There's been much written on political philosophy over the past few months, and I must admit that reading it is a bit of a slog. Call me a political simpleton if you will, but the more I read, the more I believe that when it comes to deciding which political system is best, the most important factor should be, must be, the results that particular system has shown in the past. All other factors and considerations concerning a particular political system must be secondary to the sustained results that political system has shown.
So, what do we hear about America's particular political system, socialized democracy? "The New Deal was a failure!" Never mind that for more than sixty years our economy was the envy of the planet and in many ways still is. Sure, there were ups and downs along the way, some bigger than others, but from the implementation of the New Deal to the repeal of Glass-Steagal, the strength of our economy was never truly threatened.
"The Great Society was a colossal failure!" Never mind that the statistics clearly show that the poverty rate was cut in half in the decade following LBJ's proudest achievement, and even now in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the poverty rate is still significantly lower than before the Great Society, as Politifact.com pointed out to Bill O'Reilly, and as is clearly shown in this chart.
In all America's history, the data make it obvious that the two programs above benefited more Americans to a greater extent than anything our government has done since Lincoln freed the slaves. Yet a substantial portion of conservative politicians and pundits vociferously claim that these two programs were attacks on the American way of life and assaults on freedom/democracy/free enterprise. So how do we define whether a government is good for its people?
I say that the higher the standard of living of the greater percentage of its population, and the greater the degree of the sustainability of said standard, the more successful the government. After all, what is the purpose of government? Many would cynically claim that a government is nothing more than power-hungry people wanting to exert authority over other people, and there are many, many examples where such is indeed the truth. But this is not true in all cases; indeed, in most cases in democratic nations, governments are comprised of people (some of whom are power-hungry) who are trying to do what they really think is best. I suspect that those who would claim otherwise, who try to tell us that all politicians are corrupt and/or power-hungry, do not realize that such a definition would include every president we've had; even including Washington and Lincoln and every one of America's Founding Fathers. To be sure, some (perhaps even most) were corrupt at least to some extent. But being ethically pure doesn't mean that one governs well (Adolf Hitler), nor does being somewhat corrupt mean that one cannot govern well (Winston Churchill).
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - John Lake
Glenn is still out there with a whole lot to say. He is waxing, albeit, quite optimistic. I like the line, “The greater the population of a society and the greater its level of technology, the greater the degree of regulation and the size of the government that will be necessary to maintain order in that society.”
2 - Dr Dreadful
Pretty good summing up there, Glenn.
On the subject of civil rights, a small government libertarian would probably tell you that the southern states would have come around in the end and passed legislation on their own initiative, since the racist laws and institutions in place in those states would eventually have led to the loss of most of the (black) workforce as it emigrated north in search of less oppressive places to live, and subsequent economic meltdown.
A guarantee of equal civil rights for all would have been the only way to entice those workers to move back to the South.
Of course, this theory does nothing to explain why the remaining blacks in the South should have had to put up with being second-class citizens for all the decades it would have taken. Nor does it allow for the possibility that many southern states would have opened their doors to "guest" workers from Mexico and the Caribbean, and proceeded to pay them a pittance, sooner than give rights to negroes. But there it is.
3 - Igor
If I were a Christian I'd say that a society is judged by how well it does for the lowest of it's people: the poor, the disabled, the damaged, the abused, the children, the old, the lame, etc. It's the Jesus test.
Good thing I'm not a Christian or I'd perish from grieving for this society.
4 - Glenn Contrarian
Igor -
In my opinion, most of those who claim be 'Christian' are anything but...and when it comes to the article, Jesus had no problem with government - He had no problem even with taxes.
Most 'Christians' even revile the name of Pontius Pilate - but for the life of me, I don't see anything he did that was truly sinful. He was obeying the law of the land that applied to him, declared that Jesus was apparently innocent, and followed the will of the people when they cried out for Jesus' death. But why did he do so? It's pretty obvious that he did so to maintain order and prevent rioting.
5 - Dr Joseph S Maresca
I don't mind necessary government. VP Al Gore tried to consolidate government processing with some success.
Pres. George Bush increased the role of government with dual wars and the Homeland Security.
People object to the interference of government at the local level as General and Pres. Eisenhower warned against. We need right sized government with as little interference as possible in how people live and work.
