300 years after Copernicus detailed the structure of the solar system, 150 years after Newton defined the laws of physics, and roughly the same time Darwin was sailing the Galapagos Islands, Joseph Smith of Manchester New York, met the angel Moroni, who instructed him that that 2 golden plates were buried near his house, and they contained prophecies that that only he could read (with the aid of 2 seer stones), so he hid behind a curtain and read them aloud as his wife transcribed what would become the book of Mormon.

- The inner recesses of Mitt Romney’s brain.

http://whatmormonsbelieve.org/gold_plates.html

Thank the politicians; “God” is now the most meaningless word in the English language.

Some Christians believe in the death penalty, others would like to see it abolished. Some accept homosexuality, others abhor it. Believers are divided over whether individuals ought to give up their wealth or accumulate as much as possible. Some feel abortion is murder, others do not.  All this diversity of opinion lies within one sect of one faith — just a sliver of the countless varieties of belief, each group possessing their own doctrine, dogma, and supernatural claims about the nature of reality.

And what reasons do the warring parties give for the diversity of their opinions? They’d never suggest God was so fickle to tell some to march in a gay rights parade and others to protest it. Instead they must claim to have a better understanding of God’s will than their opponents possess – as if they have more powerful antennae that better captures some weak signal emanating from the Heavens; Larger ears to hear God’s whispers.

How long until people realize God’s endorsement just gets in the way of actual debate and stultifies reasonable discussion?  It does nothing other than instill certainty into opinions where none is warranted. The moment word “God” is uttered is the moment the reasonable debate ends.  All believers can quickly identify the crippling effects of religion when looking at others, and yet they seem utterly unable to turn that lens of skeptical analysis back upon themselves.

People do not leave theism behind to escape ethics, they do so to embrace ethics — free of dogma, doctrine and supernatural mythology; to truly study how our actions affect the happiness of others; to discern between ephemeral pleasures and lasting joy; to enrich one’s knowledge with the writings of past cultures, but remain free to dispute and improve upon their mistaken ideas.

This notion that shedding the belief in a supernatural deity improves one’s understanding of ethics and increases the motivation to do good is the tipping point in most people’s journey from theism to atheism. For the perceived moral superiority of theism is the last trump card in the believer’s hand. Without it, what motivation could one possibly have to perform the mental gymnastics required to reconcile the unlikely myths of religion with reality?

The Liberal position asserts:

1) Some people are born gay.

There is no single “gay gene” however, it’s becoming increasing clear that sexual orientation is affected by exposure to various hormones in the womb. It’s touched upon in this 60 minutes episode.

Those who still have difficulty accepting the idea humans’ innate sexual orientation may be so malleable by nature might consider how malleable our sex itself is. We typically think babies are born XX or XY, but roughly 1 in 1000 are born XYY, 1 in 650 are born XXX or XXY, 1 in 5000 have just a single x chromosome. Some are born hermaphrodites, others are androgynous. All in all, an astounding 1 in 100 people are born with bodies that differ from standard male or female, and in 1 in 500 have surgery to lead a more normal life. Some sexual confusion involves having the genitalia of both sexes, some have the genitalia of one sex and the hormones and/or brain structure of another. Fundamentalists often condemn homosexuality as something that is incongruent with the intentions of God. One wonders what they feel God’s “intention” is in each of these cases? What sort of condemnation do they bestow upon these individuals? (Actually we don’t have to wonder, just look at the wise cracks and scorn heaped upon those that have the courage to have sex changes later in life.)

Given these abnormalities, a mere difference of sexual orientation caused by over exposure or underexposure to various androgens in the womb seems less bizarre (and much more common) than physical abnormalities. This, of course, does not match the world conservatives imagine God intends, but it does match reality with consistent, verifiable accuracy from one generation to the next.

The fact that sexual orientation is affected by prenatal hormones suggests there is a gray area between gay and straight. This has been confirmed by massive self reported surveys (like the Kinsey Report), and does much to explain why some would suspect sexual orientation is a choice: Those at the either end of the spectrum (strongly gay or strongly straight) feel no arousal imagining the opposite lifestyle and typically assume there must be some physiological difference in play. But those in the middle of the spectrum — those that can at least imagine being aroused by both sexes — assume it’s a choice everyone faces. Many of these people identify as bisexual, and phallometric studies have revealed their attraction to each sex is, in fact, genuine.

The problem occurs when one has mild to strong homosexual impulses and has been taught by since birth that homosexuality is immoral. These people tend to be the most vocal in their opposition to homosexuality and gay rights in general, for in their minds, homosexuality is not just a choice we all face, but a genuine temptation that must be resisted. This explains their fear that homosexual behavior could somehow spread to other heterosexuals (thus breaking down the man/woman family unit… If you think homosexuality can “spread” then you’re likely already gay).  It also explains why they consider those that freely exercise their homosexuality as genuinely immoral people – outed gays are indulging in a temptation from which they, themselves, abstain. Those who do not share this temptation typically regard homosexual behavior with a sort of shrugging indifference. This entire phenomenon has been documented numerous times in studies such as this.

