Krugman nails it again
by David Atkins
I had been mulling over a response to Ross Douthat’s much-discussed column, but a bit of googling showed by that Krugman had nailed much of the gist of my response already:
The truth is that while single women and members of minority groups are more insecure at any given point of time than married whites, insecurity is on the rise for everyone, driven by changes in the economy. Our industrial structure is probably less stable than it was — you can’t count on today’s big corporations to survive, let alone retain their dominance, over the course of a working lifetime. And the traditional accoutrements of a good job — a defined-benefit pension plan, a good health-care plan — have been going away across the board.
Every time you read someone extolling the dynamism of the modern economy, the virtues of risk-taking, declaring that everyone has to expect to have multiple jobs in his or her life and that you can never stop learning, etc,, etc., bear in mind that this is a portrait of an economy with no stability, no guarantees that hard work will provide a consistent living, and a constant possibility of being thrown aside simply because you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And nothing people can do in their personal lives or behavior can change this. Your church and your traditional marriage won’t guarantee the value of your 401(k), or make insurance affordable on the individual market.
So here’s the question: isn’t this exactly the kind of economy that should have a strong welfare state? Isn’t it much better to have guaranteed health care and a basic pension from Social Security rather than simply hanker for the corporate safety net that no longer exists? Might one not even argue that a bit of basic economic security would make our dynamic economy work better, by reducing the fear factor?
Now, none of this will bring back traditional mores — but that’s really a different issue. In Sweden, more than half of children are born out of wedlock — but they don’t seem to suffer much as a result, perhaps because the welfare state is so strong. Maybe we’ll go that way too. So?
Yes, the globalized economy and the great risk shift onto the middle classes has made everyone insecure. Of course it has. That’s a direct result of the policies that Douthat embraces.
But I would go even farther.
The entire liberal program is one of intervention against the depredations of oppressive private power hierarchies.
Yes, it’s true that women’s liberation means that a stronger welfare state is needed to protect women physically and economically, prevent them from needing to return to abusive partners, and generally counter the unjust dominance men have exercised for millennia. And this is bad…why?
It’s true that weakening the power of organized religion and its various oppressive norms reduces certain kinds of social support–support that comes at a very high price. And it’s true that taxpayer dollars must fill in where churches once covered some ground at a high social cost. This is also a good thing.
Of course, it’s entirely possible for a centralized state to become too oppressive, to tax too much, and to create too much stability at the expense of certain dynamism and freedoms. That’s the job of sober, reasonable conservatives: to push back against wild-eyed excesses of the left. But we’re nowhere remotely near that point in America. We have an unstable economy, with far too little social mobility, whose rewards have been given almost entirely to those at the very top.
Private power is still much too strong, abusing the weakened many to benefit the fattened few. It needs further curbing.
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