I support the Democratic party strongly in its social liberalism. Having visited Europe, I also view comprehensive government-based social services with high tax rates as a viable way for a society to promote its own welfare. I am an independent liberal who tends to vote for and donate to the Democratic party, but I would request two changes, one in policy and one in rhetoric. Both would help me more effectively persuade my Republican friends to vote Blue.
Safety nets help all of society by preventing individuals and families from plunging into economic failure that pulls down surrounding neighborhoods and cities. Sometimes safety nets are also necessary for corporations. Corporate bailouts are sometimes the right thing to do.
As great as social programs can be, we cannot market them to Republicans and Libertarians on the basis of the idea that hard work per se merits comfortable, secure, and sustainable living. I don't even believe that myself.
I basically agree with easternburbguy. I am liberal in the Supreme Court sense and somewhat liberal in the "safety net" sense. Based on the spectacular standard of living I witnessed traveling in Europe for an academic conference of Nobel Laureates this past summer, I would be very happy to have a wide range of "people-oriented" nationalized services in the United States.
That doesn't mean I'm happy with Democratic rhetoric. I disapprove when either Democrats or Republicans claim that hard-working people or the well-invested upper classes, respectively, serve almost exclusively as the source of this country's wealth while suffering, just as exclusively, the unfair effects of wealth redistribution policy.
The cartoon of American economics my high school taught was that (1) Currency is a book-keeping tool. We don't use the gold standard, so currency has some value by virtue of the fact that book-keeping itself is a useful technology, but currency derives much of its apparent value from the trust users confide in the economy upon which the currency is applied
(2) Even if we used a gold standard, bank savings would not be "real"--banks lend large fractions of customer savings--that is the sane thing to do since one of the most obvious conclusions one can draw from a customer's act of deposit is that the deposit is not immediately needed. Savings don't "disappear" during runs on banks--they "disappear" shortly after they are deposited
(3) Everyone lends to everyone else. Because this information is available through a high school education, and I presume through Wikipedia, many of us had the opportunity to be informed that our CHOICE to do business, save, and invest within the United States financial system incurred the pooled risks of using a system of fiat currency incestuously and promiscuously lent.
I don't like unsustainable or thoughtless debt, but I harbor no moral objection to credit per se--credit can be an excellent tool for an economy with intellectual capital and potential. Credit often works very well in the United States, though honestly I'm not sure how to quantify precisely the benefits each of us has derived from participating in our American system of currency. Hopefully to some degree we think rationally before we choose to participate in this system of currency. Hopefully we weigh its benefits and conveniences against (a) the effort required to regulate our financial instruments and (b) the fact that we cannot always regulate effectively (1) because our current system of politics has a bad habit of sitting quietly on the topic of regulation until a year after bubbles have begin bursting or until 50 days before a Presidential election and (2) because it's hard to see bubbles before they burst--a country's finances are complicated--and I am personally fine with paying millions of dollars in salaries to CEOs even as they oversee corporate destruction--managing that many people and assets is really hard. Assuming such a rational process occurred before we agreed to use American currency, we should have realized that we accepted the possibility that a large fraction of our wealth and standard of living relied not only upon our own hard work or intellectual capital, but also from the health of the American credit system. Thus, some of the wealth that taxpayers seem unfairly to be asked to surrender to Wall Street derived in the first place from Wall Street, not the middle class's hard work.
It might have been nice to have regulated in the last 5? 10? 15 years? to avoid the current crisis, but we didn't, so one of the questions we must face now is how we address the short term: I would vote in favor of partial bail outs (a full bail out that removes the incentive for responsibility is out of the question) because I would not like to see our system of credit die. It has already gone into a narcoleptic seizure.
We are all dependent on each other in ways that are not immediately obvious. It's in most people's interest to prevent entire sectors of the economy from vaporizing. We need to provide, perhaps through subsidies or loan assistance and education credits, a survivable way to get the American middle class from its globally less competitive state to a more productive state--otherwise our country could be filled with a large impoverished class, and I don't want to find out what happens in the midst of a high concentration of angry, desperate people. In the same spirit, I don't want to see the American system of credit collapse. Companies use credit and employee's work together to do business. These two tools add value to each other. I don't want to find out how hard the typical American would have to work to survive if his or her employer could not rely on credit to add value to employee labor. I doubt it would be as bad as subsistence farming, but I doubt it would be pleasant.
[Off topic: Stock market fluctuations are precedent]
Note: If you look at the stock market graph over the last century, the present credit crisis does not look like a surprise.
[Off topic: Globalization is real]
Digression on economics in general: My parents are from post-Civil War Taiwan. My father also worked in Taiwan during the early 2000s and as far as we're concerned the earnings of American workers were not appropriate for the value of their work in comparison with the value of Asian workers. I don't understand the mechanics behind the recent drop in the value of the dollar, but the final result, that American purchasing power has contracted feels like the "morally correct" outcome that my father and I have waited for years to occur. Just because we are American does not mean that we are special in a sense that would entitle our poorly-educated working class to expect the lifestyle of the competitive intellectual working classes that are emerging in other countries that are finally recovering from the second World War and the Cold War.
I don't for one minute believe in a special economic American dream, but I vote for Obama because I treasure the Constitution and the opportunities it provides for attempting to achieve liberty, justice, and equality. I also support subsidies (or their more palatable disguise--tax credits) for higher education--you don't WIN in the global economy just by working hard; you have to be productive. And what is this about WINning? Why is the focus on competing rather than contributing and participating?
[Off topic: Democratic rhetoric makes it difficult to campaign to my Libertarian and Republican friends]
The content of my writing might appear rather unattractive in this political forum; however, perspectives as callous as mine are very common among the up-and-coming 20-somethings: liberals and conservatives alike. A lot of my friends are Libertarians, and it might be very helpful to persuade them to vote Democrat if Democrats would stop using language describing Americans as deserving a safety net and comfortable living by virtue of hard work. I would be happy to have all these results, and European countries show that some government-managed socialism can be an excellent way to achieve these, but broadcasting the idea that hard work per se (even if it's stupid and unproductive) DESERVES physical safety and comfort makes Democrats look ridiculous to most of my Libertarian and Republican friends and also to many of my Democrat friends (including myself). I'm not even asking here for a major change in social policy, just a change in rhethoric.
Thanks to anyone who actually read through all that.
Best,
David Liao
PhD Candidate
Department of Physics
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Originally posted as a comment by David Liao on AMERICAblog using Disqus.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
