There is a solution besides inequality reduction. The problem is that our money makes the exertion of economic power invisible, so people have no way to reject its influence. If you don't want money to influence politics, you should be able to reject the power of money that has influenced politics over your own production.
I don't care how much money people have, but I do care when they use it to subvert our democracy. We can reject their power to do so, and we can do it without somehow passing a law through our government that has already become an instrument of entrenched economic power in itself. We can do it with individual action.
This is merit capitalism. http://meritcapitalism.com
- Marginal tax rates at the top of 50% (France is even higher and still has rich people) and policies to make sure the rates stay progressive. - Closing tax loopholes, forcible repatriation of stashed offshore assets, fully funding the IRS, and eliminating (for real) tax havens and their usage. - Debt-free higher ed (full rides, living stipends, the works) - A real universal health system - No games with inheritance taxes - Non-punitive, non-humiliating policies to help the poor like a GBI or expanded automatic welfare provision - Not gutting social security
To me it seems an incorrect, incomplete analysis of the factors that lead to wealth generation, but it seems difficult and time consuming to debunk.
-------------------------- ECONOMIC FREEDOM INDEX
I think for one thing that the economic freedom index, created by the Wall Street Journal is as hack, trying to reconcile neo con policies and the data on growth in countries around the world.
That economic freedom index wants to pass as "an argument for capitalism and neo conservatism", while at the same time incorporating scandinavian countries in the "good group" that is "doing it right", "the neo con way". It's then used as an argument to discredit socialist policies .... I'm not sure that index has any validity. It seems totally biased and "after the fact-y" trying to find ways group countries after seeing their wealth output, and find reasons why that was "totally neo con".
My reaction to the economic freedom index is ... well, if those socialist policies implemented in scandinavian countries are compatible with a high economic freedom rating ... how is that an index a measure of how socialist a country is? Then that means we can do everything they do! Yay!
For me the conclusion on the economic freedom index is summed up by these two cases:
A) Maybe that index is nailing it, and in that case, let's do exactly like the countries at the top of the chart ... the scandinavian countries.
B) And maybe it's not nailing it, and that index is totally made up and biased, a total hack coming from the neo con media. In that case we shouldn't feel bad to be socialist, mimic and adapt from the scandinavian countries which do well on progress and innovation.
... Same outcome in both cases, yay! That index doesn't add much to the conversation. It's just concurring on the fact that those countries are doing it right, and then it's trying to label that success as "neo con" and "libertarian". Well, to me call it whatever you want, as long as it has free health care, free school, minimum wage and all the smart socialist goodness, it's what we should be doing.
Is that index really the complete, correct valid answer to build a successful country? Is it the complete recipe, totally spot on? Or is it just a biased measure made up after the fact to incorporate the countries that do well and label them as "neo con"? Thoughts welcome.
-------------------------- SMALL GOVERNMENT = GROWTH
Another idea mentioned in the video is that the size of government is inversely correlated with growth and wealth generation. Can anyone debunk this?
Small yet effective? - One thing that comes to mind is that it's possible that some countries, like the scandinavian countries, are implementing some smart policies, that would be considered socialist, with a small government. And that on the other hand a government can be big and implement the wrong things, the wrong policies.
Big government would mean more corruption and bad ineffective policies? - It's possible that the size of a government isn't so much a measure of how socialist it is, but is rather a good proxy for how corrupt a country is, how dumb its people are, and thus how likely it is to "not pick policies that are conducive to growth and wealth", but are rather instead "conducive to making the rich richer" through manipulation and corruption -- which is typical of countries that don't do that well, they are controlled by an elite that abuses and parasites the middle class, incapable to vote for itself. More middle class emancipation corresponds in general to more wealth and more progress and might be an indicator of more smart people in all classes and not just the elite. More inequality generally corresponds to less progress and less wealth. If anyone disagrees with this please tell me why, thanks!
It could also be that their measure of how small the government is isn't accurate and that there's a lot of small prints about it.
If it's indeed correct, then it's an interesting correlation. I would like to know more about it. Any comments welcome.
In particular, it would be interesting to know if there's any flaw with the idea that "Sweden's decline in growth output relative to the world average is caused by a bigger government starting in the 60s".
