We should be able to take as a given that a viable political movement or party should have as its ultimate goal the betterment of the human race, or at least that part of the human race that lives within the physical area in which the movement is operating. The nature of the betterment should be made clear by the movement. The policies and strategies of the movement should be clearly articulated and it should be explained how they lead to the betterment desired by the movement. It is unclear to me that the conservative movement, largely identifiable with the Republican party, has as its ultimate goal the betterment of the lives of US citizens; or that it has any clear ultimate goal whatsoever.
There is agreement among leading conservatives as to policy. Here is what we hear them say:
1) Cut taxes, particularly income, capital gains, and estate;
2) Reduce the size of the federal government by elimination of public education, health care, and social security, thereby enabling large spending cuts. In particular, get rid of that ObamaCare!
3) "Grow" the economy;
4) De-regulate business and finance, allowing laissez-faire capitalism to operate unfettered;
5) Eliminate organized labor;
6) Maintain a strong military;
7) Make life difficult for any one who is not white, of european (preferably northern european) descent, and protestant (preferably evangelically so).
Conservatives, are there ANY I'VE MISSED HERE? FILL ME IN.
It is not clear that these policies are mutually consistent. It is also not clear that they will better the lives of US citizens. One at a time, here's where the policies seem to me to lead.
1) Cuts in income, capital gains, and estate taxes. This policy will ease the tax burden on the wealthy, while doing little to nothing for the citizen of "ordinary" income (say less than $250,000/year). The justification offered for cutting these taxes is that the wealthy will then be able to invest more money in economic capital, leading to economic growth. Economic growth will lead to overall larger tax revenues (despite the tax cuts for the rich). Economic growth will also result in lower rates of unemployment. This is the philosophy of "trickle down", or "supply-side" economics, by which investments by the wealthy lead to increased supply of goods and increased employment, leading to increased demand for goods, leading to further increases in employment, and so on. According to the conservatives, a rising tide (growing economy) will lift all boats. This sounds very good, and even seems to make some sense. The problem is that we have tried it several times, and have demonstrated that it does NOT work. We tried it in the closing decades of the 19th centurey and opening decades of the 20th century (the age of the robber barons, in which income/wealth disparity in the United States was about as extreme as it is now). The result was the 1929 stock market crash and the great depression. We tried it under Reagan in the 1980s. The result was economic downturn and huge budget deficits (because tax cuts to the rich did not result in economic growth, increased tax revenues, and more jobs). We tried it under George W Bush between 2000 and 2008. The result was the housing bubble and the Great Panic of 2007-2008. The economy has never bounced back from that, and unemployment is high. We have ample evidence that lowering taxes on high incomes, huge income/wealth disparity, unregulated capitalism DO NOT WORK. What prevents it from working is human nature (which can be summed up in a simple profane phrase: "Hooray for me, and f--- you". This phrase, by the way, also explains why communism does not work in practice, even though it, too, sounds very good in the ideal). Without the United States government (the taxpayers) to bail out the financial industry and some manufacturing firms, we would today have NO ECONOMY. This is where the conservative policy of tax cuts lead us.
Economic growth is based on DEMAND, not SUPPLY. Demand must come first. The bulk of demand comes from the bulk of the population--the 99% of us that make less than $250,000 per year, not from the people in the top 1% of income. Tax cuts might work to spur demand if they were awarded to this 99%. More money in the hands of the vast majority of Americans will make demand effective, and will quite naturally lead to scale-up in production. But the rich will not spend it. They pretty much have all the amenities. Ordinary citizens have both NEEDS and WANTS. The rich have only WANTS.
We might include in tax cuts the 401k retirement accounts, essentially tax-free retirement savings accounts offered to employees by businesses. Their purpose is to transfer the responsibility of saving for retirement to the worker (part of the personal responsibility crusade). Unfortunately, ordinary people do not have the skills required to adequately manage such an investment account, and do not have enough money to fund such an account. There is no extra money after funding the day-to-day expenses of living. 401ks have been a failure for the ordinary person in the US. The rich, of course, have benefited from them because they can store a lot of money in them tax free. This is essentially, then, a tax cut for the rich.
