Dubious Campaign Choices (final week ed.)
I spent a while this afternoon listening to radio snippets of McCain’s recent stump speeches, and he kept saying that Barack Obama wants to “spread the wealth,” and the audience kept going “Boo!…Boo!,” and, even though I’m kind of a free market sympathizer, my gut response to the the scene, at an elemental pragmatic level, was, “It’s really weird that they’re booing. Who would boo at that? (Maybe they’re saying ‘Bruuuce.’)”
Because when you hear the phrase “Spread the wealth,” as opposed to, say, “Nationalize the means of production” or “Establish a dictatorship of the proletariat” or “Liquidate the Kulaks,” you tend to grant it a positive association. It really has no inherent political baggage, much less implicit negative connotations. It’s basically the same as “Don’t bogart that joint.” (You’d boo if someone said, “Bogart that joint!”)
So McCain is counting on sympathy for libertarian economics to trump the gut-level pragmatics of a common saying. In a time of worldwide financial panic. I just don’t see that working very well.
It’s totally ridiculous. One can criticise various aspects of Obama’s tax plan, but if progressive taxation is so heinous, why isn’t McCain proposing a flat tax? By the standards of the GOP base today pretty much everybody’s a “socialist”, including Ronald Reagan and McCain himself circa 2002.
— Anthony · Oct 29, 11:44 AM · #
Actually, I think McCain is in favor of liquidating the Kulaks.
— Comrade PureGuesswork · Oct 29, 12:42 PM · #
“They’re saying ‘Boo-urns! Boo-urns!’”
— Rover · Oct 29, 01:20 PM · #
I’m not so sure “spread the wealth” has a positive connotation in politics any more. In fact, I’m not sure it has any connotation at this point, which is why it’s pretty handy to follow it with boos in your sound bites.
— Other Ezra · Oct 29, 02:23 PM · #
I’m simply astonished at the resonance of McCain’s denunciations among a slice of the electorate that is not wealthy, most of whom will never be wealthy. It’s not even a manifestation of rational self-interest, of the utilitarian calculations of economic men; it’s more on the order of the traducement of some fundamental fantasy in which people participate imaginatively and vicariously.
— Maximos · Oct 29, 02:53 PM · #
Man, if there was ever a comment to set off my hair-trigger snarkticulator…
Change the candidate, and those words could have come from Mark Steyn.
— Blar · Oct 29, 03:51 PM · #
It makes perfect sense, Maximos, when you remember that the American people live under this delusion: each of them believes that someday, they will be rich. The TV tells them so, and by god, it’ll happen.
One way to help a lot of people in this country would be to have a scroll on the bottom of every TV screen: you will never be rich. You will never be rich. But that would be going against the American dream fantasy, so it would never happen.
— Freddie · Oct 29, 05:18 PM · #
Certainly I meant to be snarky, insofar as the reaction of the GOP grassroots to Obama’s phrase – which phrase, for most, will have positive resonances – is plainly absurd. The overwhelming majority of these folks – good, salt of the earth people – will never be wealthy, and will never be affected by the policies that arouse such terror and loathing in their breasts; what, instead, is happening, is that their fantasy of one day being rich is suffering a little bit of detraction: the idea that getting rich is all about me, owing no man anything and having no obligations to the society that defends that wealth, is being diminished, and those who embody the myth are, at least rhetorically, being taken down a notch. But formulating economic policy on the basis of the illusion that we could all get rich if only we wanted it badly enough, and that, therefore, impediments to the accumulation of wealth should be as minimal as possible, is no less ideological than the most hidebound socialism.
We would be better off admitting to ourselves that this fantasy is what it is, namely, an ideological construct that falsifies reality, and focusing on policies that might actually assist the middle and lower classes in shoring up their lives, acquiring a greater measure of stability than they have at present. It is all well and good for conservatives to rail against progressive taxation, but progressive taxation is more or less inevitable given a certain level of industrial development and concentration; if conservatives oppose such taxation, they ought also to oppose the concentrations of wealth that the taxes are intended to counterbalance in the system. That won’t happen, on account of the fantasy.
