Rising Tide Economics

One of John F. Kennedy’s most memorable lines was that “A rising tide lifts all boats.”  He was trying to help the American public understand that when business prospers, so do the rest of us.  And, of course, thanks to his tax cut, that is exactly what happened.

Nowadays the Bureaucratic (aka Democratic) Party has forgotten this lesson.  Its partisans do not seem to realize that the converse is true, namely that “A falling tide lowers all boats.”  Barack Obama and his allies apparently believe that when you impoverish the rich, somehow everyone else benefits.

Liberals clearly assume that when they transfer resources from the haves to the have-nots, our aggregate wealth increases.  This is comparable to imagining that when one takes a bucket of water out of the deep part of the ocean and pours it into the shallows that the ocean as a whole rises.

We glimpse this mindset in operation when the president insists that paying out unemployment benefits indefinitely will somehow create more jobs.  Were this true, the sensible policy would be to encourage more people to be fired so that everyone could collect government checks, thereby making the country astronomically well off.

We also see this attitude in proposals to increase the minimum wage.  Never mind that a million people would lose their jobs; those who got raises would spend more and hence generate greater employment.  Following this logic, the minimum wage should be raised to at least $100. an hour.  Think of how much the recipients of this largesse could then purchase.

Liberal blinders are such that they only see the good they propose.  They are utterly oblivious to the fact that when they give to some, they must begin by taking away from others.  They do not realize that this is worse than a zero-sum game; that it is a game in which everyone loses because the source of wealth has been cut off.

When I worked at a psychiatric hospital, one of our teenage patients was being troublesome.  As a result, the staff recommended a behavior modification program in which she would be rewarded for good conduct.  The question was: What should this reward be?

It was decided that because she liked to listen to her radio, she should be allowed to do so when she was good.  The problem was that they first had to take away her radio—a dreadful punishment.  Her response was: You can take that radio and put it where the sun don’t shine.

Is the America public capable of connecting the dots the way this young girl did?  Will voters ever realize that by confiscating the wealth of some, they are reducing that available for others?  In other words, first we must all get punished and then a few will receive a tiny reward.

Liberals castigate objections to this policy as “trickle down” economics.  They say that refusing to steal from the wealthy is tantamount to stealing from the poor. But they are one hundred percent wrong.  Stealing from any of us is stealing from all of us.

A society that does not reward effort and creativity gets neither.  A society that attempts to build up its losers by tearing down its winners begets only more losers.  We, as a society, do ourselves no good by allowing envy to dictate our economic policies.

So I say those of us who want everyone to be better off should start advocating “Rising Tide” economics.  We should not dissipate our energies by fending off the incursions of the social justice crowd—but actively promote a superior alternative.

“Social Justice,” as championed by liberals, is not justice at all.  It is equalized squalor gussied up as a spoonful of sugar.  It is not a rising tide, but a mudflat in which no one can drown—but no one can swim.  If this is the ideal around which we are supposed to rally, then God help us—especially the poor.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Hope and Change Revisited

As an academic, I love to play with ideas.  Furthermore, as a sociologist, I love conjuring with new ways of understanding how societies operate.  Putting these together, I have begun a new theoretical project, i.e., trying to understand how societies change.

Consequently, several weeks ago during a conversation with Daniel Papp, the president of Kennesaw State University, I suggested that revolutions never work; that they never bring about big changes.  Dr. Papp immediately corrected me.  No, he essentially said, they never bring about big positive changes.

At first I was taken slightly aback, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was absolutely right.  The French Revolution, for example, did bring huge temporary changes, but these were drenched in blood and shot through with injustices.

Once upon a time, before he became a full-time administrator, Dr. Papp was an expert on the Soviet Union.  As such, one of his singular achievements was predicting the regime’s downfall long before it occurred.  The same sort of foresight should have been possible for the rest of us regarding the debacles visited upon the United States by Barack Obama.

Come to think of it, more than a few of us predicted “hope and change” would come to no good.  We Cassandra’s wondered, for instance, what types of changes Obama had in mind.  He didn’t say—and most voters didn’t ask.  Change—any change— they assumed would be for the good.

