Equality, Inequality, and other Mathematical Concepts Eugene Robinson Doesn't Understand

The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve

By Eugene Robinson, Published: October 27

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party

It seems odd that Robinson doesn’t get that “right-wing” isn’t a pejorative in the way that “left-wing” is to most Americans. After all, the differences between the right and left have never been so stark. Conservatives clean up after themselves, tell you what they believe, and go to work in the morning. Liberals engage in weird chanting rituals, espouse complete incoherence, and eventually riot against a system they don’t even understand.

claim to despise the redistribution of wealth,

Indeed we do.

but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.

If this is a class-war between the 99% and the 1%--as OWS protesters are so eager to assert--then how would any constituency of 1% retain power by bilking the 99%? This isn’t a riddle or an invitation to anticapitalist kookery; they wouldn’t. Indeed, you can’t make the assertion of 99% vs. 1% class warfare without veiled allusions to brainwashing and outright demagoguery. After all, why would anyone vote to be oppressed? 9/11 truthers (also almost all liberal) have a more grounded set of explanations than this.

What’s more, billionaires are generally not Republicans at all. How many liberal billionaires can you name off the top of your head? Bill Gates. Paul Allen. Warren Buffett. Michael Bloomberg. George Soros. Mark Zuckerburg. George Lucas, Steven Speilburg. The richest man in the world right now is Carlos Slim because American billionaires have been shedding wealth to whatever do-gooder charity they see.

How many conservative billionaires are there? The Koch brothers. Rupert Murdoch. Maybe Steve Wynn. Sort of/Kind of/Maybe Donald Trump, but he’s more of a populist/protectionist than anything. The blanket assertion that Republicans are synonymous with wealth is downright batty.

The truth of the matter is that the rich, even the super-rich, have mostly the same policy concerns that the rest of the country. They tend to skew towards social justice policies because the economics don’t have any threat of changing their economic standings whereas social awareness most assuredly has the ability to elevate their social cachet. What’s more, entrenched, established billionaires fear low-taxation and low-regulation policies (bedrocks of conservatism) that obliterate barriers to entry for competing new start-ups. The billionaires’ left-leaning tendencies aren’t mere coincidence, but the product of a web of incentives.

That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office

It can’t be said enough: the CBO is nonpartisan, but being nonpartisan, it often makes demonstrably stupid assumptions that are demanded by politicians. It is particularly egregious when Democrats are setting the inputs.

demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory,

Which hasn’t been implemented since the 80s.

see-no-evil deregulation

Which hasn’t been implemented ever.

and tax-cutting fervor

Which has absolutely nothing to do with income distribution.

have led to massive redistribution.

I don’t think Robinson really understands the concept of redistribution. Distribution of wealth is part of any economic system, and it happens every minute of every day. In capitalist societies, wealth is distributed through profits, incomes, expenses, investment gains and losses, and gifting—all results of voluntary contractual agreements.

Redistribution occurs when that regular distribution is altered to address social desires that are not reflected in the marketplace. In other words, redistribution is the act of arranging the outcome of economic activities before those activities occur. By asserting that the outcomes are somehow undesirable, you, Eugene Robinson, have made the argument for redistribution. This wouldn’t be surprising or even worth pointing out if not for the fact that you have dedicated this entire article to accusing Republican policies of redistributionism.

Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.

If you want to go there, you’re contractually obligated to stick to the “redistribution = theft” definition once your trite world-view is debunked.

The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent.

In the shock of the century, rich people have money!

Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots.

If your memory is faulty, it’s most likely the result of a more global brain damage, because that sentence has the intellectual acuity of a YouTube comments section. We have a representative Republic, which means that you don’t vote on how to distribute wealth; you vote on representatives. Moreover, the nation is not starkly divided between haves and have-nots, despite what the CBO report might say because “the rich” is not a monolithic and stagnant group of people. People flow in and out of income deciles rather freely. Consistently showing the top 1% as though the grouping were somehow meaningful is flagrant and particularly brazen selection bias.

Yet that’s where we’ve been led.

This is the danger of giving numbers to the mathematically illiterate. I’d feel safer around a child with a hand grenade.

Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great — but only until you look a little closer.

For those at the bottom — the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes — the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric.

By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it.

I explained this above, but this entire analysis willfully misrepresents what the number actually means. Since the study didn’t actually track individual actors, it can’t represent that the 1% in 1979 is an entirely different dataset than the 1% in 2007. (I’m graciously ignoring that this study didn’t detail the crash of 2008.) Which means that by the definition of what constitutes the top 1%, no one in that group lost money, otherwise they would have fallen out of the top percentile and been counted elsewhere. Similarly, no one in the lowest decile made any money, or they wouldn’t have still been included in the lowest decile. Again, as a description of have-versus-have-nots, the data is about as useless as a yacht in New Mexico.

This is not what Republicans want you to think of when you hear the word redistribution.

We’ve already proved that Democrats are much better at distributing tax dollars to their campaign donors. (See: Solyndra et al.) We’ve also proved that Democrats are great at filtering federal funds through favored constituencies (unions) that then come back in the form of campaign contributions. If you’re asking why so many billionaires are Democrats, look no further.

You’re supposed to imagine the evil masterminds as Bolsheviks, not bankers.

“Mastermind” and “Bolshevik” haven’t been compatible terms since the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed, Bolshevism precludes one from being a mastermind.

You’re supposed to envision the lazy free-riders who benefit from redistribution as the “poor,” and the industrious job-creators who get robbed as the “wealthy” — not the other way around.

Again, if this is all based off of a really shallow reading of a mathematically flawed analysis, then these assertions quickly become laughably inaccurate.

If Americans were to realize they’ve been the victims of Republican-style redistribution — stealing from the poor to give to the rich — the whole political atmosphere might change.

I let him slide on the “stealing” thing once, but theft requires the appropriation of goods from the rightful owner without consent. Robinson, for his part, wants to assert that the money rightfully belongs to the middle class just by virtue of them being middle class Americans. Whatever that ideology may be, it’s not capitalism.

I believe that’s one reason why the Occupy Wall Street protests have struck such a nerve.

