I saw on The Daily Show that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently said that “extreme conservatives” don’t belong in the state. This has caused a firestorm in the right wing media. It’s a great moment for them. Conservatives always knew that liberals were non-inclusive snobs and now they have the proof. It’s typical of the Ring Wing Outrage Machine, and that’s probably why whole thing happened over two weeks ago without my noticing it.

But I’m curious how Cuomo defines “extreme conservatives.” It is very telling. They are people who are anti-choice, anti-gay, and pro-assault riffle. What stands out there is that there are no economic issues. That doesn’t surprise me, of course. In general, liberalism in the United States is defined by these kind of social issues. And Cuomo is the ultimate example of the New Democrat. On economic issues, he’s a Wall Street marionette.

I’m almost to the point of giving up. The Democratic Party has ceded so much ground on economic issues that it is now a conservative party. It is true that the Republicans now hold economic views that would fit right into a Bizarro comic. But this is what happens when the “liberal” party takes over the position of the conservative party. There is no ideological oxygen on the right and so its policies have become brain damaged.

I don’t so much see the conservative positions Cuomo mentioned as all that extreme. At least they have a reasonably large constituency, unlike many of Cuomo’s Wall Street economic policies. Gay rights is great, but I have to say, the Democrats are only about ten years ahead of the Republicans on the issue. There are still a lot of conservative Christians who have a problem with it for religious reasons—or so they’ve been told. Regardless, this absolutely will not be an issue in 20 years.

Abortion is a very similar thing, although the argument against rights is a whole lot stronger. Regardless, no one likes abortion. Americans’ opinions on the issue are nuanced to say the least. So again, there are a lot of people who are anti-choice. And a smaller, but still large, set are absolutists. As with gay rights, I think these opponents are profoundly misguided. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist—even in New York.

The assault weapon issue is just laughable. We have a huge gun problem in this country. But that problem is with handguns, not assault rifles. The focus on them is the Democratic Party desperate to do something about guns and thrashing about looking for any legislation that they might be able to pass. Look, if we liberals want to do something, we should be talking seriously about what needs to be done and not making largely symbolic legislation that motivates conservatives to come out and vote against us.

I’m sure that among the Wall Street bankers with whom Cuomo spends a lot of time, these issues are beyond the pale. But that doesn’t make them extreme. What Cuomo is doing is what New Democrats have been doing for decades: signally that he is liberal with selected social issues to distract from his economic conservatism. That’s the real story about what Cuomo said, not that such anti-gay politicians don’t fit in with New York voters. That is largely true of the bright blue state.

Today at Political Animal, Ed Kilgore wrote, Atlas Whined. In it, he discusses “venture capitalist Tom Perkins much-mocked letter to The Wall Street Journal comparing people like him to the persecuted German Jews .” And he notes that Ayn Rand would be very disappointed with such “fearful titans.” He notes, “How could she worship the Creative Capitalist if he’s cowering in his mansion?”

This is not entirely correct. Rand was very angry at the “business leaders” of her day. They then, as they had for generations before, believed that in order to stay in good standing in polite society, it was necessary to give money back to good causes. A good analogy is the way that Hollywood stars now have particular charitable causes that they support. To Rand, this screamed, “Altruism!” She wanted them to get rid of what she saw as hypocrisy.

The business community of today would be a great improvement from her perspective. What’s more, half of the political spectrum now says that by pursuing their own self interest, business owners are doing a great service to the society as Job Creators. The depth of Ayn Rand’s economic knowledge was the same as her philosophical knowledge (shallow), so she saw this as a direct outcome of her philosophy.

The truth is that the Perkins whine about the 1% being vilified by the collectivists could be taken right out of one of her essays. She would agree with Perkins and say what he wrote was only self-defense. What, after all, is John Galt’s speech, but an eight hour whine about how all the “takers” don’t understand the beneficence that all the “makers” are bringing to them? And of course, in Atlas Shrugged, that is the case. In the real world, it simply isn’t. (See Property Right for a short introduction.)

