Whose Argument is It?
So now we come to the crux of where Mark and I disagree in the premise of “The Argument,” I think, and it is in fact a pretty narrow disagreement. Because I completely concur with his suggestion that all of those ideas to update Social Security for a new era (to change or replace it or however you want to frame it) are part of a long-term solution and perhaps of a new argument, too. He mentions Maya MacGuineas’s proposal, and I think the folks at New America Foundation have done an extraordinary job of trying to push government and the political debate forward.
But here’s the thing, for the purposes of this discussion: I spent about three years, give or take, following some of the most influential bloggers and the Democracy Alliance donors and the MoveOn juggernaut and Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy—in other words, the new progressive movement in its earliest days. I went to every part of the country and back again. And the number of people I met who had any passion for discussing and debating these ideas could fit into Mark’s living room. (I mean, I’ve not been invited over, but I’m assuming he doesn’t live in Vanderbilt Castle.) And that is the underlying point that should emerge from reading “The Argument”—not that no one has any ideas, certainly, but that the progressive movement as a whole seems mostly unconcerned with making any argument about the modernization of government, vastly preferring, instead, to vilify Republicans and exalt the virtues of party discipline and tactical superiority—both of which are in fact antithetical, in some cases, to the kind of debate Mark and I both find ourselves talking about.
Again, mine is a snapshot of a movement in its nascent phase, and I believe and hope that this can change. This is not an indictment of progressive politics. It is, I hope, what Mark said it was—a public service to the progressive movement, whose leaders are just beginning to grapple with the defining questions of our time.
Thanks.
Comments (22)
Perhaps we have greater faith in our policy experts and academics than you do, knowing that they are steeped in the policy details and unlike many of those on the other side, care about finding the best policies in order to reach the best outcomes.
Maybe it's part of our faith in science and reason and even in the possibility of a functioning government technocracy.
September 27, 2007 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Repost from earlier comment:
What do you think of Jon Chait's new book and the idea that the GOP has been selling snake oil in the guise of the idea of the Laffer curve and supply-side economics? If they are selling popular but fraudulent ideas, how does that impact what their opposition can and should do?
Also, how much do you credit things like the Southern Strategy and race-based appeals to conservatives to their success in being able to implement far less popular (or at least less well understood) ideas? It seems a plausible alternative to the unified theory of conservative victory through superior ideas for 21st C. governance. Or the power of talk radio and an alternative media apparatus for that matter.
Also, what about the polls that show that many, many Americans believe things that the GOP says that simply aren't true? There are many, many examples in every topic, from taxes (who benefited from the Bush tax cuts, who will face the estate tax), to foreign policy (Saddam attacked us on 9/11, we found WMD), to the details of basically every possible domestic policy.
September 27, 2007 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt,
Historically speaking, that is what the conservative movement did. It was against things before it was for things. It was against taxes. It was against government spending. It was against welfare. It was against crime. It was against weakening America's defense.
They won by attacking their opponents as being for all these things. When they won, then they figured out what they would do.
"Win first, then you get good"
September 27, 2007 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I won't belabor the point with another full post, but I can't help but comment that to write, "I spent about three years...following ...bloggers and the Democracy Alliance donors and the MoveOn juggernaut and Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy—...and the number of people I met who had any passion for discussing and debating these ideas could fit into Mark’s living room" -- is kind of like saying, "I spent three years going to football games and basketball games and even soccer games, and no one seems to play baseball."
Yes, I could fill my living room. We fill our conference room all the time. I could and sometimes do spend my entire day in large packed rooms, all over the country, with people who are part of the emerging progressive infrastructure, many of them bloggers and donors, who have a passion for discussing and debating these ideas, and an open mind about them. I spend almost no time talking about voter lists, framing, etc.
September 27, 2007 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
My friend Ohiomeister, we meet again. Where in Ohio, anyway?
I'm sorry, but I can't answer all of these in the level of detail I'd like to. Just can't. Deadline looming, kid to put back to bed, an inbox full of emails, a Yankee box score to read--you get it. This would take me all night. I'll do the pop quiz version, if that's Ok:
1. Haven't read it. Sorry.
2. I never said their ideas were susperior. I said they were persuasive. Some were good, many weren't. As for the Southern strategy, I make the point in chapter 3 of the book, better than I will here, that conservatives skillfully and cyncially exploited divisions in the country, and that those divisions were rooted as much in economic decline as in racial and ethnic tension.
3. I don't know what to make of that. I don't trust polls--I think people almost always end up sounding less informed in polls than they really are, in my experience. But if Americans are that misinformed, then we in the media bear some of the responsibility (though I won't answer for the what the broadcast people do, because that's a different species), and so does the party that has failed to set the record straight.
Hope that suffices. Thanks.