------------------------- In any case, the conclusion doesn't change much for me, it still boils down to the fact that some countries are doing it right, in growth and innovation, and at the same time implemented free health care, minimum wage, free schools etc. and we should mimic and adapt from their model, as much as possible since it works.
After that, all the discussions from Molyneux and other neo cons or libertarian, trying to label that success and "theirs" as "due to less socialism" don't really matter. Whatever those countries are doing, whatever you call it, it's the right thing to do.
It essentially confirms my temporary conclusion, what I've been reasoning in my comments on this page so far. Socialist policies at worst won't hurt the economy, and at best will contribute to it. In any case the neo con / libertarian position that Molyneux defends is flawed, indeed based on nothing (I wonder how he gets his data, besides from the economic freedom index which comes from the Wall Street Journal). Here are the highlights from the article, below (marked with ).
Now I really wonder how come Molyneux gets such a beautiful correlation between government size and growth output in his slides. Is it possible that his data is ... purposely altered or coming from biased sources? I don't see any other explanation. It'd be great if the author of that article (Audacious Epigone) and Molyneux had a good debate, so we can see who's right.
Quotes from the article:
There is a modestly positive correlation [of government spending as a percentage of GDP by country] of .25 with per capita wealth. To the extent that is of any importance, it is another reason why those on the left should favor policies that boost average IQ and by extension national wealth. Over time, as the economy grows, the government grows as well, generally at a slightly greater rate, then? But if European countries are removed from the analysis, the relationship loses statistical significance (p=.34).
(...)
* On its face, there doesn't appear to be much to validate the libertarian view that minimizing the size of the federal government, and suffering the consequent economic distortions its continued growth will otherwise cause, should be the primary goal of a society wanting economic prosperity (and a high quality of life). Ceteris paribus perhaps, but there are clearly a host of other demographic and cultural variables that are more important. Who would rather operate a business--or live--in Haiti instead of in Denmark?
Conclusion: For me it's not looking good for the neo con / libertarian ideology. I'm not sure I can identify even one pertinent spot on thing they say at this point. Could it be that most of that ideology and all its arguments really is 100% flawed and was manufactured by elites in their own short-term, near-sighted interest repeatedly in history? Or is there at least some good stuff in it? Any thoughts welcome.
I wanted to respond to all your comments, but they're blog-post level and I'm in the middle of writing a book so I can't properly do them justice. A very short answer to just some of your questions on government size and the innovation/social support question:
1) The Scand. model shows that larger (and more importantly well-run, and smarter) government is completely compatible with innovation and business creation (as well as high social mobility.) Stronger social supports mean more risks, which means more innovation and businesses. Size is a red herring, as I'll discuss below, though.
2) The "Freedom indexes" aren't wrong per se, in that they show what they purport to show, but the way they've been interpreted / designed is to always support the ideas that less regulation always and everywhere equals growth, even "good" growth. The cultural environment they were created in doesn't allow for much else. That doesn't mean they're useless; it just means that they have to be interpreted contextually.
3) Culture matters. A lot. A society that has a baseline of good infrastructure (broadly construed, not just physical, but social and technological) plus a culture of entrepreneurialism is likely to produce more innovation even with 50% marginal tax rates.
I'd add for all of the above is that the environment for innovation can be thought of like the range of temperatures compatible with life; there's a margin where innovation will likely go down at either end of the spectrum:
- If your MTR is too high, people might actually move or decide its not worth it to start a business. The issue is that the actual level and the level pushed by the economic right are very far apart. Scand. / France / Germany shows that 50-60% MTR works just fine, but we could easily imagine that a 90% rate would have the opposite effect.
- If your MTR (and hence ability to fund the aforementioned infrastructure [in this case everything from university tuition to public transportation to government grants for businesses to social welfare to allow people more freedom / privation protection]) is too low, you can lose innovation potential because too many people spend heir time and energy just trying to survive or get to the "baseline" of innovation (like working survival jobs instead of studying.) Even small-scale cash handouts in many developing countries to would-be entrepreneurs can bolster innovation and growth, as a number of previous and extant experiments have shown.