That, and conservatives needing someone new to laugh at. Obama’s policies are too depressing to be a punching bag anymore.

The far-right and its media mouthpieces

I think it’s kind of stunning to liberal media figures that conservatives don’t have an equivalent apparatus. I think that’s why they get caught shadowboxing when they realize that their understanding of the American political spectrum is skewed left.

have worked themselves into a frenzy trying to disregard,

Why would we want to do that? This rabid hysteria is the best contrast against which we can present conservatism.

dismiss

Already done.

or discredit

This one they did to themselves.

the demonstrations. Thus far, fortunately, all this effort has been to no avail.

Seriously? There are Nazis in New York, calls for violence in Chicago, Communists everywhere, and riots in Oakland. (And that’s just off the top of my head. Imagine if I weren’t too lazy to do research.) This is the organization that you want to trumpet as a pillar of the American left?

The right maintains that inequality is the wrong measure.

Of course it is. Fairness is a function of both input and output. Looking at output alone necessarily misses the point.

To argue about how the income pie should be sliced is “class warfare,”

It sure is, you dirty socialist.

and what we should do instead is give the private sector the right incentives to make the pie bigger.

If by “give the right incentives” you mean “get the hell out of the way” then yeah, you’ve got it.

This way, according to conservative doctrine, everyone’s slice gets bigger — even if some slices grow faster than others.

In that sentence, reasonable people have found a reprieve from lunacy that is desperately needed.

Indeed, the CBO report says that even the poorest households saw at least a little income growth. Why is it any of their business that the high-earners in the top 1 percent saw astronomical income growth? Isn’t this just sour grapes?

No, for two reasons. First, the system is rigged. Wealthy individuals and corporations have disproportionate influence over public policy because of the often decisive role that money plays in elections.

And yet, liberals are the ones who want public policy to be more influential. Conservatives want less influential public policy. All of this is a function of the country getting more liberal—not more conservative, as Robinson suggests—over the time period of the CBO study he cites.

This is why I continue to insist that OWS is the larval stage of conservative thought.

If the rich and powerful act in their self-interest, as conservative ideologues believe we all should do, then the rich and powerful’s share of income will continue to soar.

That seems to indicate that those of us without bottomless pockets all have a vested interest in reducing the size and scope of government interest. Funny, that sounds a lot like the Republican platform.

Second, and more broadly, the real issue is what kind of nation we want to be. Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal” is properly understood as calling for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.

File this one under “no shit, you dirty socialist.”

But the more we become a nation of rich and poor,

Which is a silly assertion based on mathematical incompetence.

the less we can pretend to be offering the same opportunities to every American.

Dammit, you already screwed up Jefferson. The government doesn’t offer opportunities. Existence, unfettered by government meddling and lawlessness, guarantees opportunities. Everyone in the country has the right and the opportunity to drive a bus, or be an accountant, or enjoy a heroin addiction, or be a school teacher, or be a rodeo clown, or—heaven forbid—be a hedge fund manager. The difference is that there is a very specific set of skills that qualify one for any of these opportunities. (There are fewer skills required for heroin addiction, but needles are kind of tricky, I guess.) The great equalizer is that if you believe that the system has unfairly put up barriers between you and your vocation, you can always start a business.

By giving people control over their opportunities, it encourages people to develop skills and cultivate competence. In contrast, giving people an undeserved opportunity entrenches incompetence.

As polarization increases, mobility declines.

Except polarization hasn’t increased. The gulf between rich and poor is a function of mobility, not a symptom of a lack of mobility. The massively wealthy in this country didn’t all start out massively wealthy. That is the American Dream in action.

The whole point of the American Dream is that it is available to everyone, not just those who awaken from their slumbers on down-filled pillows and 800-thread-count sheets.

Fuck off, I like my sheets.

So it does matter that as the pie grows, the various slices do not grow in proportion.

You haven’t shown that at all. It’s a naked assertion, and a bad one, at that.

We’re not characters in one of those lumbering, interminable, nonsensical Ayn Rand novels.

Rand’s novels present flat characters because they are archetypes. The problem is that you are, very much, a character from a Rand novel: Ellisworth Toohey. I wouldn’t like the comparison either.

We believe in individual initiative and the free market,

[footage not found]

but we also believe that nationhood necessarily involves a commitment to our fellow citizens, an acknowledgment that we’re engaged in a common enterprise.

There is nothing in my enterprise that is common to a vagrant in San Diego or a billionaire in Boston. My enterprise is my own.

We believe that opportunity should be more than just an empty word.

No, you believe that opportunity should be replaced with certainty. In reality, the two are diametrically opposed. If you believe in opportunity, then you must also believe in the purposeful threat of failure. You must believe that those that fail should not be rewarded for failing because doing so inverts the risk/reward incentives and skews the economic calculus.

In short, this entire column is based on provable falsehoods and basic statistical illiteracy. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that a failing business model (print news) seems to be leading the charge against creative destruction and the cleansing efficiency of capitalism. In an unfettered market, the incompetent get left in the dust.

Matt Miller Fantasizing About Murderous Rampages (And Other Things You Wish You Could Unread)

‘The Shining’ — national debt edition

By Matt Miller, Wednesday, April 20, 12:01 PM

Remember that great scene in the 1980 film classic, “The Shining,”

Remember that time when political writers didn’t defer their responsibility to generate a compelling narrative to tenuous analogies? Yeah, neither do I, but then, I was born in 1986. Holla back, old people.

when the wife comes upon the typewriter

Or, as those of us born after 1985 call it: “a prop from the set of Mad Men.”

of the Jack Nicholson character,

Dammit, Miller. You’ve already ruined Nicholson for me once. http://embracethedivide.blogspot.com/2011/03/ruining-jack-nicholson.html

who’s supposed to have been working night and day for months on his novel?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest would be only slightly more appropriate, but I'll accede to your obnoxious choice of references.

To her horror, she finds thousands of pages on which Jack has typed, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” formatted in countless, crazy ways.

I’ve seen The Shining, and I’m still kind of shocked that you can format text on a typewriter. I'm still kind of fixated on those creepy sisters. They kind of remind me of Katrina Vanden Heuvel.

