By John C. Goodman
Saturday, December 29, 2012
If you are one of the folks who voted for Barack Obama in
the last election, what did you vote for? More generally, if you voted for any
liberal politician, what did you vote for?
Here are three things for starters: (1) no reform of the
public schools, (2) no reform of the welfare system, and (3) no reform of labor
market institutions that erect barriers between new entrants and good jobs.
How can I be so certain? Because the teachers unions, the
welfare bureaucracy and all the other unions form the base of the Democratic
Party. At least they are the base of the liberal wing of the party.
Here are three more things you voted for: (1) no reform
of the tax system, (2) no reform of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and
other entitlements, and (3) no serious effort to deal with mounting deficit
spending and ever-increasing national debt.
How do I know these three things? Because that is
essentially the position of every liberal who has had anything to say about the
Fiscal Cliff. It is also the position of liberal commentators — including Paul
Krugman and the editorial pages of The New York Times.
As is patently obvious, the single biggest obstacles to
school reform are the teachers unions. They view the school system as a jobs
program more than a place where children learn. The unions have resisted
virtually any and all reforms that would get bad teachers out of the
classrooms, reward teachers based on merit and reward schools based on success.
Most importantly, they are adamantly opposed to school choice: allowing poor
students at failing schools to escape and go to better ones.
Almost a half century ago, southern racists politicians
stood in the school house door and told black children they could not enter.
Today, it is liberal politicians who are trying to keep poor children (often
minority children) out of the schools their parents want them to attend. In
fact, in Washington D.C., liberal politicians are trying to keep poor, minority
children out of the very same schools they send their own children to!
Having fronted for the resistance to school improvement
(the only long-term avenue to self-betterment), these same politicians are
vigorous defenders of a welfare system that encourages and subsidizes
dependency. In fact, most of them would like to undo the welfare reforms that
President Clinton signed into law.
Then there are the other labor unions. As I have written
before, a union is an attempt to monopolize the supply of
labor. That never works unless you can keep out the "scabs," which
consists of everyone else. The union agenda also includes opposition to a lower
minimum wage for teenagers (the black youth unemployment rate is 39%),
opposition to a bracero program for immigrant labor and support for all kinds
of occupational licensing — raising barriers to entry into almost every
profession and trade.
Why do you think Barack Obama condemned the Michigan vote
to install right to work? Because that weakens unions. But why is that bad?
Granted, unions use their dues money to contribute to the election campaigns of
Obama and other liberals. But what is the social reason to support unions?
There isn't any. Since unions are trying to achieve above-market wages and thus
raise prices for everybody (including poor families), and since they can
accomplish this goal only by keeping non-union workers from having access to
the workplace, what's good for a union is bad for everybody who isn't in the
union. And what's bad for a union is good for everybody else.
Bottom line: the first three policies you voted for mean
that those on the bottom rung of the income ladder are not going to get a
helping hand to get on a higher rung. As far as those with the least income and
wealth are concerned, you voted for status quo all the way. And to rub salt in
the wound, the very people you voted for will be telling the world at every
opportunity how much they care about the poor — even as they do everything to
impede their economic mobility!
The second set of policies you voted for adds up to
another bottom line: with respect to the nation's fiscal health, you voted
again for status quo all the way. There is no mystery about the problem we
face. We've promised more than we can afford. According to the Congressional
Budget Office, if we continue on the path we are on the federal government will
need to collect two-thirds of the income of the middle class and more than 90%
of the income of high-income families by mid-century.
Yet, despite the fact that liberal politicians claim we
have a revenue problem, not a spending problem, they have been unwilling to
even talk about how they plan to collect the revenue needed to pay for every
spending program they support. Unwilling to make any fundamental reform to any
of our major entitlement spending programs and unwilling to commit to huge tax
increases (including a large tax increase for the middle class), they have
implicitly endorsed the unthinkable: federal debt escalating forever.
I haven't said anything about health care. That's because
when you voted for a liberal politician, it's not clear what you voted for.
That's because when Democrats voted for ObamaCare, it's not clear that any of
them knew what they were voting for.
I'll save health care for another day.
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