For Dionne Its All About Compulsion - Road to the Middle Class

THINGS DON’T look too good out there for people like us, writes E.J. Dionne, Jr. in the aftermath of the French election. What with France, Labour’s problems in Britain, Sweden, Canada (land of single-payer health care), and Germany, social democrats are in retreat. In the light of all this

the social democratic and liberal left faces a big problem because globalization makes the movement’s core pledge — to produce economic growth that lifts up the poor and the middle class as well as the rich — far more problematic.

Er, just a minute E.J. Do you really understand what you are saying? Tell me more.

For much of the period after World War II, national governments found it relatively easy to redistribute wealth and income through taxes and decent wage agreements negotiated by strong labor unions. Globalization and heightened competition are taking a toll on unionized industrial jobs, while national governments have less freedom of action when capital is so mobile.

Is that what you really believe? That you can really help the poor and the middle class with the big clunking fist of redistribution and monopoly union wages?

How do you account for Britland, where the economy (for all workers) has bounded ahead since it abandoned progressive economic policy? Or Ireland, that has become a Celtic tiger, changed in twenty years from the poor man of Europe to a per-capita GDP now higher than Britland, France, Germany, Italy, you name it? Would that have anything to do with the moment in the 1980s when the Irish government lowered tax rates and government spending, do you think, E.J.?

E.J., somewhere along the line you have got it backwards. The progressive promise has always been to redistribute income the the poor (middle class? come on) irregardless of the effect on the economy. It was a matter of social justice, remember?

And “decent wage agreements negotiated by strong labor unions” is what killed the steel industry, and is on the point of killing the automobile industry in this country. Was it really worth it to give a few workers a decade or two of aristocratic privilege for that? The whole rust belt, home of the unionized industrial worker, is rusted out. Do you think that is maybe because labor is priced out of the market and the state governments in the rust belt are just too anti-business, E.J.?

The lesson of globalization is something that you progressives can’t bear to learn. It is that a vibrant economy with low tax rates and low privileges lifts all boats in a sudden, overwhelming, flood tide of prosperity. They tried it in Hong Kong in the 1960s. They tried it in Britland and the US in the 1980s. They tried in in China, in Ireland, now in India, and maybe tomorrow in France. Yah think, E.J.?

All that progressive politics does is slow it down with compulsion and class warfare pitting people against each other.

Of course, nobody ever denied that the progressive welfare state was a bonanza for progressive activists, politicians, and experts.

That is something we can all agree on.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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