In its most extreme form, we get the stereotypical “gay homophobe” (see www.gayhomophobe.com). We don’t see such cognitive dissonance surrounding any other issue. It’s not like we catch anti-abortion activists secretly performing abortions. This is clearly a case of people fighting against their biology.

This is not to say that all homophobes are closeted gays. There are multiple studies that conservatives a) Are more easily disgusted and b) Seek less novelty.

Disgust is an emotion evolved to protect us. Individuals disgusted by rotting carcasses for instance, would be more likely to survive than those who were not because they would avoid disease. Like any emotion, it is imprecise. Children are often disgusted by uncommon food and cannot enjoy it until they willfully override their instinct and manage to take a bite. Homosexual behavior is not only uncommon (and thus novel), but clearly fruitless when it comes to reproduction, so those individuals that find it disgusting would, in fact, be at a slight survival advantage to those that do not.

The key distinction to make is the difference between that which people find odd and disgusting and that which is immoral. In the mind of conservatives these two are more likely to be equated. Consider this clip of the Texas legislature in 1993 discussing the outlawing anal sex between married men and women.

2) Homosexuality is not harmful to individuals or society.

The liberal position on this issue basically mirrors the opinion of mainstream science which maintains that homosexuality is not only naturally occurring, but also harmless to individuals and society. Thus, homosexuals ought to enjoy every right heterosexuals enjoy, (including marrying the one they love) and raising children. The denial of these rights amounts to discrimination.

Any perusal of Google Scholar reveals the harmless and natural opinion to be the conclusion of roughly 98% of scientific literature. Not surprisingly, Christian and Islamic organizations invariably emphasize the other 2% of studies (many of which, are in fact, created by Christian and/or Islamic organizations in the first place). Thus, it’s quite easy to find hundreds of articles supporting the view that homosexuality and gay marriage are harmful if you’re willing to ignore thousands that suggest otherwise. And of course, it is often the case that negative statistics regarding homosexual behavior are the obvious result of the discrimination and bullying they endure. It’s quite easy to develop a rather dim view of homosexuality if one limits their reading to conservative religious sites. A brief perusal uncovers words like ‘filthy” and “disgusting” with surprising regularity – words so incongruent with any sort of objective scientific research that it calls into doubt their conclusions.  I’ve found it is good practice to Google each stat put forth on these sites followed by the word “myth” to hear the entire story.

A common theme among those that oppose gay marriage is the “slippery slope” argument: if society accepts homosexuality,  it opens the door to all sorts of taboo hedonism like sex with children or animals.  Again, this argument rests upon the fallacy that homosexuality is a temptation we all endure. This is not the case. Nor is it the case that we desire sex with children or animals, in fact, this assertion likely tells us more about the one making it than it does the general population.   Secondly, slippery slope arguments are typically weak.  Does setting the driving age at 16 open the door for 15 year olds to drive? Lines between acceptable and unacceptable behavior must be drawn somewhere.

Still, given the recent scandal revealing the systematic rape of boys in the Catholic church, we must address the association many conservatives have between homosexuality and pedophilia. I won’t address the Catholic church scandal directly, as I think there are surely issues of sexual repression in the priesthood that come into play (if all sex is taboo then 1. taboo itself can begin to arouse and 2. there’s less discernment between the harmless taboo (sex with adults) and the harmful taboo (sex with children). I do want to address the larger problem of sexual abuse in general. Conservatives sometimes point out that 15-30% of the victims in child sexual abuse cases are boys, however only 2-3% of the adult population is gay. Thus, the argument suggests that gay males are abusing boys at 5-15x the rate of straight males. This argument is incorrect for a number of reasons:

1) Those males who abuse boys almost never have open sexual relationships with other adult males. Almost all abusers of boys have adult heterosexual relationships (many are married) or no adult sexual relationships at all (like priests) . Outed gay males are no more likely to be pedophiles than straight people. (In fact, some data suggests they are less likely to be pedophiles than straight people because the mere process of outing themselves requires and demonstrates a comfort and maturity with their own sexuality)

2) Scientists believe pedophilia is distinct from both gay and straight sexual orientation. That is to say, most men attracted to boys are not attracted to adults of either sex. They’ve confirmed this by the use of phallometric devices and exposure to images of sexual stimuli. Child abusers are often not aroused by adult males or females, just as zoophiles are often not aroused by humans at all.  (To understand just how bizarre human sexuality can be take a look at this  examination of zoophiles.