Join The Argument.
www.mattbai.com
September 27, 2007 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi. I addressed this in my first post answering Mark Schmitt, and he conceded the point, so I'll let that stand as my response. Thanks.
Join The Argument.
www.mattbai.com
September 27, 2007 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, but Mark, you know as well as I do that my book could not account for every single discussion in the progressive universe, and that the people you're mentioning are not nearly as influential or as ever-present as the ones I chronicled. Should I have taken the time to ackowledge they existed in small pockets, though largely off the front pages on any major blog (except this one, actually) and not at MoveOn Parties or local party meetings or among the wealthiest donors? Maybe I should have, but even then, it would not have satisfied you, because the mention would have been too small and would not have affected the overall picture. I'm not trying to minimize what you do--I'm trying to point out that it matters, and that more people should be taking part.
As for these packed halls of donors and bloggers with open minds and a passion for innovating government--well, that simply has not been my experience, and it's not like I didn't look.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, which is fine, since you seem to like the book anyway.
Join The Argument.
www.mattbai.com
September 27, 2007 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed! It's a small but interesting point.
September 28, 2007 6:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well maybe, just maybe, if no one wants to discuss what you want to discuss then it isn't the highest thing on people's agenda? Perhaps you want to change the subject simply to what you want to talk about instead of what a far greater number of people believe needs to be talked about which is winning the government back?
It may not be to your liking, but perhaps you're the one who is not getting it.
Also, your reporter's bias for talking to the people who really count as opposed to those who are not as "influential" as the ones you spoke to just might be distorting your understanding of what is happening on the ground both then and now. The more I read what you've got to say the more I believe you're just out of synch like the bulk of those in your profession and others who have been absorbed by the DC Borg.
The nationwide groundswell of opposition to what is going on in Washington (the entire elite regime on both sides of the aisle) in almost all respects has only just begun. The isolated, out of touch mentality of DC has the oh so important and influential persons living inside and around the mighty beltway scratching their heads and wondering why all of us just aren't listening to all of you since you're so dang smart. When the Tsunami hits the beach in a few years and real change comes you're not even gonna know what hit ya.
September 28, 2007 7:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Liberals have no conception of government other than hating Bush? Speak for yourself. I'm not contributing further. This is just GOP sliming masquerading as reporting. Or worse, masquerading as reporting on some group I know little about that could fit in a living room but I'm supposed to take as the problem with liberalism. I'm sure your book will do well. Everyone in the Beltway is reading it and praising it, especially on the right. Why do you need me?
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 28, 2007 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matt-
Here's my takeaway of what I take to be the crux of your argument here:
"the progressive movement as a whole seems mostly unconcerned with making any argument about the modernization of government, vastly preferring, instead, to vilify Republicans and exalt the virtues of party discipline and tactical superiority"
So I have a couple of quick responses to that:
1. What you describe is taken directly from the Republican playbook. This, IMHO, is necessary but not sufficient. It's part of catching up, and leveling the playing field
2. When you say "modernization of government", I assume you're not referring to best management practices, but rather to developing a new paradigm, just as the New Deal was a new paradigm, and Ronald Reagan embodied a new, neo-conservative paradigm.
3. The surface of the real problem is that Democrats/liberals/progressives haven't established a meaningful narrative that ties the different elements of their new paradigm together. This is, in large part, because that new paradigm hasn't yet been developed. I think that's what you mean when you say "modernization of government."
4. I think there isn't a new paradigm yet because there hasn't been a fundamental discussion about values, and what values will be fundamental/necessary/sufficient to that new paradigm.
5. Right now there are "value clusters" in the Democratic Party, roughly represented by the Clintons, Edwards, Obama, Kucinich, and Biden. The struggle is on to see which value cluster will predominate.
6. Somewhat off topic, Clinton is trying to win over the other value clusters by virtue of potentially being the first woman US President.
(apologies for cross-posting)
September 28, 2007 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for answering. I'm from the empty middle-ish part, north of Columbus (Go Bucks!), south of Cleveland. The western part of Ralph Regula's district.
I can tell you that I have had innumerable arguments with people who think that, say, the Bush tax cuts mostly went to the middle class or we found WMD in Iraq.
Why?
Maybe you haven't experienced life in AM talk radio/Fox News land, but it's an altogether different experience. People don't trust the so-called MSM (and often don't read the newspaper or have a conservative paper and don't watch non-Fox TV news) and believe what Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh tell them.
Those guys constantly spread these myths to their listening audience about all of these things and are obviously extremely selective about the topics they cover. All I heard about in 2004 were the stupid Swift Boat lies about Kerry. And from normally sensible people, too, not just real wingers!
What are the Dems supposed to do since they don't own a TV network or a bunch of radio stations? It's just so difficult to get even pretty basic facts to people.
