How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality

[futurebeachbum]

OpEd at Time by Fareed Zakaria How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality

Its an interesting article.

"Conservatism is true." That's what George Will told me when I interviewed him as an eager student many years ago.
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Conservatism, he explained, was rooted in reality. Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists.
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Watching this election campaign, one wonders what has happened to that tradition. Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past.
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The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending — then things will bounce back. Now, I would like to see lower rates in the context of tax simplification and reform, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes — federal and state combined — as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950.

I would agree that simplification and reform would both be a very good thing, but that is not exactly the same as lowering taxes and cutting spending. (I also don't believe that either party is capable of truly cutting spending.)
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Many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama Administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years. Really? More than that of Richard Nixon, who presided over tax rates that reached 70%, regulations that spanned whole industries, and who actually instituted price and wage controls?

The enacting of those price/wage controls was in no way a conservative move. That was an incredibly liberal (and short sighted) move. Rather than tackle the root causes, he chose to control inflation by limiting prices?

In fact, right now any discussion of government involvement in the economy — even to build vital infrastructure — is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad.
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In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the U.S. government made massive investments in science and technology, in state universities and in infant industries. It built infrastructure that was the envy of the rest of the world. Those investments triggered two generations of economic growth and put the U.S. on top of the world of technology and innovation.
But that history has been forgotten.
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Conservatives used to be the ones with heads firmly based in reality. Their reforms were powerful because they used the market, streamlined government and empowered individuals. Their effects were large-scale and important: think of the reform of the tax code in the 1980s, for example, which was spearheaded by conservatives. Today conservatives shy away from the sensible ideas of the Bowles-Simpson commission on deficit reduction because those ideas are too deeply rooted in, well, reality. Does anyone think we are really going to get federal spending to the level it was at under Calvin Coolidge, as Paul Ryan's plan assumes? Does anyone think we will deport 11 million people?

There is discussion in there about health care and other things, but I think that for me the infrastructure comment rings very true.

JFK's Man-On-The-Moon-By-The-End-Of-The-Decade required a lot of government investment. It also yielded the relatively strong economies of the 80's and 90's and put medicine and technology where they are today. We could do similar things today to develop greener, less geopolitically sensitive energy tech but neither party in the government seems to have the stomach to make such investments (although bailing out large banks, Wall Street, GM, etc... can be done without flinching.)

Whether liberal or conservative, we really need to figure out how to elect people who are truly more interested in the long-term welfare of the nation than they are in serving the short term needs of the special interests that fund them.

 

[30ashopper]

JFK's Man-On-The-Moon-By-The-End-Of-The-Decade required a lot of government investment. It also yielded the relatively strong economies of the 80's and 90's and put medicine and technology where they are today. We could do similar things today to develop greener, less geopolitically sensitive energy tech but neither party in the government seems to have the stomach to make such investments (although bailing out large banks, Wall Street, GM, etc... can be done without flinching.)

Whether liberal or conservative, we really need to figure out how to elect people who are truly more interested in the long-term welfare of the nation than they are in serving the short term needs of the special interests that fund them.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/Federal-Spending-by-the-Numbers-2010

Federal and state spending as a percentage of GDP in 1960 was just under 30% and was decreasing, today it is pushing 50% and growing. We can't send a man to the moon on the limited amount of money the federal government has to spare after covering mandatory entitlement spending put in place over the last four decades. Debt service has also grown to new highs.

Resetting the bar will require a major economic event. We are following in the footsteps of various declining european countries where state spending has completely crowded out the private sector. The results - a loss of worldly leadership, high unemployment for younger generations, and political unrest. That's where we're headed AFAIC. I don't see things changing any time soon.

 

[PearlSB4U]

The Great Depression started under Hoover. His approach was to cut spending & balance the budget. FDR took a very different tack: massive govt spending programs.
The Great Recession started under GWB. He tried TARP & auto co. bailouts. BHO tried a large stimulus package.
Now the Conventional Wisdom, shared by Both parties is that we should cut back govt spending in a very large way. The two sides agree there should be large cuts, although they disagree on specifics; one side wants larger cuts than the other.
I'm no economic expert, but my bet is that large cuts will be made & that history will judge that to have been a harmful approach.
My intuition is that the FDR approach should be pursued until the economy is healthy again, & only at that time make draconian cuts.

