Over at Vox, Dylan Matthews wrote a very interesting article, Conservatives Love This Deeply Misleading Factoid About Poverty in America. In this particular case, he’s referring to Rich Lowry at National Review. He didn’t like Ta-Nehisi Coates new book, Between the World and Me. That’s just because, as Charlie Pierce would say, Coates must be wrong, because it isn’t about race because it is never about race. But in the “review,” Lowry claimed, “Among the people who do these things, according to the research of Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, about 75 percent attain the middle class, broadly defined.” The “things” are three norms: work full-time, graduate from high school, and be 21 years old and married before having children.

The problem with this kind of reasoning is that it is mostly question begging. It’s kind of like saying, “The problem with poor people is that they don’t have any money!” The three “things” aren’t as clearly tautologies. But as Matthews noted, full-time work is hardly a norm. It isn’t surprising that people with full-time jobs are more likely to be in the middle class! And Matthews argues that roughly the same is true for the other norms, which ought to be obvious to everyone.

The big thing here is that correlation is confused with causation. And it is even worse than that, because if there is causation, it almost certainly goes the other direction. We already know that America has some of the worse economic mobility of the advanced economies. Let’s look for a moment at high school graduation rates. There are lots of aspects of this. But let’s look at the economics of it. Schools are funded with property taxes. So rich students go to better schools and poor students go to worse schools. And then poor students end up leaving school more often. Who could ever have predicted that?!

The waiting and marrying is similar. Matthews pointed out that birth control availability is directly correlated with wealth. So it isn’t surprising that the poor would have more children out of wedlock. But in addition to this, there is the waiting question. Generally, young people put off marriage for one reason: college. Why should a young person with no real prospects wait to start a normal adult life? So all three of the “norms” beg the question to one extent or another. But that doesn’t stop conservatives from using such factoids.

What is perhaps most interesting about all of this, is that conservatives are only too happy to shove this in the face of the poor, “It’s all your own fault!” But when it comes to each of these “norms,” conservatives want to deprive the poor of easy access to them. They want a strong dollar and low inflation — both of which keep employment down. They want more inequality in education. Rich kids get trips to the museum and poor kids get metal detectors and another drill on how to take a multiple choice test. But not to worry, a poor child has an equal chance of being the next Einstein! And conservatives not only want to make birth control harder to get — they want to deprive children of even learning the science of sex.

Based upon all this, to be a conservative is to not care about anyone but yourself. Because they aren’t just willing to use questionable data to justify themselves. After all, everyone makes mistakes. But they clearly use faulty data that they know are only made worse by their own policy preference. It’s really vile.

Matt Zwolinski published a paper earlier this year, Property Rights, Coercion, and the Welfare State: The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income for All. It is hard not to applaud it, because I find it rare for libertarians to take the issue of property rights seriously. They usually assume that property rights are a given and never address how they are actually liberty destroying. What’s more, this is especially true in that property is passed from generation to generation, so poor people are in no way given equal liberty. It is indeed like being invited to play a game of Monopoly after all the properties have been bought.

Zwolinski argues that in order to justify private property, the society must see to it that everyone is still able to make a living. With the standard Lockean proviso, the idea was that property rights were fine so long as there was still a lot of free land so that anyone who wanted to make a living off it could. It’s all very interesting, because modern conservatives still seem to live in this world where literally no one could be unemployed because there was always land to farm. They haven’t noticed that there isn’t free land to farm and the rest of us are therefore dependent (in the most abased way) on the rich.

So the idea here is to yield the point and say that all people should be given a base income, because the way that we’ve structured our society greatly limits their options. Since people can’t just farm a fallow field, society owes everyone a living. I’ve been skeptical of Zwolinski’s work before. But this particular argument is so much more enlightened than most conservative thought. The reigning theory today is that the society owes the individual noting at all, but somehow owes some individuals lots because of the history that ended with the current division of property.

But Matt Bruenig countered Zwolinski’s article, Why Have Property at All? He noted that if all a given governing system has to do is make sure people are better off than they would be otherwise, then pretty much any system works. He noted that this was especially true with social democratic systems — we have plenty of data on that. So basically, although the “basic income for all” might make libertarianism less horrible, it doesn’t distinguish it. (It’s also interesting that libertarianism as most people picture it probably does not pass the Lockean proviso.)

Bruenig doesn’t go into this, but there is a practical issue. In a social democracy, we have a system of government that is strong enough to perpetuate itself. I’ve never heard a compelling argument that a libertarian system wouldn’t quickly and predictably turn into a feudal system. With nothing to stop people from accumulating as much power (including military power) as they want, what stops them from turning their little sections of the world into dictatorships? I get that Zwolinski, as an academic, understands that private property necessarily comes with certain responsibilities. But certainly Mitt Romney doesn’t. And who is it that is going to have the power in the coming libertarian utopia? Certainly not academics.