So, yes, I mean to be snarky, and to piss on the fantasy, because it is a lie, and because it has led to policymaking predicated upon the assumption that if we take care of the interests of the wealthiest and most powerful, the rest of it will take care of itself. Bollocks. The American people must be told that they will never be rich, but that they could be a bit better off if they jettisoned the fantasy.
— Maximos · Oct 29, 05:56 PM · #
Maximos — I don’t think you even begin to understand the American people. They really, fundamentally believe in their independence and in their self-sufficiency, and are distrustful of a paternalistic government that says “don’t worry, you’ll be better off, we’re taking it from someone else.” Now I think that ethic is actually dying or receding in America, but don’t under estimate the power that narrative still holds for many Americans.
— Lycurgus · Oct 29, 06:23 PM · #
That narrative no longer corresponds to actual patterns of life in even the red states, so it is just that, a mythological narrative. The broader point is that the economic policies pursued by the establishment of the United States for at least the previous generation have rendered the independence and self-sufficiency of the middle and lower classes increasingly tenuous precisely because those economic policies have been oriented towards the interests of the wealthiest Americans. Functionally, the system has been to maintain the ladders of upward mobility, but to repeatedly kick them out from beneath large swathes of the population. “Your manufacturing jobs are gone, but you can retrain for these better positions in IT. Whoops – we’re outsourcing those now, or insourcing foreign graduates to perform them, too. Guess it’s back to the drawing board for you. Keep skin in the game, though, and you, too, could strike it rich!” That’s merely a rough illustration of the dynamic, but the fantasy of the self-sufficient attainment of prospectively limitless wealth thereby functions as ideology in the purest sense: endure your shabby treatment without complaint, and accept that it is just, and you, too, might one day not be treated shabbily. The entire thing is a strategy of avoidance.
— Maximos · Oct 29, 06:47 PM · #
The self-sufficiency narrative has, unquestionably, been undermined by globalization and the broad transition of the American economy away from manufacturing. That has brought economic insecurity home to many, most evidently in populist anger at free trade, outsourcing, etc. I certainly agree with you to that extent. Many Americans, red-staters and others, would happily support the institution of trade protectionism and other parochial measures in the hope that it would restore that soft focus America of yore. But I don’t believe there is much real sentiment for the grubby ideology of hopelessness that you seem to think is rampant in large swathes of the population, with a concommitant demand for reparations from the “rich.” I think you project too much of what you think the attitude of Americans should be toward their stituation in the early 21st century. But that is just my opinion.
— Lycurgus · Oct 29, 07:14 PM · #
Actually, Lycurgus, I’m not attempting to project much of anything. McCain’s invocation of the Dread Specter of Socialism obviously resonates among a sizable percentage of the electorate, who, on account of the fantasy I’m denouncing, refuse to believe that the deck has been stacked against them. So no, they’re not hopeless. Their hopes are merely misplaced, and their faith reinforces the very circumstances that burden them. A neat trick it is, to persuade people that the very thing which is harming them is their salvation. (I’ll note, with respect to that remark, that this is not a matter of taxes simply; rather, in the GOP lexicon, tax policy is a synecdoche for an entire complex of policies. When they cry for tax reductions, they mean something more on the order of deregulation, the idea that what business wants business should receive, because it must be good – and, again, this has been ideologized just like anything else can be abstracted into a shorthand for actual thought.)
But no, I’m not projecting my attitudes upon the mass of Americans rallying to the battle cries against incipient socialism; they really do believe that socialism is coming, that it will destroy them, and I find this, in spite of my distaste for both of the candidates, alternately amusing and depressing. Socialism is not about to descend, and marginal tax rates of the levels contemplated do not represent the death of self-sufficiency or economic independence. Not that I would necessarily endorse them, but the lack of proportion – the utterly unhinged subsuming of what amounts to a technocratic quibble over rates under the rubrics of twentieth-century disputes in political economy – is a piece of absurdist theater.
— Maximos · Oct 29, 08:01 PM · #
“they really do believe . . .” sounds a lot like projection to me.
