The Pessimism of the Left

[GBFan]

Statism is an inherently pessimistic philosophy. Its core assumption is that people will not do the right thing, if left to their own devices. Private workers, investors, and managers are tried in absentia, found guilty of callous greed, and sentenced to life in Big Government’s work-release programs. Government is force. There is no need to force people to do what they would have done willingly. Therefore, the core assumption of activist government is that people must be forced into socially beneficial activities they would not have freely chosen.

The much-mocked Pajama Boy ad for ObamaCare was a visual Freudian slip that revealed the truth of how liberals view their child-subjects. Virtually everything the Left says to American citizens is the language of adults addressing children, right down to the new obsession with making sure we eat good food.

There is nothing of optimism or respect in a world-view that says the government must grow steadily larger, and the private sector smaller, forever. It’s an old statist trick to phrase every item on its agenda as an “emergency” or the “moral equivalent of war” to stampede voters into compliance. If this rhetoric is taken seriously, and in total, it tells us that our nation is perpetually in crises, eternally in needed of rescue from persistent “emergencies” it can never resolve on its own. What upbeat message can be found in that?

Have you ever heard any Obama Democrat describe the conditions under which all these emergencies will end, and the government will shrink dramatically, returning its appropriated power and money to their rightful owners? Sometimes he pushes policies that seem to imply they would be temporary in nature, but they really aren’t. Even much of his wasted trillion-dollar “stimulus” is still with us, in the form of permanent increased spending baselines. Those who accept the premise that our uninsured population was too large might have considered short-term emergency measures to resolve the problem, but what we got was a permanent reconstruction of the health insurance system that affects everyone, forever.

In fact, it’s interesting how often Obama and his defenders resort to the grim and gloomy rhetoric of fatalism and hopeless despair. You can never be rid of ObamaCare, no matter what; you’ll never be allowed to vote on your health care destiny again, and neither will your children. Cuts to any government program are portrayed as assaults upon the beneficiaries, which is another way of saying they’re hapless victims who can’t get by unless others are compelled to support them. The food stamp program blew up to staggering dimensions practically overnight, and it’s permanent; the people it benefits will never be able to feed themselves without government assistance again. Liberal class analysis in general is static and rigid – the assumption is that if you’re born disadvantaged, you’ll stay that way forever, and need Uncle Sam’s help to drag yourself forward through your life.

Static analysis is a major component of statism. Tax increases are said to have no negative effect on revenue, even though history has repeatedly proven otherwise. No one prospers unless others suffer. Wealth is stolen, not created, which is why politicians must be licensed as thieves to correct the injustices perpetrated by all the freelance highwaymen. The nation is a still photograph; only the government moves. This is implicit in the belief that government action is the only action that counts; “caring” is measured exclusively in billion-dollar government programs. Even “opportunity” is treated like a static resource that must be allocated by the State.

Everything the government does is a choice taken away from the individual. Even nominally benevolent subsidies represent the atrophy of choice. You may be led by carrots on sticks, or prodded with a bayonet in the back, but you still aren’t going where you would have freely chosen to go. These subsidies have a way of leading people into poor decisions they would not have made rationally, if they took full responsibility for their own lives, and were given accurate cost and benefit information to plan their actions. A terrible injustice is done when people are persuaded that being given ten dollars is the same as earning ten dollars.

What’s “optimistic” about telling people, in countless ways, that they cannot trust each other? That’s the message delivered every time commerce and voluntary cooperation are made more difficult by government intervention. There is no way to demand trust in the State without draining away our faith in each other, and ourselves. If the Left really thought the American economy was on the verge of taking flight, they would make the government smaller, so that we’d have more room to spread our wings. Instead, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an exit strategy for any of the domestic “wars” they want to fight, or a single endgame for any of permanent emergencies that require ham-fisted government management. There’s nothing upbeat about the state of perpetual crisis.

 

[pocketfullofshells]

I like how you posted that , pretending your wrote it. But unless your John Hayward, you did not, And I doubt you are.

 

[GBFan]

I like how you posted that , pretending your wrote it. But unless your John Hayward, you did not, And I doubt you are.

Do you see anywhere that I claimed I wrote it? ... I learned a long time ago that if you provide attribution, libs get distracted from the last shiny thing, and they discount a position, not because they disagree, but because of where it was posted. Their penchant for personal attacks (at which you seem most proficient) seems easier for them than an actual intelligent discourse.

YOU are the perfect example ... and you did it right here. You didn't/couldn't argue the post, you attacked me. Since, apparently, the discussion was over your head, the only way you could feel relevant was to attack me ... so be it. We recognize it for what it is ... a pathetic attempt to distract from an issue you can't discuss.

