We are seeing the storm clouds of the American welfare state.
Two Princeton economists recently shocked many of us by revealing the devastating welfare situation in the United States . Although death rates have been systematically declining in the advanced countries as well-being and longevity increased in many past decades, the white middle class in America has recently seen this sign of national well-being reversed. And nothing in the economic policy of President Obama’s “transformative” (changing to socialism) years countered the trend of declining well-being for American non-Hispanic whites over the age of 25. Black non-Hispanics and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 25 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall, but not America’s white population with high school education or less.
A homeless man in San Francisco
The numbers of the middle-aged in unemployment greatly increased. Part-time employment increased because Obama Care mandated that employers must provide full-time employees with health care insurance, so they immediately began to hire only part-time workers. How often have lawmakers been unable to avoid devastating unforeseen consequences! The millions on food stamps and the millions in poverty increased under Mr. Obama’s policies, and millions took advantage of more lax requirements for recipients of disability insurance.
In
the meantime, the tacit social attack on marriage resulted in less stable
families as “partnerships” replaced many marriages, children born out of
wedlock, less stable families, as well as the growing opioid epidemic and increasing
alcoholism. Incomes for these groups have not increased for decades as
manufacturing has declined and jobs have been outsourced. There were
marked increases in ‘deaths of despair’— “increasing death rates from drug and
alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although
all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings,
and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education
saw the most marked increases.” (See the Abstract, Anne Case and Angus Deaton,
“Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans
in the 21st century,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, vol. 112 no. 49.) Individuals in this
population reported declines in their health, mental health, and in their
ability to conduct normal daily activities. They had increases in chronic pain
and a resultant decline in their ability to work, obviously affecting their
desire to remain involved in the labor force.
Unemployment, poverty, depression . . .
I addressed some of these issues in chapter 18 of my book, Socialism, entitled “Socialism and the Welfare State”. In a number of city centers there are far too many one-parent families where teen-age sons drop out of school, find no employment, join gangs and become involved in drugs. As I pointed out there, minimum wage laws condemn young people to unemployment, especially those looking for their first employment experience. This is because small businesses find it unprofitable to add to the employment rolls when new workers add less to business revenues than to costs.
In
sum, welfare programs that don’t lead minorities to better educational
solutions produce only counterproductive outcomes. Poverty, ill health, drug
addiction and peddling, gang activity and violence should not be the dead-end
destiny of any youth, let alone the number of people affected in some of our
city centers. The Welfare State has largely failed in the United States.
Socialists will say it is because too few resources go into it. They will
repeat that until the financial failure of the nation state, but they will not
solve the problem of poverty with traditional welfare policies.
In later versions of the replacement healthcare plan of the Senate GOP Caucus, billions of dollars’ worth of assistance were to be allocated to states struggling with the opioid crisis. An earlier blog I wrote discussed the origins and scope of this catastrophic problem. We all ache for those who are caught in the grip of horrible addiction and they certainly deserve help.
Who is it that should bear the billions of dollars the planned assistance will cost? Of course it will actually be borne by us, the taxpayers, and future generations of Americans currently being mercilessly burdened by the federal budget’s profligacy and the ever-growing national debt. You, your children and your grandchildren are receiving this burden from our generous congress.
Who will pay? Those who produce, prescribe, or consume? Probably not…probably taxpayers.
But what about the rich pharmaceutical industry and the rich physicians who are actually responsible for the problem? My previous blog placed some rather direct blame on the individuals from these groups of wealthy and culpable parties who originally argued in medical journals that opioids don’t cause addictions, who cavalierly wrote the prescriptions, and who sold the opioids to victims of pain. Has anyone considered a tax on them? They have not received even mild public censure for bringing this plague upon our fellow citizens.
Part of the problem, of course, arises from the failure of the U.S. Congress to secure our borders. Billions of dollars worth of opioids and “entertainment drugs” are brought in through our borders. People die by the many hundreds of thousands and socialists say there is no crisis on our border. I heard on a leftist radio station the question asked what exactly would constitute a national crisis, to which the announcer answered without hesitation that a good example was the crisis of polluted water in Flint, Michigan! How many people died in Flint? More than die from the opioid crisis?
No question! They need help!
On July 24th, a column by Gerard Baker, Editor of the Wall Street Journal, observed that states are likely very soon to begin suing pharmaceutical companies for helping spark the opioid addiction crisis. They are alleged to have misrepresented the benefits and risks of opioid painkillers. A leading attorney in the cigarette litigation of a few years back, Mike Moore, has encouraged Mississippi and Ohio to sue drugmakers and is assisting in the preparation of lawsuits.
Hopefully, the passage of any healthcare legislation will not occur before the GOP senators recognize that the addicted victims needing assistance need not be aided at the expense of the taxpayers. The senate’s instincts in this regard seem quite in line with socialist sentiment. Anyone in financial need should, according to the socialist view, receive financial help from the taxpayer. And the greater the number of financial transfers that can be conceived of the better. As for adding the caveat “as much as we can afford,” there is no consideration at all, since socialists have no notion of a budget constraint. During one’s term as mayor, legislator, or elected official one can give away money as freely as one wishes, since the politician reasons “the financial disaster will come after my term is up and I am no longer in office.”
As I write this, the opioid crisis continues in unprecedented severity with deaths from overdose increasing each year, Our nation is currently locked in disagreement about national values. Many wish to establish security on our southern border. But the democrats currently ignore the hundreds of thousands of drug-related deaths and untold agony among the citizenry stemming from the massive inflow of illegal drugs through the porous southern border. President Trump seeks a barrier on the border because the security project of previous administrations did not get completed, democrats have called the wall President Trump insists on “immoral.” They have not labeled the portion of the wall constructed by President Clinton immoral, nor have they sought to have it removed. Only the national buffoon and computer hacker, Robert Francis O’Rourke, would like to see the wall removed.
