The Conservative Aristocratic Ideal

There was an interesting op-ed last week in the conservative paper The New York Sun written by W.'s former head speech writer, Michael Gerson, entitled Decline of Upward Mobility. He notes that America has less upward mobility than many other nations including tax heavy countries like Finland and Denmark and quotes John Morton of the Pew Charitable Trusts: "In America, more than other countries the circumstances of your birth have more to say about where you end up than how we tend to think of ourselves."

No, America is not the ideal country to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The "American dream" seems to work better in Scandinavia nowadays. As Gerson notes:

"Conservatives rightly reject a leveling equality as a social goal, which can only be imposed by coercion at a tremendous cost to human liberty and human flourishing. But in the absence of economic equality, economic mobility becomes an essential moral commitment.

When a society has neither equality nor mobility, it is an aristocracy. Conservatism accepts inequality as an economic fact of life — but it cannot accept the existence of a class-ridden society where inequality is hereditary and permanent."

I would argue that conservatism not only accepts inequality, it embraces it. The conservative ideal is inherently aristocratic. Those that are wealthy, through low taxes and government policies that come to the aid of big business, stay wealthy. Those that are poor stay poor. If it is true that as Gerson claims, economic mobility is an essential moral commitment, then conservative ideology is by its construction immoral.

As Gerson notes, we are currently in an economic boom that has not aided the middle class or the poor. There has been no "trickle down" to those who are in need. Instead, the wealthy have been transformed into the "super rich." We have achieved a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age before the Great Depression.

By my reading, this is precisely the kind of economic progress that the Reagan Revolution was intended to create. Taxes were dramatically lowered for the wealthy; the government decided its role was to serve as handmaiden to Fortune 500 companies. In the process, we mortgaged this country's future by consistently spending beyond our means. The Reagan Revolution and its continuation under W. has been a disaster for the working people of this country. It has crippled the American dream of economic mobility and in its place has created a new American aristocracy.

Who is benefiting from the current economic boom aside from those that are already rich? An article in Foreign Affairs this summer (sorry, no online version is available) by Scheve and Slaughter looked at economic progress by education level. The only educational group that is making gains is the upper tier of the educational ladder: Ph.D.s, MBA's, JD's, and MD's. If you have achieved that level of education (which constitutes less then 4% of the workforce), the current economy has been wonderful. Anything less in terms of education and you are hurting.

What this might mean is that the American Dream just might be viable if you spend six or more years in study beyond high school. It suggests that without very advanced education, your prospects in this country are dim. Given that there is little demand for more lawyers, doctors and Ph.D.s, there may be not much of an opportunity to pull yourself up through education.

Fundamental to the Reagan Revolution was the idea that lower taxes for the wealthy would benefit everyone. There was no valid theoretical basis to this assertion. Republicans still spout it and it's a mainstay in the economic platforms of every major Republican presidential candidate this year. It's nonsense. Lower taxes for the wealthy benefit no one but the wealthy. They serve to create a group of wealthy people that continues for generations. There is as Gerson notes a word for such a group: aristocracy.

Prior to the Great Depression, taxation of Americans was a minimal affair. The reason for this was simple. American government was tiny. There were little in the way of social services. We saw little need for foreign intervention and as a result our military was small. The economic policies of the FDR years and WWII changed all of that. Government, social services and the military, has grown dramatically over the last seven decades.

Conservatives believe that the military investment is necessary, but the social service investment isn't. Liberals believe the opposite is true, but there are so few liberals in roles of leadership that military investment is unquestioned and Congress is extremely hawkish. Regardless, both groups believe in big government. We have now have a large government in place and it isn't going away. Its size reflects the desires of our leaders.

How we pay for this large government of ours is an open question. In the Eisenhower years, the wealthy were taxed heavily with tax rates as high as 70 percent. Since that time, it has been conventional wisdom that such high rates are not productive for this country. But the pendulum has swung too far. We tax the wealthy so lightly that we cannot pay our bills. Currently, we simply print more money. Essentially, we have decided to leave our debt to future generations.

As a result of our low taxation of the wealthy, we have created both an aristocracy and a country saddled with debt. Neither are desirable. When we hear this crop of Republican candidates talk about the benefits of the Reagan Revolution and essentially pledge to be, like W., a continuation of the legacy of Reagan, we should cringe. What they are saying is that what's best for the super rich is best for America. And that just isn't so.