 

[Texas_tea]

Do you see anywhere that I claimed I wrote it? ... I learned a long time ago that if you provide attribution, libs get distracted from the last shiny thing, and they discount a position, not because they disagree, but because of where it was posted. Their penchant for personal attacks (at which you seem most proficient) seems easier for them than an actual intelligent discourse.

YOU are the perfect example ... and you did it right here. You didn't/couldn't argue the post, you attacked me. Since, apparently, the discussion was over your head, the only way you could feel relevant was to attack me ... so be it. We recognize it for what it is ... a pathetic attempt to distract from an issue you can't discuss.

GB that would be known as "the liberal art of deflection" ...

 

[GBFan]

GB that would be known as "the liberal art of deflection" ...

Ahhhhh ... where I come from, they call it bullsh*t .... I feel better. Now, i can discuss it in mixed company.

 

[Texas_tea]

Ahhhhh ... where I come from, they call it bullsh*t .... I feel better. Now, i can discuss it in mixed company.

Yes .... we have to keep it politically correct ...

 

[pocketfullofshells]

cry all you want, its called Plagiarism. By not siting where you copy pasted it, you in fact present it as if you said it. But you did not. If you want to present your own thoughts, or ideas maybe I would debate them. But I may as well just go to redstate and debate the person who actually wrote the piece...that you Plagiarized.

 

[GBFan]

cry all you want, its called Plagiarism. By not siting where you copy pasted it, you in fact present it as if you said it. But you did not. If you want to present your own thoughts, or ideas maybe I would debate them. But I may as well just go to redstate and debate the person who actually wrote the piece...that you Plagiarized.

Still haven't figured out a response, huh?

And, I tried to make it so simple for you ....

(Quit whining ... it doesn't become you)

 

[pocketfullofshells]

write your own shit, maybe I will respond. As I did not bother to read your Plagiarism. being that I spend the last week in the hospital, I don't have time to read your shit you try to pass of as your own.

 

[GBFan]

write your own shit, maybe I will respond. As I did not bother to read your Plagiarism. being that I spend the last week in the hospital, I don't have time to read your shit you try to pass of as your own.

I did not pass it off as my own ... but, if that's what it takes for you to cover the fact that you try to intimidate people, and talk trash about them, but don't ever actually try to read the article ... then bless you.

It's interesting that, while you may or may not have spent the week in the hospital, you spent significantly more time researching who wrote than it would have taken to read it, speaks volumes about your interest in honest discourse ... none.

 

[pocketfullofshells]

you did not pass it off as your own? realy what do you call it when you past someones elses words under your name, without giving any credit to who actuly wrote them... ? Its called fucking plagiarism

had you turned that in for a paper with your name on it, what would your teacher call it if you said noplace on it that someone else wrote the whole thing?

And it took 15 seconds to find out it was plagiarism and where you stole it. Not that given how much time was spend sitting around in a hospital I could not have found it.

Post your own thoughts maybe they will be read...Or give credit to where you took the words from and maybe then.

your just acting like a little bitch because you got called out

 

[GBFan]

you did not pass it off as your own? realy what do you call it when you past someones elses words under your name, without giving any credit to who actuly wrote them... ? Its called fucking plagiarism

had you turned that in for a paper with your name on it, what would your teacher call it if you said noplace on it that someone else wrote the whole thing?

And it took 15 seconds to find out it was plagiarism and where you stole it. Not that given how much time was spend sitting around in a hospital I could not have found it.

Post your own thoughts maybe they will be read...Or give credit to where you took the words from and maybe then.

your just acting like a little bitch because you got called out

LOL -- you think I give a good God damn one way or the other that you want to call it plagiarism?

Well, get used to it.

1) The purpose of creating a thread is to foster discussion about the content of the post - not who wrote it or where it was printed.

2) I intend to continue to post articles written without attribution, unless that attribution has some significance to the issue under discussion.

3) Unlike some, I gain no vicarious thrill from seeing my name in print, or feel personal ownership of the opinions I post. In fact, if you had bothered to ever actually read a post here, you would see that I have posted some pro-liberal articles without attribution (OMG!) in order to encourage conversation. Get over it.

4) I refuse to give you any excuse to divert from the issue under discussion.

5) Feel free to assume that ANY post I make was written by somebody else. After all, I have my posts screened by a 6 year old in order to ensure that liberals can grasp the concept. (I've been having trouble, though ... she's a precocious 6 year old and overestimates sometimes.)

Quit running away from the posted article ... quit trying to find some weak-ass excuse to not have to respond ... or is it something on which you CAN'T comment?

