In this blog, I have been defining the 30 year experiment of the New Right as being largely libertarian with regard to its political appeals, theory of how society works, and attitudes toward government and taxation. To be fair, I have pointed out that the Republicans’ agenda includes two other potentially conflicting influences, social conservatism and support for an interventionist national security state. I have chosen libertarianism as the dominant trend of the three in part because it is the most all-inclusive and influential in the area of economic policy and politics. In this post, I will argue that Republican-libertarian/Tea Party politics and policy are based on short-sighted greed, which is a moral accusation that is extremely obvious yet has not been spoken of as such in the public sphere.
It is surprising that after a monumental economic slump caused in part by Republican pro-greed policy, that the same group committed to short-sighted greed may make substantial electoral gains in November against President Obama and the Democrats. The Democrats are relatively speaking more committed to our long-term self-interest as a nation, though have made some deeply problematic policy suggestions and political strategy. They have proposed and passed laws which are cumbersome and sometimes wrong-headed (I’m thinking about the health care bill). The Democrats have stumbled badly in communicating their intents and commitment to a sustainable American prosperity. However the Democrats are not so exclusively beholden to irrationality and short-sighted greed as the Republicans who are standing for office or campaigning for re-election.
The substantial imperfections of the Democrats pale in comparison to the callous disregard for the welfare of the American people of the Republican Party, some of whom are now campaigning to return America to the 18th or 19th Centuries. Recently some “Tea Party” candidates have been campaigning against public education. For their mistakes, the Democrats deserve to have their feet held to the fire but, even more, the Republicans do not deserve to be rewarded for their insanity and sheer stupidity. Thus electing Democrats and challenging them in 2012 primaries would send the right message (even challenging the President in a primary makes sense) rather than switching over to the Party that brought us to ruin and doesn’t care. Though the timidity and cluelessness of some Democrats is maddening, they are not as blind and morally bankrupt as their Republican opponents, in a vast majority of cases.
Providing and Paying for Public Goods
The Republican appeal to short-term greed is nowhere more evident than in the extreme tax phobia that Republicans both foment and play upon. Over the past 30 years, few politicians have stood up for the benefits paid for, in part, by taxes, reminding the American people that the “pain” of taxes leads to the “gain” of individual and overall social benefits. It has become political common sense in the US to never appear to have raised taxes. Multiple factors have led to this impasse which now immobilizes most sitting politicians; proposing a tax has become a stigma away from which politicians run headlong. The link between a social benefit and payment for it has been broken in the mind of the public, largely due to the promises of a market-based solution for everything that postpones the planned payment for goods and services via raising government revenue. The fantasy of a market “fairy” that will make the pain of taxes go away has infantilized the American public. Both Democrats and Republicans have played into this; however, it is Republicans who have promoted an ideology of almost complete tax phobia, where taxes are considered to be a total and complete subtraction from the welfare of society as a whole.
Never Pay for “Other People”
Republicans and the media outlets associated with the Republican/ libertarian ideology (Fox News, business news channels, right-wing talk radio) have now drilled into many people the notion that taxes and other pooled economic resources are an unfair system of paying for “other people”, in particular people who are less fortunate. There is no conception of “there but for the grace of God go I” or other conceptions about the varying degrees to which people experience fortune and misfortune over their lifespan. The recent incident involving a fire department in Tennessee not putting out the fire at a house that didn’t pay the voluntary “fire fee” has been cited with approval by right wing pundits as the way society should be organized. In the Republican/libertarian ideology, every material possession that one has presently or might have in one’s personal dreams of future wealth is supposed to be a personal virtue and attribute; to be deprived of money by taxation means to be deprived of these personal virtues. There is no sense of a dynamic, interactive economy in this view, only a static collection of goods which is being fought over; in this view, someone else’s gain is always your loss.
Furthermore, in the libertarian/Republican worldview is no conception of the idea that certain goods (public and common goods) are most efficiently paid for via pooled resources with those with more money paying more than those with less. The progressive taxation system instituted almost 100 years ago is under attack by Republicans and libertarians who feel that this is unfair. It is difficult not to judge this as the promotion of an ethic of exceedingly narrow self-interest that focuses simply on what one currently has without any notion about how economies function and income is earned, goods and services are produced. The idea of society having a “commonwealth” which benefits all and enables individual wealth to be enjoyed is an impossibility in the “dog eat dog” world promoted by Republicans.
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