Ezra Klein at VOX wrote an interesting piece. Americans unify against foreign threats. Can we unify without one? It reminded me of something a friend of mine said this weekend as we discussed political issues. It went something like this:
Maybe that is the biggest problem we have in the USA at this time... Most everybody has too much money and time, therefore they spend it making mountains out mole hills?
I mean we have people out striving to save owls, own pretty much useless guns, use one bathroom or the other, prevent people from marrying the one they love, shelter illegal residents, give rich people tax cuts, give lazy people free money, make it difficult for some citizens to vote, etc, etc, etc.
What are we thinking??? And how do we get back to supporting common core goals that will make America safer, stronger, smarter, more competitive, etc? Or will it take a national or international crisis to make us all re-evaluate our tribes, positions, beliefs, priorities, etc? Thoughts?
When people are hungry, they have one problem.
When people are well fed, they find lots of problems.
Maybe that is the biggest problem we have in the USA at this time... Most everybody has too much money and time, therefore they spend it making mountains out mole hills?
I mean we have people out striving to save owls, own pretty much useless guns, use one bathroom or the other, prevent people from marrying the one they love, shelter illegal residents, give rich people tax cuts, give lazy people free money, make it difficult for some citizens to vote, etc, etc, etc.
What are we thinking??? And how do we get back to supporting common core goals that will make America safer, stronger, smarter, more competitive, etc? Or will it take a national or international crisis to make us all re-evaluate our tribes, positions, beliefs, priorities, etc? Thoughts?
35 comments:
The country will not be unifying any time soon. The division will just grow deeper.
That is a very cynical perspective... :-)
One side effect of Donald Trump's dreadful presidency is that Americans are about as unified as we will ever see them. His poll numbers are that awful.
--Hiram
There is a unity gap in our politics. One party benefits from unity, the other party benefits from it's disruption. That's because one party is positive, the other party negative, and to enact a positive agenda, especially in a system of government designed to reward consensus, one party must unify. The negative party doesn't have to unify to succeed, because doing nothing is the easiest thing to do in a consensus government. It's the natural and default position.
The weakness of being a unity party is that unity is never without faults. There are cracks in coalitions which are always useful for the non unity to support. Let's say a group in the unity cares about owls. Well, the obvious tactic for the negative party is to talk about how that party cares more about owls than people, setting the two factions against the other. Not everyone is vulnerable to this tactic but some are, and sometimes that's enough to break the consensus.
--Hiram
I do think we have many of the same goals. Republicans who tell me they want cheaper and better health care are not lying to me. Both Republicans and Democrats want our nation to be safe. I do firmly believe that Republicans are opposed to the slaughter of our children in our schools. I would be very happy if Trump kept the promise he made during campaign in these matters. Goals are not things on which we have a hard time reaching consensus. It's how we achieve them is where the necessary consensus breaks down.
--Hiram
I have long said that the battle is between Republican reality and Democrat promises. Fantasy and reality are difficult to reconcile, yet the choice between them is easy to make, in either direction. So long as some insist on the fantasy, agreement will not be possible.
For example, we all want less expensive and higher quality health care. Some believe it can be "given to everybody for free." They are a greater danger than any known disease.
Jerry,
Unfortunately the Conservatives are just as delusional as the Liberals in many ways.
- more guns will reduce gun violence
- harder to get birth control and sex education will reduce unwanted pregnancies
- lower tax rates will increase tax revenues / reduce deficits
- other
I have long said that the battle is between Republican reality and Democrat promises.
Sure. There are lots of ways to put it, and that's one. Republicans are comfortable with reality, i.e. status quo. While they are aware reality is imperfect, they are deeply suspicious of change. This also goes hand in hand with Republican absolutism. So often, we hear the argument that just because some proposal doesn't solve all the problem, it shouldn't be allowed to solve any of it.
Obviously we could reduce the cost of health care. But just because something is free doesn't mean it is cheap. Everything comes with a cost and it's up to us to decide whether it's worth it. Obamacare is essentially a Republican approach to health care. The problem Republicans have in replacing it is that their proposals inevitably have the same issues they criticize Obamacare for because they are basically the same plan. It's not that a Democratic plan wouldn't have problems, they would just be different problems.
--Hiram
John, your chart is wrong.
Jerry,
More detail please.
Of course. Start with the idea that economic freedom and political freedom are inextricably linked together. Mises and others
Therefore Republicans (Leave TEA out of it) belong in the upper right quadrant, where you have so elegantly positioned yourself. This would put them as polar opposites to Democrats, which is the reality.
