3 simplistic conservative beliefs that are radically slowing American progress [View all]

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3 simplistic conservative beliefs that are radically slowing American progress

by John Enrenreich, AlterNet, Salon

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/15/3_simplistic_conservative_beliefs_that_are_radically_slowing_american_progress_partner/

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Three sets of simplistic conservative belief stand out, accepted by virtually all Republicans and, unfortunately, by many Democrats. First: “We can’t.” The most pressing problem in the United States and the key to most of its problems, say conservatives, is our unbalanced budget and the resultant overwhelmingly large national debt. Raising taxes to deal with it is unthinkable. Higher taxes would burden ordinary taxpayers and businesses, the “job creators,” and would threaten our international competitiveness. The bottom line is that we simply can’t afford to expand government programs (for example, the social safety net).

Second: “The problems are too complex.” The belief that complex social problems can be solved through acts of government is widely considered to be foolish. Many years ago, when I was in college, Henry Kissinger, then a professor, would occasionally have lunch with the members of our campus anti–nuclear weapons group. Scoffing at what he saw as the naïveté of our proposals to advance world peace through a nuclear test ban treaty, he would proclaim in his deep German accent, “These things are more complicated than they seem.” (We callow youths, out of his presence, would mock him, proclaiming in fake German accents, “These things seem more complicated than they are.”)

Third: “We don’t want to.” To conservatives, freedom is inherently a characteristic of individuals and “big government” is the enemy of freedom and prosperity. Societal constraints on individual freedom put us on the slippery slope to tyranny. It is not government but the “free market” that solves social problems, and the only legitimate goals of public policy are to promote “growth” and serve the needs of businesses (the “job creators,” the “drivers of the economic engine”).

Let us examine each of these contentions. First, “we can’t” and the problem of the debt: Budgetary constraints seem to make it impossible even to consider introducing new and expensive government programs. Many liberal economists have argued that the supposed threat to our economy posed by the national debt has been greatly exaggerated. In any case, the budget surpluses of the later Clinton years were turned into massive deficit neither by something inherent in our system of government nor by the alleged tendency of liberals to throw money at social problems. The causes of the deficit were simple. Government income was deliberately reduced by the Bush-era tax cuts favoring the wealthy and then reduced further, involuntarily, by the recessions of 2001 and 2008. Meanwhile government spending increased, largely due to the soaring costs of the Bush war of aggression in Iraq. Nothing inevitable. All reversible.


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