The data is further skewed by 2 additional facts: 1) It’s theorized that some abusers of boys are fetishists that are choosing the most taboo subject they can find. These people tend to have greater mental imbalance and many more victims (again, like the priests) that ultimately skews the data. 2) Increasingly, females are being indicted as sexual abusers (particularly with boys aged 15-17). This also skews the data.

Pedophilia is a bizarre and violent disease. So to suggest the average gay man on the street supports NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association) is every bit as offensive as suggesting the average heterosexual on the street supports those who practice necrophilia, or fetishize rape.

3) Homosexual behavior is not incompatible with mainstream religion and spirituality.

This discussion would not be complete without addressing religious doctrine, which is, almost exclusively, the source of anti-gay sentiment around the world.

If one is insistent upon using the Bible as the moral guide for the treatment of homosexuals, then why ignore advice the Bible gives regarding the treatment of women?

The Bible tells us virgins who are raped must marry their rapists, widows must marry their brother-in-laws, virgins are legitimate spoils of war and women who have sex before marriage ought to be stoned to death. This is not merely a poor moral advice, but perhaps the worst moral advice I’ve ever read. Why does mainstream religion reject these moral tenets? It is because they realize the Bible was written by humans in primitive patriarchal cultures. The notion that we’d lend credence to their view of homosexuality is equally absurd.

In Conclusion

Liberals believe it’s important to acknowledge gay people exist and accept that they have the right to seek love and build the same meaningful, lasting relationships we all enjoy without shame or condemnation or being slighted as 2nd class citizens. As our knowledge expands and overcomes superstition, our laws ought to reflect that.  Absent of condemnation, it becomes clear that gay people can actually present a unique and interesting facet of humanity that straight men or women don’t possess. But instead of being accepted for what they are, they are shunned, teased, and hated… driven to suicide by people convinced they’re doing the right thing.

Ever wonder what happened to all the anger surrounding the Park51 Muslim community center? Take a look at a Google trends report of the words “Ground Zero Mosque”.

The story of Park51 broke in the New York Times in December of 2009 to little notice. And why should it attract any attention? Buildings come and go in Manhattan all the time. But suddenly, as the 2010 midterm elections approached, the “Ground Zero Mosque” became the biggest news in the America, dominating our national discussion.

After the election was over, it promptly disappeared off the radar. After all, when you really think about it, does anyone give a damn about a moderate Muslim center somewhere in downtown Manhattan?

This is the anatomy  of a Fox News talking point.

At the beginning of every day, Fox executives distribute “Talking Points” pushing the Republican agenda to all of their talent and producers. These memos detail what subjects to discuss and the most effective language to use (say “Democrats want to ram it through” instead of “use reconciliation to overcome a filibuster”) It’s detailed in the documentary “Outfoxed.” A  cursory explanation of the practice is available here.

Jon Stewart makes light of the practice in the 2nd half of this clip as we watch commentators try to forward the notion that Obama is responsible for the high gas prices. (Contrast that to Fox News’ opinion about the high price of gas in 2008) . He makes light again in the 2nd half of this truly hilarious clip, as  multiple commentators desperately try to work in a poorly written talking point.

This is how Fox operates. They don’t report news. They invent divisive issues that can drive voters to the polls – repeat them again and again until they become news.

And it works. We’ve just watched it unfold around the issue of birth control.

Insurance companies have been covering birth control for years. States have been mandating that coverage for years, just as they mandate coverage for all medical expenses.  This is a non-issue. Birth control is a medical necessity of the civilized world. Its provision actually saves money.   Insurance companies actually have to pay more for policies that do not cover birth control as it increases likelihood of pregnancy and the resultant medical costs. So ironically, it’s the religious zealots asking the taxpayers to foot the bill (via higher premiums) to support their extremist beliefs.

But this is an election year. And once Fox picks up the rantings of some obscure blogger, all bets are off. Suddenly Sean Hannity is convening 12 men to talk about women’s contraception and Rush Limbaugh is hurling vile language at half our population.

All this can be expected. We do, after all, value freedom of the press.

What’s alarming is not how this foments partisan divide among our population – the true concern is the speed and ease which with GOP lawmakers themselves fall into lockstep under the spell. Just weeks after the seeds were planted, 48 GOP senators voted to allow any religious organization the power to deny insurance coverage for anything that violated their principles (One would think this might please Muslim extremists).

Former Bush speechwriter and conservative commentator David Frum, said it best: “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox”.

Liberaltarianism (noun) \li-b(ə-)rəl-ter-ē- ən-i-z-əm\

1. The belief that citizens ought to be free from both government and corporate tyranny
2. A fusion of liberal and libertarian ideals.

Liberaltarian Ideals

1) Government is Prone to Bureaucracy, Waste and Corruption.

The free market is the backbone of American wealth. Handouts promote helplessness and create a culture of poverty. There should never be incentives not to work.