But Bruenig’s main point is that it is bizarre for a libertarian to understand that private property really does limit liberty, but then turn himself into a pretzel in order to salvage private property. Bruenig noted, “The strong move for libertarians here is to actually go back to the origination of the term ‘libertarian,’ which had to do with anarchist communists.” So why don’t they do that? Well, he provides the main answer: they are “propertarians who masquerade as lovers of liberty.” In as much as they think about it, libertarians always start with the idea of the sanctity of private property. And this is why liberty ends up being defined relative to the government even while all the liberty destroying acts of the private sector are ignored.

John Patty at Mischiefs of Faction has a theory about why there are so many Republicans running for president, Many Men, Many Supporters, United in Anger. Maybe — to some extent. I don’t think there is any more anger on the right, left, or center — but I will allow that the right has a whole industry built on fanning the flames of anger. Martin Longman over at Booman Tribune agrees with me, Why Are There So Many Candidates? He puts forward some practical ideas, like the effect of money in politics. You know: every candidate has his own billionaire. But I don’t think that is so important either.

I think the issue is more along the lines of what Daniel McCarthy said in A Line-up of Generic Conservative Candidates. But he isn’t really interested in the why question. He says that it doesn’t matter that there are so many candidates; they will start to disappear after the debates. The bigger problem is that for all the candidates, there really isn’t much in terms of disagreements. He noted that Rubio is posturing as a hawk and Rand as a dove, but they both jumped on the anti-Iran-deal criticism. He’s absolutely right: there really is no substantive differences between them.

And that, I think, is why there are so many candidates. If there are no issues to discuss, why not a brain surgeon who doesn’t believe in evolution? Or consider the case of Donald Trump. He’s the one candidate with some serious conservative apostasy. But he’s doing well because ideas don’t matter. It’s all about marketing. Who can talk the toughest? Bray the loudest? So why not a reality television star? Or an indicted governor? Or a failed corporate CEO? Or the brother of the worst president in history? Or for that matter, me?

This is going to be an election of, “Yes, but…” Bobby Jindal will say, I think we need to 10,000 more M1 Abrams tanks.” And Lindsey Graham will say, “Yes, but I think it should be 20,000!” Jeb Bush will suggest that they lower the top marginal tax rate to 25%, and Rick Perry will say, “Yes, but we should take it down to 15%.” And Ted Cruz will say, “Yes, yes, but we should just destroy the IRS!” Rick Santorum will say that we should make abortion illegal. And Mike Huckabee will say, “Yes, but we need to kill all the gays too.” It will be like that: a race to the bottom.

They can all fight over issues that won’t come up because they all start with positions that are so extreme that they will be difficult to enact even with complete control of Washington. So Republican Party primary voters have no real choice. This is like a beauty pageant. But instead of the looks of the candidates, the voters are expected to judge based upon grandstanding. Would a single Republican nominee be against repealing Obamacare? What about abandoning the Iranian nuclear treaty? Would any of them be against making the entire United States “right to work”? Or make a blanket ban on abortion? I think the answer to these questions is clearly no.

So why shouldn’t Scott Walker run for president? On the Democratic side, someone like Keith Ellison can look at the Democratic presidential nomination and think, “Bernie Sanders is already pushing the issues that I care about.” But if there were ten Bernie Sanders running for the Democratic nomination, why not Keith Ellison? In a world were all the candidates are generic as a practical matter, and where all the arguments are purely theoretical, there is no reason not to have 15 candidates. Perhaps we could use more. Maybe a few more with curly hair, a tall one, a blind one. Who knows what flavor of rigid conservative ideology the Republican base is going to prefer.

Henry Farrell wrote a great article at Crooked Timber on Wednesday, A Brief Theory of Very Serious People. He argued that what’s really going on with Very Serious People (VSP) is a kind of group think. And this is made pernicious because the VSP exist in a media framework that takes what they say as always being right and so magnifies their biases. But I think there is a touch of question begging here. Why is it that a media framework exists that allows this? And I think the answer to that is that the VSP are the basis of the liberal class: the apologists for the power elite — the great bulwark against revolution.

All you have to see is that the VSP just so happen to always be pushing the interests of the power elite. This is how we get the likes of William Saletan, who considers himself to be a “centrist.” But this supposed centrism consists of economic conservatism and social liberalism — the very opposite of populism. And his opinions are not moderate; they are instead rather extreme in both areas. He is neither a centrist on economic nor social issues. It’s like saying a hardwood box is soft because the inside in empty; in point of fact, if you banged your head on the box, you would see that it is not soft.