Government itself is not coming free of charge. The alternative to some government spending could be employing people in the private sector.
Lobbying is another problem area where government itself is taken hostage. Services end up costing more and ideas which should prevail- do not do so. Oftentimes, the people have absolutely no idea of the better alternatives because these are screened out by professional lobbies and interest groups of every kind. Thankfully, the internet can change the adverse power calculus.
6 - Dr Dreadful
Dr Maresca, are you aware that you do not have to hit the Return key when your cursor reaches the edge of the comments box?
Unlike with a typewriter, your computer will wrap around to a new line automatically.
I apologize if I'm stating the obvious, but I can't otherwise account for the unedited appearance of most of your comments.
7 - Cannonshop
Glenn, looking straight at your title, I can nail what the difference is...
A successful government doesn't need to run advertisements on the radio assuring citizens that the Civil Service isn't the enemy.
This is, after all, the same Federal Government that recently decided that food, fuel, and housing are too volatile to be counted in "cost of living" calculations, but that i-pods, Internet connections, and other optional crap is just fine.
The same federal government that not only can't balance its books year to year, but is borrowing money to increase the amount it can borrow ("Debt Ceiling") to pay for all those wonderful programmes you've listed in your article, because the actual ECONOMY can't pay for 'em any other way.
It's the same Government that has had to devalue the currency to the point they're devaluing what it's MADE OUT OF. when a zinc-sandwich penny costs 3c to make, there's a problem with the value of your money, Glenn. As for your poverty stat, did you factor in currency devaluation, or did you just go with handy quantitative amounts? PURCHASING POWER determines poverty, Glenn-you're just as poor with a thousand dollars that are worth what used to be a hundered, as you were when you had a hundered dollars that were actually worht a hundered dollars.
So, no, I don't buy your product of bottomless government, Glenn, Statists don't ever have a limit on how far, or how much, or what kind of future burdens they'll impose on others, to get the highlife lifestyle they feel they are entitled to-even if it means hiding real poverty behind a numbers game and pretending things are better than they really are.
8 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
A successful government doesn't need to run advertisements on the radio assuring citizens that the Civil Service isn't the enemy.
But it's okay for a political party and a major media outlet to run ads saying that the Civil Service IS the enemy?
One of the biggest misconceptions of the Republican party, Cannonshop, is that government should be run like a business - and nothing could be further from the truth. Government is not run to make a profit - government is run to govern the people, to protect their lives and property and livelihoods.
Do you remember that at the end of the Clinton administration, we were on track to pay off our ENTIRE national debt by this year? But thanks to Dubya, between two wars (one of which was strictly illegal), a huge giveaway to Big Pharma, and a HUGE tax cut (mostly for the wealthy), our surplus that was supposed to pay off our debt...went *poof*.
Cannonshop, we CAN pay off the national debt - but in order to do so, we have to have (1) a tax policy sensible enough to get rid of the deficit, and (2) an administration that doesn't throw money at wars and industry and the rich who do NOT need it, but instead use the money to build up the middle class and to bring people out of poverty...which is EXACTLY what the Great Society was all about - remember, the poverty rate was cut in half in the years after the Great Society was implemented.
Call it government giveaways if you like - but the rich do NOT need the money, but the middle- and lower-classes DO need the jobs, even if they're taxpayer-funded government jobs...VERY FEW of which are the waste of time that the Republican party would tell you they are.
9 - Igor
We need to lapse the old 2001 Bush tax giveaways, which didn't do any good anyway.
We need to cut the defense budget in half and buy a few thousand predators. All the old boats are out-of-date and airplanes are only good to send to Israel as castoffs.
10 - Igor
How should we define the success of an economy?
Well, to begin with one should keep things that worked, like capitalism to make lightbulbs and run department stores, and cast off things that didn't work, like capitalism for healthcare, military, roads, etc.
Let's face it, the big broad concerns of government (military, environment, healthcare, etc.) are too important to be left to the vagaries of capitalism, which monopolizes any such endeavor easily and corrupts it, and then drives prices through the ceiling with it's monopolies.
11 - Clavos
Let's face it, the big broad concerns of government (military, environment, healthcare, etc.) are too important to be left to the vagaries of capitalism...
