ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Bob Butler 54]

Kinser

I am doubtful about arresting automation. That genie is out of the bottle.

I looked at the chart, but I find such diagrams say a lot more about the people who share the diagrams than it does about reality. There are an awful lot of extreme partisan boxes. The new media does allow various groups of extreme partisans to create alternate realities, tell each other what they want to hear, and brew up a mix of vile stereotypes aimed at those they disagree with. Granted, such groups can sometimes brew up good ideas that might be adopted by a larger consensus.

Eric also offered one of his charts, with very different boxes, and I didn’t dive into it as a diagram of reality either. I’m afraid I browse looking for anything new or constructive, but dismiss for the most part.

Our current system of representative democracy normally works with two dominant parties. This might change. This might at least temporarily already have changed.

At the moment, we arguably have three parties. The Republicans have split into establishment and tea party wings, and we still have Democrats. Two of the three have to work together to get much done. The health care issue illustrates that this might not be easy. You might be correct that the current situation isn’t just red - blue just now. We may need a third color. At least, that is my primary perspective. I have three important boxes on my diagram just now, pretty close to the three you identified. All the others are noise with various degrees of meaningfulness.

In a recent interview with the Times, your father explained that he works on an intuitive level. He makes statements that he feels are true, and isn’t too worried about facts. It worked for him for the most part during his tycoon days. It got him through the campaign.

This distance from factual reality was shared by his tea party predecessor, Sarah Palin. One gets a feeling that one can see Russia from the top of a wall that Mexico will pay for. I see this as being fey in the sense of being otherworldly, that things are not entirely of this world. I can see how these intuitions have an emotional or poetic truth behind them that a good sized part of the population certainly appreciates.

But I’m not sure one should try to govern based on fey intuition. I’m also still doubtful of your father’s people skills.

While Hillary has her flaws and a ton of baggage, she does have persistence and a knowledge of how the Congress works. She wouldn’t have given up anywhere near this soon. She understood the difficulties, and was prepared for a long patient siege. Trump? If at first you don’t succeed, give up and point fingers. I suspect he knew full well he wasn’t going to put together what he promised, providing better coverage for more people for less cost. That was always a ridiculous empty promise. I suspect he got what he wanted. He put the issue on the shelf with some plausible ability to blame others for his failed promise.

Me? The Republicans have the House, Senate and Presidency. For the moment, everything is their fault.

Or the Republicans might have those three things if they were a united party. At the moment, the Tea Party has the White House. Nobody has either branch of Congress.

Trying to isolate the red - blue divide, I see three complementary conflicts in values.

The Democrats remember the time America was Great. From FDR through JFK, big government did big things. LBJ took tax and spend too far. The impression of corruption and inefficiency built. Nixon went off the gold standard, which might have been right in the long term, but created stagflation until the economists figured out how floating currencies worked. Meanwhile, we had the Fall of Saigon, Watergate, the Oil Crisis, the Hostage Crisis which collectively generated the National Malaise. Reagan declared that government wasn’t the solution, it was the problem. This all resulted in the red unravelling values. Cut taxes and assume that the government won’t solve any problem. If the government gets involved, this will only make things worse.

The core expression of this aspect of the divide might be JFK’s claim that we would bear any burden, pay any price, met any hardship… to assure the survival and the success of liberty, as opposed to Reagan’s proposal that government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem.

A second values distinction is between the desire for rugged individualism and independence among the red population as opposed to strong communities supporting those in need among the blue. These are both understandable and even admirable, at least to me. We are at the point now, though, that many who buy into either the red or blue virtues almost automatically demonize the opposite set of virtues.

I can see the need for another perspective to develop. We talked a bit ago of the old economy of scarcity and the need for a new economy of plenty. Automation is creating too much stuff without large numbers of employees on the farm or manning the assembly lines. As software advances, more of the service sector will be hit as well. The old economy featured enough jobs to engage the work force full time, with many to most receiving benefits.

An economy of plenty might have fewer hours worked per week, living wages for those working the fewer hours, and perhaps earlier retirement.

Some Republicans push to keep minimum wages down, minimize benefits, decrease retirement benefits, and delay retirement. These might all be profitable for industry and employers. It is not the direction we need to go for a successful economy of plenty.

The Democrats are generally pushing in the right direction for the future economy, but I’ve seen no signs of an organized perspective. What do I mean by organized? In the most simple form, take the amount of work that needs to be done, divide by the number of people looking for work, thus calculate the number of hours each has to put in to get the work done, and set the minimum wage so someone working that number of hours has a living wage. Both parties are assuming the old economy is sacred. They are fighting to tweak things to benefit this constituency or that. They are not objectively standing back to see what should be done.

I see today’s health care and tax policy questions as preliminary rumblings of the old / new economy transition. The problem is in a nation where there is enough to go around, how do we distribute so everyone gets at least a reasonable minimum? Helping the healthy and wealthy with lower medical costs while cutting out many among the poor is not movement in the right direction. Tax cuts for the wealthy is not movement in the right direction. The dominant old ethos is to push for what is best for one’s own constituency, the heck with the folks lower down on the ladder. Eventually, if the new economy its to become real, a new ethos of inclusion will have to develop.

As we’ve discussed, energy and climate change are going to be problems. They are already part of the red - blue divide. Again, the Democrats are leaning in the direction the future has got to eventually go. Again, the best they can do currently is baby steps. They haven’t got near the influence to do what eventually has to be done, and your father wants to take several banana twirls backwards. I’ve long anticipated that global warming denialists are going to get far more anger from the next generation of prophets than the GIs ever got from the hippies. For the moment, though, complacency is holding firm.

I understand your selfishness. You want to advocate for those who will make you the most comfortable in your limited time on the planet. Après nous, le déluge? Those younger than you might not be able to take such a cynical selfish attitude. At some point idealistic working together for the common good is no longer dreamy woo woo. It becomes a matter of critical practical import. If you’ve got to stop Hitler, you stop Hitler. Churchill made some wonderful speeches, but was it really idealistic woo woo that had people wading onto the beach on D Day? The GIs and to a lesser extent the Boomers understand crisis, and that understanding is what made America great. Sometimes you have to get off one’s rear and get stuff done that needs to be done. Idealism can be practical, necessary and immediate.

Do the younger generations have that understanding? Do they understand that you go into crisis mode when you have no choice but to confront a crisis? Do they think people will get up off their inflatable mattresses floating in a pool just because a generational alignment has finally fallen into place?

There are many angles to look at it from, but the Democrats still have some vague shadow of the old crisis ideals while the Republicans seem enamored of the unravelling. If I truly believed in S&H, it would be inevitable that the crisis will come, that urgency and effort will again be aroused. That time hasn’t come yet. There are times when I think it might never come, that the pendulum might swing forever. There are some problems, though, that will in time force something.

There are thus many angles and perspectives from which the red - blue divide can be looked at. Some might be moved off center stage, such as some culture war stuff. Other perspectives might become more important, such as the need for a new economy of inclusion. Perhaps the red - blue labels have enough baggage associated with them that new labels allowing different perspectives might be useful.

But the red establishment, red tea party, blue divide is the angle we're stuck at just now.