Since Bush is so unpopular, you're hearing many claims that conservative or market-oriented ideas have failed more generally. For instance here is Paul Krugman's version of the argument.
Greg Anrig's The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing launches a book-length polemic on the same point. He claims that conservatism has failed because it has been tried, not because it hasn't. Let's look at his issues one-by-one, chapter-by-chapter, and see just exactly what has failed and what remains to be tried or perhaps never will be. It's tricky to define what "right-wing" or "conservative" might mean, but let's focus on market-oriented issues where libertarians and (some) conservatives overlap, using Anrig's chapters as a guide...
Chapter one: Politicizing the government, and lowering the quality of governance, should not be considered conservative ideas. The incompetence of Bush, a self-professed conservative, doesn’t make this so. The Founding Fathers cared about governance, and there have been plenty of bad Democrats. Furthermore when the Clinton administration improved FEMA, it was praised at George Mason and very vocally.
Chapter two: The Unitary Executive. No way is this a true conservative idea. No way. Checks and balances is a fundamental conservative idea.
Chapter three: Iraq. I’ll leave this aside for the sake of keeping the comments thread manageable. You’ll have a chance to comment on this soon, but not today.
Chapter four: Tax cuts for the rich. Even if you think these were a bad idea, don’t blame conservatism. The standard conservative idea is Milton Friedman’s nostrum that the real burden of government lies in the level of spending (and how it is spent), not the level of taxation per se.
Chapter five: State tax-and-spending limits. The Colorado plan for spending limits really didn’t work out so well and Anrig scores major points in this chapter. Major, major points. If you have a revisionist take on this, please do tell us in the comments.
Chapter six: "Smart" regulation. The regulatory burden has grown, for better or worse, with each administration. Anrig criticizes John Graham and his ilk, but his points boil down to disagreement with the conservative view rather than an indictment of what has been tried. We’d all like to have better regulation, and we can all admit it is very hard to get there procedurally.
Chapter seven: School choice and vouchers. The available evidence — see for instance Caroline Hoxby — suggests that vouchers are an improvement, albeit much overrated by conservatives and libertarians. However that hardly makes the idea bankrupt.
Chapter eight: Health savings accounts and malpractice reform. Health savings accounts are another tax break for savings and they won’t much improve U.S. health care. The malpractice crisis is overrated as a cause of high health care costs. Anrig scores points here, but mostly against wheel-spinning. It is worth stressing that "the right" doesn’t really have much of a health care plan at all, and that can count as an indictment.
Chapter nine: Social security privatization. I’ve argued that the Bush plan was just bad economics, even from a conservative or libertarian point of view. We already had private accounts in the form of Merrill Lynch, so why put a government-engineered, jerry-rigged structure on top of that?
The bottom line: Two strong points that can be scored against conservatism or market-oriented ideas, as opposed to the Bush Administration. First, state-level tax and spending limits haven’t worked out. Second, "the right" doesn’t (yet?) have a coherent health care plan. But the biggest problems faced by conservatism or libertarianism are along the lines of "won’t ever be tried," not "we just tried it and it failed."
Addendum: Anrig responds.
nice analysis. I am not an American, so I shouldn’t really have an opinion,
or atleast no one will really bother about it, but I have to say that just because
market rules generally fail doenst mean centralized ideas work.
USA has had its fair share of Democrats in the White House, but important issues
like Healthcare , social security still is not at satisfactory levels, leave alone efficent.
All said and done its basically about choosing the lesser evil, and unless
Democrats really screw it up for themselves, I think either Obama or Hillary Clinton should be in the White house.
I am not campaigning, the opinion is just personal.
But during the period that TABOR was in effect, Colorado’s population grew like gangbusters.
Just out of curiosity, what makes you believe that TABOR did this?
Well Bush and the Republicans call themselves conservatives, but according to your analysis they really aren’t. So what are they and why do conservatives/libertarians support them at all? There certainly has been no great cries of outrage from the conservatives over any of the policies mentioned above. Seems to me you just want your cake and to eat it, too. Conservatives elected Bush and supported his policies. Now that these policies are not working out so well, you are trying to distance yourself from the disaster that conservatives have supported all along.
Didn’t the NCPA just release a handbook on healthcare reform?