Suddenly his suspected madness becomes all too frighteningly real.

Like any good horror movie, the audience is perpetually annoyed at the characters' blissful ignorance at the incredibly suspicious behavior around them. So we watch in a state of nagging irritation as the miserably oblivious characters stumble in and out of situations created by pure stupidity. OF COURSE MATTMILLER IS BATSHIT CRAZY; HE WROTE AN ENTIRE COLUMN IN THE FORM OF A FICTIONAL GAME SHOW ABOUT WHY WE NEED HIGHER GAS TAXES! LESS THAN A MONTH AGO!

If there’s a way to scream a semicolon, I just pulled it off like a champ.

Well, debt limit mania has driven me to a similar frenzied state.

As in…axe murder in a hedge maze? 

If my wife came across my manuscript it would read, “The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit. The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit.”

Not exactly punchy.

I thought about making this week’s column that one sentence printed over and over 30 times.

I have to give it to him. He actually could have written something dumber than this column.

It would have been the opinion page equivalent of a Dada-esque protest against the inanity of the debate —

The opinion page is not artistic in any way. Neither is Dadaism. The only common link between opinion writers and Dadaists is a stifling morass of self-importance.

and a cry for every news outlet to focus on this simple, clarifying fact.

First, you compare yourself to an axe murderer.

Then you flirt with Dadaism—an artistic movement/philosophy literally based on the ideal of nonsense.

Clarity, you dim-witted miscreant, is an attribute that has never introduced itself to you.

(Close your eyes for a moment

Around a guy fantasizing about being an axe murderer? Fuck no!

and picture such a column — kinda fun, don’t you think?

You need some new ways to have fun. No one give Matt a slinky. He’ll have to spend the next three weeks delighted that it walks down stairs.

And imagine the trend it might have sparked among pundits who found they could do their jobs with more zen-like elegance than ever before.

There’s nothing zen-like or elegant about murderous rampages.

Just distill and hammer home the single thought readers need that week to alter their worldview — more powerful than a haiku;

Things more powerful than a haiku:

The tensile strength of saliva

The lyrics of a Ke$ha song

The fielding acumen of Manny Ramirez

(you get the idea)

less evanescent than a tweet.)

Is that really desirable?

Why bother with evidence, logic, or compelling arguments at all. Just assert. Because the common man doesn’t need proof; all he really needs is the reassurance of being able a script generated by the intelligentsia.

But there’s more to say.

And yet you’ve said absolutely nothing more this entire column (except of course, some very revealing fantasies about wilting into a murderous psychotic).

For the life of me I don’t understand why the press

Note that he regards the press—to which he is inescapably melded—as monolithic. Kind of depressing.

doesn’t shove this fact in front of every Republican who says the debt limit cannot be raised unless serious new spending cuts are put in place.

Ostensibly, this would be a good argument for more extensive spending cuts.

The supposedly “courageous,” “visionary” Paul Ryan plan — which already contains everything Republicans can think of in terms of these spending cuts

Not by a long shot. This is still a political document, after all.

— would add more debt than we’ve ever seen over a 10-year period in American history.

Which, of course, is an asinine factoid for two reaons. 1) it again argues for more aggressive spending cuts (which I support and Matt Miller opposes) and 2) budgeting is done using a baseline. That baseline is calculated off of trended projections. Because of the last two years, the trend has been significantly upwards, which means that the cuts from the baseline are still adding debt.

Yet Ryan and other House GOP leaders continue to make outrageous statements to the contrary.

And then of course there are the proposed alternatives: “The People’s Budget,” so beloved by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, is designed to tax people until there is no more wealth created in the United States. There can be absolutely no doubt that it will not provide the economic benefits that it promises because it refuses to factor in the negative impact of tax increases on economic growth.

The second alternative, which the Ryan plan combats effectively, is the status quo. This is the comparison Republicans are drawing. Without giving too much credit to a man who is clearly off his rocker, Matt Miller understands this.

Without blushing. And without anyone calling them on it.

Seriously now, you’re saying we should cut more? You sure?

“The spending spree is over,”

Note: Spending. Not deficit.

Ryan said the other day, after the House passed his blueprint. “We cannot keep spending money we don’t have.”

This week from Obama: “We can’t spend more than we take in.”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041911/content/01125111.guest.html

Except that by his own reckoning Ryan is planning to spend $6 trillion we don’t have in the next decade alone.

Considering that the 2010 budget deficit alone is somewhere in the range of $1.3B, this represents an average annual deficit reduction of 43%.

The more you know!

“We have too many people worried about the next election and not worried about the next generation,” Ryan added.

Which is a signal to any reasonable person that the demonstrable benefits of the Ryan plan come years, even decades down the road.

So Ryan is expressing his concern by adding at least $14 trillion to the debt between now and when his plan finally balances the budget sometime in the 2030s (and only then if a number of the plan’s dubious assumptions come to pass).

Compared to, say, the progressive caucus’ “People’s Budget,” which balances the budget only when the rules of economics and the fundamental state of the human condition are rewritten.

“We cannot afford to ignore this coming fiscal train wreck any longer,” Eric Cantor says. “Complacency is not an option.” Well, if $14 trillion in fresh debt and unbalanced budgets until the 2030s do not amount to “complacency,” I’d hate to hear what the GOP definition of “profligacy” is.

Those two words aren’t antonyms.

Yes, I know: The Democrats’ plans are no better on the debt

Great. You're right. Stop here. You’re going to embarrass yourself if you keep going.

(though it must be noted that the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far;

Too late.

it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts).

Also, a giant government program called the Found Money Trust. Basically it hires 50,000 new government employees to sit around and wait to stumble upon a giant pile of money, The budget is more or less dependent on the revenue generation from this program.

But at least Democrats aren’t rattling markets by hypocritically holding the debt limit hostage while planning to add trillions in fresh debt themselves.

Did he even notice that Standard and Poors downgraded the US debt outlook to Negative? That had nothing to do with the debt limit skirmish.

It’s amazing how some memes, once established as conventional wisdom, are almost impossible to dislodge,

For example:

George Bush is a dullard.