Thx to futurebeachbum for initiating this thread.
I encourage all to read Zakaria's full article at
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html

 

[30ashopper]

The Great Depression started under Hoover. His approach was to cut spending & balance the budget. FDR took a very different tack: massive govt spending programs.
The Great Recession started under GWB. He tried TARP & auto co. bailouts. BHO tried a large stimulus package.
Now the Conventional Wisdom, shared by Both parties is that we should cut back govt spending in a very large way. The two sides agree there should be large cuts, although they disagree on specifics; one side wants larger cuts than the other.
I'm no economic expert, but my bet is that large cuts will be made & that history will judge that to have been a harmful approach.
My intuition is that the FDR approach should be pursued until the economy is healthy again, & only at that time make draconian cuts.

Thx to futurebeachbum for initiating this thread.
I encourage all to read Zakaria's full article at
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html

Peak federal only spending as a percentage of GDP under FDR (1932-1940): ~12%
Peak WWII spending: ~45%
Today: ~27%

Debt as a percentage of GDP under FDR (1932-1940): 20%-45%
Peak durring WWII: 120%
Current:100%

We are running out of room, this time things are a bit different.

 

[PearlSB4U]

Another example of how "Conservatives" have lost touch with reality is that the Mitt Romney's statement--"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that."-- is tantamount to political suicide in his party.

http://www.alternet.org/story/15134...jor_case_of_cognitive_dissonance)?page=entire

Another example: Newt's "suicidal" statements that "I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," and allowing that replacing Medicare w/ a voucher system is too "radical"

 

[futurebeachbum]

The Great Depression started under Hoover. His approach was to cut spending & balance the budget. FDR took a very different tack: massive govt spending programs.

Of course, the unfortunate fact is that most, if not all of FDR's programs also failed to end the depression. In 1929 (pre crash) US unemployment was <5%. In 1940 it was still at 15%. Its very hard to call that successful.

Luckily (or unluckily depending on your POV) WW2 came along and the ensuing investment and hiring of millions of men into the military ended the depression.

 

[LuciferSam]

WWII was a government spending program if there ever was one.

 

[futurebeachbum]

WWII was a government spending program if there ever was one.

It definitely was. The difference is that it wasn't a guns and butter type of spending. It was pretty much guns and guns and had the entire country unified behind it and all were willing to make sacrifices. It doesn't feel like there is a lot of that "let's all make sacrifices for the common good" attitude out there now.

Massive unity of purpose enables us to get great things done. OTOH, I don't think I want to see the type of event that generates that level of unity of purpose occurring.

 

[LuciferSam]

It definitely was. The difference is that it wasn't a guns and butter type of spending. It was pretty much guns and guns and had the entire country unified behind it and all were willing to make sacrifices. It doesn't feel like there is a lot of that "let's all make sacrifices for the common good" attitude out there now.

Massive unity of purpose enables us to get great things done. OTOH, I don't think I want to see the type of event that generates that level of unity of purpose occurring.

Why not? Ideally we'd have unity of purpose 24/7 in good times and bad. Maybe that's what patriotism is. I wouldn't call them sacrifices. It's more about people understanding that sometimes taking a disciplined approach is to their benefit.

 

[Andy A]

LS, you were, I believe, not alive during WWII. I was and they were sacrifices. We had rationing and war bonds, and many, many others. You're right, everyone pulled together, but all were aware, including us kids, of what the sacrifices were. Even kids worked and worked hard. At the age of 13, I was checking at Safeway stores and that was before the change was printed out for you to give to the customer. No, I am not for going back to the good ol' days but a little of being personally responsible for what happens in one's life and that of your neighbor's would sure be a help. The community awareness so present then would be great as well.