 

[Lagboltz]

PFOS is right. What you plagiarized is way too long. Too many people do that here. Copying and pasting is a real cheap way of making a post. However apropos to your post, here is a thought that you should thoroughly read and comment on.

During the Great Moderation, right-wingers were generally economic optimists and left-wingers tended to be economic pessimists. After all, the Great Moderation began with a series of free-market economic reforms—tax cuts, deregulation, tight money. This gave the right a vested interest in defending the performance of the economy, while it made the left more inclined to emphasize its flaws. Hence, it was fairly common to see free-market intellectuals write books—even under Bill Clinton—arguing that the economy was doing better than people thought.

In particular, conservatives would argue that the official Consumer Price Index was over-stating the rate of inflation, thereby under-stating the rate at which things were improving. Meanwhile, left-of-center thinkers tended to accentuate the negative, arguing that the lot of the average worker has barely improved at all, and may have actually declined, since the 1970s.

Since the financial crisis started, the roles have largely been reversed. Obviously liberals don’t think the economy is doing great, but it’s conservatives who believe the economy is in deep trouble.

One of the most striking ways this has manifested itself is that the CPI debate has flipped. Today many grassroots conservatives suspect that the CPI under-states inflation and speculate that the government is doing this deliberately to camouflage what they regard as the Fed’s inflationary policies.

I don’t think this is primarily a matter of hypocrisy. Rather, a lot of new people were brought into the conservative movement by Ron Paul and the Tea Party, and those folks were never on board with the optimism of the right-wing establishment. But it’s put conservative elites in an awkward position, because they suddenly find their grassroots supporters taking a position opposite to the one they’ve been taking for decades.

I think this shift in the conservative mood helps to explain the fissure over monetary policy Reihan has written about. Take me, for example. I was on board with the right-wing optimist viewpoint prior to 2008. I thought the policies of the last three decades had been generally good ones, and that the official inflation statistics were under-estimating the rate of progress.

So it was deeply disorienting when the economic system I thought was generally sound took an unexpected nosedive. I needed to update my model of the economy to explain this unexpectedly poor performance. And so when Scott Sumner told me that the Fed was to blame, I was happy to accept his argument rather than having to totally rethink my views on economic policy.

In contrast, the Ron Paul and Tea Party wings of the conservative movement have become deeply invested in the idea that there are deep flaws with the American economy. They believe, in a sense, that the American economy is getting what it had coming given all the grievous policy mistakes that have been made in recent decades. And, of course, this has been exacerbated by their dislike for President Obama and his policies. They believe (implausibly, in my view) that ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and other Obama economic policies were a dramatic move in the direction of socialism that pose a fundamental danger to the American economy.

So it’s not hard to see why these conservatives would be hostile toward Scott Sumner’s view that the economy would basically be doing fine if the Fed were doing its job. Conservative activists are deeply invested in the idea that we have to make tough, painful choices to save the country from economic ruin. They find the suggestion that there’s a quick, painless fix for the economy’s short-term problems deeply unsatisfying.

To be clear, conservatives are right that some tough choices will be needed in the coming years, especially with regard to Medicare. But in my view the long-term problem of entitlements has almost nothing to do with the short-term problems with the economy. The short-term problem is simply that the Fed hasn’t been doing its job of providing the economy with sufficient liquidity.

 

[GBFan]

PFOS is right. What you plagiarized is way too long. Too many people do that here. Copying and pasting is a real cheap way of making a post. However apropos to your post, here is a thought that you should thoroughly read and comment on.

During the Great Moderation, right-wingers were generally economic optimists and left-wingers tended to be economic pessimists. After all, the Great Moderation began with a series of free-market economic reforms—tax cuts, deregulation, tight money. This gave the right a vested interest in defending the performance of the economy, while it made the left more inclined to emphasize its flaws. Hence, it was fairly common to see free-market intellectuals write books—even under Bill Clinton—arguing that the economy was doing better than people thought.

....................................

I fear that you consider the economy in a monolithic sense, rather than acknowledging that portions of our measurement of the economy have been changed ... primarily for political reasons.

For example, the computation of CPI has been altered to provide a 'different' (I won't say false - though I could) picture of the economy. The computation of unemployment statistics has been 'altered'. It is virtually impossible to compare government reporting across a thirty year period, because you are truly talking apples and kumquats.