In the 1970s and 1980s the Swedish economy resembled socialism — big government, state-owned firms, high taxes and heavy spending. [1] Ultimately, however, crisis conditions arrived with inflation reaching 10% and at one point interest rates reached about 500 percent. That was enough for the Swedish population. Public spending was cut, the national rail network was privatized and other government monopolies were broken up and state-owned businesses were sold off. Inheritance taxes were eliminated, and a school voucher system was adopted. The large welfare state remained, so the necessity of high taxation did not go away, but thereafter the Swedes emphasized their free markets and the prevalence of strong competition and free trade. “Sweden is actually more free market.”
Gamla Stan, Sweden
Why Does the System Work as Well as It Does?
Sweden, like other Scandinavia countries has enjoyed a high degree of social cohesion. Although things may be changing gradually under fairly heavy immigration, especially in Sweden, these countries are inhabited by hard-working, responsible people with high levels of “social trust.”[2] Scandinavia enjoyed high life expectancy and other positive health indicators and rather egalitarian societies even before it expanded its welfare states.
Sweden dropped socialism and now calls its system “Swedish capitalism.”
These countries compensate for their high taxes and the rigidities in their labor markets by following market-oriented policies in other areas. They value a high degree of business freedom and openness to trade. Denmark ranks 11th in the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, which is one place higher than that occupied by the United States. The American economy is still thought of as a strong, market-oriented economy, although we, too, sustain high expenditures for welfare state programs. And, of course, one major political party in the United States advocates open borders and hopes all the citizens of countries to the south will come to join American citizens, enjoy voting rights and receive welfare benefits. At the same time, there are quite a few Americans who still believe in the existence of budget constraints.
Swedes are hard-working and industrious. The trains run on time.
Economic and Social Implications of Recent Immigration Trends
The Swedish population of only 10 million has been asked by political leadership under pressure from forces in the EU to absorb a large number of immigrants from the Middle East in the last couple years. Currently, 1.6 million residents of the country were born elsewhere. Even many favoring the admission of generous numbers of immigrants now believe that increased pressure on the schools and on Swedish society in general suggest a pause in the acceptance of additional immigrants. Many still believe that if the latest influx can be taught Swedish, they can benefit the labor market and the economy. But politics have been affected by the growing numbers of non-Swedes. The Democrat Party, Swedish Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) is a social conservative and right-wing populist political party which is likely to have an impact in elections in the near future.
There is some fear currently of losing social welfare benefits, but no evidence to this point of such losses. Housing has become a serious problem with the strong increase of demand for the current housing stock. Some young people are forced to continue living with parents at home, but unlike millennials in the United States, their problem is not so much a financial one as a housing supply problem.
Housing is good, but with many recent immigrants is in short supply
There have been some serious difficulties in integrating immigrants into the work force and the society. Gang-related crime is on the rise and fast-growing groups of outsiders threaten to break down societal cohesion and well-being.
The Democratic Socialists in the United States are advocating the adoption of a socialistic system like that prevalent in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. With that objective, they insist that we wouldn’t have to worry about having a socialist country like the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela. Scandinavian economies, they point out, are high-income, growth economies with a high degree of economic equality. We should follow that model and we can achieve positive outcomes while enjoying free education, health care, child care, vacations, guaranteed pensions, and a universal income (paid by the state to every human who escapes abortion for the duration of life independent of whether one is employed or not).
It would be wonderful to live in such a state, it is assumed, since one could spend one’s entire life playing video games and snorting cocaine. But before joining the Democratic Socialists or moving to Sweden, one should learn a little bit more about Sweden, Scandinavia, and the nature of their economies. One might be surprised, for example, that Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are characterized by the Swedes and Scandinavians as “capitalist,” market countries.
Stockholm, home of a capitalist, market economy! But yes, it is a welfare state.
And these countries are economically successful precisely because a preponderance of their citizens are not interested in dedicating their lives to their devices and their drugs. In 2016, in the whole of the country there were 590 drug-induced deaths, which was down from previous years. The mean age of the majority of victims was less than 34 years, and opioids were involved in the vast majority of those deaths. On a per capita basis those deaths are substantially fewer than the 72,000 deaths (2017) from opioids in the United States.
Old Town in Stockholm, producer of tourist revenues.
To obtain a reasonably thorough overview of the Swedish economy, however, let us consider now the origins and decline of socialism in Sweden, then we will consider the nature of Swedish and Scandinavian capitalism in the present.
The Scandinavian Economic Model
The Scandinavian or Nordic economic model, according to the Swedish evaluation, is one of capitalism, not socialism. The economic policies that are characteristic of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Sweden can be referred to as Nordic capitalism. True, these countries share commonality through their status as welfare states. It is also true that collective bargaining is carried out at the national level with a high percentage of the workforce unionized, but the economic foundation is still free market capitalism. See footnote [1] below.
Sweden is older than capitalism. Having tried socialism, Sweden has become a welfare state, but remains a capitalist country.
The Nordic model is one of free market capitalism based on a high degree of private ownership. Norway is an exception to this in that Norway includes many state-owned enterprises and there is substantive state ownership among the stockholders in publicly listed firms. But the Nordic states support a “universalist” welfare state system designed to achieve individual autonomy and stimulate social mobility for their citizens. In these countries representatives of labor meet with employers to negotiate wages and labor market policies, a process which is mediated by the government. There is a general commitment to private ownership, a mixed economy, and free trade.
