If there is any one writer I've learned the most from regarding political philosophy it's Michael Lind-along with Garry Wills and Kevin Phillips. See bottom for more on the work of these three fine writers.
A decade ago Lind evoked the need to return to what he called the radical Center. The idea made sense to me-I get the idea of a kind of radical opposition to radicalism as it were. However, years later he offers some self-criticism.
"The divisions within both parties over possible U.S. intervention in Syria mark a break from the recent pattern of partisan polarization in Washington over health care, taxes and other issues. Many political pundits will undoubtedly seize on the high-minded debate, one that is not following predictable partisan lines, as a model to emulate across a range of other issues. There’s a perennial yearning among Washington’s punditocracy, after all, to have politicians repudiate “the extremes of left and right” and search for common ground. There’s that old cliché that candidates for public office must “run toward the center” after pleasing the “extreme” constituencies in the base of the Democratic and Republican parties, and then govern from the center. Those who take this perspective often lament that many political leaders are stuck in primary mode, governing on behalf of their base."
"If the political center means nothing more than the mathematical midpoint between the policy positions of Democrats and Republicans, then it is an abstract concept, like the center of gravity of the U.S. population, which has moved from Kent County, Maryland in 1790 to Texas County, Missouri, in 2010. This kind of notional “center” does not reflect any particular constituency or worldview. Its location on the political spectrum depends on the action of genuine movements. For example, as political scientists Jacob Hacker and others have documented, the Republican party has moved far to the right in the last generation, whereas Democratic positions on most issues have remained largely stable. If “the center” is the midpoint between the parties, then the center in 2013 must be well to the right of where it was in 1993, just to keep up with the radicalism of Tea Party conservatives."
http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/articles/the-alluring-mirage-of-a-coherent-center/
Sumner's ideal economy/society is coming into sharper relief. It's an economy with low wages, low prices, and presumably lower unemployment where the low wage economy is subsidized by the govt. This is very much a supply side utopia-ie, it's basically the society we've seen over the past 30 years since Reagan. If you love the current status quo then you'll love Sumner.
I've argued in the past that I think that Market Monetarism is necessarily about fiscal austerity. Sumner is a SSer himself and he's admitted to this. However, he allows some of a more liberal or Centrist cast of mind to believe that not everyone who follows the MM argument has to follow him on everything.
I disagree with this. I think that SS fiscal policy goes hand in hand with MM monetary policy. MM is a lot more overdetermined than it at first appears.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-sadowski-and-my-apparent-war-with.html
UPDATE: For more from Lind see here
http://www.amazon.com/Next-American-Nation-Michael-Lind-ebook/dp/B003P9XI34/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649660&sr=1-6&keywords=michael+lind
http://www.amazon.com/Hamiltons-Republic-Democratic-Nationalist-Tradition/dp/0684831600/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649660&sr=1-4&keywords=michael+lind
This last link is as close to a Bible of political philosophy as there is for me.
Kevin Phillips wrote the manifesto for Republican domination interestingly enough-he gave breadth to the 'Southern Strategy' the GOP would employ successfully starting with Nixon in 1968 who Philips supported.
http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Republican-Majority-Kevin-Phillips/dp/0870000586/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649822&sr=1-9&keywords=Kevin+phillips
However, he has long since left the reservation. He was already sour on the Reagan Revolution by 1979 before it even really started.
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Money-Reckless-Politics-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B0023SDPNQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649822&sr=1-6&keywords=Kevin+phillips
A decade ago Lind evoked the need to return to what he called the radical Center. The idea made sense to me-I get the idea of a kind of radical opposition to radicalism as it were. However, years later he offers some self-criticism.
"The divisions within both parties over possible U.S. intervention in Syria mark a break from the recent pattern of partisan polarization in Washington over health care, taxes and other issues. Many political pundits will undoubtedly seize on the high-minded debate, one that is not following predictable partisan lines, as a model to emulate across a range of other issues. There’s a perennial yearning among Washington’s punditocracy, after all, to have politicians repudiate “the extremes of left and right” and search for common ground. There’s that old cliché that candidates for public office must “run toward the center” after pleasing the “extreme” constituencies in the base of the Democratic and Republican parties, and then govern from the center. Those who take this perspective often lament that many political leaders are stuck in primary mode, governing on behalf of their base."
