Like many of you, I've been following the John Roberts confirmation hearing and I've found it fascinating to hear intelligent, eloquent people from both sides present their cases. Last night, one of the final witnesses against Roberts was Dr. Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, and a former professor at Brandeis University.
Reich opened his statement with a reminder that an increasingly smaller segment of the population has been getting increasingly wealthier. "If that doesn't bring up issues of economic morality, I don't know what does," he remarked.
Inherent in Reich's beliefs, and the beliefs of most liberals, is the idea that inequality per se is immoral.
A great case in point, brought up by a previous witness [an economist-sounding female with a British accent whose name I didn't catch], is one where male sewer workers earn higher wages than female clerical workers. Prima facie, this appears to be case of gender discrimination and favoritism, another example of immoral inequality deserving of government intervention. However, this witness brought up several points. First, the market itself controls wages by valuing some services more highly than others, for its own reasons. Second, females are not prohibited from becoming sewer workers, but rather in the aggregate, they just don't seem to want to become sewer workers. Third, in a study where people were asked to choose between clerical work and sewer work for the same wage, every person chose clerical work; the fact is that the market must pay people higher wages to do that type of work.
Where is the immorality here, and how much sense does it make for the government to interfere in this process? No more sense, I would argue, than it would make for a filmographer to intervene in the natural, amoral processes he is filming, thereby projecting his own morality on to those processes.
Reich, like all good leftists do, believes that the role of government is to engineer social uniformity, to eliminate all of society's "immoral inequalities" which are believed to be caused entirely by socioeconomic factors. In other words, by equalizing socioeconomic status among the population (economic morality), you will eliminate many of society’s problems such as lack of education, illegitimacy and crime.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Very clearly put. Good job. I wish more people would grasp some of these basic concepts and cast aside the old, worn out cliches the left has lived by for so many years.
Dave
2 - troll
The left/right - democrat/republican distinction is a matter of propaganda and esthetics not ethics...how much must be given back to avoid a backlash...how best to package the system of expropriation
capitalist government is about enabling the redistributing the wealth of the many to the few
take your organizing principle - maximization of profit - off my (I mean Eric's) bridge
troll
3 - troll
should have edited for clarity - sorry
capitalist government is about enabling the redistribution of the wealth of the many to the few
4 - RedTard
troll,
I agree with your statement, but it is a two way street. The middle class makes money for the rich. The rich and middle class pay off the poor to keep them out of their subdivisions.
Poor people do not create wealth, that's why they're poor. They live in houses they never built, eat food they never grew, and wear clothes they never sewed. The poor and the rich are both supported by the high productivity of the middle class.
5 - Les Slater
“Poor people do not create wealth, that's why they're poor. They live in houses they never built, eat food they never grew, and wear clothes they never sewed.”
And who do you think built those houses, grows the food and sews the clothes? What world do you live in?
Poor, and middle class are imprecise terminologies at best. Some workers are somewhat affluent, most not, and some middle class are poor, but it is the workers that produce the houses, the clothing and most of the food. There is a small layer of the population that is family farmers that produce a significant quantity of food. I would place farmers in a distinct class separate fro the middle class. In any case it is a small portion of the population.
6 - Silas Kain
I've got the answer to the problem. Soylent Green. That's the way to go.
7 - troll
yummy - you're singing my song
troll
8 - alethinos59
Ahh Searcher... Nice to hear someone else using the old, "blame the poor for being poor" scam...
What you've done, with moderate success here in your post is to misdirect.
Few educated people of liberal bent BELIEVE that there is such a thing as complete economic equality. There will are levels to society. Not everyone can be rich. Not everyone can be middle class.
The issue HAS BEEN and will CONTINUE to be the elimination of the EXTREMES of WEALTH and POVERTY.
Some people are lazy. They don't want to work. They're not too smart. Should they be GIVEN wealth? Hell no. I don't know anyone who'd say otherwise.
But there are a LOT of WORKING POOR. For whatever reason they are there at the bottom. Do they deserve to live hand to mouth when their company's CEO, living 5 miles away just became $2 million richer because he laid them off? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
The bullshit spewed out by such CEO types - that they're only responding to "shareholder demands" is getting quite old. Who ARE these shareholders, who own millions of shares? Oddly enough, the senior management of that very company, along with their friends at other Fortune 500 companies...