Sweden has a few high-profile international corporations, e.g., Volvo automobiles.
These national economies are small and sustain public spending at around half of the Gross Domestic Product. One reason for this is that there are large numbers of public employees in the fields of education, healthcare, and government service. The private economies are limited in scope with the benefit of producing raw materials in demand internationally. A large share of welfare benefits include transfers such as unemployment benefits (at around 70-90% of the wage, as compared to 60% in Germany).
How Did This Come to Be? The Advent and Decline of Swedish Socialism
The early socialists in Sweden were also Marxists, but unlike those in the Communist Party, they hoped for a ballot-box victory to ascend to national power rather than to sweep out the bourgeois political opposition with a revolution. As they were becoming influential enough to gain electoral power, the socialist party, the Social Democrats (SAP), willingly entered into alliances with other, non-proletarian parties. In forming blocs with other middle-class parties they gave concessions that were not in the interest of its working class base.[2] They compromised away many of the foundation principles of Marxism so that no thorough-going socialist system was ever implemented. Elements, of course, remained, but these were also eliminated later as shown below.
Royal Palace in Stockholm
Of course the Swedish social democrats never officially abandoned their original Marxism (i.e., the theory of the exploitation of labor and the demand for state ownership and control of all of the means of production), they failed to present any plans for institutional reform: the state machinery was to continue unchanged under the monarchy and there were to be no nationalizations. It was at this time that the SAP established its ‘corporative’ structure for negotiations between employers, trade unions and government on social and labour market policies.[3]
In 1932, during the Great Depression, the Swedish SAP organized the first socialist government in Sweden, having achieved a majority in parliament. It accomplished this after eliminating from its 1932 electoral platform all references to socialism and to socialization of the means of production. A social consensus was achieved in which the unions accepted the rights of management to manage and the government recognized the right of the unions to represent the workers.
Sweden has the third-highest employment rate (76.2%) among all countries in the world. The top 10 countries by employment rate are: Iceland, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, United Kingdom, China, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Norway. So three of the top ten employment rates are in Scandinavia. The sun has not set on employment in welfare state Sweden.
Thus, Socialism in Sweden failed to survive, although “socialists” did. But Sweden considers and calls itself unabashedly a capitalist economy and a welfare state, based on its considerable income redistribution.[4] A very important difference between the American and Swedish welfare state systems is that in Sweden, high taxes are not considered the responsibility of the very rich, top 1% or so of income earners. In the United States vast numbers of citizens of lower income pay no taxes at all. In Sweden, high taxes are the responsibility of everyone. Even lower income families can afford tax on their small incomes, since they receive government subsidies in many areas to cover their needs.
As a PhD who spent over 40 years in
the academy, I would be the last to deny the great and enduring benefits to
society of man’s successful application of the scientific method. What mankind
has achieved through science and technology has been truly awesome. There is,
of course, still much to learn and anyone who knows anything about science is
aware that our scientific efforts are hardly perfect. Our knowledge,
growing admirably, is still limited. Our methods of gaining and applying
knowledge still need time to grow.
The Hubble Space Telescope
Interestingly, some are ambiguous
about the potentialities of science. Many of us are fond of the scientific
method without being willing to see it as more than a very human technique for
seeking knowledge and understanding. We see nothing magic about it. Others, who
have adopted science as their personal religion, nevertheless seem willing to
doubt the power of science when doubt is convenient. For example, at this writing the country is
locked in a struggle about the usefulness of a barrier on the southern border
of the U.S. While the political left
makes science its religion, it still insists that all the forces that science
can muster do not render science capable of building a wall that, combined with
available technologies, will make the border more secure.
The Future of the Minimum Wage
Returning, however, to the above
observation of the role of science, it has been noted that over the past
century and more, many in society have bartered their trust in religion for an
academic hope in science. In doing so, they may have lost for themselves
and for mankind more than they have gained. I wish to address this issue and examine
its relation to socialism. To do so, I shall review four cases in which science
failed us miserably. I want to address some of the implications of the Club of
Rome’s Limits to Growth, the science
of climatology’s early annunciation of an ice age, some of the facets of global
warming or “climate change,” and the very current opioid crisis.
The Impact of Politics on Science
Case I: Limits to Growth.
The Club of Rome was founded in 1968
to address problems of our planet’s resources and their use. In 1970 a team of
researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology undertook an analysis
of the implications of continued worldwide economic growth. They examined the
basic factors determining and limiting growth on our planet: growing
population, agricultural production, depletion of nonrenewable resources,
industrial output and pollution. They concluded that numerous of our vitally
necessary raw materials were about to disappear. Extrapolating from the known quantities
and deposits of vital resources and the rates at which they were disappearing,
they were able to calculate with their computer models that on some given date,
say 1985, we would pull our last pound of copper from the ground. I was
impressed when reading these findings approaching fifty years ago, so I don’t
remember the exact dates of the disappearance of critical resources, but the
format was as shown with copper. And on July 17, as a second example, at 2:36
pm in 1988 we would pull our last aluminum out of some mine. The disappearance
of petroleum would follow on the heels of other precious resources at a very
specific time that has now long since passed, of course.