Instead, we leave them up to the corruption and ineptitude of government, which explains why we have a crumbling infrastructure and horrendous school systems which often don't even teach reading and writing, let alone science and math or foreign languages.
And now, based on how successfully our government runs everything else, liberals want it to run the medical system too.
I can just hear the physicians working under work rules similar to those of the USPS, when, in mid heart transplant the cardiac surgeon says, "Oh my! My eight hours are up, I'm outta here!"
12 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Instead, we leave them up to the corruption and ineptitude of government, which explains why we have a crumbling infrastructure and horrendous school systems which often don't even teach reading and writing, let alone science and math or foreign languages.
That's the same old conservative line - "slice-and-dice the school budgets, and the horrendous school systems will magically get better!"
"slice-and-dice the transportation budget, and all of a sudden our transportation infrastructure will magically get better!"
"slice-and-dice funding for maintenance for government buildings, and their condition will magically get better!"
What today's Republicans (unlike the Republicans of bygone generations) do not realize is that you get what you pay for. You want government to work well - but you're not willing to pay the taxes necessary to get that level of service. "Government is broken - elect us and we'll prove it to you by making damned sure it stays broken!"
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And speaking of the USPS, Clavos, if it weren't for the pension requirements that Congress pushed on the USPS, did you know they'd be showing a profit today? Here's some edjimication for you about the USPS, BY FAR the world's most efficient postal system (they deliver 268,894 letters per year per employee), so you can learn exactly why the USPS is still losing money:
Despite the cries of bankruptcy from right wing politicians, the US Postal Service earned a profit of $112 million from its operations in October, despite a 5% drop in revenue, and a 10% drop in total mail volume compared with October 2010.
Unfortunately for postal workers and their customers, however, the accounting gimmicks enacted into law by Congress and the Bush Administration in 2006 require that the USPS hand that profit over to the Treasury. Not only that, but the USPS is required to borrow another $350 million from the Treasury, so that money can also be handed back to the Treasury for the so-called “trust fund” for potential future retiree health benefits.
The end result of all of this politically inspired money shuffling is that the postal service is forced to book a net loss of $139 million. From the politician’s point of view, it’s a win-win situation- each month, the gimmickry shifts another half billion dollars of the national debt “off budget”, to the USPS; and it matches the story people like Darrell Issa and Dennis Ross like to tell about bloated bureaucracies and overpaid workers.
We just can’t have a unionized government run operation making a profit, can we?
Clavos, the REASON why the USPS is losing money isn't because of inefficiency - they are the world's MOST efficient - but because a Republican Congress (with support from a lot of Dems who didn't see where it was going) gave them a poison pill of a pension system, one that is breaking the USPS and its union.
THAT, sir, is the reason why the USPS loses money.
13 - Clavos
Glenn,
Your "response" had virtually no bearing whatever on my comment. I never mentioned "slice-and-dice." I have no idea what you're talking about.
As to the USPS and its unions. I worked there. I know first hand how inefficient and featherbedded that "organization" is.
And the excuse about the pensions is bogus. The liability exists because for decades, first the Post Office "management", then the USPS "managers' allowed themselves to be sodomized by the unions, which are among the most arrogant and powerful such entities in the country. Again, I know that from first hand experience.
14 - Cannonshop
#9 Igor, Government Giveaways are entirely a STATIST entity-from no-bid contracts, to mandating economic activity occur, to socialism for the very rich, to a tax system so complex those tasked to enforce it don't even have a working understanding OF it, to an overburden of obselete laws, to agencies that don't perform the function for which they were created, and the contractors that feed off of all of this-it's all Statist, Igor. Every scrap from Enron to Halliburton to Solyndra and similar big scandals, all the way down to the fifty thousand dollar claw hammer and 125k toilet seats, to the John P. Murtha Airport in Pennsylvania (rated for shuttle landings, has six flights a day maximum!)
Excessive Statism BREEDS Corporatism-and reinforces it, protects it, and advances it at the cost of the citizens it is supposed to be serving.
You can't run Government like a business, but you can damn sure run it like a household-if your household were in the proportional debt of Uncle Sam, you'd be living in a cardboard box under the overpass-because you, unlike Uncle Sam, can't just print more money to pretend to cover it, passing the losses on to the next generation.