2) Corporations are Prone to the Exploitation of Workers, Consumers, the Environment, and Society.

Without regulation, corporations invariably provide unsafe working conditions, produce unsafe and unhealthy products, fail to pay unskilled workers living wages and pollute the environment with reckless abandon.

3) The Economic Policies of the Right Afford Unnatural, Unearned and Unjust Advantages to the Previously Wealthy.

The particular brand of free market touted by conservatives rewards the mere possession of capital more than actual work, which invariably pools the majority of our country’s wealth into the hands of the few with ruinous effects on the economy. This ironically fosters a market less free than what we could create with sensible regulation.

Introduction

The core belief of Liberaltarianism is quite simple: A strong economy requires a strong middle class of consumers/workers with money in their pockets to spend. As they do spend, money trickles up to business owners. Some of that money trickles back down in the form of wages, but what trickles down is always less then what trickles up, otherwise the businesses would be operating at a loss. This upward movement of money is the engine of the economy. By favoring policies that reward work instead of those that reward wealth, we keep money in the pockets of the middle class and keep the economy strong.

Liberaltarianism promotes workfare instead of welfare, seeks equal opportunity not equal outcomes. At its core, is the belief that the wealthy benefit the most from American workers and thus not only have a moral, practical and philosophical responsibility to keep society running and workers healthy, but it is in their long term self interest to do so. Liberaltarianism is based upon the idea that humans are basically good, and that people don’t mind helping the less fortunate when they know they are not being exploited by lazy freeloaders.

History has shown us that this goal can be fraught with problems. The fact is, whenever the government gives something to someone, it’s taking from someone else. And often the best intentioned “help” can end up create learned helplessness that dooms people to the culture of poverty. Any government interaction in the free market requires a robust philosophical defense, as well as persuasive pragmatic arguments.  This web-site hopes to do both.

A Liberaltarian Manifesto

Preface

Economics and Human Psychology

There’s a reason economics is considered a social science; there are many schools of economic thought that look mathematically sound on paper, but fall apart in real life because they fail to mesh with humans’ psychological motivations. The prime example is Communism. The mantra “From each according to his skill, to each according to his need” might work quite well in computer simulations when humans are represented by binary 1s and 0s, but in real life, we have emotions and we’re unlikely to exert extra effort when we don’t get to enjoy the fruits of our own labor. This is why communism was a miserable failure, and capitalism works so well; humans are motivated by self interest.

But we are not entirely motivated by self interest, and the failure to recognize this one of the failures of conservative economic philosophy.

Just as communism created situations incompatible with our emotional makeup, so too do economic philosophies based completely on greed and profit. For instance, when an uninsured single mother rushes into the hospital with a baby with third degree burns, it is simply not in our human nature to deny her or her child care. Should doctors have to pay theses expenses out of their own pockets? Or should we lay the burden upon the patient, causing them to delay care and forcing them into bankruptcy?

Or consider how the fire fighters of Obion Country, Tennessee must have felt in September of 2010 when they stood outside a home and watched it burn to the ground because the homeowner had not paid the requisite $75 fee for fire protection in advance. If the absurdity of this situation isn’t readily apparent (and offensive) to you, then I suggest you have lost some of your own humanity. You’ve likely embraced a Libertarian or conservative philosophy that works quite well on paper and in computer simulations when humans are represented by binary 1s and 0s, but fails in real life because it neglects the simple fact that humans are human.  We are not ones or zeros, nor are we robots, we are complex emotional beings and the more congruent our economic system is with those emotions, the more successful it will be.

So to truly understand human’s relationship with money, we need to start at the beginning: the very beginning.

Chapter One

Cavemen, Cooperation and Cash

“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.

Social scientists tell us this is how morality evolved. It’s called “reciprocal altruism”. Humans that formed friendships were more likely to survive than those who created enemies. Why? Because friends grant favors. Friends cooperate. Some tasks require a helping hand – like building shelters and moving large objects. Other tasks benefit from a division of labor – ‘I’ll hunt the deer if you gather the firewood.’ These win-win relationships provide a distinct advantage over those who live in isolation. It’s the reason we evolved to be “nice”.

We did not, however, evolve to be pushovers. In order for any behavior to evolve it must benefit our own genes. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that our generosity and affection towards any individual is greatly correlated with the likelihood of reciprocation. In close relationships this blossoms into nearly unconditional love. We don’t think twice about helping friends and family move house or plant trees. We’ll even give them kidneys. But evolution makes sure such wide eyed affection dissipates farther away we get from our “inner circle” of confidants and we encounter people we are unlikely to see again. We are more wary when we deal with strangers. Yes, we may offer an initial helping hand, but we are also more likely to keep score of indebtedness lest we be taken advantage of. In fact, that tendency is so strong that virtually every culture in the world has some sort of physical currency that allows us to do exactly that – keep score of our “favors”. We use scribs of paper that act as IOUs for acts of reciprocal altruism, transferable from one relationship to the next.