Sarah Palin is a dullard.

Michelle Bachmann is a dullard.

Condaleeza Rice is a dullard.

The Tea Party is racist.

The Tea Party screamed racial slurs at a Black Congressman.

Scott Walker hates all Unions

In case it wasn’t patently obvious, all are demonstrably false. We done?

Nope. Let’s try one more:

Barack Obama is eloquent.

however at odds they are with the facts. Griping about this to a Prominent Media Figure

That prominent media figure should know enough about media to tell you that “prominent media figure” is not a proper noun.

the other day, I suggested that maybe if I set myself on fire in Times Square while spouting the truth about Republican debt, the truth would break through.

No, but you would be on fire, you crazy son of a bitch.

“Maybe,” he said. “But then you’d be seen as the radical.”

I hate to break it to you, but you are a radical. Not only do you want an asinine gasoline tax, but you also have presented a highlight reel of inaccurate and out-of-context statements about the budget proposals. That this “prominent media figure”—still not a capital noun, mind you—doesn’t already know this about you buttresses what conservatives have said about prominent media figures for decades.

The classic definition of chutzpah was a kid who kills his parents and then asks for the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.

Good lord, your mind is a twisted, wretched place. I've never read a major political contributor so unnecessarily obsessed with murder, death, and destruction.

The new definition of chutzpah is Republicans who vote for the Ryan plan that adds trillions in debt and who then say the debt limit goes up only over their dead bodies!

Republicans aren’t categorically refusing to raise the debt limit. They are simply demanding something in return. This is, after all, politics.

If I were Barack Obama, my mantra on this week’s debt tour

He’s not doing a debt tour; he’s campaigning. Yes already.

and in the months ahead would be that we should lift the debt limit only by as much debt as is needed to accommodate Paul Ryan’s budget.

Republicans would absolutely agree. In fact, let’s pass the legislation to raise the debt ceiling with the Ryan budget. Let's do it tomorrow.

The president and his team should say this every time they’re asked about the debt limit until people can’t stand hearing it any more.

They would only have to say it once. The Republicans would take them up on it so fast that there’s be a stampede back to the Capitol.

All I know is somebody better start saying this soon or I may be forced to do something desperate.

Your life is desperate. We are all now slightly more pathetic for having shared in your tragic ramblings for a few minutes. 

The Era of Big Government is Over. Stage One: Denial.

Deficit hawks and the games they play

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

For 30 years,

In other words: since Reagan. Since the demise of Keynesianism as a serious economic philosophy. Since conservatives found their identity.

conservative ideologues

Keep in mind for future reference that he is implying that being an ideologue is somehow a negative.

have played moderate deficit hawks

[null set]

for suckers.

You'd think this might endow

I’m going to snicker quietly to myself, but I’m not going to make a penis joke. That’s the high road, people.

those middle-of-the-road deficit-busters

Again, [null set].

with a touch of humility.

I’m not entirely sure what point he’s trying to make here. Is it that the right has been tricking centrists into supporting deficit reduction that they already support? And that because of this Blofeldian deceit, that the centrists should then project modesty and meekness?

Fat chance.

Don’t act like your logical contortions make sense.

They stick with their self-righteous moralism, pretending to be bipartisan and beyond ideology.

Remember when he thought that being ideological was bad? Now, apparently not being ideological is bad. Quite a swing for two sentences.

In fact, they make the problem they want to solve worse by continuing to empower the tax-cuts-in-every-season conservatives.

Finally! A fair point! Not a good point, mind you, but a fair one. Dionne believes that lowering taxes significantly decreases revenues and accordingly increases the deficit. It’s woefully simplistic, economically myopic, and completely misdiagnoses the cause of the deficit, but let’s roll with it.

It's thus satisfying to see President Obama ignore the willfully naive who are wailing over deficits.

Is the assertion here that deficits aren’t a problem, that deficits aren’t an immediate problem, or that it’s satisfying to see the country’s leader pretend a problem isn’t there?

He knows that new revenue will have to play a big role in deficit reduction.

Read: we need tax increases.

He also knows that House Republicans are pretending we can cut our way out of this mess and would demagogue any general tax increases.

Of course, you can cut your way out of any deficit. Just stop spending. This is all theoretical, of course. The point is, the theoretical construct for cutting spending to eliminate a deficit is far more sound than the theoretical construct for growing revenues to implausible percentages of GDP while maintaining strong economic growth.

So he has proposed some serious spending cuts

[null set]

and some modest revenue increases

Read: new taxes.

to keep things stable as he embarks on a long struggle to move our dysfunctional budget politics to a better place.

He’s not even sort of doing that. He’s ducking for cover and hoping the issue goes away on its own.

This annoys his deficit-obsessed critics,

Again, is the assertion that the deficit isn’t a big deal, because you just praised the President for spending cuts and revenue increases.

by which I mean just about everyone who says he should simply embrace the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson commission.

It’s a good starting point.

Obama should smile, let them rage and go about his business.

What business? This is the job. This is, quite frankly, the most important part of the job. Without financial stability, we can’t fund essential functions of the government, like national defense and basic infrastructure maintenance. (Funding for a painting of Henry Ford in cow’s blood does not qualify as essential functions of the government.) He can’t go about his business because this is his business. This is what conservatives mean when we say that he’s not up for the job. Apparently, as Dionne displays, it’s not unique to President Obama. The progressive ideology is simply not suited to address the challenges that we are currently facing.

Let's look at history.

Excellent idea.

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he won big tax cuts coupled with big increases in military spending.

::Swoon::

The tax cuts and a severe recession tanked government revenue.

Mostly the recession.

Unlike today's conservatives, Reagan at least acknowledged mathematical reality and signed some tax increases.

These were largely simplifications of existing tax code.

But these were insufficient, and it fell first to George H.W. Bush - the last truly fiscally responsible Republican - and then to Bill Clinton to restore budgetary sanity.

It didn’t hurt that we had won the Cold War by that point, and that the economy went gangbusters—based on nothing related to federal policy—for about twenty years starting after the recession of the early eighties. This was accelerated by outsourcing (opposed by Democrats), and budgetary policies and welfare reform put in place by Republican congresses and erroneously credited to Clinton.

