Bereft Of Any New Policy Ideas Since Vietnam, America's Liberal Left Is bankrupt

[Stephanie]

SNIP:

English: Karl Marx
Karl Marx (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you were offered 50 percent more income than you now earn, would you be willing to go work in a coal mine? Would you give up 15 IQ points for 50 percent more income? Would you give up 10 years of life expectancy?

If you are willing to accept these offers, then money is probably the most important thing in your life. At least it ranks very near the top. For most of us, money is nowhere near the most important thing, however.

Why do we need to reflect on this? Because the topic du jour on the left these days is inequality. By inequality they mean inequality of income. And they want government to do something about it.

Yet, as I wrote recently, people seem to care a lot more about physical and mental health, living longer, social status and a host of other things than they care about money. And for the most part, money can’t buy the things that people care most about.

So why are intellectuals on the left so obsessed with money inequality instead of the inequality of life’s blessings that people value much more? Certainly in their own lives they don’t act as though money is the most important value. They’re all writers and professors when they could have earned a lot more by getting a law degree or an MBA.

I believe the answer is that they are reactionaries. They’re living in the past.

When Karl Marx was writing about inequality 150 years ago, most people were struggling to meet basic needs. To obtain life’s necessities, you needed money. So it was only natural that money income and wealth were the focus of Marx’s attention. Not surprisingly, redistribution of income was the primary goal of 19th century socialists.

Today things are different. Nature produces all kinds of inequalities that seem a lot more unfair than differences in income. Women for example, live as much as ten years longer than men. Some people are born with genius IQs; others are not as lucky. Some are born with the Huntington’s disease gene; others are not.

If the left wants to redress life’s unfairness, why don’t they advocate redistribution from women to men, from people with healthy genes to unhealthy genes, from high to low IQs? And if Tom Wolfe is right, just about everybody cares about status more than income. Social status is distributed far more unequally than income. So why isn’t the left advocating redistribution from high status to low status individuals?

Why, in other words, are they focused on a 19th century socialist view of the world instead of a 21st century view?

I have believed for some time that the left is intellectually bankrupt. I can’t think of a single new idea from the left of the political spectrum since the end of the Vietnam War. Just about all the national debates since then have been over proposals that have come from the right. Try watching left-wing talk shows on television. I believe you will find that they spend almost all their time talking about people on the right and their ideas.

all of it here
Bereft Of Any New Policy Ideas Since Vietnam, America's Liberal Left Is Intellectually Bankrupt - Forbes

 

[Joe Steel]

... I have believed for some time that the left is intellectually bankrupt. I can’t think of a single new idea from the left of the political spectrum since the end of the Vietnam War. Just about all the national debates since then have been over proposals that have come from the right. Try watching left-wing talk shows on television. I believe you will find that they spend almost all their time talking about people on the right and their ideas.

Apparently the author of the linked article thinks the production of a never-ending stream of bad ideas by the Right is to be admired. Where he could have gotten that idea is a puzzlement to the Left. Much of what passes for their so-called intellectual bankruptcy really is just stunned amazement at the silliness of the Right.

 

[Billo_Really]

Just about all the national debates since then have been over proposals that have come from the right.

Unfortunately, those "proposals" are made up, phoney issues, that distract public attention away from the real problems the country needs to address. One of which, is the re-distribution of wealth that is moving "up", not down.

 

[Bfgrn]

Funny.

John C. Goodman is the founder, President and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a free market think tank primarily funded by private foundations established by wealthy conservative business families and billionaires, including Charles and David Koch.



"The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
David Stockman - Director of the Office of Management and Budget for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.