A Proposed Trade-Off for Our Libertarian Readers
Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, more ably and concisely makes the point I was trying to make earlier:
Even though the winners from free trade could theoretically compensate the losers and still come out ahead, they don’t. America doesn’t have a system for helping job losers find new jobs that pay about the same as the ones they’ve lost – regardless of whether the loss was because of trade or automation. There’s no national retraining system. Unemployment insurance reaches fewer than 40 percent of people who lose their jobs – a smaller percentage than when the unemployment system was designed seventy years ago. We have no national health care system to cover job losers and their families. There’s no wage insurance. Nothing. And unless or until America finds a way to help the losers, the backlash against trade is only going to grow.
This is an important point that can be extended beyond the debate over trade. The more libertarian readers here should consider the degree to which something they want (deregulation) can be best achieved by advancing something they don’t (public services). When Americans live in a country in which they are not provided with basic necessities, they inevitably become much more reliant on their income. As a result, there will be a much stronger political push for regulations that preserve or boost Americans’ income when Americans are dependent on their income for baseline requirements for living.
So when Democratic politicians advance policy proposals in favor of tying the minimum wage to inflation, or in favor of a living wage, or when they want to manipulate the tax code in order to compensate losers in the economy, or when they want to stifle free trade, what’s really going on here is that those Democrats are trying to engage in very inefficient ways of achieving goals for which there are more efficient but politically unfeasible methods (namely, just directly paying for stuff). If Americans could reliably count on the fact that they would get health care if they got sick, and retraining if they lost their job; if Americans had easier access to smart public transportation and if more attention were paid to developing affordable living in metropolitan areas; and so on and so forth, then there would be far less of a need for the government regulations libertarians so decry.
Comment by tet on 3 March 2008 at 11:59 am:
I’d be more inclined towards these services if they were run by non-governmental entities.
Some things that governments have done in the past have paid off. The Illinois Merit Scholarship Program paid the tuition and fees for thousands of poor students in the 1960s and early 70s. The GI Bill helped an entire generation of veterans to produce the bullish economy of the 50s and 60s.
However, these are the exceptions that prove the rule, I think. If you have the Federal government running something like health care, you have hundreds, perhaps thousands of special-interest and corporate lobbyists trying to get their agendas enacted.
Sooner or later, they’re going to find someone in Congress to corrupt with their influence. If it’s a non-profit or corportation running things, there are a limited number of individuals running the place and they can be made subject to dire penalties if they become corrupted.
Only way to be sure.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Brian on 3 March 2008 at 2:45 pm:
Tom,
I guess I’d say two things in response to that. First, you seem to be implying that a government is less accountable to the people than a corporation is, which seems like an odd claim. Second, and more importantly, having a corporation or non-profit handle these things necessarily means that they will not be universally applicable: corporations don’t have the incentives and non-profits don’t have the resources to provide these goods to everybody. This again means that people will be reliant on their incomes, and if they lose their incomes, they are taking a gamble on whether they’ll be lucky enough to receive some charity.
Comment by tet on 3 March 2008 at 5:41 pm:
Several points:
1) Non-profits and corporations are superior to governmental operations because it is easier to prosecute an evil administrator (or a criminally incompetent one) than it is a government official. Look at the numbers of each that have been indicted over the last century and tell me that this isn’t true. Hell, the Constitution even forbids arresting members of the Legislative Branch under some circumstances.
2) A politician is concerned with being re-elected every two, four or six years. This means that they are prey for special-interest groups who can deliver votes to them. A non-profit is motivated by the desire to make change in the world and a corporation by the profit motive. Neither of them are reachable by the special interests in the same way. (Both are still susceptible to monetary bribery, but in a society with no secrets, that problem can be taken care of quite quickly by prosecution).
3) Part of the income of workers twenty-five or more years ago was the kind of access to pensions, health care and retraining. That has perished under the globalization of the American economy. Perhaps ways can be researched to return us to the kind of economics that allowed US businesses to do that. The amount of money that goes to non-profits in donations also rises, the higher the disposable income, if the individuals involved have sound religious ideals.
I must also point out that in a more Libertarian state, depending on one’s income would be less of a problem, since citizens would be allowed to keep more of it and would be able to bank amounts above their week-to-week needs.
Tom Trumpinski
Comment by Kit Fenderson-Peters on 5 March 2008 at 7:42 am:
@tet: “in a more Libertarian state … citizens … would be able to bank amounts above their week-to-week needs.”
While I won’t dispute the truth of that, I don’t think that citizens would do so, even if it were in their best interest. When the money runs out, the citizens will get pissed, even if it’s their own damned fault for not saving enough. This makes the citizens amenable to any politico who tells them “You don’t have to save. You don’t have to worry. Let the government take care of it for you.” Thus this “libertarian” state starts down the path to higher taxes and higher government spending.
Comment by tet on 5 March 2008 at 9:23 am:
If the politicos no longer have the ability to legislate that kind of relief, Kit, they won’t go down that path.
Always anticipate and amend to prevent it.
Tom