Government is not the problem
From Leon Wieseltier’s “Washington Diarist” column in this week’s New Republic:
The response of the right to the crisis in America was to flee to its catechism. The Republicans propose to bail out the economy with doctrine. Unemployment is 7.6 percent and rising, and they say: let them eat Friedman. When billions and billions of dollars are needed for the Pentagon (fine with me) and for Wall Street, it is damn the zeroes, full speed ahead–but when the prospect of relief for ordinary Americans in trouble rears its fair and compassionate head, the deficit desperately matters again. The Republicans are not only heartless, they are also hypocritical, since the cause of all this misery was the market abandon that they promoted so messianically. These are the people who would have privatized, that is, destroyed, Social Security: how can their protests not be met vehemently? This vehemence is not “partisanship,” it is analysis. It is not “populism,” it is liberalism.
But I want the president to say so. I want the president to tell the American people that, contrary to what they have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government; that strong government comports well with strong freedom, unless Madison was wrong; that a government based on rights cannot exclude from its concern the adversities of the people who confer upon it its legitimacy, or consign their remediation to the charitable moods of a preferred and decadent few; that Ronald Reagan, when he proclaimed categorically, without exception or complication, that “government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem,” was a fool; and that nobody was ever rescued, or enlarged, by being left alone.
Read the rest here.
Suspicion of government “interference” of any kind, and contempt for politics (and politicians) was the lesson the Right asked us to learn from the failures of twentieth-century totalitarianism. It was the wrong lesson. In order to avoid the worst excesses of state power, American conservatives, libertarians, and neoliberals told us we should take our chances with too little government. This false dichotomy eventually became the template for nearly all political controversy between those we Americans call liberals and those we call conservatives: statism, which always tended toward totalitarianism (cf. the “liberal fascism” thesis of Jonah Goldberg), or antistatism, which alone could secure our individual liberties so that we could all spend our lives in pursuit of nonpolitical satisfactions. A (for America) or C (for Communism). Don’t even ask about B.
Never mind that this conceptual framework never really corresponded to the way a complex modern society actually functions. Never mind that most critics of the state were also proponents of an agressive foreign policy. It wasn’t a question of historical complexity or theoretical consistency or even principle (though antistatists loved to make showy appeals to “first principles”). It was mostly a question of language: free-market conservatives developed a special vocabulary that generated a lot of rhetoric and invective — some of it very impressive — but not much useful analysis. Justice meant retribution, in a prison or on the battlefield. It had nothing to do with distribution. A Catholic word like “subsidiarity” was OK if it meant more control for local government and less control for the federal government, but not if it implied a critique of economic globalization. Centralized corporate power was OK; centralized democratic government was not. If you were interested in real analysis, they pointed you in the direction of Chicago School economists, their academic brain trust, whose ideas were indeed sophisticated and consistent but also, as it turns out, wrong.
An adequate political philosophy needs more than the only two rules the libertarian right could offer: noli me tangere and non serviam.
I had trouble getting the link to work. I found a printable version of the complete article at:
http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=6326efa0-c2b5-4de7-86b0-a2f95c85cb2d
I don’t know if this is behind a subscription wall.
Thanks, Antonio. The link should be working now.
A few points here:
1. Even ardent Republicans would not classify the GWB years as laissez faire in terms of the economy. He oversaw the greatest increase in federal government in the last 20 years.
2. Wall Street, predatory lending, ok. Remember Fannie and Freddie? Government sponsored enterprises, essentially antithetical to the laissez faire approach actively worked to promote bad loans. Is that the free hand of the market?
3. The recession is global. If a housing crisis discredits laissez faire in the US, assuming laissez faire principles informed the bad financial decisions that were made, do comparable crises in the EU discredit socialism?