But the conservatives who dug the hole

Why is it that the deficit wasn’t a big issue when GW Bush left office?

did nothing to get us out of it. On the contrary, they denounced the first President Bush for raising taxes,

First, I was six, so don’t put that on me. Second, the objection was less about the taxes and more about the blatant disregard for his word. Republicans don’t believe blindly that there should be no taxes to finance the government. Nor do we believe that reductions in taxes will always increase federal revenues (we actually understand the Laffer Curve.) Quite simply, we are a reactionary counterbalance to the certainty that liberals will promote policies that advocate tax increases on an already woefully overtaxed society.

and every Republican voted against Clinton's economic plan.

He had one?

For their bravery in supporting tax increases in 1993, Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994.

Which is when the policies that propelled to the boom of the late-90s were crafted. Kind of like how the Republican legislators of today are cleaning up the mess from the “brave” members who voted in favor of Obamacare.

By the end of the Clinton years, we had a handsome surplus.

Let’s not get carried away; it was a surplus, but not a particularly large or sustainable one.

In came the second President Bush who, with Republicans in Congress, declared the surplus too big.

No, they declared that taxes were too high. They were, and still are. There is a good argument to be made that the structural problems that we currently have in our economy were there in the 2000 crash, but that President Bush’s tax cuts and a policy that allowed the free market to course-correct shortened a very bad recession. Regardless, deficits always increase in recessions because revenues always dip. Spending is never as reactionary.

It was one problem they worked very hard to solve. Two tax cuts and two wars later,

We were attacked. One of these wars is universally agreed to be absolutely essential. The second was essential based on faulty intelligence. Even with that faulty intelligence, it still proved to be a good idea.

we were plunged into deficits - again. And the economic downturn that started on Bush 43's watch made everything worse, cutting revenue

Revenue is taxes, FYI.

and requiring more deficit spending to get the economy moving.

Spending DOES NOT get the economy moving!

Where were the moderate deficit hawks in all this?

I keep telling you, moderation is incompatible with being a deficit hawk.

They have a very bad habit. When conservatives blow up our fiscal position with their tax cuts, the deficit hawks are silent - or, at best, mumble a few words of mild reproach to have something on the record - and let the budget wreckage happen. Quite a few in their ranks (yes, including some Democrats) actually supported the Bush tax cuts.

And bless their little hearts for cowing to political pressure to do the right thing.

But when it's the progressives' turn in power,

We vote our leaders into power. It’s not a second-grade class election where everyone gets a turn by virtue of simply being there.

the deficit hawks become ferocious.

That’s more a cumulative effect. Having a national debt that is the size of our GDP is a terrible thing. We are on the precipice of having our debt rating downgraded, which will immediately increase the cost of servicing our debt by increasing the required rate for US bondholders. Our deficit has risen to roughly 10% of GDP (up from a Bush-era average just shy of 2%). The reason that there is alarm is because this is pretty goddamn scary.

They denounce liberals if they do not move immediately to address the shortfall left by conservatives.

Well to be fair, we denounce liberals for sport. It doesn’t mean we’re not right to gasp in horror at the easily predictable (and, frankly, widely expected) results of Obama’s spend-happy policies.

Thus, conservatives get to govern as they wish. Liberals are labeled as irresponsible

Can I make an editing suggestion? Let’s just keep it as “Liberals are irresponsible” and leave it at that.

unless they abandon their own agenda and devote their every moment in power to cutting the deficit.

Except that President Obama has spent precisely none of his moments in power to cutting the deficit. NONE MOMENTS!

It's a game for chumps. The conservatives play it brilliantly.

It’s not really a game. The country is broke.

By winning their tax cuts and slashing government revenue, they constrain what liberals can do whenever they get back into power.

That’s limited government, and it’s why conservatism is a movement that has always been predicated on strong presidential leadership. Liberals have unwittingly given astonishing power to the executive branch to regulate, to interpret broadly written laws, and to spend vast reams of freshly minted greenbacks We simply need a leader to wield it with the strength to dismantle the bureaucratic machine.

How do we know our difficulties stem primarily from a shortage of revenue?

We don’t. In fact, we know precisely the opposite.

Consider what would happen if we allowed all the tax cuts scheduled to expire in 2012, including the ones enacted under Bush, to go away.

Dr. Peter Venkman: This [government] is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.

Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?

Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.

Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!

Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...

Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!

Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point!

Okay, that’s from Ghostbusters in case you suck as a person and couldn’t already tell.

That would produce nearly as much deficit reduction over the next decade - roughly $4 trillion - as all the maneuvers of the Bowles-Simpson commission put together.

Of course, that assumes completely unrealistic revenue projections and economic circumstances, but by all means, let’s leave the serious matter of the federal budget to nincompoops living in a fantasy world.

If you want to be serious about closing the deficit, ending the Bush tax cuts is a good place to start.

Why? If you give the government more money, they’re just going to spend it on useless programs. This happened here in Illinois. Right after a massive “one-time” increase in the income tax to pay off the state’s debts, the governor proposed a budget that increased spending.

The commission's work showed just how effective conservatives have been. By saying they will never, ever, ever raise taxes,

To be fair, the commission had numerous tax increases, most of which I object to.

conservatives intimidate moderates into making concession after concession.

Is the argument here that raising taxes in a recession is a moderate position? I’m pretty sure that’s not why we had a 60+ seat swing in November.

In the end, the Senate conservatives on the commission - but not the House conservatives - supported some mild tax increases. But Bowles-Simpson proposed about twice as much in spending cuts as in revenue increases. You would think that moderates could at least hold out for a 50-50 split. But no, they'll do anything to win over a few conservatives.

Is it just me, or is it starting to get uncomfortable how stridently he’s arguing that we should give more money and power to the federal government?

As a result, any conservative who supports even the smallest tax increase is hailed as courageous.

This is completely counterintuitive to what you’ve been trying to say for about 3 pages of drivel. Conservatives that support tax increases should be roundly condemned.

