Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism Page 3
SUMMARY
•Complexity does not automatically suggest centralization of power
•You and I have a full-time job managing our own respective lives; our task increases exponentially if we try to control the lives of a handful of others and it explodes beyond reason if we try to control the lives of millions
#5
“INCOME INEQUALITY IS THE GREAT ECONOMIC AND MORAL CRISIS OF OUR TIME”
BY RON ROBINSON
AT THE HEART OF PROGRESSIVISM’S POPULARITY IS ITS IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN theme that income inequality is an evil in a free society.
The 20th Century’s most memorable government leaders rose to power attacking income inequality in one form or another. Lenin attacked the old regime led by the czars. He overthrew its replacement government led by social democrat Alexander Kerensky because Kerensky’s socialist party tolerated income inequality. Stalin followed with his persecution of the kulaks, who were the relatively more successful, mostly Ukrainian, farmers. Lenin had set the stage for Stalin’s purges by labeling kulaks as “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine.”
Hitler and his National Socialists attacked Jewish Germans for their economic success and wealth accumulation. Mao Zedong came to power promising income equality and later led the “Cultural Revolution” to enforce his vision. The Castro brothers and their secret police, the infamous Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, sought to rid Cuba of its successful entrepreneurs, lawyers, and doctors.
Essentially the same vices motivated each of these movements: envy and coveting against the successful hard-working entrepreneurial elements of their societies. Russian peasants and sailors could be taught to vilify the kulaks. Nazis found followers in the 1930s who resented the success of Jewish merchants and professionals. Mao and his Red brigades attacked anyone who wasn’t in their “masses.” Castro eliminated or drove away those who had their own farm, sugar, oil-distribution, or entertainment business.
The modern day progressives also rely on envy and coveting to justify raising tax rates. You can seldom find a copy of the New York Times, Washington Post, or other progressive-leaning publication that does not cite income inequality as a threat to society.
How can vices such as envy, coveting, or as the Irish would say, “begrudgery,” still be such core parts of the progressive agenda in light of the results of 20th Century movements that were similarly motivated? As the late economist Milton Friedman famously noted, “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
Basically, it is part of the human condition to resist conceding that someone else is more successful than you are because of different God-given talents, or because he just might be a harder worker, or because he made better decisions. The story of Cain’s resentment and jealousy towards Abel, as told in various Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures, and its horrific consequences, captures how dangerous feeding off resentment can be.
Yet, it is envy, coveting, and begrudgery which are at the core of the modern day progressive belief system.
Ask modern day income redistributionists: Did you do what Kobe Bryant, Aaron Rodgers, Alexander Ovechkin, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, or even Bill Gates or Warren Buffett did to earn their wealth? I doubt they believe so. Yet, how many Americans get tricked into dehumanizing the “wealthy” sufficiently to take comfort in slapping confiscatory taxes on them?
In fact, in American culture today, our films, television shows, academia, and the media produce more ad hominem attacks against successful business people than in all the propaganda machines of the National Socialists, Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, and Red Guards of yesteryear.
Every student knows their fellow classmates get different grades because of differing individual intelligence, attentive ability, hard work, and the level of other distractions in students’ lives. So, you do not have a classroom ideological perspective that insists all grades must be equal and that “inequality” in grades must be eliminated.
You know that your efforts, or your classmates’ efforts, merit different rewards. You accept that as fair. Shuffling the grades randomly, or making every grade the same, is not going to encourage scholarship and overall effort.
So, too, this is why conservatives and libertarians are not impressed by ideological claims that income inequality is worrisome, except to the extent that government interferes to choose favorites.
One of Jesus’s most memorable parables dealt with three servants receiving three different sets of talents. Jesus did not suggest those talents should be re-distributed to create an equality. He was concerned with each recipient wisely using the talents he was entrusted with. If that meant the one with the most talents used his most effectively, Jesus’s parable concluded with the greatest reward for him.
One final note: When progressives discuss security or foreign threats, they often ask, “If you think Al Qaeda or the Islamic State is a threat to the U.S., then why haven’t you signed up to join the military?” Well, you should use this rhetorical approach when debating or discussing the “income inequality” issue with a progressive. Why don’t they volunteer more of their personal income to the government than they are legally coerced to pay?
If the progressive thinks income inequality is a threat that requires action, then I ask, “Why not begin with yourself and redistribute your income? Your income is wildly unequal to the Third World poor or even the poorest Americans.” Of course, the progressive is always reluctant to acknowledge that government cannot give anything to anyone without first seizing someone’s wages or earnings. And the progressives seldom volunteer their own resources.
