Domestic Liberalism, Foreign Policy Realism
President-Elect Barack Obama ran as a liberal on foreign policy and domestic issues during the Democratic primaries season. He had to, of course: he had to run to the left of Senator Hillary Clinton if he wanted to win his party’s nomination. If he would have run as a centrist at that point, he would not have received the massive support from liberal activists he needed so desperately.
Now that he has won, however, Obama is quickly transforming into a different kind of future president: his foreign policy picks imply that he will most certainly not adopt a ‘dovish liberal foreign policy.’ Instead, he has surrounded himself by foreign policy realists and even liberal hawks such as Clinton, who will be his Secretary of State.
At the same time, Obama still seems bend on implementing reasonably progressive domestic policies. If left up to him and the Democratic-ruled Congress, limits on abortion will be done away with, stem cell research will be funded fully, the ‘gap’ between ‘rich and poor’ will be decreased, and federal spending may increase significantly in the coming four years while it will not receive (much) more tax revenue.
In other words, Obama could very well be a man who receives general support for his foreign policy, while the real battles of his presidency will take place in the domestic arena. Media have long reported that Obama and his main advisers put together a transition team before the election so that the first 100 days of Obama’s presidency would be “productive.”
“Productive” rather obviously refers to his domestic policies rather than his foreign policy.
So this is where the major battles will take place. We will see whether he will, in this area, do what he promised liberal activists - namely to close the gap between the rich and poor, to start grand initiatives aimed at ‘redoing’ society, helping unions become more powerful and influential, and so on - or whether he will be afraid that doing so in his first two years in office may hurt the Democratic Party’s chances of holding on to their majorities in Congress in 2010 and possibly even jeopardize his reelection.
“…the ‘gap’ between ‘rich and poor’ will be decreased…”
One quibble. This won’t actually happen. he’ll try, but we know from history that gov’t is unable to make this happen.
I am not aware of anyone showing that a reduction in the rich and poor gap is even desirable. It is commonly assumed as a bedrock of arguments about policy, but I don’t see why it should be taken as assumed.
Of course, gross poverty can be destabilizing, but that is conceptually distinct from a rich-poor gap. If the poor are relatively wealthy (by global standards), how does it hurt if the rich are insanely wealthy at the same time?
Envy should not be an unexamined presumption. And John Rawls’ ethical philosophy of distributive justice may be provocative, but it is not just automatically true on its face.
Jason, there’s ample basic game-theory research that shows that humans are nearly hard-wired with some basic concepts of “fairness.” In experiments where X is given $20, and is to give some portion, entirely at X’s discretion, to Y, with Y then deciding whether they both keep the money or whether neither gets the money, the results show that there is indeed a threshold below which Y will refuse what is, to him, free money, simply and solely because he believes that the distribution by X is unfair. For example, if X gives Y $1 and keeps $19 for himself, Y, on average, rejects the entire deal, and neither of them get anything.
Yes, this is on the one hand “irrational,” because it’s free money to Y regardless of the amount, and rejecting it leaves him worse off financially than if he were to take the deal, however paltry the division made by X. But that’s human nature, apparently (actually, it appears that it may be primate nature, as other primate species have had similar findings with regard to sharing food). In the long run, it encourages a certain amount of cooperation and willingness to share, which were no doubt beneficial in our early evolution.
I know that research exists, but don’t know that it shows the principle of equality = fairness is “hard wired”. It could just as easily be socialized into people after multiple generations of an education system dominated by egalitarian moralists.
And there is a vast difference between asserting that social justice (or stability) requires the maintenance of a certain minimum standard of living and asserting that any rich/poor “gap” must be minimized no matter how high the initial starting point for the “poor”.
I keep recalling the comment of a person from Russia who, when asked why they wanted to live in America, responded, “I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.” Those who complain about the “rich/poor gap” seem to me to usually want to bring the rich down, not bring the poor up. Indeed, they are usually condescending and dismissive towards the idea that the poor even have the capability to become rich. Thus, I conclude that it is envy, not compassion or optimism, that drives their discourse.
I don’t disagree that too much would “egalitarianism” would be very bad, Jason, but my point is that this basic psychological research shows that significant income gaps can reasonably be expected to create some level of social friction. At a certain level, social friction becomes social unrest and upheaval. If I could predict the various thresholds for such things, I’d be a wealthy man, or running my own country right now.
The children of the Russian immigrant, or at least his grandchildren, will not have the same emotional reaction as he does, because they will have grown up in a different reality than he did.
Again, my point is simply that extreme income gaps can indeed cause significant societal disruption. Envy is one of the fundamental human emotions, the effects of which we can’t entirely ignore just because we disapprove of the emotion. I certainly didn’t argue for “minimizing” any gap, just that at some (unknown) level, the gap becomes so high that society itself can tumble, regardless of how relatively well off the poorest folks are.
Oh, and I think the fact that this fairness principle has been observed even in monkeys (not to mention across many different human societies) strongly suggests that it is indeed hardwired into us, not a result of “an education system dominated by egalitarian moralists.”
Pat, who disapproves of emotions. What many of us disapprove of is putting emotion above thinking. Emotions are to be managed, especially the negative ones, like envy. Negative emotions have their place, a warning system if you will, but not something that should be given free reign. Maybe we could have some envy laws like we have hate laws. But I suspect that will depend on whose ox is being gored. Personally I think legislating emotions is stupid.
Years ago I saw some studies that showed if all the wealth was pooled together then redistributed equally, within a couple of years the distribution would be right back where it started. Its human nature. Some are willing to forgo lifes niceties for investment while others perfer to live in the moment with drink and drugs. And in this country its what ever floats your boat, just be willing to deal with the consequences.
@PatHMV: I agree that too much inequality can lead to social instability, Pat. I actually wrote a paper that attempted to reconcile Rawls and Nozick on that exact point, arguing that redistribution by the government is justifiable even on libertarian grounds when inequality threatens social stability.
But I think that line only exists in cases of extreme inequality, where the poor are destitute and desperate. Those egalitarians who push the “rich/poor gap” as a political issue aren’t seeking to prevent extreme poverty leading to social instability, they are trying to argue that ANY income inequality is by definition “unfair”. And I think the outcome they seek of extreme equality is socially just as bad as the outcome of extreme inequality, because it kills any incentive to excel.
It is worth remembering what egalitarian salary policies did to the work ethic in socialist economies. Workers had no incentive to excel, and as a result, many did just the bare minimum to avoid getting in trouble. No one had any incentive to take an entrepreneurial risk since the upside was limited by redistribution and therefore the risk was not potentially beneficial to justify it against the unconstrained downside risk.
The “rich/poor gap” may be a contingent problem but it is not an intrinsic problem, as it is assumed to be by egalitarians.
By the way, even if I concede the existence of some “hard-wired” impulse to “fairness”, I would maintain that impulse is extensively reshaped and reinterpreted by the influence of socialization. I don’t know how you could argue otherwise.