Also, you make a clear distinction about spending, that being whether government spends the money or whether individuals decide. Clearly, if government controls your spending – your choices – they can control your behavior. Years ago I coined the campaign theme to "deprive the government of the funds by which they corrupt the culture," as a means of uniting the social conservatives and the economic conservatives. It is still true, but it requires one more quibble with your chart. That is, you make no such distinction for what "behavior" the government "controls." You confuse liberty with license. Surely you believe that government must attempt to control criminal behavior, yet the liberals in our society insist that we must control things like free speech and freedom of religion. One side would curtail liberty and the other would control license, and that matters greatly.
Please note that Fiscal
Conservatives can be above or below the horizontal axis. Wiki Nolan Diagram.
I and other users of the diagram place the Democratic and Republican parties slightly below the horizontal line because both seem to be happy passing laws to limit the personal freedoms of the American citizens.
Just think of all the controls that the Religious Right would place on us if they got their chance.
Now if the Republicans ever started behaving like the party of personal freedom, I would happily place them above the line. But as long as they are the party that seeks to:
- limit birth control access
- limit a Mother from ending pregnancy early
- limit LGBTQ people from living as they wish
- make it hard for poor people to vote
- etc
They stay below the line from my perspective.
Your perspective is biased. The GOP doesn't oppose bc, but don't think we should pay for it (or mandate it) for others. We don't think children should be killed. We think people should love whom they wish, but they shouldn't collect government benefits for it, nor force the rest of us to accept that it is perfectly OK. We don't care if poor people vote, but don't want their votes diluted by people casting fraudulent votes. Again, it matters greatly WHAT a party or individual wants government to "control," and how.
I always liked what Alan Keyes said, "there is no right to do that which is wrong." Freedom, not license.
I see that the flaw in your diagram is not yours, it is Nolan's. Nolan supposes that personal freedom and economic freedom are independent. That's wrong; they are inseparable. It's almost as if your chart could be 1-D instead of 2.
Your double-bell curve isn't far wrong.
Jerry,
I disagree of course.
The x axis is simply a discussion of public vs private wealth rights...
We choose to live in this country.
We are lucky enough that we are free to vote for a government, rules, services, etc.
We can work, gain wealth, save, invest and live in peace due to the country / government / society.
Therefore this a worthwhile discussion for the people of America to have.
Where as the Y axis has for the most part nothing to do with money...
Our society needs to weigh things like rules regarding:
- what behaviors should be controlled by the state
- to what degree should they be controlled
- how much anarchy are we willing to tolerate
Gun control is an excellent example...
If we had allowed no guns in the public sphere...
Fewer people would die from gun fire.
Yet we as a society we are still working this one.
"the y axis has nothing to do with money"? Really?
you made $100,000 last year. You want to buy a new US-made sports car, but between income tax, excise taxes, government-mandated pollution controls and safety equipment, plus payoffs to the unions, you can't afford it. But government will give you a huge kickback if you buy a little foreign hybrid. Was your behavior controlled by government? Of course. They did it with money.
You would like to smoke, but government keeps jacking up the taxes to where you are almost forced to quit. Did government control your behavior?
You want to buy a few boxes of .223 cartridges for target practice, but government agencies have bought up billions of them for such militaristic agencies as the Department of Education and the Department of Agriculture. You can't buy them or you pay a huge price for them. Did government control your behavior?
"The power to tax is the power to destroy."
Now that was misusing my statement... How about we use the whole thing.
"Y axis has for the most part nothing to do with money".
First remember that we are a self governed country. Therefore we have a lot to say about who pays how much tax on what. And about what types of tax credits are offered to who to encourage which behaviors.
People dead on the highway, cars polluting our cities, smokers incurring huge costs on our tax payers via health care expenses, the wealthy not giving enough to charity, etc all convinced the majority of modern voters to support these societal changes.
Now you may be in the minority in many areas of belief, but that is just the way things go when you choose to live in a society.
And to answer your question, I do not see the government activities increasing the cost of some items as "government controlling your behavior".
Life is full of incentives and disincentives. They can encourage us one way or another, however they truly do not control us. People still drink, smoke, drive without their seat belt, buy ammunition, etc.
Where as for centuries people were severely punished for L,G,B,T,Q relations, having a first trimester abortion, riding in the wrong seat of a bus, etc. Those were true examples of government control.
One could not simply pay a little extra money to live as they wished.
I don't think people are that influenced by incentives. They pretty much do what they want and then look around for any incentives they can cash in.
--Hiram
Wow. John, you yourself often use the phrase that you are "happy if government controls 33% of the spending." Tell me, if you get to control 2/3 of your spending and government controls the rest, how much of your "behavior" does government control? Is not how you choose to spend your hard-earned money an integral part of your behavior? Even moreso, did I "choose" to give over that 1/3 to the government in exchange, one presumes, for goods and services that I want and need? Would you rather /choose/ to put gas in your car, or be /forced/ to help give a billion $ in cash to Iran?
