Entitlements and Realignments

This just in: The Democrats are abandoning the white working class.  The New York Times Thomas B. Edsall says so.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

Now, of course, the Democrats have always been an over-under party.  But the point of the New Deal coalition was that the "under" included the working stiff, the white working class.



It's interesting that the Dems are trying this right now, especially in the light of an article on the same day from Michael Barone.  He points out, using a study done by the indispensable Paul Ryan (R-WI) that entitlements actually contribute to inequality.  How?   Well, a smaller share of entitlement spending is going to the poor these days. According to Ryan:

[T]he distribution of government transfers has moved away from households in the lower part of the income scale. For instance, in 1979, households in the lowest income quintile received 54 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, those households received just 36 percent of transfers.

Can anyone spell "Medicare"?



Now, I'm all in favor of reducing middle-class entitlements.  I think that middle-class people like me in their 60s should be paying for their own retirement and their own health care.  But I also understand Irving Kristol's argument that, in order for government to do something for the poor you have to deal in the middle class.



You can see what the Democrats are planning.  They are planning to energize their over-under coalition by taking monies from the middle class, including the white working class, to fund their redistributive programs.  They want to send more money to the poor (oh, and quite accidentally, the overclass that will manage the redistribution.)



There is one problem with Baldrick's cunning plan.  If the Dems start moving money away from the middle class they will reduce middle-class support for entitlement programs and government spending in general.  The middle class likes to vote itself free money like anyone else.  But if the ruling class decides that the middle class doesn't need so much of the free stuff then the middle class is liable to make the obvious judgment.  It will say that if I can't get my share of the loot then nobody else should either.



All of which just shows what we knew already.  The upcoming 2012 election will be a momentous election that decides the direction of US politics for decades to come.  It won't just be a "wave" election.  Or even a "realignment."  It will be an earthquake.

The Real Obstructionists

Democrats have been having a grand old time recently accusing Republicans of poisoning the well by refusing to consider tax increases.  But, as Charles Krauthammer writes, that's a lie.  Republicans have too proposed tax increases, by proposing loophole-closing measures.  Remember when Democrats used to be all wigged out about loopholes?  Here is the list of Republican tax increase proposals, as listed by Krauthammer.

1. Sen.Tom Coburn (R-OK) last year signed on to the Simpson-Bowles tax reform that would have increased tax revenue by $1 trillion over a decade.
   
   
   
   


2. During the debt-ceiling talks, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) agreed to an $800 billion revenue increase.
   
   
   
   


3. Supercommittee member Pat Toomey (R-PA), proposed increasing tax revenue by $300 billion as part of $1.2 trillion in debt reduction.

So much for the eevil obstructionist Republicans.  Of course, Republicans aren't exactly innocent lambs about this.  They don't want to increase taxes on millionaires and billionaires; they would rather reduce the tax loopholes that disproportionately benefit blue-state taxpayers.



The real obstruction to progress on the budget is Democrats.  There's President Obama, for starters, who produced three dead-on-arrival budgets last year: the February budget, the April budget speech, and whatever it was he was proposing in the debt-ceiling debate.  Then there is the Democratic Senate that has failed to produce a budget resolution as required by law since the beginning of the Obama administration.



There is a simple reason for the Democratic obstruction.  They don't want to face up to the one incontrovertible truth of today's politics.  Entitlements must be cut.  No, not just entitlements.  Medicare must be cut.



In my view, the real agenda behind ObamaCare is/was to cut Medicare by the back door, by forcing everyone in America into a system that would ultimately ration care.



The Medicare problem is pretty simple.  Medicare as presently structured does not encourage seniors to economize on health care.  As soon as a majority of seniors (like me) start facing deductibles on Medicare then they will start bargain-hunting.  As I like to say: wait till the Jewish bubbies of South Florida start treating Medicare like they treat grocery shopping.  But Democrats don't want to face up to that.  Their idea of politics is that the American people come to them for "benefits".  A Medicare system with a fixed subsidy and deductibles doesn't fit their patron-client political paradigm, because it will refocus seniors' attention on bargain-hunting rather than benefit-hunting.



