Maybe the warm weather is affecting my judgement, but I’m finding myself in the odd position of admiring some folks on the left for their honesty.
A few days ago, for instance, I (sort of) applauded Matthew Yglesias for openly admitting that punitive tax rates would put us on the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer Curve.
He still favors such a policy, which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more revenue.
Today, I’m going to indirectly give kudos to another leftist.
Writing for the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel openly argues that the meaning of freedom should be changed. Here’s some of her argument, and we’ll start with her reasonably fair description of how freedom currently is interpreted.
For conservatives, freedom is centered in markets, free from government interference. …Government is the threat; the best thing it can do is to get out of the way. …freedom entails privatization, deregulation, limiting government’s reach and capacity.
Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual”?
Heck, this is why I’m a libertarian. Sure, I like the fact that liberty produces more prosperity, but my main goal it to eliminate needless government coercion.
But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to her column. She complains that folks on the left have acquiesced to this traditional conception of freedom.
Democrats chose to tack to these conservative winds. Bill Clinton’s New Democrats echoed the themes rather than challenge them. “The era of big government is over,” he told Americans, while celebrating “ending welfare as we know it,” deregulation of Wall Street… Obama chose consciously not to challenge the conservative limits on what freedom means.
Then she gets to her main argument. She wants Hillary Clinton to lead an effort to redefine the meaning of freedom.
This is Hillary Clinton’s historic opportunity. …She would do a great service for the country — and for her own political prospects — by offering a far more expansive American view of what freedom requires, and what threatens it. …expanding freedom from want by lifting the floor under workers, insuring every child a healthy start, providing free public education from pre-k to college, rebuilding the United States and putting people to work… Will she favor fair taxes on the rich and corporations to rebuild the United States and put people to work? Will she make the case for vital public investments — in new energy, in infrastructure, in education and training — that have been starved for too long? Will she call for breaking up banks…? Will she favor expanding social security…? …to offer Americans a bolder conception of freedom…and set up the debate that America must decide.
Needless to say, I strongly disagree with such policies. How can “freedom” be based on having entitlements to other people’s money?!?
Heck, it’s almost like slavery since it presupposes that a “right” to live off the labor of others. But that’s not technically true since presumably there wouldn’t be any requirement to work. So what would really happen in such a society is that people would conclude it’s better to ride in the wagon of government dependency, as illustrated by these cartoons.
Which means, sooner or later, a Greek-style collapse because a shrinking population of producers can’t keep pace with an ever-expanding population of moochers and looters.
Nonetheless, I give Ms. vanden Heuvel credit for acknowledging that her preferred policies are contrary to the traditional definition of freedom.
To be sure, I’d admire her even more if she simply admitted that she favors government coercion over freedom. That would be true honesty, but I can understand that folks on the left would prefer to change the meaning of words rather than admit what their agenda really implies.
P.S. Some of you may recognize that the issues discussed above are basically a rehash of the debate between advocates of “negative liberty” and supporters of “positive liberty.” The former is focused on protecting people from the predations of government while the latter is about somehow guaranteeing goodies from the government.
P.P.S. As mentioned in Ms. vanden Heuvel’s column, today’s effort to redefine freedom is similar to the so-called economic bill of rights peddled in the 1940s by FDR.
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Nobody has any right to other people’s money.
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No. Liberals are the people who encourage the existence of the entitlement society. The problem they have is that when people who are successful due to their own merits make more money than they do, they use class envy to make the successful feel guilty. Fair share in the world view of a liberal means the wealthy pay more in taxes. In the world view of a conservative, they think everyone should pay something.
Reblogged this on victoryforhumanity and commented:
Somebody is helping me make the case…..
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[…] Hall of Fame for statists who say make really bizarre arguments. Mr. Bruenig could join Mr. Murphy, Ms. vanden Heuvel, and Mr. Yglesias as charter […]
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[…] I gave Katrina vanden Heuvel credit for openly admitting her desire to redefine “freedom” so that it means a claim on other people’s income and […]
[…] I gave Katrina vanden Heuvel credit for openly admitting her desire to redefine “freedom” so that it means a claim on other people’s income and […]
To add a little more negativity, growth in high growth economies tends to be real production. In “slow growth” economies, growth comes from expansion of government and increased compliance personnel, while real production lags because excessive overhead and taxes harms the ability to compete.