Freedom is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
Some of us pay more so some of us can have more freedom and a higher quality of life during retirement when they are old.
Budget Details
Please remember that most of the taxes go into the government from citizens and then are redistributed to other citizens. A transaction along the horizontal axis.
Please tell more about "tax payers sending money to Iran"... I think you should study up on that
You are referring to the fact that government acts mainly as a redistributor of wealth, but that changes nothing. WHERE the money is spent is irrelevant to the fact that it is GOVERNMENT who decides where that money goes, and not the person who earned it. They get to choose, you do not, so your "behavior" is constrained as surely as if you had been coerced into sending money to Angel for her next 3 kids.
So here is my suggestion; it should be possible with modern technology. You calculate your income tax just like before. Then you are presented with a spreadsheet, either in actual dollars or "per $1000" numbers, of every major budget line item, subdivided, indicating that, unless you specify otherwise, this is the way your tax dollars will be spent. You can change any of it up or down, so long as the total remains the same. You can specify at the top level-- DOD, DOE, State, etc.-- or at the lower level-- say DOE college grants, Title 9 money, Title 1 money, etc.-- or even a level below that, perhaps the F/A-35 project or transgender surgery coverage for the military.
Those numbers would be added up and Congress would allocate the money accordingly. Since most people would just leave the totals alone, I wouldn't think anything drastic would happen, but at least we would each have control of our choices.
You are never going to unify Americans by permitting "majority rule" on everything, since 49% of us are going to object to what the 51% decide. Part of the solution is to stop having government be the be-all and end-all on every subject. The less power and influence (and spending) it has the more freedom we each have individually and on THAT we can all agree. Or should.
As I noted before...
The x axis is simply a discussion of public vs private wealth rights...
We choose to live in this country.
We are lucky enough that we are free to vote for a government, rules, services, etc.
We can work, gain wealth, save, invest and live in peace due to the country / government / society.
Therefore this a worthwhile discussion for the people of America to have.
I am puzzled why you are insistent upon a 1 axis representation of very complex system.
My guess is that it is hard for you to admit that you favor strong governmental control regarding morality subjects.
I mean you want the government:
- between women and their doctors
- between teachers and their students
- between LGBTQ people and their lovers
- between terminal patients and their physician assisted suicide
How does it feel to support the big intrusive government? :-)
"We choose to live in this country." You keep saying that, and it has never been correct! We choose NOT to leave the place we were born, the home of our parents, friends, family, and culture. Forcing us to leave through government actions is the penultimate case of government with FAR too much control.
Your other fallacy is insisting that government intruding on "morality subjects" is wrong if it upholds traditional religious or societal values, like laws against rape and murder and fraud, while thinking government is OK when intruding on matters like declaring individuals must recognize same-sex "marriage," or pay for other people to abort babies, or allow teachers to cheat students out of an education. Again, all depends on the PURPOSE of government's control as to whether it is "good" or not. That's not the same scale. One side of control goes on the "freedom" side of the axis. Because there is no right to do that which is wrong.
And how you can insist that spending is not about choices, and about whether government or the individual gets to make those choices, just baffles me. Sure, it's a very complex system, but the purpose of your chart is to make it simple, yes? And 1 dimension is simpler than two. Especially when there is only 1: government control vs. individual.
Since there are about 320 million citizens choosing to live in the USA and they have very different ideas regarding "good".
And since they have as much right to help choose our rules as you do, I think you should get used to being disappointed.
Why should it be an adversarial situation at all? What happened to government by ALL the people, by consensus? Or better yet, leaving most decisions to the 320 million people individually, rather than having government control every moment of our lives?
I think the Liberal and Conservative Tribes have grown too far apart to effectively govern by consensus. We are forcing our elected representatives to resist all compromise solutions.
If you think government controls every minute of your life... Do you live in a prison cell?
I personally am pretty much free to do as I wish...
You are free to do as you wish with 67% of your income, so long as you and your fellow citizens obey the laws and regulations that govern about 1/2 your total income.
You are correct about the wide divide, but two things: 1) Who moved? and 2) When did we decide that the federal government was the first resort for solving all our problems?
I know you need something to complain about, however based on your own source we are the most financially free large country in the world.
Thinking of my boat on a rope... I think the Liberals kept pulling Left until the rope grew tight... And since the rope was slightly stretched, the Conservatives are trying to pull it back to the right.
So I am not sure either side really changed. Unfortunately now both tribes just keep living in their echo chamber worlds that vilify the other tribe while praising their own tribes genius.
I think your own analogy makes my point. The Left kept pulling to the left and are now FAR outside the mainstream. The Right would have preferred to keep going "straight." The Left moved, making the gap larger, and continues to strain against the rope.
Actually, unification is simple. The Left simply has to agree with us, and quit pulling on the rope.
See here for G2As response
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