Ross Douthat defines it.
The core economic challenge facing the American experiment is not income inequality per se, but rather stratification and stagnation — weak mobility from the bottom of the income ladder and wage stagnation for the middle class. These challenges are bound up in a growing social crisis — a retreat from marriage, a weakening of religious and communal ties, a decline in workforce participation — that cannot be solved in Washington D.C. But economic and social policy can make a difference nonetheless, making family life more affordable, upward mobility more likely, and employment easier to find.
Let’s evaluate this along the three-axes model. Even though Douthat shows concern for low-skilled workers, he views the problem in terms of the civilization-barbarism axis rather than the oppressor-oppressed axis. On the freedom-coercion axis, although Douthat throws libertarians a bone by saying that the problems cannot be solved in Washington, he thinks that Washington “can make a difference nonetheless.”
Pointer from Reihan Salam. Indeed, the paragraph above sounds like a reprise of Douthat and Salam’s Grand New Party. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Read the entire post. If we think in terms of the current institutional structure, I would be willing to sign on to Douthat’s agenda. (One difference is that I would be more favorably disposed to easing up on immigration for low-skilled workers. I think it is at least as likely that low-skilled immigrants are complements for low-skilled domestic workers as it is that they are substitutes. And in general I do not think that protectionist measures can do much for low-skilled workers: protect them from labor at home and they still can face competition from labor abroad, from capital, and from consumer substitution away from artificially high-cost goods and services.)
However, I think that for libertarians, attempting policy reforms within the current institutional structure is an exercise that uses up a lot of energy without moving the ball very far, if at all. I think that any significant motion in a libertarian direction will have to come from an evolution toward competitive government. We need to restructure government services so that there is less centralization, less bundling, and less protection from private competition.
Of course, that is nothing but a reprise of the widely-unread Unchecked and Unbalanced.
” If we think in terms of the current institutional structure, I would be willing to sign on to Douthat’s agenda”
This is basically where I find myself now. Ditto on your point about immigration/trade.
I really believe (as always, likely wrong) that living in California and Texas exclusively has pushed me in this direction a little faster than otherwise comparable folks.
Kling:
“We need to restructure government services so that there is less centralization, less bundling, and less protection from private competition.”
That view appears to rest upon a concept of governments (at various levels) as autonomous entities, almost organic in nature; rather than the mechanisms which they are through which human relations are conducted relying principally upon powers of coercion.
The reference to “private competition” implies other forms of transacting human relationships that may not rely upon the coercive powers delegated to governments. Historically some of those coercive powers have resided in other forms of social arrangements, the family, clan, the tribe, the religious hierarchies and other ideological formats. All have had their failures, their stagnations and decay.
Democracy, as a process (not a condition) has provided individuals and groups with means for release from obligations, and transfers of responsibilities by impositions of obligations on others; which are ultimately compounded to be returned to the transferors as even greater burdens than those devolved.
Societies will organize themselves to reflect the principal motivations of their memberships. Perhaps in our own society we may be approaching a turning point away from the motivation to shed obligations and responsibilities and to find other ways to deal with them in our relationships with one another and with our surroundings. In any event it will not be found through the mechanisms of governments.
If I were Douthat, I would make the case that while Washington isn’t the solution, it could at least stop being part of the problem. I would then go on to crib from Charles Murray’s Losing Ground without ever mentioning it by name.
If we did not have a generous welfare state, I would be in favor of allowing high numbers of unskilled workers to immigrate to the U.S. But given current benefits, each unskilled worker will cost the taxpayers many times what he contributes in taxes. It therefore seems to be a very expensive proposition to allow unskilled immigrants to come to the U.S.
Highly skilled immigrants, on the other hand, seem to be a great deal.
Where am I going wrong?
Re Douthat’s consensus reform agenda: check, check, check, check, … .
“I think it is at least as likely that low-skilled immigrants are complements for low-skilled domestic workers as it is that they are substitutes.”
Here in California the mentally retarded are largely unemployable because their work is being done by hard-working, and brighter, foreigners. Those foreigners complementary? It sure doesn’t look like that from here.
“And in general I do not think that protectionist measures can do much for low-skilled workers: protect them from labor at home and they still can face competition from labor abroad, from capital, and from consumer substitution away from artificially high-cost goods and services.”
Your argument seems to be that since low-skill workers are beset by many forces that cannot be successfully opposed (trade, capital, substitution), we should make no effort to protect them from other forces that can be opposed – namely labor supply competition in their own country from impoverished foreigners, many of whom are here illegally.
Gee, with such friends, your low-skill countrymen* certainly need no enemies!
As what Steve Sailer calls a “citizenist”, I think that the illegals should be repatriated**, fully aware that restaurant meals, hotel stays, shoes, and shirts would be more expensive as a result.
Ken
* I realize that “countryman” is something of a skunked word for you and your fellow libertarians, but I can’t help myself.