The only thing that Ayn Rand would quibble over is that venture capitalists like Tom Perkins even make the case that they are Job Creators. She would prefer them to understand her philosophy that says that people should only look out for their own self-interest. (See Enlightened Self Interest for her all-purpose caveat.) But yelling at liberals and calling them Nazis? That was Ayn Rand’s stock-in-trade.

Oh, how America, day by day, becomes what conservatives most desire: the Dickensian utopia where the rich are treated as titans and the poor know their place.

This morning, Jonathan Chait reports, Obama’s Plan to End Discrimination Against the Long-term Unemployed. Chait seems to be reasonably impressed. But as plan’s go, I file it along with things like the plan to impress a a rich man by befriending his dog and other Horatio Alger myths.

The situation for the long-term unemployed is indeed bad. As Chait shows in a graph from a new study, recently unemployed people with no experience in a particular field are four times as likely to get a call back as long-term unemployed people with experience. What’s going on is simple enough to explain. Employers just assume that if someone has been unemployed for a long time, there must be a reason. And this creates a feedback loop where the longer someone is unemployed, the harder it is for them to get a job.

Obama’s plan is to have major employers commit to not discriminating against workers in this way. And sure, even bringing up the issue is a good thing. The more people know about their biases, the better they can manage them. But it is weak tea. It reminds me of Oliver Twist saying, “Please, sir, I want some more.” But in this case, it is, “Please great and powerful Job Creator, give me at least a chance to compete against people who don’t have any of my skills.”

This touches on a broader issue with American business. In my experience, businesses would much rather hire fools and incompetents than hire one of those weirdos with skills and brains. Conservatives always claim that the government is bureaucratic, but in my experience, corporate America is even worse. What they want above all is nothing that will upset their little worlds. So despite the fact that we constantly hear that there are jobs out there but people don’t have the skills for them, the truth is that employers don’t really care. That is crystal clear when unskilled workers are called back far more than skilled workers over an issue as vague as the amount of time unemployed.

Of course, I don’t blame Obama. Actual policy to improve the economy can’t pass Congress. But fobbing off responsibility of aid for the unemployed to the rich is hardly the answer. But as answers go, it is the ultimate conservative approach: let the poor go cap-in-hand to the rich and beg like the servile dogs they are. But the long-term unemployed are not children. They are adults. Many of them are 50-somethings—middle managers and other skilled workers who any civilized society would value as the backbone of the middle class.

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

Paul Krugman quoted John Maynard Keynes, who in his 1936 masterwork The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money wrote, “The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.” This is the kind of statement that drives conservatives crazy. How can he say that? Doesn’t that man know anything about economics?! But it is dead on, of course.

The main problem I have with economic conservatism generally is that it simply assumes that the market correctly picks winners and losers. But that isn’t even true if you accept that the winners and losers are correct. We have a political system that allows the winners to continue to enrich themselves through political favors. In fact, it is hard to find a rich person who has not made a very large amount of money directly from government contracts and various forms of special treatment.

My biggest problem, however, revolves around who the winners and losers are. It isn’t because I disagree with who ought to win and who ought to lose, although I certainly do disagree. My problem is with conservatives’ general unwillingness to admit that we have a society that selects for a certain kind of winner. And there is a reason that they are reluctant to admit this. Doing so has policy implications. If different political and economic structures select for different kinds of people, it does not justify the enormous amount of inequality in the world, because the distribution is largely an outgrowth of how the game is set up.

You probably saw the story last week, World’s Richest 85 People Now Worth Same Amount as Poorest 3.5 Billion. And you probably saw the followup, Reality TV Star Kevin O’Leary: It’s “fantastic” That 85 People Have More Wealth Than 3.5 Billion. O’Leary is typical of conservatives who think that all that is stopping a small town boy in Somalia from becoming rich is the lack of enough really wealthy people in distant lands to look up to. Now it would be one thing if those 85 people started off as a random sample of the world’s population, but of course, they don’t.