So enthused were bystanders with the soon-to-be president’s rhetoric that he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for what he was going to do.  Surely someone opposed to George W. Bush’s military adventurism must reduce international tensions merely by bringing American troops home.

So how has that worked out?  With Syria aflame, Iraq lurching toward anarchy, Iran poised to get the atomic bomb, Egypt enduring further repression, the embers of Benghazi barely cooled, the Russian president disrespecting our own with impunity, Korea tearing its dear leader’s opponents to pieces with dogs, and China testing our political resolve at nearly every turn, have things really improved?

Barack Obama may not be a Moslem, but he has embraced the advice of radical Islamists that the United States retreat from providing international leadership.  Yet who now believes this was for the better?

How about at home?  Remember that a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus was going to create millions of jobs by paying for “shovel ready” projects.  Well, those projects weren’t ready; nevertheless the president’s political allies were more than prepared to scoop up the “honest graft” he dispensed.

Then, to be sure, there has been ObamaCare.  It promised a total overhaul of the American medical system so that the uninsured would be covered.  Instead many millions lost their insurance and doctors, while millions of others will be jammed into a Medicaid system that doesn’t have the resources to serve them.

Yes, this is change, but is it an improvement?  Obama and his associates are betting that a surge in rhetoric will convince us it is.  If they tell us often enough, and with sufficient razzle-dazzle, we will no longer be deceived by our lying eyes.  The young, especially, given their idealism and lack of experience, will be persuaded the best is yet to come.

What Obama and his crowd have never learned, and probably never will, is that large changes are fraught with surprises.  There are always unexpected consequences!  Many of which can be very nasty!

Nonetheless, Obama and his disciples believe he is brilliant.  They are convinced that his unrivaled insights and undoubted rhetorical skills can get him (and us) out of any trouble that arises.

So batten down the hatches.  There is a blizzard of words hanging just over the horizon.  It is upon this storm that the Bureaucratic (aka Democratic) Party is pinning its hopes.  As for the rest of us, the best we can anticipate is that our president will not cause too much additional damage during the next three years.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Call It the "Bureaucratic" Party

When Thomas Jefferson inaugurated the State Department, it employed under a dozen souls.  Today Foggy Bottom employs thousands upon thousands.  Like government in general, it has become bloated beyond the imagination of those who founded our nation.

Everywhere we look, bureaucracies are taking over, but no more so than in the federal government.  Today its rolls number in the millions, with little hope in sight of bringing them under control—never mind reducing them.

Amazingly, bureaucracy of the sort we know is a relatively recent invention.  The Roman Empire possessed a small slave bureaucracy, while the Roman Catholic Church maintained a loose knit one.  It wasn’t until modern armies began to grow that this mode of organization took off.

But what really made bureaucracy commonplace was the advent of big business.  With the rise of industrial conglomerates, it became impossible for owner-mangers to control these entities on their own.  They required something more predictable, and more reliable, than their personal efforts.

As Max Weber tells us, this is the forte of bureaucracy.  It permits a few people at the top to control a great many at the bottom by creating a defined hierarchy of authority that oversees the implementation of numerous rules and procedures.  It also utilizes a myriad of files and records to impose its will.

Weber believed that bureaucracy was the only practical way to bring rationality to bear on large organizations, but he also feared that it locked those at their base in an “iron cage.”  So effective was it in controlling their behavior that they lost much of their freedom.

Many people, especially liberals, agree that larger and larger bureaucracies are the wave of the future.  So efficient do they consider these, that they wish to concentrate more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer “experts.”  Confident that they are the “best and the brightest,” they aim to grow the federal bureaucracy so large that it can impose their vision of justice on everyone.

I propose, therefore, that the Democratic Party be relabeled the Bureaucratic Party.  It has already been accused of being the party of “big government,” but this is too clunky a designation.  So-called “low information” voters, in particular, require an evocative term to drive home the essence of liberalism and progressivism.

One of Parkinson’s Laws informs us that bureaucracies have a tendency to grow.  However big they are, those who control them wish to see them get larger.  This is because the people who run bureaucracies love power.  They are empire builders who perceive their success as lying in the management of more and more people.