Cover of the Limits to Growth
Can you guess that as time passed
their dire predictions did not prove accurate? Since they consulted with
no economists, apparently, they could not deal with some imponderable, awesome
complexities such as the following: As the use of gasoline begins to deplete
the total quantity of crude oil available, the price of gas rises. As the price
rises, suppliers are motivated to search the world for new sources of supply
and develop new technologies to get oil harvested and marketed. Buyers look for
substitute products when the price of an important one begins to rise. In this
case, they would look for alternative sources of energy and they would
carefully conserve energy by trying to get more mileage out of each gallon of
gasoline. We see from the failure of the MIT scientists even to come close to
the reality of resource depletion in this example that scientists, who are also
just people, don’t always successfully manage an analysis of problems through
time. This is especially true when extant market forces drive production, sales
and consumption of scarce products and the physical and computational scientists
involved know little if anything, apparently, about the economics pertaining to
this issue.
Case II: Predicting an Ice Age
In an article by Betty Friedan, “The
Coming Ice Age,” Harper’s Magazine announced in its September, 1958
issue that the onset of a new ice age had been predicted by climate scientists.
Geophysicist Maurice Ewing, Director of Columbia University’s Lamont Geological
Observatory, and geologist-meteorologist William Donn claimed to have found why
the giant glaciers had advanced and retreated over the earth in the last
million years. It was their conclusion that the world was heading into another
Ice Age as part of a process that had already begun.
Contemporary climatologists assure
us that this is now well understood as a forgivable mistake. The science of
climatology was young then and more work needed to be done. But here were two
leading scientists of the time making claims that were published widely for a
short period of time.
Part
II: Science Politicized
As mentioned above, the past century
or so has seen many barter their trust in religion for an academic hope
in science. Many have shown a proclivity to reject religion out of hand
and seek for humanity’s redemption from ignorance and incapacity in the realm
of science. I wish to relate the issue of secularism to socialism. To do so, I have
reviewed two cases in which science failed us miserably. I addressed above some
of the implications of the Club of Rome’s Limits
to Growth and the science of climatology’s early annunciation of an ice age.
In this part I want first to discuss some of the facets of global warming or
“climate change,” then I shall turn to the very current opioid crisis.
Case III: Global Warming
We are informed that the debate over
global warming is over. Scientists now agree uniformly, it is alleged, that
man’s carbon footprint has irrevocably changed our climate and will play an
ever-more-debilitating role in the future. Since I am not a physical scientist
I am not in a position to evaluate the science underlying these predictions or
forecasts. As an economist, however, I am convinced that regardless of the rate
of warming, previous policies in the United States have been shortsighted. Specific
economic policy measures undertaken in response to an actual crisis of global
warming would need to be subjected to formal and more realistic benefit/cost
analyses. If global warming is in fact occurring, the U.S. will have a far less
negative impact on it than will China and India. If those countries were to continue
to industrialize with the same environmental serenity that the U.S. did when we
were at their stage of industrial development, there is nothing we could do to
avert some of the disasters that have been predicted. Nevertheless, such a
scenario would call for a policy of accommodation rather than panic.
What I wish to address here,
however, is how to develop a skeptical view of the science that drives the
panic in our country. As I indicated at the outset, science is wonderful, and
science is great. But science is a crowd of people that are still
learning and changing long-held perspectives and beliefs as they do. The
objectivity science is supposed to display suggests the necessity of finding
reasons to revise our perspectives as research discovers new facts and
principles. But some perspectives and scientific beliefs bring classes of
people windfall gains that they do not wish to relinquish to changing views. In
current science, we have thousands of professors at universities who gain their
living and their reputations by their published findings. Many of these are
full of integrity; others would sell their mother’s soul to increase the
likelihood of future income and prestige. They are perfectly willing to do what
they feel they must do to gain tenure and promotion, income, and prestige. That
includes getting grants to do research. They insist in their research
applications that they are going to bring new light to the current dogma, which
gradually takes on all the glitter rendered by the politically correct
interpretation of current scientific dogma. They learn quickly that “climate
change deniers” generally do not receive grants.
Notification of Cold, Dispassionate Science
Some university scientists promote
global warming just as liberal political indoctrination is promoted by their
non-scientific colleagues. There are some scientists with excellent reputations
who have been attacked by their more orthodox colleagues because they were not
in line with the official doctrine. One of the two smartest individuals I have
ever known personally in a long academy career is a nuclear physicist. His
research has been on physics rather than climate science, but he has taken time
to review the literature and the mathematical models underlying the conclusions
of global warming science. Those models, he insists, are simply flawed and he
doesn’t buy their conclusions at all. We have seen from the history of the Club
of Rome as well as from the viewpoint of climate scientists back in the 1970s
that scientists can be dead wrong, especially those who have been dead for a
while.
Part
III: A Medical Science Tragedy
Case IV: The Current Opioid Crisis
The opioid crisis (or epidemic)
refers to the rapid increase in the use of prescription and
non-prescription opioids in
the United States. Overdose deaths, especially from prescription drugs and
heroin, have reached epidemic levels. In 2015 of the total of 52,000
American deaths from all drug overdoses, two
thirds (33,000) were from opioids. In 2017 there were more than 72,000 deaths
from opioids. Those deaths exceeded the total number of deaths in the Vietnam,
Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined. The
New Yorker writes that by 2010 the U.S., with around five per cent of the
world’s population, consumed 99 per cent of the world’s hydrocodone (the
narcotic in Vicodin), eighty per cent of the oxycodone (in Percocet and
OxyContin), and sixty-five per cent of the hydromorphone (in Dilaudid).