I would suggest trying to find a fresher approach toward blaming the poor for their own plight... This one's already old...
Alethinos
9 - Dave Nalle
I don't see anyone blaming the poor here. There's a huge difference between saying the poor are poor and someone always has to be on the bottom of the economic pile and the poor deliberately choose to be poor. Most on the left accept the basic theories of Darwin, but they never seem willing to make the next logical step. Some people just aren't as intelligent, as motivated or as capable as others, but that does not mean they are bad people or seek to be poor. This is why a diverse capitalist society is so wonderful. It lets every person find their level, find gainful employment and live a decent life if they are willing to work hard, despite their limitations of intellect and birth. Yet the inescapable truth is that not everyone is motivated to do the hard work to overcome the limitations they are born into. For them the society provides menial jobs which are relatively undemanding.
Of course, the largest mistake we have made as a society is to provide support for those who are unwilling to work at all, essentially setting up a disincentive for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum to do the work necessary to advance themselves. Government should do everything they can to provide opportunity for those who are willing to take it, but perpetual support for those who will not work for themselves is self-defeating.
Dave
10 - Les Slater
“Most on the left accept the basic theories of Darwin, but they never seem willing to make the next logical step.”
The next logical step?
It was the dawn of civilization where humans became civilized and began to accumulate surpluses sufficient so that it became possible to begin to rise above everyone-for-themselves survival. This was progress.
It is a sign of utter bankruptcy for the collection of rich snots to justify their greed by raising the ‘next logical step’ as a defense of their social status.
These people ultimately depend on brute force to maintain their miserable positions in society. One slip and they find themselves on the other side.
I’m not talking about revolution here either. These snot’s positions aren’t as secure as they would like to think they are. They are really scared shitless that the economic system that they so dearly worship will eat them up too.
11 - Dave Nalle
Les, you don't understand even one little bit, do you. The leftist policies you support don't keep the rich in power, they keep the poor from advancing and having a better life even if they try as hard as they can. The problem isn't the rich, it's the institutionalized support and enablement of poverty.
Dave
12 - Les Slater
What 'leftist policies [I] support'?
13 - Dave Nalle
Sorry, I assumed that your irrational hatred of the rich was part of the usual package of deluded and self-serving leftist twaddle designed as an excuse to justify exploiting the poor for political profit.
Guess not.
Dave
14 - Les Slater
Thanks.
Hatred is never totally rational but there are there are reasons for it. I do not support the Democratic Party's solutions, and as you say, they are designed to institutionalize poverty and profit from it. The Republicans are not essentially different. There is a division of labor.
I see a middle class hysteria on both the left and the right. My above post applied to both.
15 - Les Slater
B.T.W. if there was ever a snot that epitomized snottery, it was John Kerry.
16 - Liberal
"Inherent in Reich's beliefs, and the beliefs of most liberals, is the idea that inequality per se is immoral."
Inequality is not itself immoral. What is immoral is an enforced condition that doesn't allow the sort of Darwinism that Dave mentions to reach its natural state.
For instance, professional sports is an area where performance alone determines success (well almost). Given an equal playing field (pun intended) a certain diversity among the population will develop in all things except the level of talent.
The immoral condition was that which existed before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Dodgers, where the natural effect of Darwinism was prevented and the inequality was forced.
"Some people just aren't as intelligent, as motivated or as capable as others."
This is obviously true. However, when it is not this factor that solely determines success, civilization advances more slowly.
"This is why a diverse capitalist society is so wonderful. It lets every person find their level, find gainful employment and live a decent life if they are willing to work hard."
Unfortunately, that is not really the society that we live in. Make a list of young, a-list actors. What percentage of them are the children of a-list actors?
I have concentrated on higher profile professions, but these phenomena extend to the rest of society. In Connecticut, and I don't know how this works elsewhere, education is funded through local property taxes. Students in Greenwich, one of the richest communities in the country, receive a far better education than those in Bridgeport, which is one of the poorest.
We have a see-saw mentality in this country, where the wealthy must maintain their wealth by keeping the poor poor, leaving them relatively wealthier. We have not, to our detriment, grasped John Kennedy's idea that "a rising tide lifts all boats."
It cannot be the case that only white males have the talents necessary to be CEO of a major corporation and yet corporate CEOs are overwhelming white and male. Why is that?
