Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

All The Falling Shibboleths

 The GOP once called itself "the Party of Ideas." Today it is best described as a personality cult around Donald Trump. Don't believe me? The Party Platform is nothing more than an affirmation of Hair Furor's leadership. If there is one shibboleth left to the bankrupt Party of Ideas, it is a regressive tax cut and aggressive deregulation. The basic idea is that when the state intervenes in the market it destroys growth. 

There's a lot that's wrong about that as an article of faith. The state largely makes markets possible by enforcing contracts, keeping domestic order, managing the currency and helping to round the jagged edges off the economy. Since World War II, there has been an emerging consensus that the state has a role to play in redistributing some wealth so that there isn't a massive accumulation at the top of the economic ladder. Henry Ford realized that his workers were also his consumers, and if you paid them well, you would reap the benefits in greater sales. That idea disappeared over time as the state took over, creating minimum wages and worker safety measures. 

The GOP has waged a decades long war against this, going back to Herbert Hoover's Liberty League that opposed the New Deal. They made a strange alliance with white evangelical Christians to create just enough of an electoral majority to dominate the political discourse from 1968-1988. While much of that electoral juice came from the same culture issues we see dominating the Republican case for Amy Coney Barrett, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary are focusing on what her appointment will mean for economic equality through measures like the Affordable Care Act.

If Joe Biden wins and Democrats win at least 50 seats in the Senate - both of which are currently likely - then there is one measure that will absolutely happen, whether they eliminate the filibuster or not: a dramatic increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans. According to GOP theology, this will crater the economy. This was their prediction for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, when they raised taxes. Under both Clinton and Obama, the economy grew consistently. Unfortunately for Obama, GOP control of the House made raises in the minimum wage and other actions impossible after 2010, so the economy still remain too tilted towards the rich. That is unlikely to happen under a Democratic trifecta in January.

Now, we have such radical leftist organizations as the American Enterprise Institute and Goldman Sachs saying that the Biden tax plan will not, in fact, cripple growth. The tax increases on wealthier Americans will not have much, if any, discernible impact on economic growth and that does not account for any stimulative spending on infrastructure, raising the minimum wage or increasing access to health care. 

Raising taxes on the rich is not poisonous to economic growth. It never has been (up to a point) and yet it is largely the reason - along with deregulation - that the GOP has put up with Trump. They have made the bet that enshrining a reactionary judiciary with lifetime terms will protect them from the basic laws of politics, but they may have overreached with Amy Coney Barrett.

In the end, there was one article of faith left to the GOP and that is largely aflame along with the rest of their so-called beliefs.

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