Any liberal who proposes moderate spending cuts is condemned as a gutless coward unless he or she also supports slashing Social Security and Medicare. What's "moderate" or "balanced" about this?

Not sure. It’s completely un-tethered to reality, if that’s what you’re asking.

I hope Obama has the spine to keep calling the bluff of the deficit hawks until they get serious about changing the politics of deficit reduction. We can't afford another 30 years of fiscal evasion.

Are you out of your mind? We can’t afford another 2 years of fiscal evasion. We’re poised to need to raise the debt ceiling in about a month, and I have serious doubts that Republicans are going to go along without a budget that actually addresses cuts to the bloated federal bureaucracy and ever-increasing siphon of the private sector. Moody’s has been warning us about dropping our credit rating for two years, but the warnings have been fast and furious recently. Having the national debt surpass GDP is a colossal milestone—one that Greece and Ireland reached not so long ago.

If the asinine idea that we can tax our way out of debt persists, we’re going to have to move from the politics of a deficit to the politics of default.

Logic: If Abstract is Bad, and Concrete is the Antonym of Abstract, We Need More Roads

New GOP House can't govern with rhetoric alone

They just can’t stand it that the GOP message is resonating. Where was this disgust with the abstract in 2008, when an entire presidential campaign was run with two words? What about when Pelosi’s House decided they “ha[d] to pass the bill to find out what’s in the bill?”

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011; 8:00 PM

Edmund Burke, one of history's greatest conservatives,

It also bears mentioning that Burke was an 18^th Century Brit/Irishman. He was therefore not bound by the constraints on governmental powers enshrined in our Constitution.

warned that abstractions are the enemy of responsible government.

There should be a rule against liberals citing conservatives. They virtually always misinterpret the quote. Then again, they would have to. If they fully understood the meaning of conservatism, well, they wouldn’t be liberal.

"I never govern myself, no rational man ever did govern himself,

Note: Burke is talking about governing himself. In case EJ missed elementary civics, the House of Representatives doesn’t govern anything (except, somewhat ironically, itself). It legislates.

by abstractions and universals," Burke wrote. "A statesman differs from a professor in a university; the latter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman, has a number of circumstances to combine with those general ideas."

Note: the ideas, often packaged together into a single “ideology,” inform the response to circumstances. While there is a feedback loop, sound judgment does not allow a circumstance in a vacuum to alter ideology. This is why flip-flopping is a pejorative in American politics.

Alas for all of us

Count me out of the “us.” I don’t want to be involved in any “us” with you, EJ Dionne, Jr.

and for American conservatism in particular,

Remember the last time we took liberals advice on what was best for American conservatism? We got the debacle of McCain for President 2008.

the new Republican majority that took control of the House on Wednesday is embarked on an experiment in government by abstractions.

By this point, a lack of specificity in Congress is a precedent bordering on tradition, not an experiment.

Many in its ranks pride themselves on being practical business people, but they behave as professors in thrall to a few thrilling ideas.

Business is not about subordinating ideas to circumstance. Look at one of the most effective businessmen of the past ten years: Steve Jobs. Jobs is a rigid ideologue who believes that Apple’s role is to change the world by doing things his way. So too does Mark Zuckerburg, who has consistently turned down lucrative buy-out offers. It was the opportunist, Rupert Murdoch, who bought MySpace and saw its’ value plummet. Meanwhile, Facebook is going public at an obscene revenue multiple that has made Mr. Zuckerburg the world’s youngest billionaire (even if he did foolishly give buckets of his money to Bill Gates’ absurd wealth-is-guilt billionaire money drive.) The point is, great success is based in the risk of adhering to your principles, not the safety of acceding to expediency.

Their rhetoric is nearly devoid of talk about solving practical problems - how to improve our health care,

Repealing Obamacare does improve healthcare.

education

Not an important issue right now. Plus, that should be a state/local issue anyways.

and transportation systems,

Very much not an important issue right now, but this still should be a state issue too.

or how to create more middle-class jobs.

By cutting taxes. Truly, we don’t need 1800 page bills for these things. What’s more, we certainly don’t have to adjudicate the merits of 1800 page bills in the public sphere because the left just throws out misinformation anyways. See: Obamacare debate. We’re still arguing about whether death panels exist. They will, because sooner or later, bureaucrats will have to ration care.

We know that cutting taxes increases job growth. We know this not only because empirical evidence bears it out, but also because lowering the tax rate lowers the cost of capital (Yes, necessarily. It’s part of the formula.) and increases both the number and the profitability of acceptable projects in which a company can reinvest profits. These expansions are literally the definition of growth, and growth is the single greatest factor in job creation.

Instead, we hear about things we can't touch or see or feel,

Like global warming? Count it!

and about highly general principles divorced from their impact on everyday life.

Lower taxes and cut spending is abstract? I feel taxes every time I see my paycheck. Then I write an angry letter to Joe Biden expressing my strong displeasure. I figure he has the most free time to respond.

Their passion is not for what government should or shouldn't do but for "smaller government" as a moral imperative.

I don’t see the point here. There is only one valid debate for politicians to be having right now: “is that the role of the federal government?” The idea that using government as a blunt instrument to enact social change of indeterminate merit is, of course, a moral issue. This is because every program the government engages in requires the government to either confiscate the cost from taxpayers or delay confiscating the cost from taxpayers through the federal debt. Of course, liberals like Dionne don’t see federal revenues as confiscated from the taxpayer; they see it as the government’s money. Therein lies the moral imperative.

During the campaign, they put out a nice round $100 billion in spending cuts from which they're now backing away.

They shouldn’t. $100B is a good start.

It is far easier to float a big number than to describe reductions for student loans,

Here’s a question: are student loans the role of the federal government? Are these among the powers of Congress enumerated by the Constitution? Could the private sector provide student loans more efficiently? I think the suggestive manner in which I ordered the questions conveys a self-apparent answer.

bridges,

Bridges? Really? You want to talk about bridge policy? Very well, I’m strongly opposed to bidding high on a leading ace. (I don’t play bridge, so I may have sacrificed coherence for that pun.)

national parks

I still don’t really get why we have to spend any money on national parks. They’re basically wildlife refuges. Just let them be.

or medical research.

