John Quiggin, Aussie economist on his blog:
It’s a movie we’ve seen over and over again in US politics. Centrists engage in respectful discussion with a thoughtful conservative[1], only to discover they are actually talking to a dishonest troll. Yet, just like Charlie Brown lining up to kick Lucy’s football, they keep coming back for another try...
...Why do centrists keep falling for this? The answer, to paraphrase Voltaire is that, since no-one like the imagined intelligent, honest conservative exists, they have to be invented. In reality, intelligent honest conservatives, are either ex-Republicans (for example, David French and the Bulwark group) or open enemies of democracy (Adrian Vermeule).
But once they recognise that there is no serious thought to their political right, centrists would have to recognise that they themselves are the conservatives. That would entail an intellectual obligation to engage with the left, which is the last thing they want....
The typical discourse about the left is centred around identity politics. Cultural appropriation and trigger warnings, political correctness and the trans agenda etc etc. But being on the left you typically meet people with political agendas that only tangentially interact with this stuff if at all. Left wing economists, political theorists, activists, organisers and mobilisers are concerned with solving problems that dominate our lives. Like our rights at work, exploding wealth inequality and the concentration of political power, the failure of liberal democratic process and institutions to address our needs, fixing the housing market, getting money out of politics, stopping capital from destroying the biosphere, providing care to those who need it, addressing hunger and generational poverty, creating functional communities.
How can the right (and centre) move past treating twitter threads as political reality and seriously engage with the left?
Is it the case that the right (and centre) are bound by the need to ignore solutions (and even the existence of problems) that would necessitate a more even distribution of wealth, incomes, power and political access?
Liberalism is innovative, but it often lacks long term data and pilot testing for its ideas. Conservative is about conserving the past, which has lots of hard data, dating back hundreds of years. For example, the Conservative prefer we maintain the Constitution, as was, while Liberals will try to game around it, but without having much in the way of test proven data, that the new game will make things better.
Liberalism is more emotion based, which is why identity politics, is so important to them. It is about feeling and empathy for others, while lacking logical common sense how to do this and not create different set of victims; affirmative action. This solution was still a form of sexism and racism for new victims.
For example, the Left can feel the plight of the immigrants, but they lack the common sense to see the complications an open border, with open arms, will create. If it feels good to help others, it must be right. The Right is more about the time tested common sense logic, that immigration needs to be done in a controlled way, so we do not exceed our ability to provide, thereby causing hardship for our own citizens. That was how it was done for hundreds of years, and it worked fine and created a balance for all. Big hearts and small brain creates unintended consequences, since this was not thought through, or pilot tested first, to get all the bugs out. It was deployed inly with good intensions. Now we have an immigration crisis due to the short terms plans of emotional thinkers who can virtue signal for all to see.
What I would like to see is the Right and Left be able to separate the national income tax revenue, so each side can invest in their own ideas, and pay their own tab, if ideas goes south. The Right now has to share the cost of bad liberal policy, like the border crisis. Texas does not want it, but has to accept and suffer front this bad idea by Biden law.
For example, since uncontrolled immigration is a Lefty brain child, Righty Governors, in my revenue model, can send the bill to the Lefty Governors, whose party endorsed this brain fart. The Left can pay the whole tab. It was not until NY had the immigration problem, at their doors step, did they gain some common sense. Before that, they were able to virtue signal to show how much they care; so warm and fuzzy. Now the warm and fuzzy feeling, does not pay the mounting bills. This shows there is a way to wake up, Lefty, from their confusion, so they can smell the coffee. Even Biden is waking up, due to logic from the Left in NYC. They will not listen to same logic of the Right.
In my model, the Right would apply its conservative values to its revenue stream, and would have a surplus, maybe for a tax cut. That surplus now goes into mopping up the messes, caused by the Lefty brain trust. This supplemental income for Lefty bad ideas, makes it harder for the Left to learn about the harm they do. Let Texas pay. But if they get to pay the whole tab, common sense will come sooner; NYC is in trouble.
The Constitution says
provide for the common defense and
promote the general welfare. Provide means to give resources which takes money and taxes. Promote should be much less resource intensive than provide. Promote can be done with education, volunteers and cheerleaders. Lefty Big government has tried to change that line in the Constitution, to "provide for the common defense and provide for the general welfare." This is why we have such a huge national debt that the Founding Fathers did not endorse with the word; promote.
The Right would prefer teach or promote self reliance; family and God, to be consistent with the goals of the Constitution. Self reliant people provide taxes, and not just live off them. But Lefty short term thinking, without pilot tests, has led to crippling and compounding debt. If the Left had to pay for all its debt laden bad ideas, and the Right was exempt, I could sit back and watch the Lefty, go lower and lower, to the fourth world, after it pays tab after tab, for all the warn and fuzzy ideas of its bonehead leaders.
Would anyone on the Left go along with splitting the Federal tax revenue, by party affiliation? Could each party pay for it own ideas? Would each party do things differently if they had to foot the whole bill.
The main reason it is hard for left and right to talk is due to borrowing money from the future to fund bad Lefty ideas. The push to allow anyone to go to college sounded and felt good, but but demand inflated prices and left millions of young people in debt. Now the Lefty solution is victimize the tax payer with more future debt to cover their bad idea . How about we tax the Left to pay off all students loan debt, that they help to create by one of their expensive bad ideas, that flopped. Thus way they will be on the path to healing their common sense.
