Shaking up the core Republican beliefs -- economics

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.

When to remove monuments and rename things

Partially in response to Black Lives Matter, there is a move afoot to remove monuments, rename institutions, change flags, and so forth.

I would start with the perhaps controversial view that all these things are fundamentally optional. There is no absolute imperative to remove or rename anything. We are bequeathed a history that is full of various kinds of oppression, and our forebears (yes, the ones in power) made monuments and named things according to what seemed right to them at the time. We can change society for the better now without digging deeply into those old decisions. Righteous indignation to change this situation comes from the same source as today's <"cancel culture">, where people with unpopular views are not just denied speaking opportunities, but subject to boycotts and professional ruin. The Enlightenment view that competing ideas can duke it out in reasoned debate is under serious attack. Monument removal is happening anyway, so it's worth thinking about how to do it right.

Some such status removal and renamings might be an excellent idea as a way forward. The US Civil War seems like a special case. One side was fighting for slavery, and the struggle for rights and status of modern US blacks can be traced back in a continuous line to that war. If in fact this <fivethirtyeight.com article> is correct, that most statues to Confederate leaders were erected 50 years after the fact and as part of an ongoing front in the battle for white supremacy, then let's take them down, especially those on courthouses grounds or public squares. Ones that honor common soldiers that were made shortly after the end of the war could be preserved, as well as those that are out of the way, on battlefields and cemeteries. The decision to remove monuments rests with local and state governments, I believe, and it will be an interesting test of the strength of commitment to black liberation to see which ones do and which do not. Another possibility is adding additional plaques which describe the circumstances under which the monument was erected and condemning the racist attitudes behind them.

Next case: Suppose today that someone said that it is was not possible or suitable for blacks and whites in America to live side by side as equals. Some sort of segregation is necessary. This is a reactionary view, perhaps not even one that could be voiced by mainstream Republican figures. Could we possibly honor a historical figure who took that position? If not, let's pull down all the statues of Abraham Lincoln, because that is what he believed for most of his life. We honor him because given how things stood at the time, he was pulling in the right direction.

If Black Lives Matter is the engine that drives removal of anything honoring the Confederacy, it's worth posing practical questions of political strategy. Is this a good thing to focus on? I don't know the answer, but I think it's worth asking the question. How much better will the lives of African-Americans be once the statues are gone? On the other hand, obviously some white southerners are going to be upset by the removal of those statues, and in their minds much of it is separate from wanting to reinforce racism. Perhaps they could be educated about the specifically racist motivations for status erected decades after the war and their views might soften. One advantage of statue removal is that you can take action and see results. If the statue is removed, then it is gone. Reforming police departments to eliminate the racism seems much more important -- but also much more difficult, and it is difficult to measure success (or even progress).

Economic policies that benefit the poor at the expense of the rich can be implemented and their effects measured. Franklin Roosevelt did it, and we can do it again, this time making sure that blacks are included. It would probably improve the material conditions of American blacks more than anything Black Lives Matter might accomplish, even if it leaves them at a relative disadvantage with regard to whites. Yes, let's work to reduce racism, but let's not neglect other avenues for progress.

But let's go beyond the Civil War. It was a well-defined event, with fairly clear boundaries. What other boundaries can we draw?

One distinction I have heard is that when it comes to removing an offending statue, the solution is not to destroy it, but rather to put it in a museum. In a public place it does give the idea that society approves of it, while in a museum it is more clearly a piece of history, quite likely not something that society approves of any more. I think that is an excellent idea.

Looking at what a particular statue signifies seems important. For instance, we might remove a statue of Teddy Roosevelt <shown in a particular relationship to blacks and Native Americans> without deciding we need to remove all Teddy Roosevelt statues.

When it comes to historical figures, they need to be judged against people in a similar class in their own time and the range of opinions they held. By this criterion, Thomas Jefferson is still worthy of honor. (Tidbit: Sally Hemings was his late wife's half-sister and at least 3/4 white in ancestry.) His contributions to the country were not around the issue of slavery. Similarly with George Washington. Renaming our capital city and the state that is home to Seattle is just going too far.

The United States itself is based on the expropriation of land from Native Americans. No one can offer a remotely persuasive argument with regard to today's values as to why this was justified. Columbus is under attack, and that makes sense as we associate him with the entire idea of Europeans interacting with and conquering the Americas.

A lot happened in the nearly 300 years that went by after Columbus's voyages and the founding of the United States. European domination of much of the Americas became a fact, and the white cities and states on the US east coast acquired legitimacy simply because enough time went by with enough European immigrants that the issue was settled. But further encroachment was still very much a live issue. A major issue in the War of 1812 was the British desire for American settlers to not push west of the Appalachians. Their motivation might not have been the well-being and independence of Native Americans, but still, by modern standards, they were right and we were wrong.

Whites continued to take Native American lands to the point that today, there are just a few reservations. Another 250 years has gone by since the founding of the United States, and the land is occupied by a huge and very interesting country composed mostly of whites. History has overwritten the moral sin of white colonization. Most of our ancestors within the past 150 years had no personal relationship to abuses of Native Americans -- it was already a done deed. We cannot and do not have to give back the land. It would in fact be immoral to do so.

Lest we all feel comfortable in the idea that we are moral people in contrast to those who came before, I'll take the view of a likely posterity looking back at us. You don't have to be any sort of radical animal rights person to understand that factory farming is cruel. The evidence is right in front of us. Anyone who claims they don't know about it is willfully ignorant. If we were to accept regulations that might increase the price of meat and dairy by, say, 20%, we could fix a lot of it. Yet we don't. We just put it out of our minds, or don't make it a priority, or go along because everyone else goes along. Will posterity condemn us all and pull down our statues unless we were vegans? Or do we deserve a break because we had the same views as most of our fellow citizens?

I wonder about the European perspective on how to redress the wrongs of history. The Normans conquered and oppressed the Angles and Saxons, yet they had previously conquered and oppressed the Celts, who had in turn conquered and oppressed earlier peoples. I suspect it's even more complicated on the mainland. The best they could do was to stay "Stop!" around 1945 or so, and leave things pretty much the way they were at that time. People continue to migrate, but it is peaceful.