Liberals are fond of portraying businesspersons as power hungry and therefore dangerous, but they ought look in the mirror if they wish to view genuinely ravenous wolves.  These bureaucracy-lovers have never met a government program they did not like or a government regulation they did not believe necessary to solve problems of their own invention.

Hence it is by these means that the Bureaucratic Party keeps encroaching on the freedoms of Americans.  Small business owners have known this for a long time.  Ordinary citizens are learning it via ObamaCare.  As newly federalized health bureaucracies continue to impose rules on them, they are beginning to feel the pain.

As per usual, adherents of the Bureaucratic party tell us this is for our own good.  They assure us that they must protect us from our personal limitations.  Nevertheless, the real reason they keep piling rules and procedures on rules and procedures is because they want to be in charge of everything.

Almost no one—except those who run them—likes bureaucracies.  It is time for those who value their freedom to take advantage of this antipathy.  Call the Democrats what they are, namely bureaucracy-lovers.  Paint them in the colors (e.g., red tape)they have so richly earned, and they may be less attractive to potential voters.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Looking Ahead

It’s that time of the year again.  The old year is just about over and the new one has yet to arrive.  As a result, those of us who write about politics are called upon to make predictions.

Unfortunately, I am not very good at prognosticating.  My hopes tend to color my expectations and hence I make mistakes.  Nevertheless I believe in looking ahead.  After all, behold what happened when the American people failed to do so and reelected Barack Obama.

So what are some of the opportunities and pitfalls that lie before us?  Let us begin with the obvious.  Almost anyone who has paid attention expects Obamacare to keep falling apart.  Once people begin utilizing the programs for which they signed up, they are apt to be in for some rude surprises.

Here then is one sad possibility.  People will die!  Many—perhaps millions—will be inconvenienced, but thousands of the gravely ill who can no longer see their accustomed doctors or be admitted to their customary hospitals will pay the ultimate price.

Likewise, instead of the “Affordable Care Act” improving healthcare by making medical services available to more Americans, larger numbers will lose their insurance and thus skip the preventive care that might keep them healthy.

These prospects should come as no surprise.  Nor should anyone be astonished when our president denies them.  This is a man who blames everyone else for his failures and so we are likely to see the insurance companies and Republicans lambasted for his mistakes.

Of course, Obamas will also put a rosy face on whatever transpires.  Indeed, if he needs to, he will invent numbers that make his programs sound good.  By the same token, he will trot out a little old lady from Dubuque who has recently had a lifesaving operation to prove that all is well.

As I say, none of this should surprise.  It is therefore up to the Republicans to take advantage of our president’s mendacity and hubris.  He must—and almost surely will—be called out for his deceptions.

Still, Republicans must do more!  Fortunately, Ted Cruz can be counted on to report on how he and his colleagues attempted to protect the public from the unfolding medical fiascos, but were condemned for their efforts.  If they are wise, his fellow conservatives will join in this strategy.

Together, however, they must attempt to do more!  They must seek to repeal Obamacare.  What you say?  This is impossible!  The president will veto any legislation that so much as smells as if it might.  Furthermore, without a two-thirds majority in the senate, it will be sustained.

Yet will it?  There was a time I too thought so, but then I had a realization.  While there is no way the Republicans can obtain a veto-proof majority in the upper house this next year, I decided they do not need to.  All they must manage is a landslide victory at the polls.

If the Republicans score a wipe-out at these, that is, if they gain substantially in both houses of congress, that may be enough.  Why?  The answer lies in the motivation of the rump Democrats.

Remember, Democrats too have an instinct for self-preservation.  Hence imagine this scenario.  The Republicans become a majority in the senate and acquire a massive majority in the House.  Then they vote to repeal Obamacare and Obama keeps his word and vetoes the legislation

The question is then: What will the remaining Democratic senators do?  Will they support their lame duck president or will they calculate what might happen to them in the next voting cycle?  Assuming that the public is utterly distressed by the Affordable Care Act, will they conclude that these voters will favor the legislators who helped save it?

Some how I doubt it.  And if I am right, Republicans will not require a veto-proof majority to slay the Obamacare dragon.  They may, in fact, be able to kill it.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University