But the current system is heading straight for the rocks.  And when it does, it will hurt Democratic voters the most.  Hey, who cares?  Not the Democrats.

Giving Thanks

I'm a lucky guy, all thing considered, and I'm thankful.



In the first place I'm a lucky guy to have two beautiful daughters and six strapping grandchildren.   One daughter is married to the $2 billion man, and the other has a debut novel, OVERSEAS, coming out next year.



In the second place, things always seem to turn out all right for me on the work and money front.  Like right now, when I've "retired" and am now busy writing.  But wouldn't you know, my little website, usgovernmentspending.com, is turning in $2,000 per month in Google advertising revenue.  Next year, very likely more. Who knew, back in March 2007 when the site debuted?



Then we get down to the details.  I'm grateful for President Obama.  He is doing more than anyone to bring on the conservative millennium.



I'm grateful for the Tea Party.  Only in America is there a movement of sensible, measured conservative renewal, in our case based on the founding principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Other nations should be so lucky.



And I'm grateful for the Occupy folks.  If they didn't exist we would have to invent them!



I'm grateful for Mitt Romney.  Is America ready for a Mormon president, liberals?



I'm grateful for Newt Gingrich.  Somebody had to ignite a presidential campaign by needling the mainstream media.



I'm grateful for the climate deniers.  They have stuck it to the climate science community and shown to the world that the headline climate scientists are not doing science, they are doing politics.  It turns out that they are not very good scientists, and not very good politicians, either.



I'm grateful for American workers and American businessmen working away, trying to make the economy recover, even as the government makes things worse and worse.



And of course, I'm grateful for the lovely Lady Marjorie.

Obama Won't Talk

I always say that you can tell what you are good at with one simple test.  What do you like to do at 9:00am on Monday?  If you dread getting back to work at that moment, then you know something important about yourself.  You are in the wrong business.



There's a reason why I'll never make a good politician.  I don't like to get on the phone at 9:00am on Monday and talk to people.  And neither, it appears, does President Obama.  That's not me saying that.  It's MSNBC's Chris Matthews.  Says Matthews of conversations with people on Capitol Hill:

He doesn’t call. He doesn’t write. Matthews continues, “I keep asking them, when did you hear [from the president] last? Silence. He doesn’t like their company.”

When he first got elected as Governor of California, Ronald Reagan's aides pushed him in a different direction.  Forget about going home at five pm, they said:

You have to get to know the legislators, especially the leaders, especially the Democrats. You have to have drinks with them. Tell jokes with them. They have to get to know you, like you, and trust you.

Over at the Wall Street Journal Holman Jenkins details how his isolation worked against President Obama on the recently failed Supercommittee.  The president could have picked up the tax-increase idea floated by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and fashioned a compromise.  But he didn't.

Mr. Obama, if he had the political creativity he credits himself with, would now pick it up and run with it, instantly redeeming the super-committee "failure" with an act of presidential leadership.

Ah yes.  Leadership.  What voters are generally looking for in a president.  But leadership, according to Ronald Reagan's aides, means getting out and talking with the players.  Because unless you get out among them, you will find it impossible to twist their arms when the moment comes to make the final push on a key piece of bipartisan legislation.



Napoleon said that in battle, the moral is to the physical as three to one.  When Gen. Sherman was marching through Georgia, his troops liked to get a look at their "Uncle Billy" to make sure that things were still all right.



When things get tough in 2012, how will Obama's troops get the same reassurance from the man that nobody knows?

Teeing Up For 2012

The Supercommittee, writes John Podhoretz, was never meant to work.  Or rather, it was designed to kick the can down the road once more.  And it did.  Forget about "dysfunction."  The debt ceiling debate of July 2011 demonstrated the current stalemate between the two parties.  Republicans don't have the power to change, and Democrats have the power to stand pat.  Only an election can decide it.

The central dispute between the camps of the supercommittee — the Republicans wanted no tax increases to stimulate economic growth and entitlement cuts to shrink the size of government, while Democrats wanted tax hikes on the wealthy — will certainly be the central debate of the upcoming national election.

And that is as it should be.



It is also right and proper, writes Yuval Levin, that the Democratic Party should be demonstrating the two sides of progressive liberalism: its technocratic side in the yearnings of people like Peter Orsag for less democracy, and its populist side in the envious ravings of the OWS crowd.