However, all that being said, the difference between conservative and liberal assessments of the economy is true ... but it's rooted in a fundamental difference in opinion about the goals of the economy. Conservatives believe that, left to its own devices, the economy would function such that an increase in growth is inevitable. Yes, they believe that there would be those who would not succeed - companies would fold because their product would no longer be needed (the old 'buggy whip' scenario), but from the ashes would come the new car company to drive the economy forward. People would have to adjust as these changes happen - being the best buggy whip handle whittler has no relevancy in today's economy. Conservatives believe that corporations do not have a conscience; they do not inherently believe they have a social responsibility. Corporations are non-human entities whose sole purpose is to make money for its investors. They believe that it is the responsibility of the people to adjust to the economy, not the other way around. It is the responsibility of the buggy whip handle whittler to learn a new trade, not for the economy to find a place where buggy whip handle whittlers can ply their skills. Corporations only "develop" a conscience where it enhances its bottom line - if claiming to donate a million dollars to education creates a positive public perception that is then translated into a bigger bottom line, then, and only then, will a company develop that conscience.

Liberals, on the other hand, feel that the economy has a responsibility to those involved in it, and that it must be manipulated in order to provide the result THEY believe is in the best interest of the people. When the buggy whip maker goes out of business, liberals believe it is the responsibility of business to find a place for those who fall by the wayside. In short, the economy must change to fit the workers, not the workers change to fit the economy.

I would maintain that what liberals have done is abdicated their personal responsibility to their fellow man by trying to shift that onus onto the corporation. I think this is proven true when you consider that the charitable efforts of conservatives far outweigh the charity of the left. Conservatives recognize their responsibility to their fellow man, while liberals have pushed theirs off onto some other non-complaining entity (whether it be the government or an expectation that corporations will do it).

You speak of the Great Moderation ... unfortunately, true. It's important, though, to realize that the Great Moderation was directly caused by human interference in the economic process. While great swings in economic performance would seem, on the surface, to be injurious, the reality is that movements (either positive or negative) will, in the long run, result in a positive direction for the economy. When you tamper those movements, you invariably harm the overall growth.

An excellent example of that is the current unemployment crisis (and, yes, it is truly a crisis). Prior to 2008, there was great sociological and political pressure to keep people employed. When the crash happened, it provided an excellent excuse for companies to shed themselves of unnecessary labor. The crash forced companies to figure out how to accomplish their mission with less people.

When the recovery began, companies were under no pressure to return to the employment levels of the past, and in order to maximize their profits, they stayed 'lean and mean'. So, now we have a business base that is more efficient than it used to be, and millions workers are left by the wayside. So, now we have our 'jobless recovery' ... which is exactly what the economy needs.

So, we go forward - but, what about all those unemployed? The liberal answer is to gather them under the wing of government and take care of them ... give them food and housing and money to spend ... money that is taken away from those who are working (thus stifling THEIR growth). The answer should be to recognize that the unemployed are unemployable in the current environment, and try to increase their employability by creating new businesses and new jobs and new opportunities. The left has created an anti-growth, anti-entrepreneurship environment, hostile to creating new jobs. They need to remove those restrictions and let the economy do what it does best - morph and change to create growth.

Your comments about Ron Paul were dead-on --- I'm not a Paul advocate, but the idea that the economy is getting exactly what it deserves is almost totally correct ... the economy is getting exactly what was inflicted on it by the interference of the left. It is NOT a coincidence that the economy tanked at the point in time that the business community realized that Obama was going to be the next president, and that with him, liberal interference. It is NOT a coincidence that, while we happily blame greedy mortgage companies for bundling, that they were literally forced into it by the threats of the federal government.

As you say, I do, in fact, believe that "ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and other Obama economic policies were a dramatic move in the direction of socialism that pose a fundamental danger to the American economy." Anything that hampers or dampens the dynamism of the American economy contributes to an environment of greater government intervention, which in turn, invariably hampers or dampens the dynamism of the American economy. Or, as my ol' grandpa would say about me tinkering with my cars, "Leave it to hell alone - it'll run fine."

In summary, the left believes in the Great Mediocrity ... think it through. They pine for 'income equalization', where everybody makes the same. They want to ensure that all children reach the same level of education - even though it holds back those who can make that economy grow. They want to make sure that all people have the same level of housing, of education, of income. While all of this sounds great, and makes everybody feel good inside, the reality is that, in order to do that, we must rob from some to give to others --- (oops, I meant 'make sure the rich pay their fair share') ... so, their answer isn't to raise people up, but rather to bring people down. The left has no problem hampering the growth of some in order to help others, when the real answer should be to promote, to facilitate, to help the growth of all so that those who succeed can give a helping hand to those who need it.

When you raise the bottom and restrict the top, you have the Great Settling ... where all rest at some level of mediocrity.

 

[Lagboltz]

LOL. You win the copy/paste plagiarism award. You have two points to my one. You will always win the plagiarism post award.