Adeodatus,
1. To point out that many conservatives were unhappy with the huge increase in government spending under President Bush is only to underscore the schizoid character of the conservative movement during the last several years. Of course there were those on the libertarian right who were opposed to the big budget deficits and also opposed to the invasion of Iraq. They were at least (and, alas, at most) consistent. There were also a lot of conservatives who continued to complain about the deficits even as they supported a hugely expensive war and tax cuts for the rich. But then my point in this post was not mainly about what kind of conservative Bush was. Which brings me to
2. The economic meltdown. You’re right: the story of Fannie and Freddie isn’t about how the free market failed. More to the point, though, the story about how the economy failed isn’t mainly about Fannie and Freddie. The real estate bubble didn’t happen because Fannie and Freddie were allowed to lend to unqualified borrowers; it happened because our economy needed another bubble and Wall Street found a way to make highly risky mortgages profitable by splitting them up and grafting them into complex securities. And this was a failure of the “free market.” If the government had been doing its job, the financial alchemists who were turning hidden risks into high profits would have been required to keep more money in the bank so they could cover their own losses. Not many real economists are saying there wouldn’t have been a credit crisis if only Freddie and Fannie hadn’t been allowed to loan money to so many poor people.
3. Yes, the recession is global. But you’ll notice that so far, at least, the economies that have weathered the storm best are the economies that are either less dependent on global, American-dominated financial markets or have strong social welfare protections for the unemployed. The fallout has been far worse in Ireland and England, whose economies are more like ours and more tied to ours, than in France. So, no, the “crises” — which is really only one crisis with various effects — do not discredit what you are calling “socialism.”
Wall Street, predatory lending, ok. Remember Fannie and Freddie?
The facts suggest otherwise. See:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html suggests otherwise.
3. The recession is global. If a housing crisis discredits laissez faire in the US, assuming laissez faire principles informed the bad financial decisions that were made, do comparable crises in the EU discredit socialism?
On that basis, the recently nationalized overseas banks suggest quite the opposite.
Matthew, we can set aside point 1 till another day, since I think we are actually somewhat in agreement. As to point 2, I think you are undercutting the influence of Freddie and Fannie on the greater loan industry. If the government endorses irresponsible loans, it influences practices in private lending companies, but more importantly in the regulation of lending. Regulation of lending actually increased under Bush as a result of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. The result of the scandals was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. We can leave it to historians to figure out why the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board didn’t catch what was going on in the lending industry. But it was common practice for the government to violate the guidelines offered in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act through granting Fannie and Freddie loans. What’s good for the goose…
Point 3. England and Ireland have been hit by the recession, yes. But comparing their fall to the prosperity of the French is comparing apples to oranges. In March 2005 France had an unemployment rate of 9.7%. England and Ireland during the same period were at 4.6 and 4.5 respectively. Forecasted unemployment in France for 2009 is 9.8%. England and Ireland? 8.2 and 9.7% respectively. In the past four years, England and Ireland have outperformed France in GDP, with Ireland especially walloping France from 2004-2007. Will Ireland and England respond more dramatically to the global recession than France? Yes, but they can afford to because they have a greater distance to fall before they get to France’s anemic economic levels. I wouldn’t wish the drudgery of the French on anyone because their constant high level of unemployment is dehumanizing. It’s why the French have riots. If the French are your defense of socialism, you can have them.
Adeodatus,
The Irish Tiger turned out to be a paper tiger, its growth underwritten largely by the same kinds of high-risk speculation and bubble-economics that have gotten the U.S. in so much trouble. In both cases, the trouble started with the housing market, and in both cases there were no firewalls in place to keep it from spreading to the rest of the economy.
The unemployment rate does tell us something important about a country’s economy, and so does GDP, but neither of these — nor the two together — is all-important. As you yourself suggest, 9.7 % unemployment in France is the status quo, and most people there, employed or unemployed, have what they need. In Britain, it’s a more serious problem, because New Labour has gutted some of the social protections that once took care of the unemployed. But at least in Britain, as in France, the poor have access to regular health care. In the U.S., to lose your job is to lose your health insurance, and there isn’t enough public housing to accomodate everyone who has been, or will be, turned out of his or her home. So let’s talk about standards of living, not GDP, the recent growth of which in this country has gone almost entirely to those who already had more than enough.
The French have riots because of French racism, not because of French socialism.