Check it out:
http://www.ncpa.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=219&zenid=0db8fae4e10563dc0bf2a4554a4e4caf
What led to “disastrous cuts in state spending” wasn’t TABOR; it was a 15 % year-over-year drop in state revenues. That did reset the spending limits down, so spending couldn’t return to previous levels as fast as revenues did — the ratchet effect — but that would probably have been a fine thing except for a different constitutional amendment mandating that the state increase spending on K-12 education faster than inflation no matter what else happened.
Resetting the ratchet was defensible; keeping five years of TABOR surpluses (now estimated to be closer to $6 billion than the modest $3.7 billion proponents claimed during the campaign) was not.
Among other consequences, it ended a number of benefits paid from the TABOR surplus before refunds were calculated, including the state earned income tax credit.
TABOR has had highly beneficial effects on Colorado’s economy, and bad as the recession’s effects were, things would have been worse if the cuts had been made from the level the state budget would have been without TABOR spending limits.
Perhaps, in addition to simply disagreeing on a point by point basis, you can also address areas that he left unmentioned, because he didn’t have a compelling case.
A liberal I know has claimed that “Conservatives are always wrong”. Debating him on the value of the free market is something I’d just rather avoid (for the same reason I avoid wrestling pigs).
But I’m having a hard time coming up with a recent example of a failure of a liberal idea that demonstrated the superiority of conservative ones. For example, I know that rationing leads to hoarding, but I can’t point to that recently. It would have been a good argument in 1980, but not today.
Abstract things like New Orleans rebuilding and the woeful environmental situation in China are not compelling – it has to be more fact-based.
any ideas?
“Chapter two: The Unitary Executive. No way is this a true conservative idea. No way. Checks and balances is a fundamental conservative idea.”
The Bush administration has taken an expansive view of the executive power, but that’s not the fault of the unitary executive theory, which speaks only to who holds the executive power, not how great the executive power is. All the unitary executive theory says is that the Constitution vests the entire executive power in the president. In that way, the theory IS about checks and balances; it prevents the legislature from usurping executive power through the creation of quasi-independent agencies within the executive branch.
I thought that the real goal of conservatisim was to roll back the New Deal, the complex of programs and regulations that modified the free market to reduce the way unregulated capitalism cumulatively, exponentially amplifies inequality and reinforces powerful hierarchies, and to free the free markets to allow the wealty and powerful to increase their wealth and power unfettered by law, scruples, conscience, or ethics. If you take that as thier goal, it is clear that conservatives’ efforts in the last three decades have been a roaring success.
If, on the other hand you took it for granted, for instance, that the goal of abstinence education was to promote health, and you deemed that it had failed in that objective, you were suckered.
Paul D — why not compare the growth rate in the US since 1980 under generally conservative policies — including Clinton — as compared to
US economic growth from 1950 to 1980 under significantly more liberal
policies.
But if you want to talk about the failure of a conservative policy how about tax incentives to encourage savings? For the last quarter century we have implemented a wealth of programs to exempt savings from taxes. Moreover, income inequality has risen sharply and in theory this should lead to more savings. But the results have been a collapse of personal savings rates to about zero. Yet, we constantly get proposals to expand these programs as if the experiments had been massive successes rather then abject failures.
The basic theory is that increasing after tax returns will lead to more savings. The counter theory is that greater return means that individuals have to save less to achieve their goals. The actual results over the past quarter century sure seem to support the counter theory.
Anyone care to comment?
You can define conservatism to be anything you want on your blog. But the actual standard-bearing conservative leaders don’t act like they believe any of the things you say they should. Why not?
I am sorry Tyler, but you are operating under smart conservative syndrome, so as a result, you can’t really evaluate this as a conservative with any real credibility. In the view of most conservatives out there in the real worlk, you are not a conservative. You need to evaluate it from the lens of the Rush Limbaugh listener, not the Tyler Cowen reader. As far as I know, you don’t interview Dick Cheney twice a year, like Rush does. Just because you don’t like the leaders of the movement doesn’t give you the right to ignore thier influence on conservative thought. Yes, if you used the classicial definition of conservative, you are correct, but that definition is not the operative defination for at least 60% of the republican party. Wander over to little green footballs for a few minutes if you doubt my statements.
You go to war with the army you have, not the one in your dreams. I don’t get to ignore the Stalin deniers of the 50s and 60s on the liberal side, or the 70s era hedgeamony of the managed economy movement either. You don’t get to ignore the modern conservative movement simply because you are appalled at how freaking crazy it is.