Again, is medical research the role of the federal government? Are these among the powers of Congress enumerated by the Constitution? Could the private sector engage in medical research more efficiently?

Republicans promised they would "repeal and replace" President Obama's health-care law, but the only thing on the schedule is repeal. They provide no alternative.

There’s no point right now. Health care was never the crisis the Obama Administration made it out to be. Some 60% want the law repealed. By offering a replacement, you are effectively engaging in two arguments at the same time.

Then again, is health care regulation the role of the federal government? Are these among the powers of Congress enumerated by the Constitution? Could the private sector engage in the health care industry more efficiently?

A leadership that promised a more open process highhandedly slammed the door on any amendments to its repeal bill.

There’s a difference between enacting new legislation and getting rid of the bad old legislation. Obamacare was the single biggest issue in this last election.  Every legislator and candidate had the opportunity to hold debate directly with the American people. The American people said no.

Most Americans rather like the new law's ban on insurance discrimination against those with preexisting conditions and the provision allowing parents to keep children on their health insurance plans until age 26.

No, most Americans think infantilizing twenty-somethings is condescending. Not to mention that the polling data for these proposals looks at the offers in a vacuum without cost estimates. It’s like asking a kid if they want candy without telling them that it costs their entire allowance. Actually, it’s less innocent than that. It’s more like a hooker picking up a guy without revealing that he’s going to have to pay afterwards.

But there will be no votes on those parts of the law because attention to those inconvenient "circumstances" Burke discusses would divert attention from the great, abstract scarecrow of "Obamacare."

How is a piece of legislation an abstract? Obamacare is a series of laws and regulations that work in consort to produce a massive industry-killing powergrab for the federal government. Keeping provisions of the bill is both unpopular and needlessly complex.

There is nothing wrong with reading our Constitution as part of the new Congress's debut. It's a good Constitution.

James Madison thanks you for your approval.

But note that conservatives would much prefer to pronounce various liberal initiatives "unconstitutional" - again, in the abstract –

How is deciding that the individual mandate in Obamacare violates the Constitution abstract? The Constitution is concrete. Obamacare is concrete. Their conflicts must necessarily also be concrete.

than to say whether they are for or against minimum-wage

Which minimum wage laws? Not only is this painfully vague, but this hasn’t been relevant in almost a decade. For the record, minimum wage laws are feel-good nonsense offered up by condescending suits. Minimum wage jobs are for high school kids. No one earns the minimum wage for more than six months. Even in recession, the bargaining power of workers allows job-seekers to demand in excess of the minimum wage for virtually any job. By raising the minimum wage, however, you would put downward pressure on hiring and lead more people from minimum wage to welfare.

and environmental laws,

Which environmental laws, Mr “I hate how Republicans talk in abstractions?”

Medicaid

What Republican over the last 20 years has opposed the existence of Medicaid? The issue is always the expansions to Medicaid and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse—which are rampant—from a massive bureaucracy. Oh, and which changes to Medicaid is the object of your abstractions?

and a slew of other initiatives that never crossed the minds of those who wrote our foundational document.

The Founders were concerned with creating enduring principles. While they understood that they would be ill-equiped to govern 250 years in the future, they also understood that certain principles are timeless. If their verbiage or perspective became outdated, they also gave the legislature the mechanism to recreate the Constitution in ways as large or small as they wanted.

The Founders couldn't conceive of Facebook, either.

This is a completely worthless sentence, unless you’re abstractly arguing that we should regulate the internet.

And that other perennial abstraction, "excessive regulation," is easier to assail than specific rules that make our air and water cleaner or financial transactions more transparent.

Of course. FinReg was 2300 pages of regulations. To go through all of them would require a week of nonstop TV coverage or a paper much, much better than the Washington Post.

Here are a few:

--a council of unelected financiers, the “Financial Stability Oversight Council” was given the authority to take over financial institutions that they deem a risk. They have no oversight and an unlimited budget. Do you really want to dig into this one?  I can scream “nationalization” really really loud. Try me.

--Derivatives now must be traded on exchanges, instead of OTC. Anyone who understands derivatives thinks this is crazy. Exchanges work well for derivatives like options and futures, but forwards and swaps—the vast majority of the derivatives market—are entered into between two consenting parties that need no exchange. The swaps market is so large-scale that it’s virtually impossible for a private investor to engage in the market, and even less likely that a private investor would be injured by deceptively risky contracts. They have lawyers and financiers for that. You want to try informing the public why a swap is different than a future, go right ahead, but most people understand that the government injecting itself into a private transaction between businesses is a bad idea. It need not be more complicated than that.

--The credit rating agencies, such as Standard and Poors, Moodys, and Fitch, must report to the SEC Office of Credit Ratings. I wonder whether they’ll be honest with us about Fannie and Freddie’s ratings.

--and of course, the SEC’s virtually universal right to offer exemptions to anything and everything. Is there a better way to promote cronyism between K Street and Wall Street?

Intelligent legislators

Subtle. Of course, you’re not implying that Republicans are unintelligent, are you?

know that human beings sometimes cut corners. They recall what James Madison, another conservative hero, said in Federalist 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

“Cutting corners” is not what Madison was talking about. He was talking about malevolence, not laziness. Murder is different from incompetence; theft is different from negligence.

As Madison knew, men aren't angels, but the professors in Congress seem to believe that another great abstraction, "the free market," can obviate the need for messy and complicated statutes.

Yes, Dionne is really advocating for messy and complicated laws?

We hear much debate over how Obama and the Democrats should deal with the Republican House and beefed-up Republican ranks in the Senate. The primary task should be a relentless campaign to move the public discussion from the abstract to the concrete:

I’m counting this as a tacit admission that liberal ideology is unpopular.

from doctrine to problem-solving; from "smaller government" to the specifics of what government does;

A piece of advice: leave the catered brunches out of it when you describe what government does.

from "budget cuts" to the impact of reductions on actual programs.

If there are fewer USDA employees, we won’t be able to effectively and ethically mete out lawsuit settlements…oh wait.