“…that strong government comports well with strong freedom, unless Madison was wrong…”
If Mr. Wieseltier is referring to Mr. James Madison, I am not sure what he is referring to. Not only did Mr. Madison conceive of an extremely limited Federal government, vesting most power with the several States, he even argued, in his introduction to the Bill of Rights in June 1789, that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary since the Federal governments powers were so circumscribed as to be incapable of infringing on freedoms. And the fact that he ultimately compromised by definition implies the inherent nature of the government to usurp freedom. In Mr. Madison”s own word:
“In our Government it is, perhaps, less necessary to guard against the abuse in the executive department than any other; because it is not the stronger branch of the system, but the weaker. It therefore must be levelled against the legislative, for it is the most powerful, and most likely to be abused, because it is under the least control. Hence, so far as a declaration of rights can tend to prevent the exercise of undue power, it cannot be doubted but such declaration is proper.”
But Mr. Madison aside, the notion of a strong government comporting well with strong freedom is absurd on its face. Governments have power because it is vested in them by the people ceding their power to it. Some want to vest more, others less and very few others none, Mr. Wieseltier’s straw men notwithstanding. Fyodor Dostoevsky, IMHO, most eloquently described the trade-off in the “Grand Inquisitor” chapter of Book 5 of The Brothers Karamazov: “…freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together…”
“The French have riots because of French racism, not because of French socialism.”
You don’t think the 20%+ unemployment of people under 25 years-old has anything to do with it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4618030.stm
The real estate bubble didn’t happen because Fannie and Freddie were allowed to lend to unqualified borrowers; it happened because our economy needed another bubble and Wall Street found a way to make highly risky mortgages profitable by splitting them up and grafting them into complex securities.
Of course, we could also conclude that it was both.
Even if the Obama administration were more directly liberal, I doubt it would dissolve the toxicity in the House (Pelosui vs. Cantor and friends) and the ideological bloc that McConell can throw up in the Senate.
As long as ideology rules, the common good suffers.
Now we can get back to the GOP apologists here.
One wonders if Wieseltier has ever had any actual dealings with a government body – has every renewed a driver’s license, or applied for foodstamps, or attended a public school in a large city, or waited for a bus when it is ten degrees below zero, or had his taxes audited. “Jewel of human association”? Perhaps on his planet, but not here.
My fervent prayer is that no president ever subscribe to, much less speak aloud, the untruths that Wieseltier is promoting. Government does some necessary things (usually poorly), but it surely doesn’t follow that everything it does is necessary, nor that making government bigger makes anything better. Government is neither intinsically good nor bad, but governments seem to have a knack for settling for inefficient, ineffective and expensive ways of doing whatever they do. Really, the government sucks at just about everything.
The economic basis for the health of our society – and our government – is profitable private enterprises. I certainly don’t argue that government is extraneous for addressing chronic social problems. But ultimately, the treasure that government expends on Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and so on is funded by the wealth generated by profitable private enterprises. The best way that government can sustain the health of our society is by enacting laws, regulations and policies that enable private enterprises to be profitable.
Given that Jim P. is from Chicago, he’s entitled to a certain cynicism about government. I think government services in general are a lot better than say HMOPS or some other forms of private approaches (say privatized prisons).
I though the statement by the lone Rep[ublican who signed off on the budget bill in California is indicative of how far the Grover Nporwuist propaganda on taxes has sunk in; he said he might well bet hrough as a lefgislator bu the had done what he did for the people of California.
Of course, we now have several GOP governors saying they might refuse stimulus bill money.
Just strikes me to bleep with the people and on with my career and ideology.
Really, the government sucks at just about everything.
Jim,
Does your disdain for government go all the way back to the Founding Fathers, or the Framers of the Constitution? Does it include the military and law enforcement? Speaking of education, I did pretty well at The Ohio State University, and so did my brother (obtaining a PhD in chemistry). My nephew is a doctor who got his degree at the University of Cincinnati.
Business can be profitable because the operate in a safe environment, thanks to law enforcement, with a system of roads and bridges built, maintained, and policed by the government. Business can ship things by air a lot more reliably because of the FAA and air-traffic control. If you have a heart attack, your odds of surviving are better because you can call 911.