Yuval proposes two types of liberalism, the conservative liberalism of constitutionalism and limited government and the progressive liberalism of progress towards an ideal society.

One view, which has always been the less common one, holds that liberal institutions were the product of countless generations of political and cultural evolution in the West, which by the time of the Enlightenment, and especially in Britain, had begun to arrive at political forms that pointed toward some timeless principles in which our common life must be grounded, that accounted for the complexities of society, and that allowed for a workable balance between freedom and effective government given the constraints of human nature. Liberalism, in this view, involves the preservation and gradual improvement of those forms because they allow us both to grasp the proper principles of politics and to govern ourselves well.



The other, and more common, view argues that liberal institutions were the result of a discovery of new political principles in the Enlightenment — principles that pointed toward new ideals and institutions, and toward an ideal society. Liberalism, in this view, is the pursuit of that ideal society.

The Tea Party, a popular movement to restrain government, is today's instantiation of conservative liberalism, and the Democrats, with technocrats and populists blazing away, exactly represent what you would expect from progressive liberalism: frustration in the technocrats that they can't execute their well-crafted plans, and envious rage from the street that the ideal society hasn't happened yet.



Everyone thinks that next Fall the decision will be a pretty close-run thing.  But I don't.  I think we are going to see a 55-45 Republican win.  It's true that the president is stirring up his base and lambasting the Republicans at every turn and he is moving the needle on his popularity.  But the problem is that the president doesn't have a plan that gets us out of the jam.  Raise taxes?  Steady as she goes?  You must be joking.



The American people are frightened, and are looking for someone to lead them forward.  They know that government is too big, and they know that we need jobs.  Obama's plan isn't working, and it doesn't look as if things are going to be much better by next fall.  The Euro debt debacle will take care of that.



But don't think that a resolution of the Euro debt mess would help the president.  If the Europeans turn the corner then the hot money presently sitting in US debt as a safe haven will be looking at Europe for safety.  That would not be good for US Treasury debt yields, and it would not be good for President Obama's reelection.

Supercommittee Fail

The Supercommittee failure was predicted by Newt Gingrich back in August, according to Rush Limbaugh.  The reason? All those members of Congress weren't going to let a committee of 12 make all their decisions for them.



But bigger than that is President Obama's nasty bind.  Let's assume that he and the Democratic High Command know that entitlements must be reformed.  Let's assume that they also know that healthy, sustainable entitlements are vital for the core Democratic vote, the lower income folks who don't have capital assets.  So why isn't the president out in front proposing a practical, sensible reform of entitlements?



Because to do would demoralize the troops.  It would admit that the Democrats have betrayed their base, promising benefits that cannot be paid out to the party faithful.  President Obama is planning a reelection campaign in which he fights for his base against the mean, Do Nothing Republicans.  Admitting that the Democrats have overpromised on welfare-state benefits doesn't fit the narrative.



Moreover, there is the first law of government checks.  The shortest measurable time interval in the world is the time between someone getting a government check and deciding he deserves it.  Any cuts in government benefits are hugely unpopular.  Because the people receiving them reckon they deserve them.



Maybe, one day, Democrats will vote for reform of entitlements.  But, like the Europeans, they will only do it in the context of a threatened sovereign debt default.  Because in their political calculus, only the end of the world justifies cutting government benefits.



You and I can argue about the morality of big government.  We can wail about the social destruction that government "social protection" programs cause.  But practical politicians don't care about that.  They only care about the next election, and elections are won by promising loot to your supporters.



Reform of the welfare state, if it comes before total financial meltdown, will only occur in the context of a moral movement of reform, something like the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century.  And even then, it may not succeed without violence.  The fight over slavery ended in war because slavery was very profitable, and getting more so.  There was no way that the South could be persuaded on the moral merits of emancipation.  They were making too much money. And they had also seen how emancipation had ruined the sugar planters of the British West Indies.



I'm afraid that the same is true about the welfare state.  It's likely that the beneficiaries will want to fight to retain their benefits.  And judging from the way that the Democrats have given the Occupy movement a wave and a nod, it's unlikely that Democrats will stand in the way of a violent movement to protect "our" benefits.

