American Paradox

"What a new progressive movement needs can be simply stated: more socialism."


Sadly, this article about the problems of Progressive politics could have been really good. Instead, it castigated democratic capitalism (the predominant Anglo-American form of government) as not socialist enough. What the article failed to note was that by saying such, it was really saying that democratic capitalism was not controlling enough.

Let's take the characterizations the author (Ronald Aronson, whoever he is) makes about what he variously terms "individualism" or "capitalism." Aronson says that "unequal schools, the rising costs of higher education, the growing gap in living conditions between well-off and poor, the abolition of the estate tax encouraging a plutocracy--all heighten the system's unfairness." These specific complaints about our capitalist democracy are grossly misplaced -- Aronson would be better off complaining about health care quality and access, or perhaps the Iraq war. But on these grounds he has little to stand on.

School Inequality: We currently have a massive public school system, with a mandate from the Supreme Court to integrate (albeit flagging in its potency, see e.g. the recent desegregation decisions in Seattle and Kentucky), and a huge investment by local communities (based on property taxes, mostly) and states to sustaining equal public access to education. What we also have is a flawed "opt-out" system for parents wishing to place their children in private or religious alternative schools for the betterment of their children. These alternative schools can generally only be afforded by the upper-middle and upper-class. Why is this? The left wing is insistent that everyone attend public schools, and that no state money go towards any alternative schools. They maintain this despite the fact that government-run schools are precisely the weakest schools in the nation, as well as some of the strongest. The problem is that it is hit or miss. You can live in a place with excellent public schools (suburban Minneapolis-Saint Paul) or you can live in a place with terrible public schools (examples abound, but inner city Minneapolis is an example I am familiar with).

So what is the private, capitalist solution to this problem? Make vouchers available for the poor and working class, to send their children to public schools (who would then get the money) or alternative private/religious options of the parents' choice. This is an option based on enabling the freedom of educational choice for the lower classes -- and it is opposed in a knee-jerk fashion by the left. Why? It undermines the left's insistence that everyone go to public schools, and that the only solution to the failure of the public schools in many rural and inner city areas is to pour more money into those failing programs, as though money itself will save the day. So I'm not sure what is "progressive" about Aronson's implied assault on school choice proposals other than the huge "progressive" taxes that would be needed to support more "equal" schools.

Rising cost of higher education: This is spurred by excessive government subsidization of student loans, as well as the foolish insistence of the left that "everyone should go to college." Nothing could be further from the truth: there are many people I know who should not have gone to college, because their career goals will only be held back four years by attending, because their careers do not require college degrees, or because they wish to be entrepreneurs and college is a waste of investment. Thus, the artificially higher demand for schools, combined with the artificially high amount of loan support for students of lesser means (which may be a good egalitarian policy with a flawed execution) means that colleges are free to raise tuition at will. Higher demand = higher aggregate price in the market for higher education. Simple economics predicts this, ceteris paribus. It's unclear how Aronson's socialist policies would change this system, except to encourage price ceilings on higher education, with disastrous results (rationing, lower wages for professors, leading to supply problems).

Gap between rich and poor, growing: I used to think the existence of a wider "gap" itself was a bad thing. Then I asked myself, "Why?" It turns out that everything I worry about regarding such a gap has to do with how the poor are doing, not with the existence of the gap itself. There can be a gigantic gap between trillionaires and those without jobs, but if in that hypothetical society the unemployed and working poor are still doing quite well, then who cares? So the point is empowering the poor's earning potential and making sure consumer goods are cheap for them to purchase, not in worrying about some "gap." And as capitalist democrats would point out, a freer market gradually lowers the price of basic commodities (see: Wal-Mart, Target, CostCo, et al.) for everyone, including the poor. Individualist policies also promote the poor by lowering taxes to negative values (the EITC, for example), and preventing price floors from artificially lowering the aggregate demand in the labor market (not adopting "living wage" programs, for example). So, absent some evidence that these denigrated "market-based" or "individualist" solutions actually make the poor worse off, I don't see what Aronson is getting at.

The Estate Tax: This is a restraint on the transfer of investments across generations. Basically, Aronson wants government control of inheritance, letting elected politicians decide who is "too rich" to pass on his full wealth to his children. In contrast, individualists claim personal freedom as the source of appropriate policy in this area: individualists of any wealth should be able to pass on their wealth. It's a social choice, between freedom and control-based-on-envy. Hard to make, but there is no presumption in favor of control. I'm not sure Aronson actually wants to put this argument to the American people, most of whom do not subscribe to the "wealth should be punished" philosophy of leveling.

Conclusions: I'm not sure the specific "socialist" controls on economic and social choice that Aronson favors would make people better-off. It seems to me that what he is opposing in all these areas is wealth-generating freedom of choice, in favor of top-down control of people's decision making made by expert bureaucrats and politicians. In fact, that is precisely the problem with full-blown and even marginal socialist efforts. Real democracy usually rejects such efforts over time when they are proven failures.