« Chic Ironic Bitterness | Main | Single-payer systems aren't so egalitarian, part II »
Do right-wing ideas keep on failing?
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.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 19, 2007 at 05:33 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
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.
Posted by: Rahul at Oct 19, 2007 5:46:44 AM
Tyler, I don't understand why you don't talk more about TABOR (taxpayers' bill of rights) which is the advocates' name for TELs (taxation and expenditure limitations).
You say that they are a form of bad governance and you link to a memo from a group that opposes them. The group makes the claim that (1) they were unpopular because (2) they led to disastrous cuts in state spending.
The group neglects to mention that TABOR in Colorado lost by some very small margin--under 5 points--after a hard-fought election. Tons of special interest money was spent to convince Coloradans that an absence of government spending meant that they were living in hell on earth. All of the elites--those whose voices are heard around the proverbial table where government dollars are spent--were lobbying for a bigger kitty. They pulled out all of their fancy nameplates and pretended to represent 1000% of the population.
In reality, of course, TABOR, like all human things, isn't perfect. The problem is that once you mandate a cut in government spending, there's no guarantee that the government won't cut necessary things (childhood vaccination) instead of unnecessary things (the giant bureaucracy devoted to teacher licensure).
That's a genuine problem with TABOR. But during the period that TABOR was in effect, Colorado's population grew like gangbusters. This is hardly evidence that TABOR is, by itself, destructive and unsustainable. Not only did people vote with their feet but, again, TABOR's performance at the ballot box came within a hair's breadth of victory--and this was two months after Hurricane Katrina put "good governance" on the top of the national policy agenda. It's arguable that TABOR's loss was due to electoral tactics more than ideology. Some disaster!
It's true that TABOR errs on the side of underspending and non-discrimination. But don't current government allocation measures err on the other side, especially at the federal level?
Posted by: ck at Oct 19, 2007 7:29:29 AM
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?
Posted by: perianwyr at Oct 19, 2007 8:03:23 AM
The Unitary Executive. No way is this a true conservative idea. No way. Checks and balances is a fundamental conservative idea.
Must be an economist's blog. Practice contradicts theory, assert theory. Someone voted for GWB, and the Unitary Executive theory wasn't unknown in '04. Heck, someone came up with and elaborated the Unitary Executive theory well before that, and probably self-identified politically as well.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim at Oct 19, 2007 8:07:04 AM
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.
Posted by: lm at Oct 19, 2007 8:14:13 AM
Seems like a good time to cite "Why I am not a conservative", by Hayek:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html
Posted by: David N. Welton at Oct 19, 2007 8:21:21 AM
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
Posted by: JH at Oct 19, 2007 8:22:23 AM
Great post.
"Liberal versus conservative" is the central element of groupthink in American political.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Oct 19, 2007 8:26:56 AM
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.
Posted by: linsee at Oct 19, 2007 8:28:10 AM
"Politicizing the government, and lowering the quality of governance, should not be considered conservative ideas."
I disagree. Obviously no one says we should have lower quality, but what many right wingers say is that the government should "wither" away. This means that if you are in charge of a department that you don't think should exist, you ain't puttin your heart into doing a good job. That is just common sense.
Posted by: robbL at Oct 19, 2007 8:29:15 AM
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?
Posted by: jb at Oct 19, 2007 8:59:25 AM
I haven't read the book, but it seems to me that the author wants to critique conservatives based on the government programs they propose. But isn't the conservative position that we should allow markets and the private sector to solve problems rather than the government. The conservative agenda is not to come up with new ways for the government to do things better, but to get the government out of the way.
As a result, I think the author neglects what I would view as the most important accomplishments of conservative economics. First, I would point out as a success of conservative economics the rate of economic growth in the United States from the early 1980's to today as to compared to the growth rate in the social welfare states of western europe. Conservative economists led the intellectual fight that helped the United States avoid the socialist policies that have stifled economic growth in western europe. Moreover, the tremendous technological innovations of the last 30 years have come out of the United States rather than Europe or Asia. Again, I give conservatives credit for allowing our free markets to work.
I would further point out as successes of conservative economics the welfare reform of the 1990's and reduction of barriers to free trade. Although these happened in large part during Clinton's watch, they were reforms pushed far more by conservatives than by liberals.
Finally, I think conservative economists deserve credit for the changes in monetary policy that have led to a long period of relative price stability in the United States and the western world. In the area of monetary policy, nearly everyone is now a conservative.