“socialism” has become the preferred mocking point for supporters of Senator Obama, and I understand that. But the point that is being elided by those supporters is that Senator Obama’s tax policy amounts to removing a good half of America from the income tax rolls (48% is a number I’ve seen from some sources, and I’m sure there are varying ways that can be measured). “Socialism” is probably a poor description of that policy, but I think there is an adverse reaction at a gut level among much of the electorate, even from (some) of those who would be part of that 48%, against the notion that they have no skin in the cost of delivering government services at the national level. Maybe that’s not socialism, but it strikes me as an ill-advised movement away from the idea that the entire body politic should be contributing, at some modest level at least, to the cost of the programs and services that they expect the government to deliver. You can mock the cries of “socialism” all you like, but there is a serious public policy point underlying that shorthand label.
— Lycurgus · Oct 29, 11:07 PM · #
Good call, Mr. Feeney. There is nothing wrong with spreading the wealth. But the end doesn’t justify any old means, and certainly doesn’t justify the means that Barak Obama is proposing. That’s what we should be criticizing.
As for this comment:
I’m simply astonished at the resonance of McCain’s denunciations among a slice of the electorate that is not wealthy, most of whom will never be wealthy.
Huh? Are we each supposed to vote our own narrow, economic-self interest? What kind of person would expect people to do that?
— The Reticulator · Oct 30, 12:32 AM · #
You can mock the cries of “socialism” all you like, but there is a serious public policy point underlying that shorthand label.
Sure. But interpreting the objections to Obama’s tax and economic proposals as socialism, as these McCain voters are doing, is not an attempt to make that point, which would logically entail, in this instance, that these folks don’t want to receive additional tax credits, and are eager to share in the burden of supporting the public fisc (“Hey, tax us, too, because everyone should contribute to the maintenance of common goods!”) I could imagine a small-R republican argument for such a thing, but that argument is not being made by the McCain campaign or its supporters at the rallies. Rather, the point they are making is that it is unfair to tax that extra money away from the successful, which has resonance because they hope one day to be so successful. This argument would not be indefensible, but it isn’t identical to the argument that all socio-economic strata should have some skin in the business of supporting public goods. And since these folks are not advancing that argument, and since most of them are not now, nor will never be, rich, what they are arguing, implicitly, is that their fantasies shall not be traduced, that they shall not be told that the shadow-play on the walls is really just shadow-play.
As for the argument that all economic strata should be putting something into the public fisc, it is assuredly a valid one; it just won’t play politically, not after two generations during which the middle and lower classes have, at best, been treading water, while the cost of many goods (like education, requisite to compete in an economy increasingly bereft of remunerative – the operative word – blue collar employment) and services (like health care) have been skyrocketing, while returns to the commanding heights of capitalism have been almost logarithmic. If the non-wealthy and non-elite are supposed to contribute to the maintenance of public goods, they will have to be a part of the game, rather than its pawns, as they are presently.
It is worth noting that imagining this argument to be the one advanced by Obama’s critics is an act of projection. It is not the one being made.
Are we each supposed to vote our own narrow, economic-self interest?
Supposed has nothing to do with it. The folks riding to the battle cries against a resurgent socialism are voting for neither their own objective interests nor the common good, but for their hypothetical self-interests, arising from a rich cultural fantasy life, which is all fine, I suppose, provided that no one takes it seriously enough to base policy upon it.
— Maximos · Oct 30, 03:09 AM · #
The folks riding to the battle cries against a resurgent socialism are voting for neither their own objective interests nor the common good, but for their hypothetical self-interests, arising from a rich cultural fantasy life…
Sheesh. Talk about a rich fantasy life.
— The Reticulator · Oct 30, 04:54 PM · #
Talk about a rich fantasy life.
Yes, I must be incredibly daft not to recognize that the people getting riled up about the threat of socialism to Joe the Plumber’s business plans are really making an incredibly sophisticated, almost wonkish, point about the sharing of tax burdens across income quintiles. Silly me.
— Maximos · Oct 30, 07:28 PM · #