I’ve mentioned a few times that I appreciate the writing of Jim Manzi on the question of climate change. He does a good job of cutting through to the fog to find what seems to me to be the most reasonable position on AGW.
So it doesn’t surprise me that Manzi has an interesting piece in the fantastic new journal National Affairs on the tension between policies promoting growth and those promoting social cohesion. You should read it all but one of the propositions is that, while liberals assume the material wealth that they seek to distribute without an adequate regard for the way in which redistributive policies will impede its production, conservatives assume the cohesion – I would prefer the word “social capital” – that the operation of markets and individualism promoted by capitalism can tend to undercut.
The conservative ascendancy was, in large part, as result of Democratic policies that either ignored the creation of wealth or believed that it was no longer possible. If conservatives are to avoid a liberal ascendancy, we need to think about cohesion and the importance that the benefits of growth – while they need not and probably cannot – be equally distributed, ought to be widely shared.
One of the things that brings to mind – and Manzi addresses it rather indirectly – is the extent to which the dichotomy between economic and social issues is a false one. One of the persistent causes of poverty is the deterioration of social capital in poor communities. There is a reason for many of the “judgmental” moral standards that have traditionally characterized American society.
The problem, it seems to me, is that we have lost our ability to discuss these things. The overriding memes of our generation – tolerance, equality and individualism – make it almost impossible to talk about anything but materialistic and reductionist responses to social problems.
Cross posted at Shark and Shepherd.
I recall my undergrad public policy professor (Dr. John McAdams, no less) treating the relationship between economic efficiency and equality as represented by a production possibilities frontier, where it is impossible to have total efficiency and total equality simultaneously. Instead, furthering greater efficiency leads a reduction of equality and vice-versa: a trade-off. The aim, from a policy standpoint, should thus be attaining the most equality and efficiency possible in light of the existence of that trade-off.
Economic models aside, as a political matter, treating the balance of growth and social capital does not necessarily avoid a “liberal ascendancy” as you put it. Both liberals and conservatives more or less engage in this balancing, and thus the thought on and incorporation of both ends into policy will not alone distinguish the two ideologies.
A distinction does lie, however, in ideological labels. As Manzi points out, conservatives are largely pinned pro-growth and liberals pro-equality. Obviously, reality has a way of rebutting such generalizations. Conservatives since Reagan have justified their platforms and policies with some “social” justifications. For example, the proponents of the major tax cuts of the last couple decades supported them by advancing the trickle-down theory. Furthermore, a conservative could also argue that poverty and unemployment and the like can be addressed through other forms of government incentives without the free-riding, complacency, and other inefficient consequences that Manzi alluded to that plagued the AFDC and other similar transfer payment programs. The income tax credit is one such success. However, the pro-growth (read “big business”) perception is what it is, and that label has been affirmatively fixed on economic conservatives. As such, the “social” justifications for conservative economic policies might still be brushed aside by others as pretextual.
Avoiding the onset of greater political clout among liberals and the passage of more and bigger liberal policies, then, depends in part on conservatives shedding that label. This is especially true after the excesses that led to the current recession, however much conservative policies actually contributed to the problem (which isn’t to say that conservatives are entirely without fault).
I do not claim to have the silver bullet for this issue, but addressing these labels could provide a start.
The greatest impediments to discussing these topics are the labels and their matching ideologies. “Liberal” and “conservative” labels add no value to the conversation, they lend themselves only to distractions about what one group or the other “want” and foster fears of ideological “ascendancy” of the “other”. I realize I am tilting at windmills here, that public discourse is captivated by partisanship, but it is precisely that focus on partisan “victory” that distracts us from finding workable solutions.