So here we go
1. Dodge. Entire Republican party seems to exist to politicize govt.
2. Dodge. Dick Cheney and Bush – leaders of the conservative party
3. Dodge.
4. Dodge. Yeah, the WSJ editorial page isn’t the dark heart of conservative economics. Bringing up the white knight of MF is cheap shot at best.
5. Honest
6. Dodge – smart regulation my ass, these guys want to replicate the regulatory scheme of the south in the entire nation. There are reasons the south has been a backwater since forever and it comes down to their crappy regulatory philosophy. Note why conservatives are so against lawsuits isn’t because they don’t like lawyers, but becuase in the south that is essentially the only way that there are any constraints on business. they don’t have any regulations, so when something bad happens, they must resolve it in the courts. This is unlike the east where the regulation allows businesses to accurately estimate their risk in most situations.
7. Dodge. Vouchers have mixed results at best, and their best results are unlikly to hold when implemented across regions. Much school underperformance is the result of talented women having other career opportunities in the recent era.
8. Dodge
9. Dodge Most republicans support it and is part of the modern conservative movement politics. Oh I agree, it is horrible, but it is conservative
You stack the deck by conflating market-oriented and conservative policies. There is very little in what Bush has done to make this association. Conservative policies are about using government to help the rich. They have been moderately successful in that. Market oriented policies can be used for conservative or liberal objectives — they are a tool not a goal of policy.
On the issue of Colorado, a Wall Street Journal unsigned editorial from Feb 28 2005 said the following. I have absolutely no ideas about this issue, and no preferences either way (except that I admit I would prefer if government had even half the same financial reporting requirements as any US public company), so I’m just reprinting what appears to be a support of the measure, for the sake of fostering discussion among the experts who congregate here.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB110955828721165586.html
[ ... ] Between 1997 and 2000, Coloradans received $3.25 billion in Tabor rebates. And far from wrecking the economy as opponents predicted, Tabor freed up capital in the private sector to create jobs and boost productivity. Between 1992 and 2002, the average Colorado family paid some $16,000 less in state taxes than in the decade prior to Tabor’s implementation; private-sector jobs in the state doubled; and government growth was kept in line with inflation and population growth.
Just as important is how these strictures helped Colorado weather the last recession. By forcing lawmakers to restrain spending during the boom years, the state was better able to cope with revenue shortfalls when the economy went south. “While states like California had a $38 billion deficit because they had spent all their excess tax revenue and increased the size of government, Tabor saved Colorado’s financial fanny,” says Jon Caldera of the Independence Institute, a Denver think tank.
[...]
Instead of taking on the real problem, which is the mandated increase in education spending known as Amendment 23, [Colorado Governor Bill] Owens has taken it off the table. K-12 outlays are already 47% of the budget — the largest line-item — and much too big an expenditure to ignore. The Governor argues that adjustments to Amendment 23 can be proposed only in an even-numbered year, which some dispute. But even if that’s true, the responsible move for the Governor would be to hold off on any Tabor tinkering until education spending can also be part of the discussions.
Not that we think Tabor needs tinkering; the dread ratchet effect is its most important feature and one of the reasons that states like California, Maine, Kansas and Ohio are considering their own version of Tabor. By forcing lawmakers to put the brakes on spending, even after a downturn in the economy, Tabor gives government an incentive to take on self-correcting tasks that aren’t in its nature. Selling off excess assets and reforming procedures for procurement and competitive contracting aren’t high on a state’s list of priorities unless there’s a fiscal squeeze. Tabor helps state governments find these efficiencies. Bill Owens used to know that.
Most conservatives I talk to credit Bush with two things: tax cuts and the Supreme Court. That’s it. There are plenty of people who want to be political and defend their side, but ideologically that’s all he’s delivered. Clinton was much the same. He claimed to be a liberal, but if you look at his policies many were quite conservative. Also, as far as expanding executive power, every President agrees on it. I forget the exact details, but I seem to recall Clinton protecting Bush I from Congress. Trust me, if Hillary becomes President and Democrats try to hold hearings on Bush, she’ll fight them with exactly the same arguments Bush uses or come up with new ones.
As for TABOR, the system was unworkable because of conflicting laws. Total spending could only increase a small amount, but after 2000 education increases were mandatory. It’s not hard to see how that led to a crisis.