SUMMARY
•Historically, the worst demagogues demonize a group they don’t like, such as “the rich,” for the purposes of political gain and power lust
•Hypocritically, many progressives advocate government income redistribution in the name of “equality” but rarely run their own lives that way or spend their own money in accordance with the policies they support
#6
“CAPITALISM FOSTERS GREED AND GOVERNMENT POLICY MUST TEMPER IT”
BY LAWRENCE W. REED
ON APRIL 19, 2014, THE COLONIAL BREAD STORE IN MY TOWN OF NEWNAN, GEORGIA, closed its doors after a decade in business. The parent company explained, “In order to focus more sharply on our core competencies, the decision was made to close some of our retail stores.” A long-time patron responded in the local newspaper this way: “It’s just sad. It’s simply greed and we’re on the receiving end. It’s frustrating to know there isn’t anything you can do about it either.”
Now there’s a rather expansive view of “greed” if there ever was one! Trying to make more efficient the business in which you’ve invested your time and money is somehow a greedy thing to do? And what is it that the disgruntled patron wishes should be done about it? Perhaps pass a law to effectively enslave the business owner and compel him to keep the store open? Who is really the greedy one here?
“Greed” is a word that flows off progressive tongues with the ease of lard on a hot griddle. It’s a loaded, pejorative term that consigns whoever gets hit with it to the moral gutter. Whoever hurls it can posture self-righteously as somehow above it all, concerned only about others while the greedy wallow in evil selfishness. Thinking people should realize this is a sleazy tactic, not a thoughtful moral commentary.
Economist Thomas Sowell famously pointed out in Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays that the “greed” accusation doesn’t meet the dictionary definition of the term any more. He wrote, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
Once upon a time, and for a very long time, “greed” meant more than just the desire for something. It meant the inordinate, obsessive worship of it that often crossed the line into
actions that harmed other people. Really, really wanting a million bucks was not in and of itself a bad thing if you honestly worked for it, freely traded with others for it, or took risks and actually created jobs and wealth to secure it. If you worshiped the million bucks to the point of a willingness to steal for it or hire a public official to raid the Treasury on your behalf, then you were definitely a greedy person. Shame on you. If you’re one of those many people today who are willing to stoop to stealing or politicking your way to wealth, you’ve got a lot to answer for.
“Greed” also means, to some people, an unwillingness to share what’s yours with others. I suppose a father who buys a personal yacht instead of feeding his family would qualify. But that’s because he is evading a personal responsibility. He owes it to the family he brought into being to properly care for them. Does the bakery owner who closes his store thereby violate some responsibility to forever serve a certain clientele? Was that ever part of some contract all parties agreed to?
Let’s not forget the fundamental and critical importance of healthy self-interest in human nature. We’re born with it, and thank goodness for that! I don’t lament it for a second. Taking care of yourself and those you love and have responsibility for is what makes the world work. When your self-interest motivates you to do that, it means on net balance you’re good for the world. You’re relieving its burdens, not adding to them.
A common but misleading claim is that the Great Recession of 2008 resulted from the “greed” of the financial community. But did the desire to make money suddenly appear or intensify in the years before 2008? George Mason University economist Lawrence White pointedly explained that blaming greed for recessions doesn’t get us very far. He says “It’s like blaming gravity for an epidemic of plane crashes.” The gravity was always there. Other factors must have interceded to create a serious anomaly. In the case of the Great Recession, those factors prominently included years of cheap money and artificially low interest rates from the Federal Reserve, acts of Congress and the bureaucracy to jawbone banks into making dubious loans for home purchases, and government entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac skewing the housing market—all policies that enjoyed broad support from progressives but never from genuinely “free market” people.
The progressive perspective on “greed” is that it’s a constant problem in the private sector but somehow recedes when government takes over. I wonder exactly when a politician’s self-interest evaporates and his altruistic compassion kicks in? Does that happen on election night, on the day he takes office, or after he’s had a chance to really get to know the folks who grease the wheels of government? When he realizes the power he has, does that make him more or less likely to want to serve himself?
The charlatan cries, “That guy over there is greedy! I will be happy to take your money to protect you from him!” Before you rush into his arms, ask some pointed questions about how the greedy suspect is doing his work and how the would-be protector proposes to do his.
The fact is, there’s nothing about government that makes it less “greedy” than the average guy or the average institution. Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that adding political power to natural self-interest is a sure-fire recipe for magnifying the harm that greed can do. Have you ever heard of corruption in government? Buying votes with promises of other people’s money? Feathering one’s nest by claiming “it’s for the children”? Burdening generations yet unborn with the debt to pay for today’s “Cowboy Poetry Festival” in Nevada (a favorite pork project of Senator Harry Reid)?
