I am giving a talk on Friday for our Occasional Lecture Series at Mesa College.
The title is “How an Ethics of Care Can Transform Politics.”
It is open to the public so if you are interested in politics, ethics, and their intersection (and you live in San Diego) check it out.
The talk will be on Friday at 12:00 noon in LRC (Library Resource Center) 435.
American political writers constantly claim that Europe, although a nice place to visit, doesn’t really produce enough wealth to make it livable. This column by Ross Douthat is the most recent of the genre. This belief is part of the narrative that social democracies, because they devote lots of resources to public goods and a social safety net, are less efficient than full-blown capitalist economies.
Matt Yglesias has the right response to this argument.
There are three main differences in living standards between the United States and Europe. One is that the US has long been somewhat wealthier than the biggest European countries, dating back to the 19th century. Two is that the US is much less egalitarian than Europe—a bigger share of European output is in the hands of the poor and the middle class, and a smaller share in the hands of the rich. The third is that Americans work more than most western Europeans…
These last two show us what I think is the real meaning of social democracy for a developed country—you get more equality and more vacation, with no real impact on the rate of growth. There’s a case to be made that less vacation and better televisions are a better deal than more vacation and worse televisions (the two things I like to do on vacation are go to Europe and watch TV, so I have mixed feelings about this) and there’s a tradition of philosophical argument which holds that the failure of modern mixed economies to be sufficiently solicitous of the interests of the wealthy is a major source of injustice. But though some level of income inequality would seem to be necessary to achieve economic growth, within the range that actual developed countries exist at there’s no evidence that inegalitarian policies boost growth.
This article by Lane Kenworthy contains a primer on the correlation between inequality and growth—it turns out there isn’t any. Here is one of his charts:
Aside from the outlier, Ireland, it is hard to see a correlation between growth rate and inequality.
This is another right-wing talking point that needs to be scrapped.
Political philosopher Bill Galston points to disturbing trends in recent political polling.
The current state of American politics presents a paradox. On the one hand, survey after survey testifies to the rock-bottom standing of the Republican Party. Fewer Americans identify with the party than in the past, and fewer trust it to deal with the country’s problems. On the other hand, there are hard-to-ignore signs of a conservative resurgence. A 15,000 person Gallup survey out today shows that 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservative (up from 37 percent at the time of Obama’s election), while only 20 percent regard themselves as liberal (down from 22 percent). Far more independents (35 percent) consider themselves conservative than was the case a year ago (only 29 percent).
These findings would be less compelling if they were not linked to conservative shifts on specific issues–but they are, and the Gallup organization enumerates a considerable list. Among them: increasing opposition to government regulation of business and gun ownership; an uneasy feeling about the influence of labor unions; increasing support for immigration restrictions and government promotion of traditional values; and diminished support for strong action on climate change. The percentage of Americans who believe that government is trying to do too much stands at its highest level (57 percent) in many years. Trust in government is near all-time lows, and Americans believe that 50 cents of every federal tax dollar is wasted–the highest level ever.
When I conceived Reviving the Left, the percentages of self-identified conservatives and liberals were roughly the same as reported in this recent poll.
Despite the historic achievements of liberalism, its recent electoral successes, and the utter collapse of conservatism as a governing philosophy, liberalism still has not captured the political imaginations of most Americans.
In Reviving the Left, I argued that liberalism’s troubles stem from a variety of false and pernicious background moral beliefs, deeply rooted in the American psyche, that explain the persistence of anti-government attitudes and the mistrust of liberalism. There is as yet no evidence that those background beliefs have changed, despite the extraordinary events that have shaped politics in recent years.
It is likely that only generational change will produce meaningful political change.
Thus, Galston is right to be concerned, although his prescription for less government action is misguided. Without a firmer commitment to liberal principles by a larger proportion of the public, we could very easily slide back into a conservatism that has already shown itself to be nothing but one disaster after another.
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