Posted by: Paul D at Oct 19, 2007 9:04:22 AM
"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.
Posted by: anon. at Oct 19, 2007 9:06:48 AM
I think there's some confusion about what the "unitary executive" means. It isn't a theory of executive supremacy in foreign affairs, or anything like that. Instead, it's a theory that says that everyone in the executive branch should be accountable within the branch, so that there is ultimately political accountability. The alternative is that some members of the executive branch aren't accountable to the president, and are often accountable to no one. It's a good idea, but even if it weren't, it's what the constitution establishes (or so the argument goes), so the disagreement should be had at that level.
Posted by: Thomas at Oct 19, 2007 9:07:38 AM
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.
Posted by: John Mark Rozendaal at Oct 19, 2007 9:12:53 AM
This sounds like nothing so much as the claim that "true Communism has never been tried." Unsuccessful ideas, no matter how vigorously supported by conservatives, suddenly cease being "true conservativism" when they don't work out.
Conservatives have overwhelmingly supported Bush tax cuts, HSA's, his attempts at changing Social Security, his expanded notions of executive power, and so on. I think it's fair to judge the movement by what it does.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Oct 19, 2007 9:13:01 AM
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?
Posted by: spencer at Oct 19, 2007 9:19:27 AM
Since the Libertarian/Conservative ideas are mostly a lack of action, they should not have to show positive results, just neutral. Government action requires a positive payback result and in many cases I do not see one. Government has grown through democrat and republican administration at all levels. IMHO the problem with the republicans is that they are so corrupt. I think that we need the Republican Party to go away, and for the Democratic Party to split into a more libertarian party and the traditional help everyone party. Another complication is Libertarian/Conservative ideas often trade the short term for the long term where democrats want to do something to help people now even if it is predicted to bring bad results in the future. Also how about ideas like free trade and deregulation of trucking and air travel? And BTW Just becuase these where implamented by Democrats does not mean that they ar e not Libertarian/Conservative ideas.
Posted by: Floccina at Oct 19, 2007 9:27:22 AM
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?
Posted by: Andrew at Oct 19, 2007 9:29:58 AM
Perhaps many libertarian-conservative ideas have not been tried, but isn't this a good reason to be suspicious of any candidate who claims to be a libertarian-type conservative who will lower spending? I suspect the top Republican candidates would like to lower taxes; I doubt they will try very hard to lower spending. In recent debates, they could not name a single significant area to cut.
Posted by: c&d at Oct 19, 2007 9:30:12 AM
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
Posted by: mickslam at Oct 19, 2007 9:40:57 AM
There is a hypothetical collection of ideas that you claim are conservative. I happen to agree with (many of) these hypothetical ideas. I don't agree that they are conservative. Conservative and Liberal both have a dictionary definition and they also refer to the policies of the american right and the american left. Your version of what conservative seems to be defined as those ideas that I like that were at one time espoused by (some) republicans.
Liberal economists could pretend that liberal in the united states means something that it doesn't and claim any number of solid responsible progressive ideas as liberal like pigouvian carbon taxes and the EITC and hand wave stupid liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage as bad but not much of a problem at all, and claim that being against globalization isn't a real liberal position. And it would make american liberalism seem far better than it is. And then these two very similar versions of liberal and conservative that have damn little to do with the policies advocated by the lions and the lambs who self identify as liberal and conservative can duke it out for the jackpot of nothing.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Oct 19, 2007 9:43:33 AM
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.
Posted by: Barry Ickes at Oct 19, 2007 9:51:03 AM
"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. "
I would be interested in such a discussion. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what such a comparison would show. Do you have the data?
I'll admit that I am not a scholar of economic policy and data from that period. Off the cuff, I would make several points. The first point I would make is that starting a comparison from 1950 would likely be unfair. The United States was emerging an unusual low point--we were recovering from World War Two and from the effects of a great depression. There was enormous pent-up consurmer demand. So I would expect growth rates in the 1950's to be high regardless of the government policies in place.
Second, I would question whether the policies in place during the 1950's could be described as liberal by today's standards.
In the 1960's liberal policies were adopted. I think that their impacts were felt by the 1970's, which are reflected in the stagflation of that period and which led to the "Reagan revolution."
Posted by: Paul D at Oct 19, 2007 9:55:03 AM
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.
Posted by: Hovie at Oct 19, 2007 10:02:26 AM
