Saturday, November 7, 2015

Mark Thoma — 'Economic Policy Splits Democrats'


Third Way-New Democrat-Establishment-Clintonites versus Progressives uniting behind Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren aka elitism versus populism.

Both the Republican and Democratic Parties are fracturing.
So, should I adopt a message I don't think is true because it sells with independents who have been swayed by Very Serious People, or should I say what I believe and try to convince people they are barking up the wrong tree? (For the most part anyway, I believe both the technological/globalization and institutional/unfairness explanations have validity -- but how do workers capture the gains Third Way wants to create through growth and wealth creation without the bargaining power they have lost over time with the decline in unionization, threats of offshoring, etc.? That's the bigger problem.) It is unfair when, say, economic or political power redirects income away from those who created it to those who did not (I am using the normative equity principle that each person has a right to keep what he or she produces, to reap what they have sowed, and I have little doubt that workers have been paid less than their productivity, and those at the top more. That's unfair, and redirecting income -- redistributing if you will -- to those who actually earned it is not harmful. It is just, and it creates the correct economic incentives). Wealth creation/growth has not been the biggest problem over the last four decades (i.e. since inequality started to increase), it is how the gains have been distributed. I'd rather convince people of the truth that more growth and more wealth creation won't solve the problem if we don't address workers' bargaining power at the same time than gain their support by patronizing their views. In the meantime redistributing income from those who didn't earn it to those who did can serve as a temporary solution until we get the more fundamental underlying problems fixed (e.g. level the playing field on bargaining power between workers and firms).….
The answer is not dealing with the issue because it is "unpopular"(owing to elite propaganda) but through explanation.
Maybe politicians have to tell people what they want to hear, I'll let them figure that out, but I will continue to call it as I see it even if "independents and moderate voters are more anxious than they are angry about these changes." That won't change if we play into those anxieties instead of explaining why new approaches are needed, and explaining how they will benefit from a system that does a better job of rewarding hard work instead of ownership, connections, and power.
It's HRC's election to lose at this point. If she wins (and likely serves two terms), the Democratic Party should be toast by then, if the whole world is not toasted by nuclear war in the meantime.

Economist's View
'Economic Policy Splits Democrats'
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

1 comment:

Ignacio said...

The problem is that the top quintiles of the population is neoliberal. The managerial class, the professional class providing highly specialized services, middle-top services/industry executives, etc. A part of the urban classes etc. This is a class who has the numbers to influence political outcomes that the elites (for whom they usually work for, but actually more times than not don't like) lack (this is why Koch's and Peterson-types have repeatedly failed to influence policy), numbers matter; but also have the connections, networks and economic power to yield the results and outcomes they want. They are the empowering class and the one who sets the rules and dictates the law, we are talking about 20%-30% of the population, whose agenda sometimes aligns and sometimes doesn't with the 1%-0.1%.

Those are the 'establishment' voters, the 'third way', the ones voting for the Bushes and the Clintons, etc. They ARE neoliberalism. All this while the 'outsiders' don't bother to mobilize. Then there is this massive media spinning, where the political landscape is painted as something it is not: the majority of the population is to the furthermost left of what politicians offer them, but the big scare tactics of the political parties and the corporate media muppets moves the voters back to the right even when they don't really think like that.

Until either the former neoliebral class gets screwed, or the underclasses are empowered by education and/or mobilized, the hope for real change is low no matter who is the president.