It’s what we may call “electoral socialism”:
A nirvana world where one simply votes his wishes and they magically appear.
These “rights” exist primarily as an obligation of the more competent to supply them to the less competent.
Darwinism will take care of societies that suppress competence.
“Which means, sooner or later, a Greek-style collapse because a shrinking population of producers can’t keep pace with an ever-expanding population moochers and looters”
I couldn’t agree more, and I also cannot help but think of Atlas Shrugged. Thanks for the post.
Policies that flatten the effort-reward curve and thus usher the US into becoming a 1-2% annual growth trendline Euro-like nation are ultimately doomed. Doomed as the other nations that have followed, and will follow such dreams.
Doomed by the fact that a 1-2% trendline growth in a world that is growing by 4% means definitive and rapid decline. Decline that is felt within a voter’s lifetime, not a few generations down the line.
Decline will take everything down with it, including the HopNChange culture of a nation that once dreamed to prosper by flattening the effort-reward curve, with demotivating entitlements for the less productive, financed by even more demotivating taxes on the more productive.
Of course, the fact that this will ultimately self-correct in Darwinian decline, does not mean that there will not be much pain in the process. Many one nations have gone down that path over and again throughout history – but that seems like farfetched news to Americans. As the rest of the world grows much faster than America, Americans and their new Euro-style flatter effort-reward curves will find themselves citizens of a middle income country a few decades down the line.
It used to take a few generations for a country to decline. No more. This is the 21st century and everything human has irreversibly accelerated.
The arithmetic is unequivocal: A structural 2% growth deficit compared to the baseline average world growth (4%-2%) is indeed a staggering decline rate on a historical time scale. Growth deficits compound, pounding down your worldwide prosperity ranking, year after year, towards the middle income nations of this planet.
The voter lemmings that fall for exchanging a redistribution dollar today for five perpetually growing dollars in the future, will get to live in the bed they made. A 2% compounding annual loss of prosperity ranking in the world will be felt within our own lifetimes. Gone are the days of the slower moving world of the past where we could kick the effects of bad choices down a couple of generations.
Just watch Europe. See where Europe will be in a decade… …and then in two decades. Alas, it will be too late for Americans to change course. Attempting to live off the productivity of other people brings slower growth, decline, malaise and desperation. In desperation your only source of immediate salvation is to try to milk other people’s productivity even more. The vicious cycle closes. Actually, it HAS ALREADY closed. In 2008, Americans beleaguered by the effects of advancing statism voted a super-statist into office. For America, the vicious cycle closed in 2008. For Europe it closed in the 1970’s.
But it will not take 40 years for America to decline. Apparently unbeknownst to the delusional one billion people of the world’s advanced democracies, the remaining six billion people of this planet are moving from their once dismal freedom past into middle-freedom, and are growing gangbusters towards their new equilibrium point. They have neither the desire, nor the patience to see how the few privileged spoiled developed Democracy voter-lemmings end their experiment with socialism, statism and coercive collectivism in general. They will take no prisoners.
As one privileged group, the world’s top 5% (the American middle class), fight their new war against the world’s top 1% (the American rich), a rising four billion people of this world will emerge to absorb both groups into the middle income countries.
Darwinism is alive, and the western world voter-lemming is the welfare seeking dinosaur. Bring it on lemmings! Continue on the march…
{sarcasm:} Is she nuts! You can’t invest in infrastructure. Do you know who works those jobs? Men! Men work those jobs. Hardly a woman in sight or on site! It wouldn’t be fair to shovel money into infrastructure jobs that are overwhelmingly held by men!
Difference between Bill Clinton’s governance and Hillary’s potential approach–Bill studied economics and at least knew the fundamental outcomes of policy. He also had a Congress that pressed him in somewhat the right direction.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
The two definitions of freedom are: Freedom from coercion, OR freedom from achievement.
[…] Reposted from International Liberty. […]
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” – Popularized by Karl Marx. Communism is not a new idea.
[…] By Dan Mitchell […]
Freedom does mean being free to use your money as you so choose without government force or theft.