As for SS privatization, one only need to look at the market. Steel, auto, and airline companies operated their pension systems like SS and were unable to change because of unions. They have all gone bankrupt, are on the verge of bankruptcy, or cut benefits. SS will soon be cutting benefits, either by increasing the worker contribution or cutting benefits. And that system is in a far better position than state and local government pension plans.
For someone with little but not no confidence in the medical system like myself and a very high tax bracket, a HSA plus catastrophic insurance can provide a feeling of security without encouraging frivolous or wasteful medical spending. Just leave the money in there and never touch it.
Does such money generate returns as an investment? If not, it’s still only really relevant in a deflationary regime.
jb: there’s no American liberal party, so you don’t get to see what disasters liberals are capable of causing on display in the US. Instead we have a party of pure corruption and pork with no real conservative ideology, and a party of mostly corruption and pork and some good governance with no real liberal ideology. That’s probably good. Ideology is more dangerous than corruption and pork.
Good point Spencer.
GREAT point Floccina
Micslam: Your point 6 is essential to understanding the whole modern American political situation. The South is something like historical China or Babylon, an occupied power that uses cultural unity and religion to impose its system upon the whole empire of the occupier when the occupier tries to impose it’s system upon its uncontrollable possession.
Yikes, these comments are painful to read, and rapidly lowering my opinion of what I thought was a reasonably thoughtful readership.
Most of the comments are painting conservatism as some cartoonish evil. The equivalent would be a right-winger who believes liberals support, say, a living wage in order to create unemployment and maintain the underclass as a captive voting block.
I believe liberals when they say they want to help the poor and minorities. The fact that many of their policies hurt those exact same groups isn’t proof of evil malevolence … just a poor understanding of economics, sometimes caused by willful ignorance.
If you believe your political opponents honestly support explicitly evil policies (ie screw the poor) … then you need to get out of the house more.
I have to laugh when the party that would have (and still wants to) taken the US down the economic road of socialism claims to have
better policies. I would point to the disasterous effects welfare has had on the families of its recipients as contra-evidence.
Reagan and Thatcher saved the US and Britain from Democratic-style economic policies. Let’s not forget that lesson.
Paul D — I hear your argument that the 1950-1980 comparison is unfair all the time and I do not think it is a valid argument.
The long term growth rate of the US economy from 1900 to 1980 was 3.5% and we got back to that long term trend in the early 1940s — so at 1950 we were not starting at a low base — we had been above the long term trend for almost a decade in 1950.
Second — real economic growth in the 1970s was almost exactly the same as it was in the 1980s. You hear the 1970s described as stagflation. Stagflation was something that was frequently forecast in the 1970s, but it never actually happened.
The data comparisons are that after 1980, or the era of the great moderation the long term growth rate of the economy slowed to 3.0%
as compared to 3.5% from 1900 to 1980. About half of that slowdown was
due to slower population growth and the other half was due to weaker productivity growth. You keep hearing the Republican spin, but for example over the last four years since the Bush tax cut — so even following the Republican example of throwing out the bad observations –
real gdp growth has been 3%, either the norm under the great moderation or far below the long term 3.5% growth rate of the US economy.
When Bush was elected and then the Republicans took over Congress I was excited, even as a liberal, that “conservatives” had been given control of government.
I was disappointed. Apparently, I had been wrong.
IMHO, if we are going to have the same old, same old, might as well be the Democrats running things, as they have so much more experience in muddling along.
Jody,
In my book, I acknowledge that both welfare reform and the James Q. Wilson/Kelling “broken windows” work led to government actions that clearly did more harm than good. But I distinguish those ideas, which largely arose from traditional conservativism’s legitimate ctitique of the unintended consequences of certain governmental activities, from MOVEMENT conservatism’s radical ideas — which are primarily intended to weaken government regardless of the consequences (see the ideas listed in Tyler’s post). The ideas pushed by the think tanks created by the Scaife, Koch, Olin, and Bradley foundations, unlike Wilson’s work, are not grounded in careful research and analysis. They are ideological driven in the sense that they are primarily intended to weaken the domestic reach of government regardless of what history and research demonstrates. That has much to do with why the ideas are failing. — Greg Anrig
Here are some right-wing ideas that I believe have clearly succeeded:
* Welfare reform (hatched among the right-wing intelligentsia — Charles Murray — and pushed by Republicans in Congress)
* Volunteer military — pushed harder by Milton Friedman than anyone else. While the left is hardly enamored by the military they love the idea of compulsory government service.