The Opioid Crisis
How did doctors, who pledge to do
their patients no harm, let the use of prescription narcotics get so out of
hand? Traditionally, American doctors have
prescribed narcotics almost exclusively for short-term pain (to recover from
surgery, or for cancer victims soon to become terminal). But some time
ago medical journals published two short accounts that helped promote an
expanded role for prescription narcotics. The first of these, a 1980
report in the New England Journal of Medicine, claimed that less than one per cent
of patients at Boston University Medical Center who received narcotics in
hospitals became addicted. The second, a 1986 study in the journal Pain
found that for non-cancer pain, narcotics can be prescribed “with relatively
little risk of . . . opioid abuse.” The authors advised caution, and called for
longer-term studies of patients on narcotics. In a follow-up report, the New
Yorker pointedly observed that they hadn’t found any such studies.
“Relatively little risk of opioid abuse”
The main manufacturers of narcotics
–Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and Endo Pharmaceuticals thereafter
aggressively marketed their products through ads in highly regarded
publications, and through medical continuing-education courses. Once doctors
knew that other doctors were supplying opioids to about anyone requesting help
for pain, the use of these prescription drugs skyrocketed. Today, thousands are
dying from overdose every month. It is now more dangerous to ask a doctor for pain
relief than to travel on our highways.
Part
IV: Socialism and Science Today
Without trying to take time to build
a logical case for the beneficial contributions of religion in a world
captivated with the potential of science, permit me to close with just a few
thoughts about religion and its past role in the modern world. The enemies of
religion will not be particularly receptive, but one would hope reason would
suggest that an adversarial position against religious thought really isn’t appropriate.
Back around the First World War, the
western world and its culture, especially in large urban centers, began quite
rapidly to reject the Christian religion and to promote a purely secular
society. Karl Marx and his socialist followers had already rejected belief in
God and their atheism was seen as “scientific,” just as Marx’s socialism was
deemed to be “scientific socialism.” Academic and urban types were anxious to
replace religion with science.
Marx Statue in East Berlin
On the farms and in many families
back in those days, Bible reading was a daily practice of believers. Many
believed the Bible can open people’s eyes to the natural and spiritual
realities of our lives and some of us still do. When one does not open one’s
eyes to the many miraculous things around us, one can begin to see life as a
sequence of random happenings that can’t be explained well. The presence of
“scientific theories” relieves us of the necessity to think about what the purpose of our lives might be. The New
Testament gospels, written by honest, sincere, and intelligent people, report
that many of their contemporaries were eyewitnesses of the living Savior, Jesus
Christ, after he was resurrected. Historically,
that fact caused people to stop and think, but Bible reading gradually ceased.
Such reading and study was not
replaced, of course, by the primitive theories of Darwin. The world didn’t read
his Origin of Species, so nobody seemed to notice an issue that Darwin
knew could destroy his theory. The slow process of evolution, from the
providential, or rather, fortunate mutation through the survival of the fittest
species, failed to litter the planet with billions of skeletal remains of
intermediate species between mutations and new species. Some of those who
notice this are nevertheless unwilling to give up the rationale it provides for
being an atheist. Thus, one simply doesn’t discuss this problem, or several
other major issues with the theory of evolution, in the public realm.
Part V: Weltanschauung, the
New World View
Science gradually became the new
deity for the human race, and scientists sometimes feel obliged to sustain the
belief that we need no God to live happily. There were many fine philosophers
both before and after the onset of the renaissance, but none of their
philosophies has served as a general philosophy of life or as a world view to
serve as the foundation of our post-religious era. It would take much
space and some expertise I lack to document properly the gradual evolution of
our contemporary attitudes and culture in post-modern or other philosophical
terms. But it is quite apparent that the philosophy that has served the
role of underpinning much of our culture’s biases was the work of an economist
philosopher, Karl Marx. He was the driving force of socialism, which has
prevailed since the time of Marx, although people have ceased to read the holy
writings of Capital.
We have ceased to understand most of
the elements of Marx’s philosophy, which are treated at length in my
book, Socialism. The world’s greatest minds on that topic would make it easy for us to
reject socialism root and branch. I reviewed in detail their analysis and cited
their conclusions in the book. In spite of the flaws and inadequacies in
theoretical Marxist economics, many have nevertheless retained Marx’s hatred
for capitalists, corporations, markets, and the freedom that undergirds all of
the institutions of the market system. Anger that some have less of life’s
material goods than more fortunate individuals, whether that results from lack
of education, lack of motivation, lack of creativity, lack of persistence, lack
of health, or just simply lack of good fortune, is the heritage of Marx’s
hatred.
The persistent pursuit of socialist
solutions has spawned social experimentation, social tyrannies, and perverse
social outcomes that divide societies and generate new hostilities. We
have failed to understand the natural benefits of market systems, as explicated
by Adam Smith. Nor are we cognizant of the developments of science and
technology which have enhanced market developments where they are not choked
out by socialist ideology. And because of socialist suspicions and animus
we have lost much of the spiritual and humane side of life.
Adam Smith Statue by Alexander Stoddart
A previous blog showed that modern
societies are in the secular, very long-term process of disappearing. That can
occur quite naturally as population growth ceases and as birth rates fall below
replacement levels. Socialists, who teach women they have value only in
competition with men in the work force and in management positions, seem to
leave the future of humanity in the hands of the diminishing number of people
who love children and families. Those are usually religious families. Thus,
from the standpoint of humanity as a whole, the religious groups of the earth
have definitely lost culture battles, but are certainly in a position to win
the cultural war of survival as their adversary group strives diligently in the
long term to become extinct.