We’re talking about money. It is the currency of “favors”. Its transferable quality means we no longer need extract a favor from those we help; they can pay us with “coupons” redeemable anywhere.  We help a car company sell cars every day from 9-5, but then we use wages they pay us to buy food from a grocery. Money is the grease that turns the wheels of reciprocal altruism amongst strangers – it makes us considerably more likely to help those we don’t know.

The Beauty of the Free Market

If money did not exist, it’s difficult to imagine a thousand engineers slaving tirelessly to create the perfect iphone, and another army of workers distributing millions of them in our Christmas stockings each year. But money does exist. And thousands of engineers and workers do exactly that, and we have to do favors to other people in order to acquire the funds to purchase those iphones… It ends up being favors all around for everyone.

The laws of supply and demand keep everything running smoothly. Sought after goods and services thrive, undesired products and behavior die out. It’s this tendency for markets to fulfill our desires perfectly that Adam Smith called “the Invisible hand”.   He stated:

If each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole.

Throw a bunch of greedy humans together in a free market and they quickly start cooperating like they’re all on the same team – dividing up tasks; butcher, baker, candlestick maker, until everyone seems to have what they want and need.

It’s not just a beautiful theory, but it works beautifully in practice: The catastrophic failure of the Soviet Union, coupled with the stunning economic expansion of the West has firmly established the superiority of the free market in the minds of virtually every serious thinker in the world.

Barack Obama has described the free market as “the best invention to allocate resources and produce enormous prosperity for America or the world that’s ever been designed.”

In 2009, when Hillary Clinton was asked by Charlie Rose what values she’d like to she intended to promote to other countries during her tenure as Secretary of State she replied with two: Democracy and Free Markets.

“There’s no doubt that we believe eventually free-market economies will prove to be the most effective means of both generating and distributing wealth”

– Hillary Clinton

But, as most conservatives will attest, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s definition of the free market varies considerably from their own, and this is where the fighting begins.

Liberal and Conservative Free Markets

We can judge the desirability of any economic policy by two criteria:

1)      How it affects the overall economy

2)      How fair and just is it to individuals.

Of course,  the economy is so mind numbingly complex that it is difficult to reach a consensus conclusion regarding either question. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any other field where the so-called experts disagree so vehemently. Virtually every source of information and analysis available comes with its own particular bias, and this web-site is surely no exception. It would be insulting and foolish to pretend otherwise. Liberaltarians have libertarian leanings, but they are also, as the name implies, liberal. This writing hopes not only to extol the virtues of capitalism, but to point out the dangers as well. There is a reason that every economic superpower in the world has put serious restraints on free markets. There is a reason every economic superpower practices some sort of economic redistribution. Most countries have established hundreds, if not thousands of laws that obstruct our economic freedoms.

Given the sheer power of the free market, such restrictions may seem to defy explanation at first blush. But those that study the problem in the greatest detail (economists) tend to support their implementation and favor liberal policies.  You may not agree with them, but to have any sort of serious discussion, we must, at least, learn why they do so.

The Liberal Argument

Liberals believe money trickles up, When the poor and middle class run out of money to spend, the engine of the economy sputters and dies.

Nowhere is this more evident than 1920s: The years immediately preceding the Great Depression (1924-1929) saw low taxes on the wealthy (a top marginal rate of 25 percent), a lack of economic regulations, weak or non-existent unions, no minimum wage and very few laws limiting  environmental pollution or requiring worker safety. It was, in every respect, a conservative utopia. The inevitable result of this utopia was the pooling of the majority of the wealth into the hands of the few, creating some of the richest people the world had ever seen.

Contrary to conservative dogma, this wealth did not trickle down to the workers. In fact, while the wealthy were acquiring unfathomable riches, the common man was watching his personal savings disappear. Without money in their pockets to spend, demand dropped. Without demand, factories closed, and the cycle snowballed and the economy crashed.

Consider the words of Marriner S. Eccles, who served as FDR’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1934 to 1948 as he describes what he believed caused the Great Depression:

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth — not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced — to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation’s economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.]

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

That is what happened to us in the twenties. We sustained high levels of employment in that period with the aid of an exceptional expansion of debt outside of the banking system. This debt was provided by the large growth of business savings as well as savings by individuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes were relatively low. Private debt outside of the banking system increased about fifty per cent. This debt, which was at high interest rates, largely took the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotel structures, consumer installment debt, brokers’ loans, and foreign debt. The stimulation to spend by debt-creation of this sort was short-lived and could not be counted on to sustain high levels of employment for long periods of time. Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product — in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups — we should have had far greater stability in our economy. Had the six billion dollars, for instance, that were loaned by corporations and wealthy individuals for stock-market speculation been distributed to the public as lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to the corporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatly moderated the economic collapse that began at the end of 1929.