* Deregulation (trucking, airlines). And yes, I am aware that Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, pushed these. However, since they involve getting government out of the marketplace they strike me as right-wing by definition.
* Free trade (GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, various bilaterals). This has produced a surge in trade and attendant prosperity.
Furthermore, regarding this notion that the right has given unquestioned backing to the Bush agenda is bogus. Witness Bruce Barlett’s book Imposter and the fact that the Cato Institute has never cottoned to Bush as a standard-bearer of their cause. Bush has little interest in shrinking government, he simply wants to use it to further certain goals.
That’s why I laugh at this notion put forward by Krugman & Co. that Bush is part of a plot to carry out some libertarian fantasy and destroy the government from within. If only that were so.
Greg Anrig writes:
“The ideas pushed by the think tanks created by the Scaife, Koch, Olin, and Bradley foundations, unlike Wilson’s work, are not grounded in careful research and analysis. They are ideological driven in the sense that they are primarily intended to weaken the domestic reach of government regardless of what history and research demonstrates.”
Mr. Anrig surely has the self-awareness to see that these kinds of statements come off more as well-poisoning or coalitional line-drawing than as part of a useful argument worthy of serious people interested in real intellectual engagement.
It may be worth noting that Tyler is the general director of an organization chaired by Charles Koch.
http://www.mercatus.org/People/typeID.81/people_byType_detail.asp
Is Mr Anrig suggesting that Tyler and other scholars at the Mercatus Center do not do careful research and analysis? It sounds like it. How is this helpful?
Greg:
You began by making a severe and dangerous error by conflating conservatism with free-market economics. Conservatives use free-market economics because it is currently convenient for them. There is nothing inherent in conservatism that guarantees this, and it is very intellectually sloppy to conflate the two.
But you compounded your initial error with a painfully absurd statement on your blog entry today, which you attribute implicitly to Tyler:
That is, the right-wing Republicans running the government actually failed because they weren’t conservative enough.
This is in direct contradiction of Tyler’s attempt, explicit in his blog post, to focus on market-oriented solutions. Your inability to credit Tyler for this attempt at clarification, and indeed your insulting formulation of Tyler’s clarification above, is bad sportsmanship on your part.
Conservatives currently espouse free-market policies, but there is no inherent guarantee of this. Tomorrow the Jack Kemp / Lou Dobbs wing of the conservative moment may gain ascendance and we’ll see the Mexican border closed and the gold standard reinstated. Will you then write another book claiming that these “right-wing policies” failed? It would be interesting to see how you could possibly reconcile as the tenets of a single monolithic movement the competing claims that it would be better to open the mexican border (the free-market WSJ’s “conservative” approach) and close the mexican border (the Dobbs/Buchanan “conservative” approach), or the same for the floating currency (WSJ) versus the gold standard (Kemp).
If you are incapable of distinguishing between conservative politics and free-market policies, then I would have great difficulty taking your word for anything.
“Second — real economic growth in the 1970s was almost exactly the same as it was in the 1980s. You hear the 1970s described as stagflation. Stagflation was something that was frequently forecast in the 1970s, but it never actually happened.”
Really? I have a distinct recollection around 1980 of very high inflation and high unemployment. Reagan made a point of it in the debates when he coined the term “misery index”.
“The long term growth rate of the US economy from 1900 to 1980 was 3.5% and we got back to that long term trend in the early 1940s — so at 1950 we were not starting at a low base — we had been above the long term trend for almost a decade in 1950.”
The growth in the 1940′s was due to the production of “war” goods. When peace came, the economy had to make up for lost time producing “peacetime” goods and services. Moreover, Europe was in shambles so the US economy was producing goods and services not only for the United States, but for the entire world. It would have been difficult to restrain economic growth in the 1950′s
Furthermore, except for the New Deal policies, which I believe likely slowed economic growth in the long-term, I don’t know how it can be said that the period 1900 to 1950 was a period of “liberal” policies by today’s standards. The government was far smaller and there were far fewer social programs and government regulations. Ronald Reagan would have acheived success beyond his wildest dreams if he could have shrunk government to the size it existed in 1950.