During the greater part of his tenure, President Obama was addressing some important issues that to some extent diverted his attention away from “transforming completely” our economic system. But he was affecting important public policy issues and causing problems that President Trump wanted to overcome by setting aside the many of the executive orders President Obama had introduced.
During the presidential election campaign already well underway in 2019, democratic candidates, some among the self-proclaimed socialists and some strongly under their influence, made it clear that their objective was to further the socialist agenda of President Obama. The direction the country takes will become evident by 2022.
Why Does President Trump Want to Deregulate the U.S. Economy?
By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13286526
President Trump launched a deregulation initiative in his first days in office. Why? Because as a successful businessman he had lived with the commercial regulations of government bureaucracies and their costly intervention in the nation’s business life.
Those who have studied bureaucracies and those who have had to respond to bureaucratic demands are aware of the nature of this problem. Many creative agents populate bureaucracies; although many are well educated few have any significant experience in business. Their job is to think of ways to control businesses and their environment so that corporations won’t exploit their workers or their consumers. They can implement regulations with the force of law, although their abilities to generate such commercial regulations are usually in violation of constitutional principles, which mandate division of governmental powers.
The legislature, not the
bureaucratic agencies, is responsible for the creation of laws. We have
developed a huge bureaucracy of federal agencies in this country and they are
responsible to the president, who is responsible for the implementation
– not the creation – of law. Unfortunately the agencies have come to gain power
not only in administering laws, but also in creating the rules and regulations
they wish to impose. But they also adjudicate the implementation of their laws.
Affected parties needing to litigate problems arising through the
implementation of regulations discover that the agencies themselves, rather
than just the courts, can issue judgments and sanctions, etc. Thus, all the
powers of governance are wielded by the departmental bureaucrats despite the
constitution’s mandate for a division of powers among the branches of
government.
Cutting the Red Tape – Deregulation
The government agencies aspire to
cut pollution, manage problems of human resources, promote product quality and
safety, affect the prices of products and services, and have an impact on about
every conceivable aspect of economic life. The cost of implementing the endless
stream of ideas with which the bureaucrats hope to control every aspect of our
commercial lives is excessively high. It is estimated to be about two trillion
dollars, or about 12% of the entire economy spent every year on dealing with
regulations. The Office of Management and Budget found that President Trump had
reduced regulatory costs in his first two years by $33 billion. The report
indicated he cut 12 rules for each new rule adopted. President Obama added in
excess of 22,000 new regulations.
But Isn’t Some Regulation Necessary?
The answer to this question is straightforward. Of course it is! As long as human imperfection exists in the economy, there must be rules and oversight to insure honest and competent performance of a nation’s productive forces. But such oversight can very soon become excessive. The answer is that there should be competition to force producers to bring quality products to the market without negative secondary effects. When government protects competition by thwarting monopolistic forces – opening markets to foreign competition, reducing barriers to entry in all markets, and refusing to grant special favors to would-be monopolists – the economy will require less regulatory intervention. Promoting competition is better than drowning the economy in regulations.
The Culture of Bureaucracy
Bureaucracies, which often make
mistakes, develop a culture that attempts to protect them from taking
responsibility for those mistakes. They develop practices to protect themselves
from being discovered by the public in their mistakes. They develop job
protections through their relationships with legislators so that they cannot be
fired. The objective of the bureaucratic leader in government is to grow the
bureaucracy, take on more tasks and projects, and to gain power and
influence. Salaries are not related to performance, since performance is
difficult to measure. Governmental salaries are thus related to seniority.
Bureaucratic regulations cloud the future of enterprise.
Governmental bureaucracies generally pursue more or less specific projects or goals. Business bureaucracies have projects too, but all of them relate to making profits. Since profits are generated through sales, the business bureaucracy must think of its customers. If it fails to be productive and relevant, the business itself will fail and the organization will become extinct.
Big spending legislators tend to ignore the effects of incentives. Bureaucracies do the same.
The government bureaucracy, is inclined to think more of tasks than of people. They aren’t interested in sales, efficiency, or profitability and the branches of government that should manage and oversee the administrative agencies are usually too busy or disinterested to monitor their activities effectively. The IRS, for example, thinks of the revenues derived from taxes. People who hold the money even become like the enemy, since the IRS has to take the funds from them. The EPA has the project of protecting the environment; since people mess up the environment, an adversarial relationship quickly develops between the government bureaucracy and all us polluters in the private sector and citizenry.
The IRS and Lois Lerner were weaponized by the Obama administration against political opponents. Government agencies can become a swamp of political opposition in “deep state” activities in Washington, D.C.
Parliaments are rather inept at analyzing short- and long-term benefits and costs of industrial regulation.
Imagine several thousand clever and educated minds thinking about environmental forces that they aspire to manage. They have never had experience with a real world and its problems, but instead wish merely to create new rules which the actors in the real world must follow. Such rules may be of benefit to the public, but may also be strictly for the benefit of the bureaucrats themselves. In any case, they will be implemented at a cost. It will cost the firm and its customers, not the bureaucrats, scarce resources to apply the rules. Firms have to hire lawyers to help them understand and implement the bureaucratic regulations produced by the thousands of pages. Those regulations demand compliance with the force of law. Such regulations have the effect of driving up production costs, driving down profits, and sometimes rendering the firm unable to compete effectively. Sometimes agencies are so focused on the benefits of an operation that they ignore the concomitant costs thereof.
Combine this business regulatory syndrome with the socialistic preference for extensive government participation in normal life, which also is costly and persuades socialists to support high taxes. The regulation and the taxes make firms look abroad for a new home, so that they can stay viable in the international business arena. Firms will take their jobs and go elsewhere.