** coerced! by deadly force! oh, the humanity! ; )
Kenneth,
With all due respect, I think you should be more charitable to Arnold’s position. The libertarian *prior is that immigrants are 100% complimentary. Arnold’s posterior is 50/50.
Best
* for instance, look at the 1:30:47 mark of the transcript of this conversation between Russ Roberts and Robin Hanson
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/01/hanson_on_the_t.html
Thank you, S,
I’m happy to take your point. I admire Dr. Kling for, among other things, the concept of his blog and particularly for his kindness to conservatives. He gives me an ideal place to, I hope, nudge open-minded libertarian and libertarianish folks to reflect on the consequences of their policies to the less-blessed: what one might call “Ricardo meets The Bell Curve.” I tried to be earnest and polite, if emphatic, while advancing these ideas in the body of my message, and to be good-natured in my snarky postscript, hence the wink ; ) emoticon. That postscript was meant to acknowledge but not accept the standard libertarian take down that my position amounts to murder or some such thing. Tone management is quite the challenge.
Ken
No worries, Ken. And in fact, my tone was bad cause I wasn’t trying to manage your tone, but came off that way! Anyway, have a good weekend and whatnot!
From another perspective… Because of fellow “countrymen” like you, I decided to leave the country. Enjoy the collectivist utopia while you can. Bankruptcy is a … Well, you know.
Yes, “collectivits” like Kenneth have been keeping out, or forcing into the “shadows,” the swarms of principled, free-market-loving, libertarian immigrants who would otherwise have saved the country from socialism and bankruptcy by now. Gee, I hope Obama and the Democrats don’t figure this out before Immigration Reform passes!
I am surprised that conservatives do not say that, in the USA poor people do not lack food, clothing or shelter as much as they lack safety and so advocate for more and better police and better courts. This would be to hold the barbarism at bay more directly. Instead they advocate things that are very unlikely to work. Maybe we do not need more upward mobility but better living conditions for the poor due to less crime and violence.
Ken,
Your conservative axis informs you that ‘we’ or ‘society’ or (perhaps more appropriately) ‘The State’ needs to protect our fragile civilization from the barbarians who will destroy it, either overtly or by rote.
The libertarian axis informs us that limiting peaceful human movement, and interfering with voluntary human transaction is, actually, coercion, and that ‘we, or ‘society’ or ‘The State’ ought to limit or outright eliminate such coercion.
Who’s right? Who knows. But as one who runs along the libertarian axis, I am willing to err on the side of ‘encouraging freedom’ as opposed to ‘preserving civilization’.
If your goal is to ‘nudge libertarians’ to ‘contemplate the consequences’ of an open borders/relaxed immigration standpoint, it might be a good idea to re-couch your response to show how your position encourages freedom and *limits* coercion, as opposed to mocking the POV (emoticons notwithstanding).
Djf, OTOH, does not appear to share this goal. His goal appears to be to alienate and entrench those on both sides, and if it is, he’s succeeding. If I’m wrong, then I would again suggest a different tack.
If it is my goal is to persuade a conservative of my relaxed immigration stance, the challenge to me is to couch my response to show how such a position would encourage, enhance, or at least not do damage to civilization.
BTW, progressives can be less than ‘open’ to open borders as well. Progressively-leaning Unions, for example, oppose free trade in most things, especially labor. It may be somewhat easier to persuade a progressive concerning relaxed immigration, but it’s by no means a slam-dunk.
Guthrie, I could take your concern about being charitable to opponents more seriously if you applied it to your own side. Specifically, I refer to the comment by “Brent” to which I was responding, in which he accused Ken of being a “collectivist” responsible for driving the country to bankruptcy. You don’t seem to have any reaction to that. I thought the remark deserved an in-kind response (although one informed by some logic and common sense). Based on my reaeding around the Web, both leftists and libertarians (but, to his credit, not our host, Arnold), while highly sensitive to perceived incivility and snark from opponents, rarely have any compunction about using such tactics themselves. Intelligent conservatives (I’m not referring to the professional whiners) seem to have thicker skins, generally.
Djf
I agree that Brent could be admonished for being uncharitable in his comment, and that I probably should have addressed him if my intent was to be even-handed (which it was). Point taken, and my apologies for the oversight.
My statements stand, however, regardless. From my own reading, in contract, it seems far more prevalent to see conservatives mock an open-borders position in your manner above than to see libertarians jump to calling ‘collectivist’, but that could be my own sample bias (which I readily admit).
I cannot vouch for the thickness or thinness of the skin, re. based upon one’s particular axis. Some people have thick skin in some situations and thinner skin in others, and this likely has nothing to do with their political/economic thought process. Whatever the case, snark and incivility isn’t justified, especially if we purport to desire communication and understanding. This is why I said if your motive is to alienate and entrench people on either side of the issue, keep using snark and incivility. If you genuinely wish to understand and develop a dialogue, then your tack must change.
And yes, that cuts both ways.