I think between here and TPM, Anrig does a good job of refuting Cowan and other critics. Above all, he’s right that conservatives have conflated ideas and ideology themselves, so they have no right to criticize progressives who merely follow up on that. Ditto for conservatives substituting theory for practice. The “ideological purity dodge” is a kinder, gentler “stab in the back” theory.
G, as for Ron Paul? Oh, he’s plenty against big government in the abstract, but still willing to fight for his district’s fair share, or more than fair share, of Congressional pork.
Wow! The cats are amongst the pigeons (except the pigeons are pecking back). Pick your own tags for who is which.
Like so many of these displays, Five of the most essential factors seem always avoided: For our social order: (9) What are the proper functions of governments (at each level)? (2) How should those functions be determined? (3) How are they actually being determined? (4) How should those functions be executed? (5) How are they actually being executed. And then that major question “Why?,” after factors 3 and 5.
We usually seem to wind up nibbling around the edges of the fourth factor, and generally avoiding the “Why” except for factor five.
Paul D — you are putting words in my mouth. I did not say the period 1900 to 1950 was a liberal period. I said 1950 to 1980 was a liberal period and there was no significant difference in economic growth from the 1900-1950 era. The evidence is overwhelming that the New Deal did not cause long term economic growth to slow as you are claiming. The trend growth rate in the 1950s was 3.5% — it was not unusually strong by historic norms. Remember, there were three recessions in the 1950s.
As far as your argument about the impact of WW II on the rest of the world I suggest you check the data. US real GDP was $1,806 billion (2000 $) in 1944 and did not rise above that level until 1951 when it was $1915 b (2000 $) The biggest impact of the post war era you are talking about happened in the late 1940s not the 1950s. But during that period the impact of foreign demand for US goods was more than offset by the conversion of US manufacturing from building military equipment to building civilian goods–remember in 1943-44 from a quarter to a half of US output was for the military. The same goes for food crops that constituted a major share of the Marshall Plan Aide because the traditional Eastern European sources of food for Western Europe were closed to them by the iron curtain.
What you are doing is making a bunch of claims that are just plain factually incorrect. I know, many people believe them and the claims are widely used. But that does not mean they are right. I will be more than happy to send your the data.
Two quick points.
One has to do with the tone of Mr. Anrig’s post at TPM Cafe. Tyler Cowen has the readership he does largely because of Tyler’s efforts to avoid partisan sniping while discussing economics and public policy. More, Tyler obviously makes an honest effort to treat opposing viewpoints as being worthy of serious consideration. This effort at fairness is very refreshing in today’s political climate. I wish that Mr. Anrig would adopt it himself, if for no other reason than that surrounding his arguments with a context of partisan sniping makes his points appear to be mere partisan sniping.
Secondly, regarding Mr. Wilkinson’s comments, while I do appreciate the careful and serious analysis I’ve seen from both Tyler and Mr. Wilkinson, the fact is that the Mercatus Center is only a small part of the network of institutions funded by the Scaife, Koch, Olin, and Bradley foundations. And in my experience with those institutions (which admittedly, is far from comprehensive), most of them are simply crude propaganda bureaus. The existence of the Mercatus Center does not change that fact, and Mr. Anrig is correct to call attention to this network.
Johnrobert (and Tyler),
I honestly didn’t intend to be disrespectful, or to “snipe,” and was striving to avoid sounding defensive, which isn’t always easy to do when trying to defend one’s book from a wide-ranging critique. In any case, I definitely respect Tyler’s work, so I apologize if anything I wrote conveyed the impression that I don’t.
Right wing ideas fail:hmmmmm…
Tax Cuts-WORK FABULOUSLY NO PROBLEMS HERE
Anti-public schools-great stance to take, secondary public education is HORRIFIC. Insert draconian rhetoric to add negative emphasis to taste as it is always correct to be unflinchingly critical of secondary public education.
Anti-Government roads: Of course, public highway systems in this country are congested death traps.
Anti-Government spending: of course, who would be in favor of heavy levels of public spending. Politicians spend to win elections, not to make society better off as a whole.
Pro Free trade: Are there any good non-special interest arguments that actually try to do the unthinkable and argue that restricting trade is good for society as a WHOLE?
To be fair lets mention the bad right wing ideas:
ENORMOUS Military budget and aggressive foreign policy: has failed miserably. Enormous chunks of scarce wealth have been allocated towards a foreign policy that has only weakened our position in the world. Not to mention the incredible amounts of foreigners killed in the process.