"This analysis assumes that there is some easily-identifiable center in American politics, and that both sensible policy positions and swing voters may be found there. But the more you look for this legendary center, the harder it is to find."
"I plead guilty for having succumbed to the temptation of proposing a new public policy consensus that could win broad bipartisan support. In 2001, I co-authored with Ted Halstead The Radical Center. In the book, we argued: “‘Centrism’ itself has become something of a shallow mantra in recent American politics… We use the word radical — in keeping with its Latin derivation from “radix,” or “root” — to emphasize that we are interested not in tinkering at the margin of our inherited public, private, and communal institutions but rather in promoting, when necessary, a wholesale revamping of their component parts…” However, our attempt, somewhat similar to that of neoliberals, to provide the term “radical center” with fixed content in the form of a modernized and updated version of the mid-twentieth century New Deal settlement failed to take hold in popular usage."
"If the political center means nothing more than the mathematical midpoint between the policy positions of Democrats and Republicans, then it is an abstract concept, like the center of gravity of the U.S. population, which has moved from Kent County, Maryland in 1790 to Texas County, Missouri, in 2010. This kind of notional “center” does not reflect any particular constituency or worldview. Its location on the political spectrum depends on the action of genuine movements. For example, as political scientists Jacob Hacker and others have documented, the Republican party has moved far to the right in the last generation, whereas Democratic positions on most issues have remained largely stable. If “the center” is the midpoint between the parties, then the center in 2013 must be well to the right of where it was in 1993, just to keep up with the radicalism of Tea Party conservatives."
http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/articles/the-alluring-mirage-of-a-coherent-center/
I think the trouble is that if the Center is nothing more than the midpoint between the parties-regardless of the content of each its meaningless. If one party engages in Holocaust Denial and the other didn't do we have to find the midpoint between the arguments? Yet this is how David Brooks' often seems to see it. It seems to me that the Center is not a fixed point but constantly evolving but never settled on. After all, what constitutes a 'Centrist' position varies very widely. The real trouble in American politics is that you have a sensible Centrist party already-the Democrats. Basically the Republicans keep moving further to the Right while the Dems stay in the same basic area-the Center.
Lind also has a very good piece out regarding low wages. This is a very good topic as many conservatives like Sumner just dont see why a low-wage society should bother anyone. Sumner would argue that if worst comes to worse simply give the poor a negative income tax rate and that the drop in wages also means employers can lower prices which on net leaves the poor just as well off.
http://newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/FreedmanLind_LowWageSocialContract_2013_1.pdf
http://newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/FreedmanLind_LowWageSocialContract_2013_1.pdf
What Lind points out that is that the effect of these offsets is hardly enough to make up for the drop in low wages. He makes the point that we now live in a 'low wage social contract' where there is acceptance that many people, perhaps most people will make a low wage. In fact 86% of Americans now work in the service sector which is mostly low wage jobs-with a few very high ones in the financial sector, et. al. So Sumner et. al. want to argue that a low wage economy and society are fine because they will be offset by low prices and the negative income tax. However, this Supply Side argument has not borne fruit.
The negative income tax would have to be a lot higher than it is to truly offset low wages. Sumner was very critical of a recent Swedish proposal to give married couples a subsidy of $67,000 each for 'juIt breathing.' Doing this though would cut into poverty. He doesn't like the idea of paying people for just existing.
The EITC in its current form however, is not enough. The idea of the low wage SC is basically Supply Side theory-you cut the wages of business, increasing its profits, enabling it to cut prices while with the help of low taxes on the rich, business is also able to achieve such a high level of innovation that this further lowers prices and raises productivity, etc. The problem is that whatever business gains in profits thanks to lower wages they lose in consumption thanks to a low wage economy.
The various tax credits are not enough either. One solution is to increase the negative income tax greatly. This will run into political arguments. Ironically, while conservatives like Sumner and Friedman have pushed the negative income tax for years, recently, as Lind notes, you've had conservatives criticizing the idea that close to 50% of Americans don't pay-federal-income taxes, al Mitt Romney's 47% slur. Of course, this one sided look at things ignores all the taxes this '47%' pays in regressive payroll taxes as well as regressive state and sales taxes.
