When my son was three, every time he was faced with something that went against his desires, he would scrunch up his little face, clench his little fists, and veritably roar “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY FAIR!!!” Anyone who has raised, worked with, or spent any time with pre-schoolers will be familiar with the fact that they are obsessed with fairness, which to them means getting what they want. Ayn Rand’s acolytes would certainly advocate we encourage them to retain this preliminary definition of fairness. Consider John Galt’s oath from Atlas Shrugged: “I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.” This has become the guiding principle of modern conservativism, which simultaneously tries to maintain it’s claim to being the party of patriotism, the party that reveres military service, traditional marriage, and devotion to family and community. They then demean liberals as spoiled cry-babies who want free handouts. Even though they think a society of people who understand fairness as selfishness will function productively and ethically, they denigrate those who want our economic and political system to be more fair for all Americans as inherently immature and selfish. Then they argue that their selfishness, the selfishness of the free market, of the ultra-rich and corporate elites will restore us to prosperity. It’s perverse. Knots of perversity here. But this also suggests that we aren’t making the most effective argument.
Instead of moralizing about fairness and equal opportunity, which I indeed see as guiding principles of any ethical society, we need to argue for our policies from a different but equally true and potentially more persuasive angle. The levels of income inequality we are seeing aren’t just morally and ethically unacceptable, they are unsustainable. Instead of arguing that the 1% must pay their fair share, we’ve got to hammer away at the fact that the 1% are cannibalizing the system by devouring the middle class. To paraphrase Yeats, if the center will not hold, things will fall apart.
We aren’t trying to fleece or soak the rich out of envy or resentment or laziness or entitlement. We are trying to save the system. There is no historical evidence that the market contains the mechanisms to correct and sustain itself. Marx recognized that capitalism was vulnerable to increasingly radical cycles of boom and bust. He was right on that point. He was also optimistic that this would lead to a moment of unsustainability that would also represent an opportunity for the proletariat created by these cycles to rise up and create something better. Not so sure on that one. And as I have written before, I used to think the revolution a beautiful idea, but somehow they always end up shooting the Jewish professors and that’s not really gonna work out for me. What’s left is Keynes. Keynes ultimately agreed with Marx’s critique, but eschewed his teleological optimism. So he envisioned a limited but targeted and activist role for government to intervene and guarantee the system’s sustainability when necessary. If he recognized the progression of capitalism’s symptoms, he feared any radical cure and instead sought to manage it as a flawed but reasonably maintainable chronic condition. And even Marx evinced great respect for the productive and creative ability of capitalism.
The market will not restore its own balance. The moneyed elites will fiddle while we all burn if they can’t see opportunities to profit. We could hand the contents of Fort Knox to the top 1% and the so-called “job creators” wouldn’t create a single job. They’d look at the instability and lack of demand and sit on it just as they are doing now. Government must tax them in order to create jobs that will demonstrate the stable growth of demand for products and services. Even if we double taxes on the top 1%, if they recognize that demand, i.e. the opportunity to profit, they will begin to hire people. Then government will step back and they will continue to prosper.
So let’s stop screaming “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY FAIR” and start focusing, with a fanatic republican-style devotion to simple rhetorical talking points, on trying to save the system for everybody. Then our arguments for how that must happen will explode the simplistic assumptions about taxes and government spouted by conservatives who applaud their own selfishness and degrade others as selfish.
Preaching to the choir here. I know. I’ve written much of this before. Just had to get it out.
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