I live in Manhattan, and I feel safer on public transportation than I do in privately operated cabs. The water here is great (provided by the government), and I have no complaints about the sewage system or the trash collection.
I may not agree with numerous Supreme Court decisions, but I think our courts from the highest down to the local small-claims and traffic courts do a fine job.
This is a government of, for, and by the people, and it seems to me to trash the government is to trash the people.
“I think government services in general are a lot better than say HMOPS or some other forms of private approaches (say privatized prisons).”
You’re probably right, Bob – I am skeptical of that so-called “privatization”.
And you’re probably right, too, that living in Chicago has made me a little cynical!
Hi, David,
No disrespect meant to you or your brother. :-) I have a degree from Univ. of Illinois of which I am duly proud. But I also believe that the administrators from Xavier Univ could take over Ohio State (pardon me, THE Ohio State University) and run it as well or better for half the cost – and probably be a lot more pastoral to the students, to boot.
I agree with you about the necessity of regulating, and about the importance of the government providing basic services such as roads, bridges, etc.
One of the very worst things about the Bush Administration was that he put people in policy-making positions who were not only anti-big-government – they were anti-government, period. Anti-governing ideologues were charged with governing. Thus the FEMA
debacle with Hurricane Katrina.
I’m not anti-government. However, apparently unlike Wieseltier, I don’t see it as an unmixed blessing, either.
Really, the government sucks at just about everything.
Just for starters, you have Government to thank for the core technologies that make the internet and a host of other net-based technologies possible. Thank Darpa for the Internet itself. Thank CERN’s Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the Web to begin with and all those universities, public and private, that jump-started the technology. Without that government-financed technology you wouldn’t have the soapbox to stand on and complain about how the government sucks at everything.
The complaint about busses is baffling. Sure, I’ve waited for busses in the rain and snow a lot. That’s the problem with busses, not government.
I worked for over 50 years, payed taxes and whined about it like everyone else. However, when I got layed off, unemployment got me over the rough spots. Have had more than one emergency and was thankful that EMTs got there in a few minutes each time. Thank God for the good taxpayers that support the service.
Now I’m old enough for Medicare. Works great for me, and a lot better than the alternative.
My mother passed away at the age of 90, Social security and some help from the familly made it possible for her to live comfortably. Medicare added years to her life. Medicaid helped her to live out the last year of her life in dignity and without financially crippling the familly.
As others have pointed out, Katrina shows what happens when those who hate the very idea of government are in the driver’s seat. Back then (and after 9/11) I didn’t hear any of the nay-sayers at this or any other site claiming the problem was too much government. Besides, the Corp of Engineers has been keeping New Orleans afloat for years and must continue to do so.
“The complaint about busses is baffling. Sure, I’ve waited for busses in the rain and snow a lot. That’s the problem with busses, not government.”
Hi, Antonio, I’m not sure where you live, but in most places in the US, public transportation is chartered, administered and largely/mostly funded by the government – i.e. it is a government enterprise. In Chicago, where I relied on trains and buses as my primary mode of transportation for a number of years, it is ruled very much by the philosophy of the least possible service for the most possible public dollars, most of which find their way into the paychecks of voters who happen to work as bus drivers, motermen and public-transportation bureaucrats.
If you find yourself having to wait for 23 minutes for the next bus in below-freezing weather, you can be sure it’s because of a government employee.
At one time, there were a number of private companies that provided bus and train service. I take the private carriers’ current non-existence as an indicator that for whatever reason (perhaps their inability to compete against the government-funded road and national highway systems), the private sector can no longer profitably operate this service, and so the government has assumed responsibility for public transportation as a matter of necessity.
I’m grateful that it did so – as I say, I relied on public transportation to get around for a number of years, and many hundreds of thousands of people in this area still do. I would happily pay more taxes to make the service more available for people unable to afford a car, especially those who live in the suburbs, which are underserved by public transportation around here. I’m just arguing that it’s a slow, frustrating, unrewarding way to get around. Bus drivers in Chicago tend to treat their passengers as pains in the kiester, rather than as the sources of their livelihood. In short, it’s a very poor and unsatisfying service.