- Regulation and government size are often explained in terms of "number" or "size", but these should be considered complete red herrings. What's more important are good design, responsiveness to changing circumstances, good administration, hard-to-corrupt regulators, and understandability. Many of the Scand. countries, NZ, and especially Singapore (for all its faults) show that regulation can be done in a way that protects people and does not squash business. The proper way to frame this is not to think about "too many" or "too big" but "bad" and "stupid." Bad/stupid regulation can kill business, but good/smart regulation can actually support it (one way is to allow certain kinds of businesses which lines to color inside AND to let them know that they are not being undermined when their competitors cheat - standard regulations means a level playing field for businesses in many cases, particularly ones in well-trodden industries.)
The other thing I'd say, which is very interesting, is that even though there's some disagreement on the causes and the extent of many of the inequality issues, the solutions are weirdly convergent. Left-wing intellectuals with a technological bent, realistic right-wing intellectuals who have given up on a complete dismantling of social welfare provision, and technologists of the techno-libertarian (both left and right) variety have spoken in favor of the GBI, which would kill several birds with one stone:
With a proper GBI, you wouldn't need TANF, SNAP, WIC, social security or any of those. You would still need a proper UHC, and would probably need top ups for those with disabilities, but we could get to the "post-Scandanavian" model of social democratic capitalism if it was done on a large scale. Politically unlikely for another half-century, in my estimation, but a far better solution than most of the others.
The "standard" list of suggestions (like not gutting SS) takes into account political likelihood, even though I consider many of them second-best solutions.
EDIT: emphasis added.
- think tank funding
- ad spending
- lobbying (CF will not fix that)
- the potential of future jobs / revolving door
Most importantly, cultural deference does not go away with CF reform; people respect the monied and the powerful for more than their campaign contributions. They also respect people "like them" (http://time.com/373/congress-is-now-mostly-a-millionaires-cl...), which means similar socio-economic backgrounds, elite schools, clubs, etc.
They buy influence indirectly by simply having wealth and power concentrated with them. You can only reduce that by reducing the distance between the bottom and the top. You have to reduce "vertical social distance."
Nothing is a silver bullet here, but reducing wealth inequality is the most direct route to equalizing political power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
I especially recommend reading "The original problem of social distance" in "Twilight of the Elites."
So all those things you've mentioned are the real direct causes (that should be fixed) of the problems you blame on wealth inequality.
You can't fix "vertical social distance" without reducing inequality. Read my links to find out why.
Here's another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...
> Income inequality is ... a cause of the problem (inequality itself causes vertical social distance, causing unresponsive elites, causing people to get elected that favor the preferences of other elites, which causes..) It's self-reinforcing.
You state the problem is elites in office who have biases in their preferences, and claim that inequality causes this. The links you provide list political polarization, class warfare, etc. as "effects" of income inequality. However, nowhere do you show this is the ultimate cause of the problem rather than a proximate cause.
A better use of time would be to suggest ways that one might limit undue political influence in the presence of inequality, rather than eliminating inequality itself (which would have many deleterious effects as addressed in the original post).
Absolutely, more safety net produces more innovation. That's also what I thought. Thanks for saying, finally someone else says it!
Some arguments for it:
- the middle class was important for progress in the west. That's a well established idea.
- the map of low vs high inequality countries points more toward high inequality --> less innovation per capita, on average. In particular at least, it's clear that some of the nordic countries can pull off the highest innovation rates per capita while being among the most socialist countries. So at worst, most of the socialist policies won't hurt. Like free school, free health care, financial regulations and less tax on the poor than on the rich. At worst, they just won't affect innovation, and at best they actively contribute to it.
- the law of accelerating returns states that, in rough terms, "computation power" is a function of "world knowledge" which in turn is also a function of "computation power". This is why it's an exponential trend. Well, until we reach a point where computers can innovate on their own, human brains are still going to matter in the equation for progress, still going to be a bottleneck for progress, still for a few decades in the future. Yes more powerful computers is mostly what's driving the exponential tech trend right now, but so is the raw number of brains at work, scientists and engineers in particular. This means that we need more bright kids in college and university.
Neo conservatives usually argue that "making way for investors" is the priority for the economy and innovation -- that it's currently the bottleneck for innovation and the economy. But it's clear for me that it's not the case. Investing might be the easiest part to solve among the "ingredients" that are often cited to generate progress: 1) inventors+computers 2) investors 3) middle class buyers.