September 28, 2007 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Modernize government? I think the problem is rather that we're discarding all that old fashioned stuff like rule of law, 1st amendment, 4th amendment, etc. I don't much trust the modernizers. They usually just want to discard what it took about 2000 years to achieve.
September 28, 2007 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Barry Goldwater couldn't have said it better.
That is a very conservative,with a small c, statement.
Jack
September 28, 2007 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
If my choice in 2008 was between Goldwater and Clinton, this leftie would vote for Barry. And don't I wish we had a candidate who could run with the campaign slogan "a choice not an echo"!
September 28, 2007 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I find interesting is that most of those ideas are being formulated by people whose only knowledge of Social Security 'crisis' is second or third hand, the number of people who could offhand cite the economic assumptions in Table V.B1: Principal Economic Assumptions of the 2007 Social Security Report could fit in Mark Schmitt's guest bathroom, moreover most of those people are not fundamentally looking for a 'fix' as conventionally defined.
Social Security 'crisis' is generally framed in terms of the Trust Fund going 'broke' at some future time ('broke' generally being undefined) and private accounts being presented as some way to 'fix' that state of 'brokeness'. Which I think most people would think meant a focus on payment of full scheduled benefits. But solvency is not the focus of these plans at all. For example you mention Maya MacGuineas, co-author of one of the more prominant privatization plans out there LMS: Leibman-MacGuineas-Samwick Nonpartisan Social Security Plan I urge everyone to read it, it is not particularly technical and only 9 pages long. But how many have in fact read it?
For those that have not understand that the current payroll gap through the standard 75 year window is 1.95%. Which is to say that the Social Security Trustees say that an immediate increase in payroll tax of that amount would fully fund promised benefits for every single worker currently in the workforce. Now this amount was 1.92% at the time LMS was drafted. So what is their solution?
LMS suggests that all workers get a tax increase of 1.5%, that the cap be lifted by the equivalent of another 1.0% of payroll for a total payroll tax equivalent of 2.5%. Problem solved? No they proceed to add another combined 2.7% of payroll equivalent by cutting benefits and increasing retirement age. In the face of a 'problem' whose conventional fix is a 1.95% payroll tax increase, or a combination of tax increases, retirement age changes, and benefit cuts equalling 1.95% of payroll LMS proposes the equivalent of a 4.2% payroll tax increase on workers making incomes under the cap along with a 6.2% increase in marginal rates for most people in the 28% bracket and everyone in the 33%.
Why the overkill? Because LMS is not about a 'fix' of Social Security, it is about a transformation of it to something quite different but all at a huge cost to current workers. The authors are not being devious here, they lay out what they conceive to be the advantages of their approach, little of which particularly focused on solvency of the system as such. As an example an examination of Table 1 in LMS shows that even with the equivalent of a 4.2% tax increase all one earner couples come out behind in LMS from what they would get simply by taking a straight 1.95% increase.
So I will freely admit I haven't read Matt's book. On the other hand has Matt read the 2007 Report of the Trustees of Social Security past the 15 page overview? If that? Has Matt actually read through LMS? In more general terms has Matt (or indeed most commenters) done any primary research on this topic at all? Certainly Maya MacGuineas and Andrew Samwick have, they know the numbers intimately. But they are proposing a solution to a whole different problem set than most people would suppose.
In my decade long experience dealing with this topic outside a handful of Heterodox economists like Dean Baker and Max Sawicky almost everyone who actually knows the details of Social Security are opposed to it on principle. Dean put this very well in the introduction to Social Security: the Phony Crisis all of the way back in 1999.
The roof analogy is illuminating, but we can make it more accurate. Imagine that it’s not going to rain for more than 30 years. And the rain, when it does arrive (and it might not), will be pretty light. And imagine that the average household will have a lot more income for roof repair by the time the rain approaches.
Now add this: most of the people who say they want to fix the roof actually want to knock holes in it.
This is the situation facing Social Security, and it is well known to those who have looked at the numbers. The program will take in enough revenue to keep all of its promises for over 30 years, without any changes at all. Thirty years is a long time—it’s hard to think of any other program that can claim to be secure for that long. Furthermore, the forecast of a shortfall in 2034 is based on the economy limping along at less than a 1.7 percent annual rate of growth—about half the rate of the previous three decades. If the economy were to grow at 1998’s rate, for example, the system would never run short of money.
All of that is still true, except that depletion has been pushed out to 2041, and the payroll gap in 1999 was 2.07%. What do you call a 'problem' that left unaddressed for eight years recedes in time by seven years and requires a smaller fix going forward than before?
