I heard Dean Baker on the Sam Seder Show on Air America my way into work this morning. He’s released his latest book, The Conservative Nanny State as a free ebook. It contains information and insight such as this:
As this book has argued, it is ridiculous for progressives to embrace a position that puts the government acting in the public interest in opposition to the market. The market is an incredibly powerful force. Good policy seeks to harness it in ways that produce desirable social outcomes. It is much easier to have the river flow in the right direction, than to try to block its path and have it flow backwards. The nanny state conservatives have spent the last quarter century putting in place a set of policies and rules that ensure that the river flows in a way that sends income upwards. If these rules are not challenged, then it will be impossible to design policies that ensure that the bulk of the population enjoys a decent standard of living.
It is also ridiculous to claim that conservatives don’t like government or that they don’t run it well. It is true that conservatives don’t like big government social programs, but that is because they want to redistribute income upward and big government social programs are designed to provide security for the entire population. But conservatives are enthusiastic supporters of the big government policies that send income flowing upward, and they are quite effective in running the sectors of government that bring about this end.
In the Reagan and Bush administrations (as was also the case in the Clinton administration) there were no serious problems with foreign doctors or other highly paid professionals practicing in the United States and competing down the wages of U.S. professionals, as the government quite effectively limited such competition. The Fed has been quite successful on several occasions in raising interest rates and keeping millions of people from holding jobs. Pfizer, Microsoft, and Time-Warner have been able to have their patents and copyrights successfully enforced not only in the United States, but increasingly across the globe, as U.S. trade negotiators have forced other countries to provide stronger patent and copyright protection in recent trade agreements. The nanny state conservatives even gave the government an enhanced role as a bill collector in the bankruptcy law that Congress passed in 2005.
The reality is that the nanny state conservatives want a big role for the government in the economy and they are very effective in managing the government when it comes to having it do the things that they care about. They might not do a good job in saving the people of New Orleans from a hurricane, but saving poor people is not the agenda of the nanny state conservatives. Their agenda is making sure that no one mass produces copies of Windows without Microsoft’s permission. Enforcing this type of monopoly, and other interventions that distribute income upward, is the role for government preferred by the nanny state conservatives, and the government performs these functions very well under their watch.
In addition to being essential for the effective design of government policy, reframing the debate is also crucial for the prospects for political success. The basic point is very simple: if progressives argue their positions using a script written by conservatives, then we lose. If we argue about “free trade” agreements, which have as one of their primary purposes increasing patent and copyright protection, then we start with a huge disadvantage. Even worse, progressives will sometimes talk about restricting drug patents (as in requiring compulsory licensing for essential medicines) as a form of interference with the free market. The hearts of the nanny state conservatives must be filled with joy when they hear their own rhetoric spouted passionately from the mouths of their political opponents.
The nanny state conservatives have largely been running the political show in the United States over the last quarter century. This is due in part to the fact that the liberal/progressive opposition has been so incredibly confused in trying to lay out an alternative framework. At the moment, there is nothing on the table that passes the laugh test in either its policy coherence or political appeal.
In order to have any hope at succeeding, we will have to move beyond the political framing of the nanny state conservatives. Many people have become comfortable with the framing “we like the government, they like the market,” but it is both wrong and politically ineffective. If liberals/progressives insist on adhering to this framework, then they guarantee themselves continuing failure in the national political debate. This framing would be fine if the point is to simply show up and be the perennial losers of national politics, but if the point is to actually change the world in a way that makes it better for the bulk of the population, then we must be prepared to move beyond the ideology of the conservative nanny state.
So if you’re interested in approaching political and economic debate from an educated, left-leaning perspective, you should probably download the ebook and read it. No, really. Read it.
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