For me it's clear that socialism would generally help 1) and 3), as well as 2) (for example with incentives for high risk investors or investors in renewable energy for example) while neo conservatism might help 2) only and be detrimental to 1) and 3) (especially with the current price of a university education and health care, 1) and 2) are affected negatively in non-socialist countries).
Important to point out that the law of accelerating returns formulated by Kurzweil doesn't really acknowledge 2) and 3), except maybe indirectly (if you count the political model, which is currently btw in the US "capitalist with some socialist measures", and say investing practices, as indirectly contributing to the "human knowledge" variable, which of course it is to some extend). In other words, it's probable the only thing that matters significantly for progress and the economy, is more scientists and engineers. 2) and 3) are just helpers and we wouldn't be near a bottleneck on those.
Interesting to point out that Kurzweil notes no significant variation in the exponential tech trend, throughout peace or war times, growth and recession periods. So either the only variable that changed significantly is the computational power available, or more likely the number of human brains at work also increased in the last century.
An interesting question is, would we still get the same rate of progress with the same number of scientists and engineers and investors and buyers that we had 100 years ago? I think not, but maybe I'm wrong.
I think more smart human brains at work, besides having better and better computers, has been the most important variable for progress in the last centuries. And I think it still is somewhat important today, until we get fully independent computer-generated scientific or tech innovation.
Any response to these ideas would be welcome. Great if you change my mind or correct me on some details. Thanks.
1) Massive wealth inequality distorts policies towards the preferences of the rich (http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-..., http://www.demos.org/stacked-deck-how-dominance-politics-aff..., Affluence and Influence), so reducing inequality does more than just give people more mobility; it allows government to more accurately reflect the will of the people. It's democracy-enabling. Massive inequality in wealth breeds massive inequality in political power. No amount of mobility or opportunity can fix this one, only inequality reduction itself.
2) As Hayes discusses in "Twilight of the Elites", we've learned that basically everyone in the US has accepted the current notions of meritocracy, social mobility, and equality of opportunity. What is currently not well-accepted is that in order to achieve anything like equality of opportunity and social mobility, you need more equality of outcome in the first place. One can express this as "reducing poverty", but that's just a _reframing the same idea_. We are in fact talking about redistributing money from the very rich and giving it to the not-rich, one way or another, to improve EoOpp and SM. That reduces inequality by definition.
3) Massive inequality itself increases social distance, which is partially reflected in #1. When all one sees, knows, meets, etc. are other wealthy people, one may wind up becoming disconnected from the plight of the non-wealthy. They become an annoyance, invisible, or irrelevant, which is reflected not only in policy, but also in self-reinforcing cycles of disinterest and disconnection in the realm of social relations. Inequality has to be reduced somewhat to reduce that social distance.
4) When we speak of inequality reduction, it can be understood as "wealth range compression." The top go down, the bottom go up. Many analogize chopping off the top and putting it at the bottom, but the compression metaphor works better IMO.
5) Some worry (like Acemoglu) that US inequality subsidizes other nations in terms of innovation. I think Edsall and others have completely demolished the argument, and its was largely facile in the face of facts like Sweden having invented the ultrasound, the pacemaker, and AIS (an advancement of GPS) or Denmark having invented the loudspeaker, Bluetooth, and Insulin. You could even argue the opposite: a society that gives people a better safety net (Peltzman effect again) combined with an entrepreneurial culture will produce more, not less innovation.
The recommendations for remedying this are fairly tame in the European / Scand. context, mostly because fewer of them have internalized ideas like "taxation is theft" or "everything that happens to you is your own fault." We should regard the following as non-controversial (some a restatement of your list items):
- Marginal tax rates at the top of 50% (France is even higher and still has rich people) and policies to make sure the rates stay progressive.
- Closing tax loopholes, forcible repatriation of stashed offshore assets, fully funding the IRS, and eliminating (for real) tax havens and their usage.
- Debt-free higher ed (full rides, living stipends, the works)
- A real universal health system
- No games with inheritance taxes
- Non-punitive, non-humiliating policies to help the poor like a GBI or expanded automatic welfare provision
- Not gutting social security
If we were to implement the whole of Sanders' platform, for example (most of which I agree with, a few items I think are questionable), we'd still be to the right of a Denmark or Sweden(!) We'd be slightly to the right of what we had during the Great Society.
It's a return to sanity, basic living standards, and mobility. Hardly the stuff of Galtian nightmares.