Now I can’t say if the VSP hold these opinions explicitly to curry favor with the power elite. Because the truth is that the interests of the VSP and the power elite are the same. In many — perhaps even most — cases, the VSP are the power elite. But the way this works is very clear. The VSP are in favor of cutting Social Security, because they plan to work at their cushy jobs well into their 70s. They are in favor of keeping taxes low, because they “make” a lot of money. They are in favor of education “reform,” because they send their kids to private schools. What’s more, they have friends who work in the “reform” movement. They aren’t too keen on the minimum wage, because they don’t know anyone who makes that little. But they do have friends in the LGBT community, so they are in favor of equal rights for them. People of their class know how an unplanned pregnancy can ruin a life, so they support reproductive rights.

Usually, the VSP make the most tired of arguments. They are some of the biggest supporters of conventional wisdom. But not always. The VSP love to push counter-intuitive ideas — but only when those ideas help the power elite. Raising the minimum wage might seem like it would help the poor, but they argue that it won’t. They argue this because of a collection of ideas from free market dogma, which might apply if we actually had a free market. But the VSP never get to the end of that reasoning chain, because the moment they get to a conclusion that helps the rich and tells the poor to shut up, the VPS know they are done.

But most of all, the VSP love “tough decisions.” They love to push the ideas that cause a lot of pain in society because they think it makes them seem strong. Of course, making a tough decision is one that ought to be applied to oneself. But the supposed tough decisions of the VSP only result in pain for people well removed from them. It is not tough for me to decide that Khalid Bin Mohsen Shaari ought to lose some weight. It is a tough decision for me to go out and run each night rather than sit at home and watch reruns of Arrested Development.

And this, I think, is what really matters about the VSP: they actually think that they are serious. They are so unplugged from the real world, that they think that reducing inflation by throwing 10 million people they don’t know out of work is a sign of how seriously they take policy. But the actual work that VSP are expected to do is things like arguing to keep inflation down, because that’s what the rich want. So when they make such “tough” decisions, they are not pushing against expectations. They are instead doing what is expected and therefore easy. And that is why they transcend being simply wrong and move on to being some of the most offensive (Very Serious) people on the planet.

Medicare is hated by conservative elites. And it was hated long before it even existed. In 1961, Ronald Reagan said, “We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” He was talking about what would become Medicare. It’s silly in a way, but also callous and hateful. Now, of course, conservative elites have a problem because the one group that consistantly votes for conservative candidates is totally dependent upon Medicare. They mostly have sunset years because of the medical care that Medicare provides. Although I will admit that many of them do spend a lot of time telling young people about how great things used to be.

The truth is that Medicare has a problem: it costs a lot. This fact is often used by conservatives to claim that Social Security is not sustainable. It’s nonsense, but fundamentally Medicare is not sustainable. But it is true that Medicare is not sustainable. This is because we pay about twice as much for the same medical care as people in other advanced countries like Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. Medical inflation seems to be slowing down. But if things don’t improve, no one will be able to afford healthcare in America. Now that’s an issue of freedom that Reagan ought to have been worried about.

But conservatives are not interested in dealing with Medicare problems reasonably. The truth is that the elderly would just be squeezed out of the private insurance market. And the one thing that would have any chance at all of stopping that would be Obamacare, which conservatives also want to destroy. There isn’t a lot of honest discussion about healthcare on the right. Conservatives just want to destroy any system that will actually cover people. And to be honest, I’m not sure why this is. It seems to be some kind of ideological gut reaction that is not based on anything rational.

Now the most “reasonable” man running for the Republican presidential nomination is Jeb Bush. And I just read in Think Progress, Jeb Bush Quietly Suggests “Phasing Out” Medicare. And it’s the same old thing: let’s keep Medicare for those who now have it but then get rid of it for those who will soon need it as much or more. Or to put it more bluntly: let’s keep Medicare for the people who currently vote Republican and screw over everyone else.

This is always phrased as something that we must do for fiscal reasons. We just can’t afford to fund Medicare! But there are two big things wrong with this. First is just that the costs are not going away. Older people will still need medical care. So the question is only and forever who is going to pay. Second is that benefits determine taxes. There is this bizarre idea that many politicians and pundits have that somehow you could get rid of Social Security benefits but just keep on collecting those payroll taxes.

Ideology trumps everything in the conservative movement. They don’t like Medicare because it is “socialized medicine.” That doesn’t mean that they actually know what socialized medicine is. (Medicare is actually socialized insurance, not socialized medicine.) It is just a conservative bogeyman. But the press really needs to do a better job of covering this stuff. Bush needs to be asked what he thinks should be done to help the elderly who won’t get Medicare. I know what Bush actually thinks: nothing. But it would at least be fun to hear him say what I know he would: buying insurance across state lines; tort reform; high deductible plans — the usual conservative answers to every healthcare problems that would, in fact, do little if anything to address the problems.

Update (24 July 2015 10:33 am)

I didn’t realize just how much Medicare spending had leveled off. This is from Paul Krugman. It shows that per patient Medicare costs in inflation adjusted dollars have stopped growing. Amazing.