17 - The Searcher
I appreciate all the comments; I found some of them quite amusing.
18 - Dave Nalle
>>I have concentrated on higher profile professions, but these phenomena extend to the rest of society. In Connecticut, and I don't know how this works elsewhere, education is funded through local property taxes. Students in Greenwich, one of the richest communities in the country, receive a far better education than those in Bridgeport, which is one of the poorest.<<
Except that as it turns out, even if you put the best teachers in those poor community schools and double the money, by taking it from other communities - which has been tried here in Texas, the schools don't get any better, because it's the family background and the community which determine educational success, not teacher quality or educational spending.
>>We have a see-saw mentality in this country, where the wealthy must maintain their wealth by keeping the poor poor, leaving them relatively wealthier. <<
This is fundamentally untrue. I challenge you to demonstrate any kind of causal relationship between the wealth acquisition and impoverishment. It's been tried. It doesn't work that way. The fact is that for the most part, those who build up personal wealth also make those around them and those they employ wealthier as well - maybe not on the same scale, but as a general trend.
>>We have not, to our detriment, grasped John Kennedy's idea that "a rising tide lifts all boats."<<
It's not an idea, it's a fact of the economy.
Dave
19 - Eric Berlin
Except that the poverty rate has increased throughout Bush's five years in office... a hole in the boat, then?
20 - Bob A. Booey
This discussion is so disappointing and immature.
Dave's serious advocacy of social Darwinism is bizarre enough, but the inchoate discussion of morality by people with no knowledge of ethics or how socialization works is quite amusing.
Making poverty vs. wealth an issue of moral character is classic "blaming the victim" rhetoric and anyone who employs it should read the William Ryan book from the 1970s before they trot it out yet again. What's particularly disturbing about the language of "a culture of dependency and failure" is that it's basically code for racial divisiveness in this country.
There have been many sociologists who point out the endurance of inherited wealth in this country, where traditionally wealthy families (many from the East Coast) have spread their enterprise around the country and remained dominant among the top 1% of wealth in this country that controls the vast majority of the movement of capital in this country. The Horatio Alger morality lessons are cute and necessary for anyone who's poor to take to heart, but let's not pretend that there isn't a distinctly historical imbalance of wealth distribution that makes this one of the most unequal nations in the history of the industrialized world.
Since you're all using code for race, let's be explicit. African-Americans are a textbook underclass and the arguments for the moral failure (tied to criticisms of academic, economic and criminal behavior) of blacks in this nation are virtually identical to the criticisms of racial minority groups in the history of virtually every colonial experience. The British still attribute the same moral criticisms to Indians and Pakistanis in their nation, who are still considered poor, inferior, morally suspect minorities who live in "slums" in London. Considering the positive reputation which South Asian immigrants have in this country, where they are consistently the most educated immigrants who arrive on our shores, how can the difference in which group becomes the underclass be explained by anything but enduring, socially constructed prejudices and structural discrimination? Indians are the UK's blacks, where the racial slur "Paki" is basically the equivalent of our N-word as one of the most hatefully backwards word in the vernacular. Are we to attribute this to some sort of fundamental moral failing in their home culture, some pseudo-scientific "Darwininan" explanation of their fitness to survive? Or can this be an illustrative example of the unique processes by which socialized discrimination endures? The history of the Irish in the UK is another example.
If it seems like it's the SAME groups that are continuously being "naturally selected out" in your disgusting Social Darwinist fantasy, then it's incumbent upon not only the minority culture but the dominant culture to answer for the morality of that situation.
Dave, to make it personal since you want to speak of natural differences in intelligence and ability and are so insistent upon repudiating any moral obligation to others, sit down with your wife and have an honest discussion about the way Native Americans have been misperceived and excluded from mainstream society over hundreds of years. You may think you relate to her completely on your own terms as a white man, but I'm sure her experience of "economic morality" and racial pre-judgment is much richer and more mature than your perspective is. Yes, she may well be a conservative who thinks Natives need to work on themselves to get past alcoholism or poverty through education, but it doesn't change the fact that she has some personal understanding of WHY Natives feel that their hard work won't pay off in a way that's fair, economically or socially.