This then, was my reading of what brought on the depression.

(From his memoir, Beckoning Frontiers)

The Liberal Revolution

How did we get out of it? We’ve all heard the answer; World War II ended the Great Depression.

But how does manufacturing thousands of goods, shipping them overseas and blowing them up rescue us from a Depression? It’s difficult to think of a more wasteful endeavor. Keynesian economists have suggested that increased spending stimulated demand further along down the supply chain. This may be true, but Liberaltarians have a more nuanced answer: The primary factor that rescued us from the Great Depression was the sudden influx of cash that flowed to the middle class. Not only were there suddenly millions of jobs for to work as soldiers (with solid pay) but there were countless jobs for women in factories. All around the country, no-income households were turning into 2 income households. Who paid these wages? Primarily the wealthy people. The top tax bracket soared to 94% .

Top Marginal Tax Rate

Add to this the fact that families spent very little during the war years as rationing was in effect. By the time the war ended, we had a massive middle class with money in their pockets ready to burn. It was the largest redistribution of wealth from rich to poor the nation had ever seen.

Money had come out of the pockets of the oil, car and railroad barons and into the hands of the common man. The tide had come in. The middle class was flush with money and ready to let it “trickle up” to the business owners again, who in turn, let some of it trickle back down. Contrary to conservative dogma, minimum wage laws, welfare, social security and high taxes on the wealthy did not kill the economy, they created the largest economic boom in the history of the world.  These policies also gave birth the world’s first “middle class”, and they did it while keeping national debt under control.

Conservatism Strikes Back

All of that changed in 1980 when Reagan came to power. Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, cut taxes on investments, rolled back financial regulations, cut welfare rolls, eased worker safety and environmental regulations. These policies have continued more or less  for the last 30 years (we saw a slight roll back under Clinton).  As a result, we’ve seen 4 major shifts in our economy over the last 30 years:

1) Wages stopped rising (See above chart for family income (family income has continued to rise (albiet as a slower rate) but this is largely due to the fact that women now work outside the home)

2) Out national debt has ballooned to epidemic proportions.

(source: USgovernmentspending.com)

3)  People’s savings evaporated and household debt skyrocketed

4) The rich became richer than they’ve ever been.

There is little doubt we’ve seen remarkable technological advances that have eased our quality of life in the last 30 years (indeed, the last 100 years). This is a testament to the free market. But economically speaking, it’s almost impossible to find a single positive statistic enjoyed by the middle or lower class in the last three decades. They’ve seen their savings evaporate and accrued record personal debt. The same is true for the finances of the government, which teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.  In fact, if we subtract deficit spending from GDP, the true failure of Reaganomics becomes painfully clear)  Where did all the money go? Into the hands of the super rich. The gap between the rich and poor has now become greater than any other time in the history of America.

The Rise of Plutocracy

In 2004, the richest 1% earned 21% of all the income. The wealthiest 10% earned 43% of all the income.  The bottom 50% of all workers earned just 12.8% of all the income.

These differences in income, however, are miniscule compared to the differences in wealth. For the lower and middle class often spend all of their income food, shelter, sending the kids college etc, while the rich can set aside a large percentage of their income for savings. The working poor are likely to let their entire lives pass without ever building a nest egg. A wealthy person’s advantage in income accrues year after year until they pass away. Then the money is passed on to their children, just rendering the gap between rich and poor all the greater.

Consider the net worth of “Household Wealth” in the 5 quintiles of the American public.

Household Wealth in the United States 1998 (source)

To better illustrate these figures, imagine we sat down to play a game of Monopoly with 5 players. Instead of being given $1500 a pieces, our game of “Real Life” Monopoly would divide the cash at the beginning of the game as follows:

Who do you suspect would win?

This is how Americans born today begin their lives. It’s the most important lottery they will ever win or lose. The gap between the rich and poor is much greater today. Consider this direct quote from a 2006 internal Citigroup memo heralding the new age of the super rich:

“The top 1% of households also account for 33% of the net worth, greater than the bottom 90% of households put together. It gets better (or worse, depending on your political stripe) – the top 1% of households account for 40% of the financial net worth, more than the bottom 95% of households put together.”

There is a new class of “super rich”. And in a capitalist economy, the mere possession of capital (or the ability to manipulate it) is a far more effective way to earn money than actually engaging in any kind of work. For instance, in 2010, the top hedge fund manager earned more in one hour than the typical middle class worker earned in their entire career. (Top manager John Paulson earned 2.4 million dollars an hour, and he does so hour after hour, forty hours a week, 2080 hours a year.)

The most lucrative jobs in America do not contribute to the economy by producing goods of any kind, they simply siphon money off the top by taking a small percentage of the investments of the wealthy.