Social policy: As a libertarian Im biased against just about any government stance which precludes us from doing things that will have zero effect on others.
Social security privatization: You dont fix bad government policy by replacing it with even more bad policy.
As a libertarian Im not really sure what is a right win g idea anymore and as a result lumping libertarian and conservative ideas together seems irrelevant. Conservatism has become such a nationalist doctrine and libertarianism is so inherently liberal that they just seems naturally at odds. For instance, so many republicans that I know personally are extreme economic nationalists. They believe in low levels of taxation but that is where their sympathies with free market doctrine end. They are mostly anti trade with foreigners, anti liberal social policy, pro military, and anti-immigration that now more than ever libertarianism and conservatism have become distinct from one another. I think other than tax policy, the liberals and conservatives have become bead fellows on most economic policies.
TABOR was the best law we ever passed. What killed it was Amendment 23, the constitutionally mandated continual increase in education spending. When education spending is forced to go up and the TABOR negative-ratchet forces revenues to go down, something has to give, and it’s no surprise that when “low taxes” gets in the ring with “spend money on the children” that the latter wins. Especially with all the super-wealthy (by local standards) Californians etc. that have moved here since TABOR passed, who don’t have the anti-tax ethos of true Westerners and jump at any chance to throw money at their kids (particularly other people’s money).
The real lesson from TABOR is that constitutions that can easily be changed aren’t very credible constraints. The people are usually going to get what they want… good and hard, ala Mencken.
This thread might be relevant if we ever get a conservative president.
Oh. And the question should not be “how has conservatism failed” but “how has the Republican party failed the conservatives (and the rest of the country)?”
We could also ask, rightly, “how has the Democratic party failed the liberals?”
The answer is that both parties have platforms and govern by ignoring those platforms, unless following the platforms is convenient.
To follow up on my point that the southern states GDP growth is almost entirely a factor of federal spending, lets look at the case of Mississippi
Federal spending in excess of tax receipts from Mississippi: $4.7B Source the tax foundation
Population: 2.9M classbrain.com
Spending per person in excess of taxes collected: ~$1600
GDP 2005: 26,587
GDP 2006: 27,829
Take away the govt, and mississippi is in negative GDP growth land. This is just the state with the lowest GDP in the nation. I suspect for most of the south, and this would be the case. They are welfare states down there in the south. Note that excess govt. spending accounts for about 1600/27800 = a remarkable 6% of their economy.
After reading everything on here, I’ve come to the conclusion that Mr. Anrig is a mean spirited and sniping partisan hack. His analysis of history and politics is poisoned to me. It sounds like this book would have been much more enlightening, better written, and impacting is someone like Tyler Cowen wrote it.
Could it be that the policy innovation energy has largely come from the Right (however defined) in recent years, so they’ve had more failures? After all, it’s been a long time – probably not since the Carter and Tip O’Neil days at best – since the Left had a functioning governing coalition at the federal level.
The Left has been good at criticizing and complaining, but hasn’t done much else at the national level for the past 30 years or so…
Does Mr. Anrig really think that Scalia’s famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson provided any kind of intellectual groundwork for Abu Ghraib?
Also, could he point to the exact location where Yoo’s memo on the Geneva convention uses the term “unitary executive,” or where Yoo’s conclusions actually depend on that theory?
Ignore the extraneous “how” in that sentence. [Your eye will probably do so anyway, because people tend to read a sentence in a way that makes sense. [But if that's true, perhaps this comment is just calling more attention to an error. [On the other hand, some people will notice an error, and there's still a useful signaling function in showing those folks that one didn't completely fail to recognize the error.]]]
the “communism has never really been tried” analogy doesn’t apply. Saying “libertarian/free market ideas are wrong because Bush failed and both are conservative” is precisely as ridiculous as saying “Global warming can’t be true because socialism failed and both environmentalism and socialism are left-wing ideas”.
and yes, partisan hacks on both left and right are equally guilty of rejecting ideas solely by pointing out their adherents’ fellow travellers. IMHO this kind of argument by association is a good thing, because it lowers the cost of identifying and ignoring hackery.
if some people think that nothing will ever happen. Stand tall honest will prevail and people will be a part of honesty, just living. CEO’s should never get a “package” sorry it hurts all of the usa
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