Eventually, governments ALSO lose that ability-look at Zimbabwe, or any of a hundered other hellholes with worthless currency, dependent on foreign aid to stay in some kind of shaky operational condition.
there is only so far you can redistribute from a frankly dwindling pool of wealth production, and that shortens as you expand the financial committments. Right now, I work at the last big EXPORTER of goods in the U.S.-Goods, Igor, not Jobs.
And what've we got for it? Kids are graduating from schools unable to read or do basic math, ignorant of history, languages, science-the intellectual capital necessary to recover or maintain enough production to pay for what Statists want Government to DO. The bottomless foreign wars are just aggravating factors, the real problem is, Government doesn't do much of anything well-we have prisons that are essentially training grounds for a permanent criminal underclass, and they're jammed to the rafters and beyond, we have a "National Security" apparatus that is more worried about some non-violent protesters, than they are about hostile foreign nationals already inside our borders, we have an immigration policy that is frankly insane and utterly unenforceable, we have, in short, a lot of failure, very little success, and a huge outlay of resources we don't even HAVE to lay out propping up a system that is dysfunctional and growing moreso every day.
Respect for the Law is declining, we elect Presidents based on the same criteria as "American Idol" (and choose Presidential Candidates the SAME WAY...look at Santorum, Gingrich, etc.)
WE've been cutting our own throats for THREE generations now. IT's GOING to catch up with us, maybe you'll be lucky enough to die of old age first, but what about the ones that come after you? Do you even give a shit?
15 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Instead, we leave them up to the corruption and ineptitude of government, which explains why we have a crumbling infrastructure and horrendous school systems which often don't even teach reading and writing, let alone science and math or foreign languages.
And what has been the conservative reaction to the problems we face with schools and infrastructure? "Slice-and-dice". That's why I went on my 'slice-and-dice' tirade.
And if you'll recall, I worked for the USPS too - and if the USPS is SO terrible, then please tell us why it is that the USPS is the MOST EFFICIENT postal service on the planet, AND why it is that except for the mandatory payments pushed on them by Congress, they would be making a profit even today? That's what the references I gave clearly show.
P.S. I'd LOVE to see you show how any other organization delivers over 200,000 of ANY physical product per employee per year! I don't think even McDonald's can make that claim!
16 - Clavos
please tell us why it is that the USPS is the MOST EFFICIENT postal service on the planet,
Questionable. Australia? The UK? Deutsche Bundesposte? Japan? Canada? etc., etc.
If your criterion is quantity it's a specious point; most of the 200K you cite above is Presorted Standard (i.e., "junk mail"), which is sorted and banded by the senders and is then carried to its destination PO by contractors, chief among them UPS and FedEx, both of whom are much more efficient than the USPS, because and they make money! The USPS only carries it the "last mile."
The only reason the USPS hasn't yet lost the First Class franchise is they are protected by law; no other carrier can carry it; if there were real competition for First Class, the USPS would lose -- quickly.
17 - Igor
Glenn is absolutely right about USPS: the only reason they have any financial problem is because the Bush/Republican cabal in 2006 forced a 10-year plan to fund the retirement plan fully. This was just designed to make the USPS look bad.
NO ONE has a fully funded retirement plan. No company has a fully funded retirement plan. Look at your own retirement plan wherever you work and ask the administrators if it is fully funded.
YOUR company doesn't have a fully funded retirement plan (unless you are one of the very top executives).
In fact, your automobile insurance is NOT fully funded. If you have a loss, the insurance company will use funds from current revenues. There is NO pre-funded money. The only slack in auto insurance companies is a slush fund for financial exigencies, not for product payoffs.
The same is true of your house insurance. No payoffs are pre-funded. If there's a massive flood or fire in your neighborhood the insurance company can simply declare bankruptcy and not pay off.
But , of course, that doesn't stop crooked rightists from proclaiming that only the USPS and SSA have an unfunded liability. And, at that, the USPS unfunded fraction, just like the SSA unfunded fraction, is small compared to the pre-funded part, because both are controlled by government regulations, whereas most PRIVATE insurance funds are not.
18 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Do you realize how many assumptions are in your #16? You assume that other nations don't have anything like a 'Presorted Standard'. You assume that private companies are just a-hankering to do first-class mail (they aren't), and that they could do it anywhere as close to as cheaply as the USPS does it (they can't), at the same level of mandated service that the USPS provides (they can't).