And, on the off-chance that your mention of Medicare was to thank me, a working taxpayer, for paying for your medical care on your behalf – you’re welcome.
“Thank Darpa for the Internet itself. Thank CERN’s Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the Web to begin with and all those universities, public and private, that jump-started the technology.”
Ok, thanks, Darpa and CERN. But far more thanks to Cisco, Verizon, Intel, Microsoft and Google for the current state of the Internet.
, on the off-chance that your mention of Medicare was to thank me, a working taxpayer, for paying for your medical care on your behalf – you’re welcome.
As long as you don’t forget to thank the working taxpayer that’s going to pay for yours.
Ok, thanks, Darpa and CERN. But far more thanks to Cisco, Verizon, Intel, Microsoft and Google for the current state of the Internet.
They don’t have any thanks coming. To do so would be like thanking the gold mining companies for the gold they extracted.
I’m not sure where you live, but in most places in the US, public transportation is chartered, administered and largely/mostly funded by the government – i.e. it is a government enterprise. In Chicago, where I relied on trains and buses as my primary mode of transportation for a number of years, it is ruled very much by the philosophy of the least possible service for the most possible public dollars, most of which find their way into the paychecks of voters who happen to work as bus drivers, motermen and public-transportation bureaucrats.
I live in Santa Clara county in California. In my opinion, public transportation is not bad around here and of course we don’t deal with Chicago weather.
If you find yourself having to wait for 23 minutes for the next bus in below-freezing weather, you can be sure it’s because of a government employee.
I can just see all those government employees now sitting around in some warm shelter, drinking coffee and chuckling over how many riders they can screw today.
“As long as you don’t forget to thank the working taxpayer that’s going to pay for yours.”
…God willing, of course. And please forgive the snarkiness of my comments previously.
“I can just see all those government employees now sitting around in some warm shelter, drinking coffee and chuckling over how many riders they can screw today.”
That probably has happened at least once or twice. … but more likely, it’s government bureaucrats, sitting in a warm office building, drinking coffee, and wondering how much service they can cut in order to maintain the fiction that their workers’ underfunded pensions are intact.
If drinking coffee were the only problem we’d have little to complain about. But here’s a recent video and news report documenting serious management problems in New York transit. For example, you can watch
“the worker who went from one park to another to read for hours day after day, or the crew that drove the MTA truck 30 miles so they could hang-out at the beach, or the guys killing time lifting weights, and perhaps the worse abuse, the track worker who spends hours tending to his bar and running errands instead of inspecting track. Wasted time, wasted money while the MTA threatens crippling service cuts and huge fare hikes.”
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:vu-pc68Xc3MJ:abclocal.go.com/wabc/story%3Fsection%3Dnews/investigators%26id%3D6506742+ny+mta+coffee+weather&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=safari
“…that Ronald Reagan, when he proclaimed categorically, without exception or complication, that “government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem,” was a fool;”
Just as an aside, this is either grammatically incorrect or Mr. Wieseltier is using a style manual which is highly irregular for the English language. I am not familiar with what style manual the New Republic requires, so this may be consistent with their requirements, but it leaves the reader with the impression that the quote is not excerpting a sentence fragment rather than the full sentence, which of course it is. There should be ellipses after the parentheses and preceding the first use of the word “government” since this is an excerpt of the sentence from President Reagan’s First Inaugural Address and excludes the introductory phrase. He also excluded the semicolon after the first use of the word “problem”. The full quote, with correct punctuation, is: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
As a former NYC managemen tperson, and with a good froend who dealt with disciplinary problems in NYS services, I think it’s important to understiand that
-unfortunately, there’ll always be some problem folk in government jobs
-that’s why emphasis on professionalism is so important.
- The problem is disciplining these folks who screw up – union agreements and civil service rules can make that a long difficult process.
My experience was that where good management /labor r4elations exist, the problem of dealing with workers who needed to be terminated or severely disciplines was handled much more quickly and smoothly.
Referring to these miscreants though as emblematic of government work strikes me as propaganda from the “small government”, not smart government side.