The similarities between today’s recession and the Great Depression are staggering. The upper tax brackets are near historic lows (just as they were in 1929). Unions, once strong in the 50s and 60s are in serious decline. CEOs  are pulling in record salaries, but wages for the workers have been stagnant since 1980. In fact, the last time the concentration of wealth in the top one percent was as high as it is now, was 1928. We once again face a “perfect storm” for economic collapse.

(Source: Visualizing Economics)

This is not a theory. It already happened. The economic collapse of 2008 was the biggest since the Great Depression. The only difference is that, this time, our government “patched” things up with a 800 billion dollar band aid. This is temporary fix. Liberaltarians believe in order to truly come out of this recession we must get money back into the pockets of the middle class.

Libertarians often point out (rightly so) that the bailouts were largely supported by the Left . Of those voting in favor of the first Bailout package, 91 were Republicans and 172 were Democrats. They maintain that the market would self-correct if we only allowed these banks to go under. It’s a strong point – one with which liberaltarians would not disagree. However it overlooks 2 important factors:

1) The banks that would go under contained the pensions of school teachers, factory workers, and laborers who would have borne the brunt of the bankruptcies.

2) The executives would have escaped unscathed with golden parachutes. Bankruptcy is a bailout for the top brass. (Consider the 8.3 million in bonuses paid out to executives during the recent bankruptcy of Borders).

Liberaltarians would not have bailed out Wall Street, they would have bailed out Main Street (Which , conveniently, would save Wall Street as well)  This would have watered the roots to the tree of the economy instead of gluing dead leaves back on.  This illustrates the differing philosophies between the left, right and liberaltarians.

Republicans blame the economic collapse on Democrats’ unwillingness to regulate housing loans to low income families.

Democrats blame Republicans’ (and really their own) unwillingness to regulate Wall Street’s “credit default swap” derivatives that allowed traders to bet on those home loans at 20-1 odds. (So for every home loan that went bad, it went bad 20 times over on Wall Street, and unlike the actual loan, these bets were not secured with actual houses).

Liberaltarians understand that home foreclosures were not the cause of the economic collapse, but rather a symptom of it. The more serious problem underneath all the partisan fingerpointing is the fact we increasingly have a middle class that is increasingly unable to make basic house payments. This was not the case in 1950 when one 40 hour a week job could support a family, house and college for the kids.

Present Day

30 years of tax cuts and deregulation bankrupt the government and destroyed the middle class. How do conservatives respond to the failure of Reganonmics? By redoubling their efforts to push the country to the right.

As if tempting the fates, the current Republican budget, offered by Paul Ryan, lowers the top tax bracket to the exact rate it was in the years before the Great Depression: 25%. Why? Because Ryan and every other Republican in Congress ascribe to the myth that “Taxes kill jobs”.

This notion is “demonstrably counterfactual”. If we look at the last 100 years we find that the greatest economic expansion the world had ever seen happened when the rich were taxed at marginal rates in the 90s. If we look at the last 30 years or Reganomics, we find the sole bright spot to occur during the presidency of Bill Clinton.

As Eliot Spitzer points at Slate.com:  Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, and in turn, created 23 million jobs with strong gains in GDP and balanced the budget. In contrast, Bush lowered taxes on the wealthy to near record lows, and in turn, created fewer jobs than any president in history (one million), generated record debt and sent the economy into the worst crash since the Great Depression.

Clearly the economy is complex and there are other factors in play, but it would be difficult to invent more persuasive facts. It makes one wonder what sort of data it would take to actually convince a conservative that liberals might be on to something. If the debate surrounding human involvement in global warming[4], or even the validity of evolution is any indication, it’s fairly safe to say there is no amount of evidence that could change their minds.

This denial of basic facts is but part of a larger trend in Conservative America. Increasingly, conservatives are constructing an alternate reality unencumbered by mainstream science or academia, which are often regarded as “liberal conspiracies”. Glen Beck has compared American Universities to Nazi Reeducation camps. Rush Limbaugh names academia and science to be among the “four corners of deceit”. As Jacob Weinberg puts it, to conservatives “reality itself comes to be regarded as some kind of elitist plot.”

In fact, data contradictory to conservative ideology seems only to strengthen their resolve. Consider the following: In 2009, Northwestern professor Monica Prasad took a group of 49 conservative voters who believed Saddam Hussein was involved in orchestrating the  9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and presented them with contrary evidence consisting of a detailed review of the 9/11 commission report stating there was no connection, and videotape of President Bush himself asserting, in plain English, that Saddam was not involved with 9/11.

Only one of the 49 changed their mind. Once an idea becomes lodged in the human brain, it’s nearly impossible to remove it, and the idea that totally free markets are superior to regulated free markets is lodged so deeply in the brains of conservatives, there is seemingly no fact that dislodge it.