When Does Justice Become Freeloading?

In the old days of the agricultural age, justice suited the ruling landowner class.  Nobody thought about the needs of the agricultural laborer.  The only thing was to make sure that he paid dearly when he poached a rabbit or stole a sheep.

Even divines like Martin Luther were clear that the new liberty was for the townsman.  The peasants should obey their landlords.

So when the modern era dawned some time in the 18th century, your average man was pretty well held down by a yoke of injustice.  There was slavery, there was serfdom, there was indentured servitude, you name it.  In the new conception of justice, that all men are created equal, the old hierarchical ethos no longer applied.

If we take the words of Robert William Fogel, a scholar of slavery, there are several things wrong with slavery, when viewed from our modern society.  In Without Contract or Consent he sets forth a four count indictment of slavery:

1. "Slavery permitted one group of people to exercise unrestrained personal domination over another group of people."
2. "Denial of economic opportunity."
3. "Denial of citizenship... the utter exclusion of slaves from civil and political rights."
4. "Denial of cultural self-identification."

Obviously these are the words of a liberal, but they resonate with me, not just in the case of slavery but in all questions of justice.  For in modern politics, the question of justice is usually decided by analysis of these four points but at a less extreme situation.  If there is a question of injustice, then people are asking these questions: Is domination a problem? Is economic opportunity constrained?  Is access to civil and political rights diminished?  Is cultural bullying a problem?

Our liberal friends are experts at this sort of thing and they have unerringly focused on the one thing that validates the four questions.  Is the person or group in question a victim?  If he/she or the group is a victim then the power of the state can be deployed legitimately to redress the victim's grievance or claim of injustice.

But here is a thought.  Let us categorize degrees of victimhood.  Let us say that slavery is the worst.  Then would come, in descending order, serfdom, political repression, economic exploitation, and last of all marginalization.

The question that conservatives ask is whether government is always the appropriate vehicle to redress these grievances.  For our liberal friends it goes without saying that all of it, down to marginalization, can and should be addressed by legislation and government programs.  But conservatives aren't so sure.  We look at economic exploitation and say, well, if there is no serfdom or political repression then a free laborer is free to leave an exploitative situation.  If you get the government involved in fighting economic exploitation you end up with collusion between big business and big labor, economic regulation, crony capitalism, and Solyndra.  You get duelling exploitation.  If we set up a government program to provide pensions for the disabled, then all of a sudden, people find ways of qualifying as disabled.   Government employees seem to be expert at this kind of work.

And as for marginalization, which is worse, the marginalization of immigrants by conservatives that tell them to get with the program and Americanize or liberals that ruthlessly marginalize conservatives at the university with speech codes?  Freedom means that people are free to deal or not to deal with other people.  At what point does the freedom not to deal with someone become a marginalization or repression that requires the intervention of the state?

The problem with empowering the state to interfere at the lower levels of the slavery, serfdom, political repression, economic exploitation, marginalization axis is that people are human.  They naturally think that government action is warranted when their friends are damaged.  But they are quite unmoved when people they don't like are harmed.

One big reason for our gigantic government is that politics has recognized no limit on government action.  If people are hurting, said President Bush, then the government must help. "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move."

But that means that limited government is out the window.

But if someone is hurting then surely we must do something to help.  The question is: who is we?  Is the the government?  Is it the neighbors?  Is it business?  Is it "society"?  Our liberal friends are too quick to assume that if someone is hurting, then government must move.  But it would be better for all of us if, instead of government, Americans moved.  Because society, at bottom, comes down to humans acting sociably.  When government moves, people don't need to, and their social instincts atrophy.

It comes down to the basic truth about government: government is force.  So in every question about justice or marginalization, the question comes down to this: Is force the only way we can deal with this?  Because when you use force, then the four count indictment above may apply.  Never mind what the action does for the "victim."  Does it end up dominating someone else?  Or denying them economic opportunity?  Or abridging their political and civil rights? Or their cultural self-identification?  Chances are that it will, so we have to judge whether the cost is worth the benefit.

Because every time someone gets something from the government, the chances are that it amounts to freeloading.