No one would rationally choose to be poor and suffer. And to attribute that sort of self-hatred to others is borderline morally monstrous and possibly most accurately a projection of people's own hatreds.
Dave, by that logic, your classmates at St. Alban's could look at you and call you a moral failure since you're in the bottom 5% of wage earners and in possession of relatively little wealth compared to the politicians, high-powered lawyers, and CEOs that came out of that school.
Keep in mind too that welfare has been almost completey dismantled in this country, for better or worse, and that the "culture of dependency" argument is so 1980s. Now, people know they can't rely on the government for significant aid to live by or readily available job training or quality schools and they make do with what they don't have. We've broken the "welfare state" model for almost a full decade and we've seen an increase in poverty, not a decrease. People don't find the minimum-wage service sector jobs liveable for their families, and that's why there's been a marked increase in child poverty, hunger, and parental presence as a result of a less-than-serious commitment to creating good jobs with a decent wage for former welfare recipients.
Anyone in education who's so oblivious to the notably successful efforts in inner city schools to use funding for magnet-type programs and to raise standards and test scores as a result should really read up on the more recent literature.
That is all.
21 - Les Slater
“What's particularly disturbing about the language of 'a culture of dependency and failure' is that it's basically code for racial divisiveness in this country.”
I do not think this is true. At least it is not fundamentally so. How people fared in New Orleans was primarily dependent on their economic status. Better off Blacks faired better than poor whites.
Yes, there is deep-seated racism, but also contempt for the poor in general. You heard of ‘poor white trash’?
Wealthier Blacks have contempt for poor Blacks as well other nationalities and whites. This is especially true of the Black political leadership, which mostly represents this privileged layer.
Blacks are a greater percentage of poor because of a long history of brutal discrimination, which still exists. Even though wealthier Blacks are discriminated against, the social consequence of the Black population’s existence is more related to their economic status than race.
22 - Bob A. Booey
Yes, class is the problem more than race, but it can't be ignored that the primary locus of economic discrimination in American society has always been racial.
You can't talk about poverty without talking about race because blacks and Hispanic immigrants are the poorest and definitely subject to the last hired - first fired phenomenon. Black professionals are to be admired but the statistics overwhemingly show that educated blacks in business rarely advance beyond mid-level management into the upper reaches of executives. So discrimination isn't just against poor blacks, but the discrimination of most concern is obviously against the poor.
It just happens that race is the primary fault line upon which poverty resides in this country.
That is all.
23 - Nancy
A question for anyone who know the answer: I read/heard somewhere last week that the outrageous over-compensation of CEOs rampant in America does not exist in Europe; I don't remember where I read/heard this, nor were there any details I read/heard concerning how or why this obtained in Europe: whether they had laws limiting CEP reimbursements or what. Anyone know about this one?
24 - Jody
Funny how people have theroies of proverty. Live in it for a while and see how you get out. I have been in proverty and the only way I got out was that I knew what it was to be middle class. I knew how to get out. I watched how proverty and education had been ingrained in those in proverty. Look at major stores like Walmart. They pay people as little as they can and employees have no health care. They live day to day and when they get their pay check its usually spent at the store. Now Walmart is cashing checks and becoming a store bank. Funny how no one says this is wrong? The poor cash their checks at check cashing places and get charged. The poor buy at dollar stores which usually the items sold are cheaper in the burbs due to competition. The poor usually can not get to these stores. The poor have no extra money to save. I've seen the same people work at discount stores for years. Most can't afford cars and gas. They can't afford to get education. When you live in proverty you see how the world works and what political world you would follow.
25 - Bob A. Booey
Well said, Jody.
Another little-known fact about the inner cities is that grocery stores are frequently hard to access, few in number and (in a cruel irony) actually charge MORE than the same chain will in the suburbs. Meanwhile, liquor and tobacco stores, advertisements for these unhealthy products, and the unhealthiest fast food chains are everywhere, contributing to the obesity, health and addiction problems that make it even harder for people to work and live long, happy lives. If you've ever been in a neighborhood like Englewood on the South Side of Chicago, you can't find a single grocery for miles, you find nothing but sneaker and used-jewelry stores in between liquor stores, and every restaurant is a fried-chicken and fried-food chain where you get served and put your money in a rotating door through bulletproof glass.
And you wonder why people are alienated and feel dehumanized by poverty?
That is all.