Now here's a question to which the answer is not at all clear: For what reason would a person making a modest income vote for a conservative who advocates tax cuts for the rich? In what way will this benefit him or her? People are supposed to vote their self-interest. If a policy does not benefit YOU, indeed will probably hurt YOU, why would you vote to support it? Why is Joe the plumber a conservative? This makes absolutely no sense to me.
2) Reduce the size of government by eliminating programs requiring huge spending. Perhaps the true purpose of the tax cut policy is to create a situation (huge deficits) in which elimination of medicare and social security can be justified. "We just aren't producing the tax revenues necessary to sustain these programs." (Never mind that we aren't producing the revenues because of the huge tax cuts that you, the conservative, insist on.) But how will eliminating these programs improve life in America? Social Security is a New Deal (Democratic) program. Medicare is a Great Society (Democratic) program. Both have the clear, humanitarian objective to better the lives of people in the US. But they are very costly. They are supported by tax revenues. The only way to sustain them in the face of the retirement of the baby-boomer generation is to generate more tax revenue. The conservative solution is to NOT sustain them. How will this better our lives? We will have a lot of old people who can't work and who will therefore have NO INCOME WHATSOEVER (because social security will be gone). We will have a lot of old people with substantial medical needs, but who will be unable to pay for care for these needs. What is good or desirable about that? How will anyone who is not extremely wealthy benefit from that? Why would such people vote for a conservative who espouses that?
And education. I admit that public education in the US is abyssmal. Many teachers are ignorant of their own subjects. Infrastructure is decaying. Money is not available to fund up-to-date teaching accessories (computers for example). Creationism is replacing evolution in biology programs in the schools. Pay for teachers is poor. It is nearly impossible to fire poor teachers. Poor teaching results in poor learning. Kids get turned off in the school system somewhere between 4th and 9th grades. I've read arguments that education should be privatized because competition will force out bad teaching. This seems to make sense. There are indeed a few private education firms that are successful (Sylvan Learning is one). But it's a matter of scale. These programs would have to be developed in all areas of the country sufficient to handle all K-12 kids. This development would have to take place before the public system was dismantled, otherwise and educational gap would penalize our kids more than they are already penalized by decrepit teaching and decaying infrastructure and creationism. An alternative is to fix the problems with the public system. Drop the excessive requirements for educational certification. Increase the requirements for some knowledge of your field. Drop tenure. Fire poor teachers, reward good ones. Look for teachers who can ENGAGE students. This seems doable to me.
But here's a problem with the concept of downsizing government: if we make government as small and unobtrusive as the conservatives seem to want it, who is going to bail out the financial system/economy when the next bubble bursts? Big business wants NO regulation--but they sure want bailouts.
3) All politicians demand that we "grow the economy". Capitalism cannot survive without growth. Growth is necessary to provide jobs for an ever-growing work force. Growth is necessary to pay the interest on money that is loaned into existence. Without growth, capitalism dies. We can kind of see that happening now. But how can we grow the economy if we cut taxes? Goal 3 is inconsistent with Goal 1. We have ample evidence that cutting taxes for the rich results in economic slowdown, even depression.
4) Deregulate everything. This means allow big business and big finance to do whatever they want; that the market will reward "good" and penalize "not good." The Arabs want to run the Port Authority of New York? Fine, if there's profit in it for us. The banks want to issue sub-prime mortgages, and sell them to us in the form of asset-backed securities? Fine, there's money to be made, and after all there's no risk to the banks--they've sold it all to us! The natural gas industry wants to frack? Great, go to it (never mind the ground-water contamination, landscape destruction, and conceivably earthquakes that it might cause--these are just externalities that won't show up on the balance sheet). Big oil wants to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Sure, anything to boost domestic production of oil. Never mind that it will only provide enough oil to run our cars for a few weeks. Shale oil development in the Green River basin in Wyoming/Utah? Sure, let's wreck that too! It will provide a lot more bucks for Exxon-Mobil executives. How about geothermal power plants in Yellowstone? Question: what will it provide for those of us who earn less than $250,000/year--that is, the typical US citizen? General Motors wants to close down all US plants and open new plants in Mexico, Singapore, and India? The market demands that they minimize their labor costs. The market is god.
5) Eliminate organized labor.
