I have never had anything good to say
about Donald Trump. Fundamentally I have been more concerned about
the people who voted for him enthusiastically. There are many
individuals as bad as Trump; the problem comes when large segments of
the population can be convinced to vote for one of them. (Though
Trump has been far worse in office than most of his opponents
expected, including me.)
But Trump is a phenomenon of the past
four to five years. Before Trump the basic tenets of the Republican
party were already quite worrisome, given the values I hold and
what's important to me. I'm far from alone.
Some Republicans (and the ones who
through their pocketbooks wield the most power) are motivated simply
by greed. They are the rich. They want lower taxes so they can have
more money. That's a rational viewpoint. There's not much one can do
to move them except perhaps appeal to some ember of charity and
feeling for the common person that might be banked within them
somewhere.
It is widely accepted (at least on the
left) that most Republican voters are voting against their own
economic self-interest. Some may not understand this, and perhaps
their views could be changed by education. But when coastal elites
hold them in contempt on this account, they are making a big mistake.
The voters also may simply be acting in accord with their values.
Many believe that life outcome is based on merit. The rich are rich
because they've been smarter or wiser or harder-working, and they
deserve what they have. If they are poor, they similarly deserve it.
Although that is not at all my understanding of the factual
situation, I should think they deserve some credit for voting in line
with their principles rather than their narrow self-interest. Many of
us would think that view had merit if the proposal on the table was a
sort of pure communism, taxing everyone 100% and distributing the
money equally among everybody.
I believe that it is vital that people
feel there are incentives -- that what they do makes a difference for
their personal welfare, typically in terms of how much money they
have. Yet in moral terms, very little of a person's success is due to
their own efforts -- a great deal comes from genetic and cultural
endowment, such as what example your parents set and the material
resources you had available to you growing up. Society used to value
physical strength and endurance. Today it values intellectual skills
far more. Your fate hinges in part on which skills you have and which
era you were born into -- rather arbitrary and not a measure of some
fundamental underlying worth. Today more and more money goes to the
very best, who create the automated systems that dominate our lives.
The productivity gains are enormous, but the effects on the standard
of living of the bottom 80% are worrisome. The solution is largely
redistribution -- taking money from those who are lucky and giving it
to those who aren't so lucky.
The New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman has said that poor Republican Whites oppose social programs
because they don't want money going to Those People -- meaning
undeserving lazy people with brown skin. It sounds plausible to me.
The current experience with Covid-19 (and the hard economic times
that are about to begin in earnest) will leave many of those Whites
in deeper trouble than they were before. Perhaps some will understand
that this isn't their fault, and start supporting such programs.
Maybe some will in their minds recast some of Those People as folks
like them who were doing their very best all along. Or maybe some
will just accept the fact that Those People will get some of the
money as an unpleasant side effect, but think of their own narrow
self-interest as more important.
The election of Franklin Roosevelt in
1932 ushered in a sort of "New Deal Mentality" that wasn't
seriously challenged until Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 -- an
extraordinary run of nearly 50 years. Ordinary folks were of value,
and high taxes on the rich were just fine (top tax brackets reaching
90% at times). Perhaps an economic catastrophe of the kind that now
seems to be unfolding -- on the order of the Great Depression --
could give rise to a renewed New Deal Mentality. However, I'm sure
the modern-day Republicans will fight back fiercely with every tool
in their arsenal.
What perplexes me more in retrospect is
why the opposition to the New Deal Mentality was so weak for so long.
Eisenhower in his 8 years as President didn't challenge it (though he
wasn't himself really a dedicated Republican). Richard Nixon and
Gerald Ford didn't challenge it -- Richard Nixon was on the verge of
approving universal health insurance when Watergate hit. Another
fascinating example came to my attention recently. When the US
occupied Japan in 1945, we had the ability to reshape a society as
had rarely happened before. In charge was Douglas MacArthur, a
Republican, largely insulated from scrutiny of those back home in
America. But the society he engineered was very much in line with the
New Deal Mentality.
It would be an inspiring outcome of the
rule of Trump and the pain of the Covid-19 pandemic if the US once
again adopted a New Deal Mentality that would last for decades. The
Republican opposition is so determined and clever that I would bet
against it happening, but it remains a hope.
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