people advocating for universal health care.
Re: "Nothing terrifies me like people advocating for universal health care."
I once was in a debate involving David Himmelstein MD, one of the folks behind the Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance
Afterwards I googled (oops ...sorry!), er, I did a Google search and found out he's an out-and-out Marxist, having written at least one article with "a Marxist view of current U.S. health policy". Sheesh. He was also a malignant sort of debater (made up facts, etc.) Regardless, the craving for power he had was almost palpable.
The debate was at a small NY NPR affiliate, so I was the Evil One on the panel. I was lucky to escape alive.
Sure! invite Mike!
In Wisconsin, the beer is free.
Or so I've heard.
Mike is sooo invited. Bring the thermite!
Freder Frederson:
I understand your point - it does seem unfair for people who lose the genetic lottery to pay more in health care. And the government does have a responsibility to protect the weak and poor.
But let's not go to extremes. Your strawman of children dying outside emergency rooms (better yet, a poor, disadvantaged minority girl of a single mother, bleeding to death as she claws at the spotless glass doors of a Hampton clinic) is absurd. Do the uninsured have a right to free basic care? To have their pain relieved? Of course - you're not going to find much argument there. Do they have the right to generic drugs, root canals, and the like? I say why not, but some might object. Do they have the right to multiple MRI scans, and the best, most expensive cancer treatments? I don't think so.
Every dollar of mine that is spent on someone else's care is a dollar that I can't spend on my family's care. What's so wrong about wanting the best I can buy for those I love? I can play the sob story game too. What if, because I'm forced by the government to pay for others, I can no longer afford the treatment that could save my child's life?
You can say that the nice thing to do is spread everyone's money around so everyone gets equal care, but I don't think you have the right to take it by force. Let's call a spade a spade. This is socialism.
altoids:
Freder doesn't care about no stinkin' facts. He won't be persuaded by pointing out his ideological flaws, the economic impossibility of socialism, or the unintended side effects of national health care that makes the cure worse than the disease.
The New Democrats want to rule. They don't need to make any sense. They're our betters, they know what's good for us, and they are just right, that's all, and that's that.
P.S. Careful! People to the right of the far left best call it a shovel.
Pogo:
I know. My intent was never to convince him - that's a fool's task - but to present a reasonable counterargument for anyone who might be reading this.
To those people, let me make a direct appeal - use your broswer's search function (Ctrl+F) to search for all instances of "altoids" or "freder" in this thread. You be the judge. I think you'll find that I have been acting in good faith, responding to the main points of his posts, while he has constantly avoided mine, changing the subject, misrepresenting my views, bringing fresh accusations.
My arguments stand for themselves, I don't think there's any need to continue this any further. Here are the links.
Link Health care does not grow on trees, insurance cannot make medical bill magically disappear - it just makes other people pay for it. Insurance should be based on individual risk, a free market is the best way to quantify and manage risk.
Link Government has the responsibility to protect the weak and poor - which means basic health services should be guaranteed. Vaccines, yes, $1000 MRI scans, no. But we must balance that with our individual right to private property. What if, because you're forced by the government to pay for others, you can no longer afford the treatment that could save your child's life?
To summarize, national health insurance means taking people's money by force and redistributing it. This is socialism. The government has a history of fantastically underestimating the cost of it's social programs. Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt unless the government either reneges on its promised benefits, or drastically raises taxes. We don't need more problems. We've got enough wreckage already.
Re: "a single payer system is not "socialism" except in the loosest definition of the term"
Your invincible ignorance of the meaning of that word just made everyone's IQ drop several points.
Re: socialism; Don't take my word for it:
In advocating the dominance of government allocation over market principles in the organization of the US health system, NHI is by definition a socialist endeavor.
Berger PL, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions About Prosperity, Equality, and Liberty; Basic Books, New York; 1986 pp. 20, 70-3
By state control of the economy, socialism transfers power to an inner circle of bureaucrats who will inevitably seek more expansive powers. “It cannot be stated too often that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.”
Cristopher Hitchens Why Orwell Matters; Basic Books, New York; 2002, pp. 82-3.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, liberal economist Robert Heilbronner noted that there is “widespread agreement, including among most socialist economists, that whatever form advanced societies may take in the twenty-first century, a market system of some kind will constitute their principal means of coordination.”
Heilbronner R, 21st Century Capitalism; Norton, New York 1993, p. 97.
The productivity, creativity and competence of the free market that has been “the greatest –indeed, the only significant- alleviator of poverty in history.”
Mueller J, Capitalism, Democracy and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery; Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ; 1999 pp. 21, 53
Re: "My friend is a doctor ...His practice employees three full time employees whose only job is to deal with insurance claims and companies."
And if you spent 10 minutes there you'd realize that at least half of the forms and demands for information come from Medicare and Medicaid, and the other half all merely copied Medicare's format for their requests.
Anyone who argues that the government is more efficient running health care doesn't know the meaning of the word. (Clue: Merely spending less on administration does not equal higher efficiency.)
Pointing out inefficiencies and contradictions in the pseudo-market of health insurance does not translate into "therefore, the obvious answer is national health care", except maybe to you and other socialists, but then socialists tend to say that as an answer to every problem, big or small. It's the Marxist's magic pill.
Homework for Freder:
Look up socialism and efficiency. May I suggest Von Mises as a source? Or Thomas Sowell. If time is short, read Hayek's "Road to Serfdom". If you're really lazy, try the cartoon version.
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