Consider Mr. O’Leary himself. He was born into the middle class in Canada where everyone gets basic medical care and education. After getting his bachelor’s and MBA from public universities in Canada, he started a business. Of course, his mother had $10,000 to give him to start the company. That in itself is a huge advantage. But the company was a success. It was, not surprisingly, doing nothing more than packaging up freeware and shareware that other people who had real skills created. Still, I don’t doubt that O’Leary is a smart and capable manager. But his success is owed to two very big things: his many and continuous environmental advantages, and luck.

O’Leary is estimated to be worth $300 million. But it just so happens that at this very moment, I am working with a brilliant young man on a high tech start up. It is, even now, far beyond anything that O’Leary could ever do. And we do hope that some day we can make some money with it or at least leverage it into a job. But we don’t look up to people like O’Leary, much less Carlos Slim Helu. People like that aren’t innovators. They are people who take the innovations of people like my partner and monetize them. To a large extent, we do the work just to see if we can.

But our society does not reward us a great deal for our work and initiative. And the more “advanced” our economy gets, the more that’s true. In fact, you can see it every week on O’Leary’s own show, The Shark Tank, where actual entrepreneurs stand up in front of a bunch of rich people and try to get money. Like most “reality” shows, it seems totally fake to me. What’s more, it doesn’t have much to do with how venture capital works. But it shows the way the game works: capital gets huge rewards, even though there is actually a lot of capital floating around with nothing to do. What the rich really want are safe investments that pay a lot of money. And we have a system set up so that they generally can get just that, even though that’s not supposed to be how it works. Seeing the show, I’m often struck with the fact that the “sharks” in the chairs are usually passing judgement on their betters.

It provides a great example of what’s wrong with our society. It is often the case that one of the “sharks” gets offended when one of the presenters turns them down. I’ve even seen one shark be offended on behalf of another shark, “You mean you’re going to turn down his offer?!” How dare they! Because in the world of the conservative, the rich aren’t just rich, they are better. And so they spin this yarn of bullshit about the “free” market and its magical powers. Thus, it isn’t necessary to provide actual opportunity to everyone. All they have to do is provide the example of the “Great 85” or the “sharks” and their wise beneficence. But the truth is just as Keynes pointed out. We have an economy that is an “arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.”

Afterword

Just to be clear: I am not saying that bringing an innovation to maker is worthless. Not at all! But our society rewards that part of the process as though it were the hardest or most elusive part. But it isn’t. Everyone knows that it isn’t. But that has been the way that the system has been set up, and so people accept it as the way things ought to be. But it is a choice. Unfortunately, it is a choice that keeps making the already rich richer. If Kevin O’Leary had to come up with a great new idea for a business, I think he would be stumped.

Ross Douthat’s last column was about—Wait for it!—how the decline of marriage is causing income inequality, More Imperfect Unions. But that’s really just the pretext. The actual point of the article is to complain that liberals are not willing to look at evidence, the way he and other conservative “reformers” are. It’s a funny claim, given that not only have liberals yielded on some of this nonsense, but the Democratic Party actually passed legislation. A large part of “ending welfare as we know it” was about reforming the social ills of the poor that were supposedly holding them back from becoming nice middle class people.

Conservative Concessions

Douthat starts with conservative concessions that he doubtless thinks are major. He says that conservatives ought to admit that mass incarceration and “creative destruction” have “often made it harder for low-income men to find steady work.” (They have also made men with steady work unable to support a family, but Douthat doesn’t seem interested in that issue.) But the only policy recommendation he has is maybe a bit more along the lines of the earned income tax credit. So he, a supposed conservative reformer, is offering up less than the bare minimum here. There is no discussion of unions, which have been effectively destroyed thanks to the work of conservative US government policy. And somehow the decade’s long attack on the middle class is going to be reverse by subsidizing minimum wage pay checks? I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but the government already subsidizes minimum wage work. And this is a subsidy not of the worker but of the employers.

