Evidence-based governance versus faith-based economics
by David Atkins
Proponents of austerity, however, were lying about their motives. Strong words, but if you look at their recent reactions it becomes clear that all the claims about expansionary austerity, 90 percent cliffs and all that were just excuses for an agenda of dismantling the welfare state. That in turn helps explain why the intellectual collapse of their supposed arguments has made no difference to their policy position.
One interesting point, which Wren-Lewis gets at and I’ve mentioned on other occasions, is that the austerity side of this debate isn’t just disingenuous; it doesn’t seem to comprehend the notion that other people might actually argue in good faith. No time to do the link right now, but back when we were discussing stimulus many people on the right, economists like Lucas included, simply assumed that people like Christy Romer were making stuff up to serve a political agenda. And now I think we can see why they made this assumption — after all, that’s how they work.
This is the problem when only one side is interested in actual governance. “Serious” people cringe when this sort of rhetoric gets thrown around, but it’s less useful to consider conservative economics as a political principle than a religious one. The biggest problem with faith-based arguments is that there’s no way to disprove them: believers will continue to believe no matter what logic is marshaled because their beliefs aren’t based in evidence.
To both its credit and detriment, the Left saw the failures of Communism and determined to be above all pragmatic and pratical: where capitalism and free markets can achieve the best outcomes for the greatest number, let them flourish unfettered. Where unbound capitalism creates grossly unjust inequalities, crashes into resource shortages or fails to provide the best outcomes, government of the people must step in. The entire argument between progressives and neoliberals is about where those areas are, and their extent–financial markets, energy and healthcare being prime examples of each, respectively. But the internal battles of the left are reality-based regardless of which side one is on.
The Right never had such a reckoning. Between the 1930s and 1960s the Right bided its time in fear of competition with other economic systems, but never came to grips with the failures of its own ideology. It remains mired in the theological doctrine of the gods of the market. Free market principles cannot fail; they can only be failed.
If the free market is clearly ill-equipped to deal with providing healthcare at a national level, it still must be the fault of something else. A scapegoat must be found, even if it’s as silly as tort lawyers, because the economic principle cannot fail. At a pragmatic level, a rightist insisting that the free market provide healthcare is as silly as a leftist insisting that the government nationalize the hairbrush market. A pragmatist knows that different methods work better in different circumstances. As it turns out, progressives tend to be a fairly pragmatic bunch.
But for the Right, arguments are never based on the empirical evidence, but amassed to justify what they already “know” to be true in their hearts. It’s hard to run a country divided between pragmatics and zealots but there we are.
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