6) Maintain a strong military. My favorite. We really need this, considering that the total of the 20 next largest militaries is smaller than ours. What if they were to band together and come after us? We spend (a guess) over 500 billion/year on our military. God forbid we cut into that at all. The world is a dangerous place (largely, now, thanks to us!). We need to be ready to defend our shores (against people in rowboats from Cuba; against people walking over from Mexico). We need to be able to intervene all over the world wherever it is in our best interests to do so. We need to be able to make preemptive military strikes against those who may (get that: may) threaten us. What do we really need this military for? My guess: the time is coming when all of remaining oil in the world will be in Saudi Arabia. We need to be able to move in and take that over.
How about we arbitrarily decide to cut the military budget in half? What could we do with that $250 billion that we just freed up?
7) Make life difficult for non-whites (oh, and gay people too--can't forget them). This is an insidious conservative policy. They will probably deny it. But look at SB1070 in Arizona. Nikki Haley (rabid conservative) in South Carolina just signed an anti-immigrant bill. Is not there a similar bill in Georgia? We are now seeing a cutback in a wonderful program, early voting, that expands the number of people who are able to vote. By eliminating this, we are once again making it more difficult for people to vote. Who will be impacted by this? People who work long days and have a hard time getting to the polls. Ordinary people, many of whom do not make much money. Many of whom are black. Many of whom are brown. Many of whom are red. We don't like these people. We don't want them voting in our country. They are not up to snuff. We white people are better than they are. The single most convincing fact that conservatives have an anti-brown/black/red agenda is that the entire tier of southern states switched their allegiance from the democratic to the republican party after the Civil Rights act became law.
Interestingly, many brown and black people fill jobs that we white Americans consider ourselves too good for. Our economy depends crucially on them showing up to work each day. Yet we don't want them to vote? How does that improve lives in America. What will be the ultimate consequence of continuing to abuse these people?
Following a conservative agenda will result in a wrecked economy, a socially-abandoned populace, and a huge sub-population of really pissed off non-whites. We will have a country in which "praying for rain" (Rick Perry, governor of Texas) is accepted as a government policy step.
Conservatives out there, I welcome your comments on this missive. Tell me where I've gone wrong. Make your agenda make sense to me. Explain to me how it will better the lot of ordinary citizens in our country.
I have recently read a book called "The Great Risk Shift" by Jacob Hacker. I highly recommend it. Based on my reading of this book, I think I now understand, the motivation for what Hacker calls the personal responsibility crusade. It is based in disgust with the entitlement mentality that, according to conservatives, government support programs create. It is also based in the desire to eliminate so-called moral hazard. The doctrine of moral hazard maintains that people who are protected from the consequences of risky behavior engage to a greater extent in risky behavior precisely because they now have protection. Government bail-out of the too-big-to-fail banks creates moral hazard, because now banks know they can go back to risky behavior because the government will bail them out if they get in trouble again. Generous expense accounts create moral hazard. It is argued by conservatives that government protection programs such as unemployment insurance create moral hazard by rewarding people for becoming unemployed. I have to admit that I understand these arguments, and to some extent sympathize with them. However, the great advantage of the government-funded protection programs is that they diversify risk. People can live with some degree of security knowing that in certain tough circumstances some help will be available from the government--i.e., from the entirety of the tax-paying public in the United States.
To eliminate the entitlement lifestyle, conservatives advocate making each individual responsible for his own fall-back accounts: retirement savings accounts (401ks), health savings accounts, disability savings accounts, unemployment buffer accounts, child-education accounts, and so on. First, the ordinary person cannot fund a series of such accounts at a level that will be sufficient if a job loss, a health crisis, a work injury, occurs. Second, such accounts are subject to the vagaries of the stock market. What would have happened to peoples' individual safety accounts in 2008 when the stock market crashed? The proposal that individuals take personal responsibility for their own fall-back accounts sounds good. Establishing such accounts, all tax-free of course, would work fine for a family with income of a million dollars a year or so. But a family of four with a total after-tax income of $75,000/year could not possibly divert enough money to these accounts to provide the fall-back needed. The individual accounts concentrate risk in the hands of individuals. When an emergency hits, you are on your own: i.e., you are personally responsible.
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