Arkady
President
Quick: when was the last time we had a Republican presidency that ended with lower poverty rates than it started with?
I'm pretty sure that not even the conservatives here would identify either Bush as the answer to that question. Poverty famously increased dramatically during each of their presidencies. But maybe you're tempted to guess Reagan. Nope, didn't happen. Ford? Uh uh. Turns out it was Nixon. Although poverty declined only a fifth as much on his watch as during the same length of time before he took office, it at least did decline.
So, what is the reason for this failure by Republican leadership to make headway against poverty, going back four decades? It's not like its a bipartisan failure -- poverty declined dramatically under Clinton and, despite inheriting the Great Recession, came down a bit under Obama, too. The usual answer would be that the Republican failure is a product of their vision of government, which limits their ability to cope with any problem that doesn't have laissez faire solutions. But what if poverty isn't a negative side effect of ineffectual policy tools, but rather a positive goal of their policies?
That may sound facetious, but it's not meant to be. It's about the "positional good." In some ways, wealth isn't best understood as an absolute thing, but a relative one.
Think of it this way: would you rather live like the owner of a big plantation in 1850, or like a lower-middle-class American today -- setting aside the moral issues of slavery? Well, in a lot of ways, the lower-middle-class person today is better off. He'll very likely live a longer and healthier life, since the kind of medical care that's a bare-minimum standard in the modern world would be unavailable at any price in 1850. He'll be able to dine on foods from all over the world, and to wear clothes manufactured with a robotic precision even greater tailors of earlier eras could meet. He will also have entertainment options that even the richest 19th century person would have trouble affording equivalents of. With a TV and Netflix account, you have the equivalent of having hundreds of theatrical troupes standing by to put on plays of your choosing, and with your mobile phone, you have the equivalent of a 19th century person walking around with a photographer, a team of musicians, a bunch of messengers, stenographers, and clerks, etc. Yet, despite that ABSOLUTE wealth, I think a lot of people would opt to be the plantation owner, moral considerations aside. Relative to the surrounding society, that person was very rich. He was respected and envied, and was be surrounded by dozens or hundreds of people subservient to him. That has emotional value for a lot of people.
The same concept works within modern America. There's a famous quotation, variously attributed, to the effect that "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail." I think there's a real undercurrent of that sentiment in our society that drives conservatism. Paul Krugman refers to it as "Republican Sadism":
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/dollars-cents-republican-sadism.html?rref=collection/column/paul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=opinion
Living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle will not taste as sweet for some people if they feel like others who don't deserve it are living almost as comfortably. If, on the other hand, things like basic medical care, decent education, etc., are not generally assured, then those things become luxury goods, and people who have them can bask in that luxury. So, some people would take the smaller absolute gains in quality of life we see under Republicans, in exchange for the larger RELATIVE gains (relative to "those people," who lose ground.) It's Schadenfreude as prime policy objective.
I'm pretty sure that not even the conservatives here would identify either Bush as the answer to that question. Poverty famously increased dramatically during each of their presidencies. But maybe you're tempted to guess Reagan. Nope, didn't happen. Ford? Uh uh. Turns out it was Nixon. Although poverty declined only a fifth as much on his watch as during the same length of time before he took office, it at least did decline.
So, what is the reason for this failure by Republican leadership to make headway against poverty, going back four decades? It's not like its a bipartisan failure -- poverty declined dramatically under Clinton and, despite inheriting the Great Recession, came down a bit under Obama, too. The usual answer would be that the Republican failure is a product of their vision of government, which limits their ability to cope with any problem that doesn't have laissez faire solutions. But what if poverty isn't a negative side effect of ineffectual policy tools, but rather a positive goal of their policies?
That may sound facetious, but it's not meant to be. It's about the "positional good." In some ways, wealth isn't best understood as an absolute thing, but a relative one.
Think of it this way: would you rather live like the owner of a big plantation in 1850, or like a lower-middle-class American today -- setting aside the moral issues of slavery? Well, in a lot of ways, the lower-middle-class person today is better off. He'll very likely live a longer and healthier life, since the kind of medical care that's a bare-minimum standard in the modern world would be unavailable at any price in 1850. He'll be able to dine on foods from all over the world, and to wear clothes manufactured with a robotic precision even greater tailors of earlier eras could meet. He will also have entertainment options that even the richest 19th century person would have trouble affording equivalents of. With a TV and Netflix account, you have the equivalent of having hundreds of theatrical troupes standing by to put on plays of your choosing, and with your mobile phone, you have the equivalent of a 19th century person walking around with a photographer, a team of musicians, a bunch of messengers, stenographers, and clerks, etc. Yet, despite that ABSOLUTE wealth, I think a lot of people would opt to be the plantation owner, moral considerations aside. Relative to the surrounding society, that person was very rich. He was respected and envied, and was be surrounded by dozens or hundreds of people subservient to him. That has emotional value for a lot of people.
The same concept works within modern America. There's a famous quotation, variously attributed, to the effect that "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail." I think there's a real undercurrent of that sentiment in our society that drives conservatism. Paul Krugman refers to it as "Republican Sadism":
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/dollars-cents-republican-sadism.html?rref=collection/column/paul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=opinion
"Making lower-income Americans worse off has become a goal in itself for the modern G.O.P., a goal the party is actually willing to spend money and increase deficits to achieve."
Living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle will not taste as sweet for some people if they feel like others who don't deserve it are living almost as comfortably. If, on the other hand, things like basic medical care, decent education, etc., are not generally assured, then those things become luxury goods, and people who have them can bask in that luxury. So, some people would take the smaller absolute gains in quality of life we see under Republicans, in exchange for the larger RELATIVE gains (relative to "those people," who lose ground.) It's Schadenfreude as prime policy objective.
Few if any Republicans run those cities