While conservatives have tempted liberals for years with the negative income tax, etc. we have other conservatives deriding things like the EITC and Child Tax Credit-as welfare, or handouts. The irony is that the Sumner-Friedman solution is for the govt to simply give money to low wage earners. The supposedly Left wing solution of the MMTers (Modern Monetary Theorists) calls for everyone who wants a job to be given a job. What is the more 'socialist' solution-having the government help those who cant find a job themselves?
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/tag/job-guarantee
Similarly raising the minimum wage would seen to be preferable to a conservative than wage subsidies. In practice however, this has not been the case. Conservatives prefer to have lots of low wage workers who then receive a govt subsidy to simply raising the MW so that workers earn a livable wage without any government handout. The negative income tax would have to be a lot higher than it is to truly offset low wages. Sumner was very critical of a recent Swedish proposal to give married couples a subsidy of $67,000 each for 'juIt breathing.' Doing this though would cut into poverty. He doesn't like the idea of paying people for just existing.
The EITC in its current form however, is not enough. The idea of the low wage SC is basically Supply Side theory-you cut the wages of business, increasing its profits, enabling it to cut prices while with the help of low taxes on the rich, business is also able to achieve such a high level of innovation that this further lowers prices and raises productivity, etc. The problem is that whatever business gains in profits thanks to lower wages they lose in consumption thanks to a low wage economy.
The various tax credits are not enough either. One solution is to increase the negative income tax greatly. This will run into political arguments. Ironically, while conservatives like Sumner and Friedman have pushed the negative income tax for years, recently, as Lind notes, you've had conservatives criticizing the idea that close to 50% of Americans don't pay-federal-income taxes, al Mitt Romney's 47% slur. Of course, this one sided look at things ignores all the taxes this '47%' pays in regressive payroll taxes as well as regressive state and sales taxes.
While conservatives have tempted liberals for years with the negative income tax, etc. we have other conservatives deriding things like the EITC and Child Tax Credit-as welfare, or handouts. The irony is that the Sumner-Friedman solution is for the govt to simply give money to low wage earners. The supposedly Left wing solution of the MMTers (Modern Monetary Theorists) calls for everyone who wants a job to be given a job. What is the more 'socialist' solution-having the government help those who cant find a job themselves?
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/tag/job-guarantee
Sumner's ideal economy/society is coming into sharper relief. It's an economy with low wages, low prices, and presumably lower unemployment where the low wage economy is subsidized by the govt. This is very much a supply side utopia-ie, it's basically the society we've seen over the past 30 years since Reagan. If you love the current status quo then you'll love Sumner.
I've argued in the past that I think that Market Monetarism is necessarily about fiscal austerity. Sumner is a SSer himself and he's admitted to this. However, he allows some of a more liberal or Centrist cast of mind to believe that not everyone who follows the MM argument has to follow him on everything.
I disagree with this. I think that SS fiscal policy goes hand in hand with MM monetary policy. MM is a lot more overdetermined than it at first appears.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-sadowski-and-my-apparent-war-with.html
UPDATE: For more from Lind see here
http://www.amazon.com/Next-American-Nation-Michael-Lind-ebook/dp/B003P9XI34/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649660&sr=1-6&keywords=michael+lind
http://www.amazon.com/Hamiltons-Republic-Democratic-Nationalist-Tradition/dp/0684831600/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649660&sr=1-4&keywords=michael+lind
This last link is as close to a Bible of political philosophy as there is for me.
Kevin Phillips wrote the manifesto for Republican domination interestingly enough-he gave breadth to the 'Southern Strategy' the GOP would employ successfully starting with Nixon in 1968 who Philips supported.
http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Republican-Majority-Kevin-Phillips/dp/0870000586/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649822&sr=1-9&keywords=Kevin+phillips
However, he has long since left the reservation. He was already sour on the Reagan Revolution by 1979 before it even really started.
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Money-Reckless-Politics-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B0023SDPNQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385649822&sr=1-6&keywords=Kevin+phillips
His book Wealth and Democracy is everything a liberal could want.
I still look at Gary Wills' Confessions of a Conservative as about as good a theory of American politics as there is.
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