Bureaucracy vultures in organizational hierarchy
President Trump, formerly a businessman, knows this world from the compliance
side very well. He knows his colleagues are being regulated into high-cost
oblivion. He sees them pull up and leave the United States and says we must do
something about it if our workers are to retain their jobs and incomes. He sees
the job of governmental regulation as a balance of keeping those regulations
necessary to promote responsible corporate performance and of discarding
regulations which add far more to public costs than to benefits.
Bureaucracies Can Affect Both Socialistic and Market Economies
My book, Socialism, has a full chapter on the nature of bureaucracies. The study of bureaucracy should be a part of every citizen’s curriculum. I address the organizational costs and benefits of the government agencies and also document throughout the book the fact that once a bureaucracy is installed, it lobbies vigorously for continually expanding its share of governance and government control of the economy and of society generally.
Once bureaucracies were installed in the centrally planned economies like the Soviet Union, economic reform became impossible. It became impossible to scale back the layers of government economic agencies and enhance the functioning of market-like activity to achieve the minimal efficiency necessary for the economy’s survival. The red tape and the government planning system imposed ever greater inefficiencies until the economic system simply collapsed. President Trump and his successors will find that it will be an awful challenge to inhibit further growth of the government agencies in the United States.
The book Socialism, reviews the organizational characteristics of governmental agencies, showing the forces driving the continual expansion of bureaucracies and clarifying their regulatory impact on the firms that produce the nation’s goods and services. Of course the government must perform functions which require organization, but the tendency of such organizations is to continue to grow even after the original problems requiring such organization no longer exist.
The negative characteristics and tendencies of bureaucracies have been known for a couple centuries, but socialists ignore them because they have been indoctrinated to distrust private firms and they put their faith in government to accomplish every essential task. They do so only because they have not personally experienced life under the ultimate bureaucracies of socialist regimes.
The Difference between Corporate and Governmental Bureaucracy
Because liberals/progressives/socialists believe that corporations create most of the evil in the world and that government is the source of salvation for humankind, one can expect that with the growth of government involvement in the economy, the government bureaucracy will generally be in growth mode.
In a private sector economy, every firm and every consumer household will have its own economic plan. In socialism, the objective is to remove planning from the private sector and turn it over to a single, gigantic government plan designed and implemented by oversized agencies. In a true socialist economy, this is by definition what will be in process as long as socialists retain power.
Unfortunately, a study of bureaucracy must reveal to the objective mind and to human experience that overgrown human organizations unavoidably take on dangerous preferences, proclivities and powers. Such organizations work against the positive incentives of market systems, against the creativity of the private sector, against the productivity of the society’s workers, against the implementation of technical improvements, against the social harmony of diverse groups in the country, against the freedom and honesty of the press, and against human freedoms in general.
Bureaucracy, fountain of red tape.
When confronted with complaints about the performance of bureaucratic
agencies, socialists tend to assert that a little inefficiency is normal in the
functioning of government agencies. They also inevitably aver that large
business firms also have their own bureaucracies, so one should not fret about a
little governmental red tape. But there is a world of difference between
governmental and corporate bureaucracies. The latter are paid to perform
tasks related to profit making. Inefficiencies of the corporate
bureaucracy impinge on profits, which is the driving force of firms that must
compete in the market place. The governmental bureaucracy is not interested in
profits or efficiency, but merely in achieving the tasks suggested by organizational
goals. They are interested in creating new ideas and methods to control the
environment which they are involved in managing.
Many young people are attracted to socialism because socialists are known
for their strong advocacy for social equality and for the elimination of
poverty. That’s how socialism got started as a social movement a couple
centuries back. The first socialists with a political platform were moved in
part by the secular absorption of the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New
Testament, pleading with people not to forget the downtrodden and the poor.
These socialists were known as “Utopian Socialists” because they envisioned a
perfect society driven by the voluntary action of people motivated by love.
They advocated the formation of small, communitarian societies, which later
became very popular in the United States.
My book Socialism has a long chapter devoted to the various kinds
of communal groups which organized privately in the United States. They called
on those who wished to be a part of such an organization to join them and live
with “all things common” as Christians did in the New Testament (See Acts,
chapter 4). The beauty of this approach was that it only involved those who
wished to be involved, whereas the socialist system as a national economy
constrains all citizens to live under its tyranny whether they want to or not.
Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline, and the Attempted Revival in the United States
The Movement Changed Completely when Marx Appeared on the Scene.
But Karl Marx was appalled by the lack of efficiency and by the lack of
power of these socialists who wanted to form a movement of love. Marx advocated
violent overthrow of those whom he blamed for poverty and inequality. He
insisted on a society which constrained all citizens, whether they liked
sharing or not, to live in a socialistic order. He hated capitalists and waited
anxiously for the workers to make the whole social class of property owners,
the bourgeoisie, extinct. It was Marx who turned the movement of socialism into
a movement of hatred. To keep the property owners from trying to regain
power after the Marxian revolution, he advocated the formation of a
“dictatorship of the proletariat (working class)”. This vanguard of the
communist party would organize the government, plan the economy, and rule with
an iron fist.
Karl Marx
Marxism never got over Marx’s personal hatred. When Lenin, a great admirer
and teacher of Marxism, took over Russia’s Bolshevik government after the revolution
of 1917, he immediately set out to establish Marxian institutions to manage the
economy. After Lenin’s early death, Stalin completely took over the
Soviet economy, which cost millions of the peasants and workers their lives as
he forced them into agricultural communes and state farms. He ruthlessly
eliminated all opposition to his confiscation of their private property, their
lands and their animals. Opponents were killed or sent off to Siberia into
forced labor camps.