If you are an honest, self-interested person in a free market, you quickly realize that to satisfy the self-interest that some critics are quick to dismiss as “greed,” you can’t put a crown on your head, wrap a robe around yourself, and demand that the peasants cough up their shekels. You have to produce, create, trade, invest, employ. You have to provide goods or services that willing customers (not taxpaying captives) will choose to buy and hopefully more than just once. Your “greed” gets translated into life-enhancing things for other people. In the top-down, socialized utopia the progressives dream of, greed doesn’t disappear at all. It just gets channeled into destructive directions: to satisfy it, you’ve got to use the political process to grab something from other people.
The “greed” charge turns out to be little more than a rhetorical device, a superficial smear intended to serve political ends. Whether or not you worship a material thing like money is largely a matter between you and your Maker, not something that can be scientifically measured and proscribed by lawmakers who are just as prone to it as you are. Don’t be a sucker for it.
SUMMARY
•Greed has become a slippery term that cries out for some objective meaning; it’s used these days to describe lots of behaviors that somebody doesn’t like for other, sometimes hidden, reasons
•Self-interest is healthy and natural. How you put it into action in your relationships with others is what keeps it healthy or gets it off track
•Lawmakers and government are not immune to greed and, if anything, they magnify it into harmful outcomes
#7
“THE FREE MARKET IGNORES THE POOR”
BY LEONARD E. READ
ONCE AN ACTIVITY HAS BEEN SOCIALIZED FOR A SPELL, NEARLY EVERYONE WILL concede that that’s the way it should be.
Without socialized education, how would the poor get their schooling? Without the socialized post office, how would farmers receive their mail except at great expense? Without Social Security, the aged would end their years in poverty! If power and light were not socialized, consider the plight of the poor families in the Tennessee Valley!
Agreement with the idea of state absolutism follows socialization, appallingly. Why? One does not have to dig very deep for the answer.
Once an activity has been socialized, it is impossible to point out, by concrete example, how men and women in a free market could better conduct it. How, for instance, can one compare a socialized post office with private postal delivery when the latter has been outlawed? It’s something like trying to explain to a people accustomed only to darkness how things would appear were there light. One can only resort to imaginative construction.
To illustrate the dilemma: During recent years, men and women in free and willing exchange (the free market) have discovered how to deliver the human voice around the earth in one twenty-seventh of a second; how to deliver an event, like a ball game, into everyone’s living room, in color and in motion, at the time it is going on; how to deliver 200 people from Los Angeles to Baltimore in three hours and 19 minutes; how to deliver gas from a hole in Texas to a range in New York at low cost and without subsidy; how to deliver 64 ounces of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—more than half-way around the earth—for less money than government will deliver a one-ounce letter across the street in one’s home town. Yet, such commonplace free market phenomena as these, in the field of delivery, fail to convince most people that “the post” could be left to free market delivery without causing people to suffer.
Now, then, resort to imagination: Imagine that our federal government, at its very inception, had issued an edict to the effect that all children, from birth to adulthood, were to receive shoes and socks from the federal government “for free.” Next, imagine that this practice of “free shoes and socks” had been going on for two centuries. Lastly, imagine one of our contemporaries—one with a faith in the wonders of what can be wrought when people are free—saying, “I do not believe that shoes and socks for kids should be a government responsibility. Properly, that is a responsibility of the family. This activity should never have been socialized. It is appropriately a free market activity.”
What, under these circumstances, would be the response to such a stated belief? Based on what we hear on every hand, once an activity has been socialized for even a short time, the common chant would go like this, “Ah, but you would let the poor children go barefoot!”
How
ever, in this instance, where the activity has not yet been socialized, we are able to point out that the poor children are better shod in countries where shoes and socks are a family responsibility than in countries where they are a government responsibility. We’re able to demonstrate that the poor children are better shod in countries that are more free than in countries that are less free.
True, the free market ignores the poor precisely as it does not recognize the wealthy—it is “no respecter of persons.” It is an organizational way of doing things featuring openness, which enables millions of people to cooperate and compete without demanding a preliminary clearance of pedigree, nationality, color, race, religion, or wealth. It demands only that each person abide by voluntary principles, that is, by fair play. The free market means willing exchange; it is impersonal justice in the economic sphere and excludes coercion, plunder, theft, protectionism, subsidies, special favors from those wielding power, and other anti-free market methods by which goods and services change hands. It opens the way for mortals to act morally because they are free to act morally.
Admittedly, human nature is defective, and its imperfections will be reflected in the market (though arguably, no more so than in government). But the free market opens the way for men to operate at their moral best, and all observation confirms that the poor fare better under these circumstances than when the way is closed, as it is under socialism.