And paradoxically, because Obama is a former professor himself, he may be especially well-suited to call the bluff of the new professoriate in Congress. He knows better than most the dangers posed by an excessive devotion to abstractions.

Really? He owes his election to it. That and White Guilt. You would think he’d be more attuned to the benefits, not the dangers.

But the media also have a responsibility.

The marching orders have been laid out. Look out!

If journalism in a democracy is about anything, it is about bringing the expansive rhetoric of politicians down to earth and holding them accountable for how their ideas translate into policies that affect actual human beings.

Now that Republicans are in office, the media has a responsibility to hold politicians accountable? Where was this lust for specifics in the health care debate, when Obama derided the notion of more debate as laughable obstructionism? Where was the thirst for the concrete during the campaign of 2008 when the only things we remember now are the words “hope” and “change?” Where was the zeal for ethical reportage when avowed socialists were appointed to prominent positions in the White House?

It may be easier to report windy speeches about "liberty" and "entrepreneurship" than to do the grubby work of examining budgets, regulations, programs and economic consequences.

Seriously, change “liberty” to “hope” and “entrepreneurship” to “change” and you have a conservative snippet from 2008 that would have Dionne scoffing for days.

But journalists surely want to be more than stenographers.

The question is whether or not journalists’ role is to be more than stenographers. It seems they only seem to think so when the liberal flag is in retreat.

Michael Oakeshott, another great conservative philosopher, declared: "It is the mark of all intelligent discourse that it is about something in particular."

Well, that knocks this article off the pedestal of intelligent discourse, as it has been entirely about randomness and clearly hollow cries for specifics. Dionne even went so far as to ask for specifics on how Republicans feel about “environmental regulations.” Care to narrow it down, EJ? Can you give me a hint?

Let's encourage the new professors who would govern us to deal with particulars and not just their ideological dreams.

In other words: abandon your ideology, stray off your message, give up your campaign promises, and get bogged down in the minutia at a time when America needs bold leadership.

Sorry, EJ. We don’t pay our politicians to be subject-matter experts on everything that crosses their desk. Their job is to be informed, but apply a consistent and predictable ideology to the tasks of the day and promote their decisions to their constituents. If they want to negotiate in the margins, that’s great, but it all comes from an over-riding set of deeply held beliefs. These beliefs aren’t trivial. To the contrary, these beliefs are proof that our politicians are engaged in trying to explain the complexities to themselves and to us, and trying to define rules from which we can reasonably extrapolate. These beliefs are proof that our politicians still give a damn.

Dropping the Hammer

It has occurred to me that I'm ridiculing a lot more than I'm praising, in large part because ridicule is more fun. Anyways, here's a little tip of the cap action:

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post is today's Object of Praise and Admiration. He hates and blames hippies just like me! The next asshole I see wearing a Peruvian poncho gets a beer bottle upside the head.

The Heretic and the Inquisitor

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn (and it's always a hard-fought battle on Sundays) is Jessica Valenti, whose opinion piece ran today in the Washington Post.

I’ve always been amazed at how liberals have been able to sell the march towards massive government control with the rhetoric of liberty. Normally I’d be impressed, but Jessica Valenti is a leading intellectual within the feminist movement, and she isn’t even close to compelling here.

In a country where women are in many positions of authority across both the public and private spheres and a basic cable package boasts no fewer than three channels programmed explicitly for women, the relevance of the march of feminism is severely limited. So Valenti and her ilk are relegated to peddling the politics of division. Much like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton act as poverty pimps for the black community, Valenti aspires to act as a discrimination pimp for women. Sarah Palin is dangerous because she is a model of astronomical female success built outside of the feminist framework of support.

Valenti leans heavily—though unintentionally—on the motif of the Church of Feminism, drawing a sharp line between “us” and “them.” Valenti casts herself as inquisitor. Feminist leaders like Gloria Steinem are like a council of elders. Sarah Palin is the heretic who has turned from the good word. Even the language of “the movement” is sacrosanct. The dogma is not open for adaptation or interpretation—only the elders can be entrusted with that responsibility.

Ineptitude as an Art and a Science

The Washington Post had the audacity to run this opinion column today by Mark Brzezinski. Brzezinski is a biased subject-matter expert, not a resident Post columnist, so it's actually a decent article that centers mostly around the problem of bribery and other shady business practices in developing nations. It is a problem worth examining, but Brzezinski foolishly believes that cracking down on the bribers (mostly American corporations) will be a more fruitful effort than encouraging responsible governance in the third world. That is not, however, my issue with the article.

I highlight this article because a mere 12(ish) hours before this piece went to press, President Obama refused to answer a question about the Sestak allegations of bribery. Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Pennsylvania Joe Sestak has said repeatedly that the Administration offered him a high-level appointment within the administration (it's widely speculated that the position was Secretary of the Navy) in exchange for withdrawing his primary challenge from incumbent Democratic Senator Arlen Specter. If Sestak's allegations are true, someone high up at the White House has committed a felony.

Re-Fighting the Cold War

Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr.

GULF OIL SPILL OFFERS A LESSON IN CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM by E.J. Dionne Jr. 

So who is in charge of stopping the oil spill, BP or the federal government? 

It’s not really a question. British Petroleum is the only one even trying. At this writing, the Top Kill method to plug the leak—an idea generated and executed solely by BP—appears to have worked.

The fact that the answer to this question seems as murky as the water around the exploded oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico 

There’s absolutely no murkiness in the answer. It’s clear as day. But admitting clarity would deny Dionne the chance to use that clunky simile.

suggests that this is an excellent moment to recognize that our arguments pitting capitalism against socialism 

Less than twenty years after defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Dionne is actually admitting that capitalism and socialism are battling it out for the future of America. This is akin to the United States having “arguments pitting capitalism against fascism” in 1964 or "arguments pitting monarchy against a republic" in 1802. Socialism is a defeated and discredited ideology. If there are large-scale arguments in the United States between capitalism and socialism, who exactly is arguing the virtues of socialism? Conservatives have been blasted from the left for suggesting that Barack Obama and other members of the Obama Administration were socialists. Is this vindication?