It gets worse. He claims, “Right now, I think some conservatives—though not enough Republican politicians—are willing to concede these points.” If by “not enough Republican politicians” Douthat means “none at all,” then I’m with him. I’m sure that Douthat can point to a handful of politicians who might give lip service to this. But when it comes down to it, who in Congress is willing to redistribute even a penny to the poor? As Jonathan Chait has pointed out recently, even the couple of policy initiatives designed to encourage marriage just take money away from one set of poor people to give it to another. This isn’t serious policy.

(This is something that really annoys me about “reformers” like Douthat. They are forever claiming that plans like Rubio’s are serious when they are just for show. I’ll admit that when it comes to immigration reform, Republicans have put forward some actual plans. But when it comes to doing something about the poor, the Republican Party is only interested in looking like they are doing something. And even if they backed something like Rubio’s plan, it would hardly be a compromise: taking from one group that they don’t care about to give to another group they don’t care about.)

Liberals Won’t Compromise

But that’s all preamble. After talking about what little he thinks conservatives need to concede, Douthat gets to his real point, which is that while the conservatives are looking at the evidence and changing, those liberals have just ossified:

I think reason that Douthat doesn’t see a readiness among liberals to make any concessions is that they don’t think conservatives are serious. Liberals are open to policies that will encourage marriage. But it doesn’t help liberals to talk about this kind of stuff publicly when people like Douthat are only pushing the “marriage is the cure for poverty” narrative because they think marriage is a good in itself. We have an observation: income inequality is very high and it is getting worse. Solution: ban abortion! So the solution to a huge social ill is exactly the policy that conservatives always want. There are very real reasons for liberals to disregard the conservatives on this matter. But liberals are willing to discuss this stuff. I’ll come back to this later.

Conservatives Aren’t Offering Anything

The biggest issue here is that Douthat has defined conservative concessions so vaguely without any actual policy ideas that they mean nothing. Then he contrasts them with very explicit policy: limit abortion and eliminate no-fault divorce. I think that Douthat is disingenuous on the former and misinformed on the latter. He proposes making second term abortions illegal. But 90% of all abortions take place in the first term. So is this really going to do anything for marriage or is it just a way to pander to the Republican base that thinks that all abortions and many forms of birth control out to be outlawed?

As for no-fault divorce: I don’t especially see the problem. This is not a huge issue for liberals. The main concern is that woman in abusive relationships will not be able to get out of them. According to the Stanford Business School study comparing states with and without no-fault divorce, having it reduced suicides in women by 20%, murder rate of women by a small amount, and domestic violence by 33%. So liberals aren’t ignoring the facts, as Douthat claims; they are just focusing on different facts. But as long as there are safeguards to protect women in these situations, I don’t see a major problem. (Or is Douthat arguing that keeping women in abusive relationships is a social good?) I certainly don’t see liberals completely closed off from discussing this issue.

It is interesting that the party of “freedom” is so interested in depriving people of freedom. I understand in abortion because social conservatives believe that the fetus’ rights are equal to or greater than the rights of the mother. But no-fault divorce?! It may well be that it is a social ill that is keeping the poor in poverty. But there can be no doubt that it is a great deprivation of individual rights. After all, marriage is a contract. If people want out of a contract, what gives the state the right to stop them? Modern conservatism doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Liberals Are Willing to Compromise

My position is that economic policy trumps most other things. So I’m willing to talk about anything. And so are others. What I’m not willing to do is offer up a ban on second term abortions in exchange for taking money away from single parents to give it to married parents. A compromise is when you give something in exchange for getting something. And if the best that conservative “reformer” Ross Douthat can do is provide regrets about past policy and the idea that maybe a little redistribution would be okay, then what exactly is the conservative movement offering? I can tell you: nothing.