The Progressive mind has always been a curiosity to me. I ran across a story in the Chicago Tribune which seems to me to demonstrate two aspects of Progressive thinking.
The story involves the Niles North High School subcontracting out school lunches to a private concern with the result that Niles North students get several good, healthy choices for lunch at a very reasonable price ($2.25/meal). For the enviro-Left, the food is even "sustainable, local and organic." Lower income students get their basic lunch for free. Although less healthy choices remain available, students have gradually shifted preferences to the healthier choices. For those who want them, and can pay for them, additional, higher margin, options are available which helps the private contractor make a profit even while providing free and low-cost basic options. Students, parents, administrators, the contractor and taxpayers are all better off and like the plan.
The new regime takes the place of public employees providing uniform, lower quality and student disliked food at (higher) taxpayer expense. The change sounds great, right? Well apparently not to the Progressive mind. Chef Ann Cooper of Berkeley, California and Boulder, Colorado was quoted as saying:
"I don't want to criticise it, but I worry that when you have some kids who can afford your more expensive lunches and you have other kids who can't you are creating a stigma around the free lunches and increasing the chasm between the haves and the have-nots."
This quote demonstrates two characteristics of Progressive thinking. First is the fetish for uniformity of results. It doesn't matter that lower income students are getting better choices at little or no cost to them. They don't like the fact that some, who can afford it, have more options. That is, they are offended not by poverty, but by wealth, or at least that those with wealth get to spend it on themselves. And this fetish is generalized to their fascination with income inequality. To the conservative, why should it matter if Bill Gates keeps a sizable chunk of the next $1B he creates as long as this wealth benefits the economy as a whole? The idea should not be to weaken the incentives on the rich to save, invest, work, create and profit by higher taxes and restrictive regulation, but to improve the lot and opportunities of the poor. This is done not by redistribution of wealth but by letting people do what they do best in a free economy, create new wealth.
Second, the Progressive thinks she knows better than others what people should want, regardless of what they actually do want. Everybody in Niles likes the plan, but some Chef from Berkeley thinks she knows better what these folks in Niles should want. The Progressive thinks he has a unique, and superior, moral sense of right and wrong, derived from his own head, and the head of other right-thinking types, and not from any objective authority or tradition.
These two peculiar traits of Progressive thinking explain many of the irrational positions that Progressives take. Future posts in this series will explore others.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
God's Economic Justice I
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the Land of Slavery. . . . You shall not steal. . . . You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Deut. 5:5-21 (with ommissions)
Initially let me define what I mean by socialism. The classic definition of socialism is where the government owns the means of production. But ownership consists of, at least, two primary bundles of rights. The right to control what happens to one's property, and the right to the economic benefits generated by one's property. If the government seizes these bundles of rights, through, for example, intrusive regulation, high taxes or "crony capitalism", there is, to the degree of the seizure, socialism. Mere nominal title to the assets is unimportant if the government controls how the property is used, managed or disposed of, and controls how much, if anything, the nominal owner of the property is to receive of the profits generated by the property.
Our Lord is often pictured by the religious Left as a proto-socialist revolutionary figure who would support "spreading the wealth" by coercive government action. And there is, of course, no doubt that He often talked of giving to the poor as a matter of private charity. But is God in favor of socialism, of spreading the wealth by government coercion? This post is the first of a series that will explore this question each focusing on a different passage of Scripture.
Not one, but two, of the Ten Commandments address the issue of private property. The commandment against stealing, of course, makes no sense in the absence of private property. It is essentially a command that private property rights should be respected. Similarly, the Tenth Commandment, against coveting something that belongs to one's neighbor, is meaningless without private property. But it goes further than the Eighth Commandment against stealing by saying that we should not even desire what belongs to another.
There are practical reasons for seeking not to be jealous of what one's neighbor has. First, the desire, which cannot be satisfied except by theft, might lead one to break the Eighth Commandment. But second, and I think more importantly, desiring what one cannot lawfully have leads to unhappiness and distracts from more productive activities. Rather than thinking about how you might like having something belonging to another, it is better to direct one's energy into creating something for yourself.
In these days of Occupy Wall Street, "spreading the wealth" and the collapse of the social welfare states of Europe, we would do well to avoid class warfare which is, at base, founded on a breach of the Tenth Commandment.
Initially let me define what I mean by socialism. The classic definition of socialism is where the government owns the means of production. But ownership consists of, at least, two primary bundles of rights. The right to control what happens to one's property, and the right to the economic benefits generated by one's property. If the government seizes these bundles of rights, through, for example, intrusive regulation, high taxes or "crony capitalism", there is, to the degree of the seizure, socialism. Mere nominal title to the assets is unimportant if the government controls how the property is used, managed or disposed of, and controls how much, if anything, the nominal owner of the property is to receive of the profits generated by the property.
Our Lord is often pictured by the religious Left as a proto-socialist revolutionary figure who would support "spreading the wealth" by coercive government action. And there is, of course, no doubt that He often talked of giving to the poor as a matter of private charity. But is God in favor of socialism, of spreading the wealth by government coercion? This post is the first of a series that will explore this question each focusing on a different passage of Scripture.
Not one, but two, of the Ten Commandments address the issue of private property. The commandment against stealing, of course, makes no sense in the absence of private property. It is essentially a command that private property rights should be respected. Similarly, the Tenth Commandment, against coveting something that belongs to one's neighbor, is meaningless without private property. But it goes further than the Eighth Commandment against stealing by saying that we should not even desire what belongs to another.
There are practical reasons for seeking not to be jealous of what one's neighbor has. First, the desire, which cannot be satisfied except by theft, might lead one to break the Eighth Commandment. But second, and I think more importantly, desiring what one cannot lawfully have leads to unhappiness and distracts from more productive activities. Rather than thinking about how you might like having something belonging to another, it is better to direct one's energy into creating something for yourself.
In these days of Occupy Wall Street, "spreading the wealth" and the collapse of the social welfare states of Europe, we would do well to avoid class warfare which is, at base, founded on a breach of the Tenth Commandment.
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