The problem with the 'new argument' on Social Security is that almost all of the people who actually know the basic facts are working to eliminate it. Simply put 99% of all progressives are simply fighting on a battlefield prepared by the enemy. An enemy that is simply assuming that no one will actually check their facts. And given the record of the last ten years rightly confident in that belief.
September 29, 2007 7:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can you submit this as a discussion table post? I would really like to see it on the front page.
sPh
September 29, 2007 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Treasury Department released on Monday the first in a series of Social Security Issue Briefs (Warning deceptive and alarmist rhetoric ahead)
Each and everyone of these points are debatable and in my view wrong. Then again I have done my homework. Can readers here spot the fundamental fallacy? Hint, how do they come up with 3.5% over the 'indefinite future' when the Trustees report 1.95% over the standard seventy-five year window?
Yet you can bet all the reporting on this will dutifully repeat $13.6 trillion (the amount over the standard 75 year window is $4.7 trillion). These people want you to not know.
September 29, 2007 7:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
To address it properly would take a book length treatment, which of course Phony Crisis already did.
I have found it more productive to be reactive both on the basis of the 'Bruce Who?' effect and the fact that a lot of these people are simply not playing fair. That is someone will weigh in with a totally reductive argument, you challenge it on the basis that they clearly don't understand the fundamentals and suddenly they are oddly familiar with Appendix E: Stochastic Projections itself a last minute addition to the 2003 Report.
Hmm? What time constraints? Without debating on the merits of the Stochastic Projections themselves what was the motivation for introducing this device to begin with? Why did they introduce a whole new measure of solvency with the Infinite Future Horizon projection in that same year? Well I don't think it was a coincidence that this came at the same time that there was pushback against the Intermediate Cost alternative. As Dean put it in Phony Crisis.
Or as I framed it all of the way back in 1997;
"If Privatization is Possible it Won't Be Necessary, If Privatization is Necessary it Won't be Possible"
By 2000 at the latest it was clear that any rate of economic growth that would allow private accounts to work would meet or exceed the numbers of the Low Cost alternative which returns a fully funded Social Security system without changes in tax, benefits, cap or retirement age. And since then there have been a whole series of gambits designed to keep people from realizing that 'Low Cost is Out There'. The problem for me is that pointing out manipulations in the reporting, at least until recent years, put me in serious danger of being relegated to Tin Foil Hat Land. Surely the professionals in these agencies wouldn't allow their work product to be influenced by political considerations? Well given the dirty work done by Bush people at NASA, DoI and just about everywhere else, the notion that politics has snuck into Social Security reporting is no longer crazy. But just in case I prefer to let people like Josh and Duncan take the lead on these things.
September 29, 2007 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The other problem with this is that first you sell those who really could privatize and do better on the idea (not a hard sell) and in doing so you reinforce the "I" factor, I can do it, why can't THEY. This totally undermines the "we" factor in the entire concept of "social" security.
This is perfectly logical conservative thinking. I know many principled conservatives. Their philosophy belongs in the debate, but it is no debate at all if we concede the argument.
Instead, we ought to be taking every opportunity to cleverly argue against the "Survivor" society. Take Bush's extremely conservative stand on SCHIP. We ought be arguing that ALL children should be healthy and their health should not be dependent on their family income. The argument for Social Security was that ALL the elderly should be treated with dignity.
The core values of our society will be demonstrated in how we treat the old and the young and the most vulnerable.
That isn't a "progressive" argument - and Hillary, this isn't even an argument about "fiscal responsibility". It's an argument that goes back to the Sermon on the Mount.
September 29, 2007 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Along those lines anyone really interested in this topic should read the introduction the the Fall 1983 issue of Cato Journal which is entirely devoted to Social Security Social Security; Continuing Crisis or Real Reform and then follow up with the article by Butler and Germanis Social Security Reform: Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy
Here are some eye opening excerpts;
Remember Bush promising that retirees and people approaching retirement would be protected? He didn't come up with that on his own.
If you can't win the battle of ideas, then cheat.
Boy howdy. Show Wall Street there are some bucks to be made and get its clout behind you.
Yep lets take an underinformed group and shove misinformation at them until they are convinced Social Security just won't be there at all. (This worked great BTW).
There is lots more. The point is that none of this was an accident. They set out to create a privatized system based on IRAs (and pushing IRAs in general was just another part of the strategy). In short you can draw a straight line from Butler and Germanis to LMS. They established the plan in 1983 after their last defeat and followed it to the letter ever since.
September 30, 2007 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I admire Bruce's analysis, but I'm trying not to overreact. It seems like something Matt through at us late in the week just to prove that the corporate marketing slogan about new ideas meant something, even if his book, articles, and initial post don't explain it. Oops, better find big idea for the information age fast. Tie it to the information age, check.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
October 1, 2007 5:53 AM | Reply | Permalink