Furthermore, exactly how workable would it be for a private company to operate on the SAME mandate that the USPS is required by law to provide, namely to be able to deliver to every single address in the nation six days a week (or is it five now, thanks to the Bush-admin-manufactured budgetary problems the USPS has?)...even if those addresses are out in the boonies and the mail those addresses receive are nowhere near valuable enough to pay for the expense of the delivery?
It's a dream world, a fantasy that you're living in if you think that FedEx or UPS or anyone else has the wherewithal to do that as cheaply as the USPS already does it. The cost of first-class mail would skyrocket...and so would the cost of the presorted standard upon which many businesses depend!
That last is what neither you nor the Republican party as a whole is not getting - the USPS is a value-added service - the ability of the retirees (who don't like direct deposit) to get their checks, the increase in business of J.C. Penney, Macy's, Harry & David, and all the tens of thousands of other businesses that advertise through the mail - do you really think it would HELP their business if they all of a sudden had to pay three or four times the price for presorted standard?
But it's as if all you can see is the initial price of the USPS, and you think that the money is all completely wasted. But it's NOT.
The USPS is by far the most efficient postal service in the world...and that presorted standard mail counts just as much and is just as important, because it's that presorted standard that's helping make our business sector run.
As a business person, Clavos, you should understand all that instinctively.
19 - Igor
Bigger government is inevitable. As a country grows in population and commerce it is inevitable that management overhead increases (it's also true in every business).
And it's NOT just a linear increase. It's greater than linear. Both mathematical theory and empiricism show that management burden must increase logarthmically. Thus, the very fact of growth commits you to bigger government.
It's just a question of who has the power. Do you want the power in the hands of a few people who will do anything to enrich themselves at the expense of others? Or do you want power in the hands of a broad electorate?
You get to choose. The rest is hot air.
20 - Clavos
Do you want the power in the hands of a few people who will do anything to enrich themselves at the expense of others?
That, Igor, is the very definition of the government we already have -- and it's only going to get worse, unless the nanny staters are stopped.
21 - Glenn Contrarian
Oh? Our government right now is concentrating the power into that hands of just a few people who enrich themselves at the expense of others?
Really?
Do you have some kind of facts or figures to back that up? Because I'm having a really hard time trying to think of any government functionaries who became billionaires on government salaries. As far as I can tell, every single billionaire made it in the business world.
Can you show differently?
Didn't think so. Clavos, y'all need to get off the "government is all-evil, all the time" shtick...because government - at least OUR government - is NOT as corrupt as many (or perhaps most) corporations out there (as you should have learned from everything we've found out about Goldman Sachs and the Great Recession).
22 - Zingzing
It's strange how conservative arguments against the current gov't can be so contradictory. It's socialist, yet it's fascist. It's creating class war against the rich, yet it's trying to enrich them. It's incompetent and inefficient, yet it's totalitarian. Obama has big ears but he won't listen to me, even though I didn't vote for him and never would because he doesn't believe in the things that I do, but he should still do things I agree with because I'm a real American and anyone who doesn't believe as I do can just leave this land of freedom and liberty.
23 - Clavos
Um, guys, every single member of congress is at least a millionaire, even those who weren't when they started, and ALL the government power is concentrated in Washington DC, in the hands of Obama, and the congress, all 535 of 'em.
None of 'em are billionaires, true, but ALL of 'em are richer as a result of being elected, and more importantly (because it's their real motivation for seeking office) are much more powerful than any private citizen -- even the billionaires.
24 - Zingzing
You may be right about many of them, clavos, but that's a pretty simple and reductive attempt to nail the motivations of 536 individuals and their relationship to power in the us. Do you really think the lowliest member of congress holds more power than the murdochs and soroses of the world?
25 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos rails against the power-hungry in Congress and thinks that we're so naive about why they wanted to be elected...
...but he himself doesn't seem to see his own naivete when it comes to the much greater degree of corruption in the corporate world. And why is there more corruption in the corporate world? Easy. There isn't someone from the media watching what Joe CEO does all day long, every day - but there's ALWAYS someone in the media watching what anyone in the government does, all day long, every day.