Vladimir Lenin
Post-Marxian Hatred That Lingered.
Marxists today still loath those who advocate private property and personal
liberty. The Marxian influence has been around so long that many people on the
left uniformly hate those who are affluent, those whom they perceive as
political enemies, business corporations, managers, laborers who don’t vote for
union policies, and on and on. It’s the kind of loathing that one sees today in
many who had planned on the electoral victory of Hillary Clinton. They made it
clear how they hated those who refused to get on board with the radicalization
of the Democratic Party. The Party had enthusiastically supported the protests
of the ‘Occupy Wall Street” movement, the ideology of which was strongly
socialistic. Nor was the “Black Lives Matter” a movement of love. (I address
such activity in my book Socialism so I can keep the story brief
here.) Later, the party accused President Trump of holding political
rallies that encouraged violence. In actual fact, the Clinton emails later
revealed that Clinton campaign funds had paid for hooligans to attack Trump
rallies.
The massive Democratic protests of the election results demonstrated the
love of the contemporary left. There were also incidents of violence and lawlessness,
which were supported not very subtly by Democratic leaders who mandated
resistance on the streets and demonstrated irrational opposition to everything
the Trump administration did. Trump voters were the “half” of American
society labeled by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a “basket of
deplorables.” Simple, continuously repeated name-calling is a primary
Democratic campaign and governance strategy. Democratic politicians and their
propaganda arm, the media, do it so long and so loudly that many come to
believe the slurs. Billions were spent by the Clinton campaign and by the
media who volunteered their manpower and resources to smear President Trump
during the campaign and after his election.
The Dissemination of Ideological Truth
The book Socialism shows that even the expression of love is aided
by wise policy. There are ways by which, conceptually, we could take care of
the poor, for example. Anti-poverty policies would put greater emphasis on
voluntarism. Social welfare policies would put emphasis on helping low-income
families. The founders of the welfare state wanted to win popular support for
their redistribution policies by providing subsidies even for those who are
nowhere near poverty conditions. Everyone receives the state-sponsored goodies
whether they are poor or not. Wisdom would suggest an elimination of subsidies
for the middle class and others with higher incomes. (Risk could be avoided
through the principles of insurance rather than subsidies.) It takes some time
to explain and justify such policy suggestions, however, so I recommend you
acquire the book at the very nominal prices for which copies are
available. Check out the “Order a Copy” page.
What role did religion play in President Obama’s politics?
Generally, socialists following in the traditions of Marxism reject religion (“the opiate of the masses”) outright. The Obamas’ personal adoption of Christianity was ostensibly for political purposes, since Marxist atheists are not usually good candidates for the U.S. presidency. Actually, the president’s religious inclination, if non-religious interest or sentiment can be so characterized, quite apparently belonged to Islam. President Obama has spoken openly and ardently in praise of Muslim culture; there were, however, few signs of religious devotion in his emotional attachment to Islam. Of course, his father’s dreams were Muslim and according to Muslim beliefs everyone is born Muslim and remains so unless they join some “infidel” religion. The President doubtless identifies with the faith of his father; he clearly had no grasp of Christian doctrines in spite of his joining Reverend Wright’s congregation.
Islam’s historic tradition
In any case, I am convinced that his Christian affiliation was a purely political expedient for his presidential aspirations. When he did join a congregation, it was clearly politicized. Reverend Wright tipped his hand in the first Obama presidential campaign when he publicly spoke out for “black liberation theology,” which is an offshoot of Latin American “liberation theology,” a movement of Catholic Marxists in Latin America. Reverend Wright’s radicalism, viewed during Obama’s first presidential campaign, clearly appealed to the president.
Barack Obama, President of the United States and Community Organizer
Did Obama wish to generalize human rights?
One of President Obama’s most pressing social policy concerns was to secure civil
rights for the LGBTQ community. It was surprising that the LGBTQ community
gained formal and legal recognition so quickly in the United States. Sodomy
laws were perfectly acceptable to Americans from the founding of the colonies
until the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that it is
unconstitutional to bar consensual sex between adults, calling it a violation of
the 14th Amendment. The Judeo-Christian tradition basically condemned
homosexuality for about four thousand years. One would think it might take more
than a decade or two to convince Christians to bestow full “civil rights” upon
the LGBTQ community, for Christians have always read in the Bible that
homosexuality, like adultery, is unacceptable to God.
It does seem to most of us that any moral issue involved in homosexuality should
be between God and the homosexuals. Regardless of His views of people’s
particular activities, God has commanded all people to love one another and to
leave the issue of theological judgment to Him. He has required of Christians
to love all men while attempting to flee from human frailties. My personal
belief is that the LGBTQ community, appropriately endowed with civil rights,
should also recognize the rights of Christians freely to practice their
religion as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. The consensus seems to be
that all should enjoy the right to practice what they believe, so long as that
does not impinge upon the rights of others.
Why Even Bring Up Non-Economic Issues in Socialism?
The purpose of this blog is merely to acknowledge that human rights are a
highly important issue for socialists or progressives, as for us all. I speculate
that it currently plays a role larger than it otherwise might if socialists had
some effective economic policy to promote. The long book I
wrote on socialism is really focused on economics and does not address either
the issues of Islam or of social policy, although I am greatly interested in
the interplay between socialism and personal freedom and in the issue of human
rights for the unborn. But these problems are not belabored in my book, which
focuses, as indicated, more on economic issues.