So, for the last 30 years, we’ve seen Conservatives wage a war on arithmetic. In 1992 Rush Limbaugh offered to bet 2 million dollars that Clinton’s economic package would lead the ruin of our nation. In 2001, the Heritage foundation published a scholarly paper that suggested the Bush tax cuts would balance the budget within the decade. These predictions have not only proved wrong, but perfect reverse barometers of the truth.

No matter how egregious the above examples seem, they absolutely pale in comparison to what we see today. Today’s conservative passion incorporates genuine rage and hatred towards the left. While Rush Limbaugh used to call Clinton “Slick Willy”. Glen Beck routinely compares President Obama to Hitler.

This is the present conservative dogma: Any policy that benefits society as a whole is akin to communism (which is also somehow akin to Nazi Germany).

There’s a certain amount of irony when the super rich complain about the relatively weak social programs in America: Wall Street investors produce no discernable product, instead they earn their living investing in companies that do. They have few problems reaping the rewards the engine of our workforce provides, but they cry foul when attempts are made to oil the machine that generates their wealth with even the most basic of provisions such as healthcare for laborers, affordable education, public transportation, or clean air and water.

They want all of the reward our society provides, but none of the responsibility it entails. This is the Ayn Rand philosophy of selfishness that’s increasingly dominating our politics. I don’t speak metaphorically or in hyperbole. The architect of the 2010 Republican budget proposal, Paul Ryan, reportedly makes gifts of Ayn Rand books to his staffers. This is a philosophy that can be boiled down to 2 words: “Be Selfish”. There is nothing clever or insightful about this idea: It is the working philosophy of every 2 year old on Earth.

There’s obviously something much, much deeper going on in the hearts of conservatives that trumps any data on the economy as a whole. And to examine it, we need only go as far as the second criteria by which one can judge the desirability of any economic system: How fair and just is the policy to individuals?

Fairness and Justice

Any time the government gives something to someone, it’s taking away from someone else.

…. to be continued.

[4] Conservatives increasingly consider any policies that benefit society as a whole to be akin to communism. Thus, the notion that humans are causing global warming is particularly ripe for conservative derision as policies to remedy the situation do not only benefit all Americans,  but citizens of all nations. In fact, the benefit it not restricted the Earth’s present day inhabitants, but spread across all future generations of the world. It would be difficult to create an issue more likely to be hated by conservatives.

Predictably,  there is seemingly no amount of scientific evidence, data or proof that can sway them. The scientific consensus is overwhelming.   There is currently not a single reputable scientific organization on Earth that does not admit that link between the burning of fossil fuels and the fact that our Earth is getting hotter. Despite this, not a single member of the GOP’s energy task force will publicly admit human activities are linked to global warming. In fact, they emphatically deny it.

I admit to hating Nader when he threw the election to Bush… but now as the blue dog democrats sell out to the insurance and financial industries, I have to admit, he looks a little more appealing. 

Check out his stance on the issues, and imagine if Obama had this sort of backbone.

We only need one thing for 3rd party candidates to start making a difference: Instant Run off voting.

Frontline tells a story like no other show on TV.

Click here to watch “Children of the Taliban” to get an idea why we’re fighting this war (you may have to scroll way down to see the video)

Click here to watch an interview with Elizabeth Rubin to see how futile that fight can be.

There’s simply no substitute for seeing what’s happening up close and personal.

The Taliban blew up another girls’ school in Pakistan this week. One of hundreds in the last 6 months.

If we allow this government  to exist they will not allow females to be educated.

I consider myself something of a lefty peace advocate, but I find the morality of the far left to be lacking when they oppose war in every situation other than self defense.

I suppose the question is, at what point do we defend humanity?

I suppose it’s easy to be an arm chair quarterback, but these authors seem to hit the nail on the head.

Check out this incendiary critique of  8 years of the Bush administration’s pandering to the oligarchs.

Breathe easy for a second, knowing he’s gone, and then read Drew Westin’s scathing critique of Obama’s first year in office.

And just for fun, here’s the definitive critique of Sarah Palin.

If we were to divide all the “Household Wealth” in America and determine what percentage of the whole the poorest 20% owned, the 2nd poorest 20% and so on,  the data would look like this: .

Household Wealth in the United States

(click here for source)

To better illustrate these figures, imagine we sat down to play a game of Monopoly with 5 players. Instead of being given $1500 each, our game of “Real Life” Monopoly would divide the cash at the beginning of the game as follows:

Who do you suspect would win?

PS – These figures are from 1998. The gap between the rich and poor is much larger since the Bush tax cuts for the rich, in fact,  according to an internal Citigroup memo, the top one percent now own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.

PPS – This article was inspired by an excellent post by Jim Moss, over at the Seminal — but he used Census Bureau data on income, not wealth.