Brooks’ Paradox And
Brownback’s Panacea
David Brooks has an interesting piece in last Friday’s New York
Times, "The Great Migration" in which he writes about the lures beckoning the
academically gifted from more rural and economically depressed communities. Smart high school kids from all over the
country end up going to top tier universities that operate at a different pace;
harsher, more competitive, faster, more meritocratic. Some are turned off, but most are brought
into the vortex. These same universities
are feeders to the best internships, the best graduate schools, the best
employment opportunities.
Brooks is wrestling with a central paradox in his desire for
communitarian conservatism. Unlike many
Republicans at the national level, he accepts the obligation to care for those
in need. What he rejects is the Obama/Democratic
approach, in which government always provides the safety net. In Brooks’ view, the best places to deliver
charity and community support are at the grass-roots, and the best ways to
create the wealth that enables that charity is to unleash the private sector
and to educate the talented.
But, in practice, as he acknowledges, it doesn’t work. Education creates intellectual and financial
free agency; the smart kids from Nebraska, or Newark, or rural Ohio, leave the
home team and take their talents elsewhere.
Their movement from a more socially egalitarian and supportive culture
to one that is more focused on a “relentless quest for distinction” is
transformational, and does nothing to solve the inequality problem. The Great Migration perversely produces the
opposite effect; when you’ve shown the Nebraska farm-boy Paris (or Davos) the
livestock back home looks less appealing. They simply join a new team, and
they like it.
Brooks doesn’t make the direct connection, but this mirrors
part of what Murray and Herrnstein were talking about in “The Bell Curve.” We “smart” people, from all across the
country, come together in the great universities, go off to graduate school and
the professional world, and choose our friends and spouses from among the
people we meet there. We settle in
communities with the same group, have kids, who then go to elite public or
private schools together, then those kids go on to some of the same universities
we went to, and the closed loop of education, influence, class, and genetics
self-reinforces.
So, in American, land of the free capitalist, why is this
bad? If we earned it, why we shouldn’t we enjoy the fruits of our labors? More coarsely, who cares about income disparity
if we have what we want, and, even better, can pay our politicians to make sure
we get more?
The problem, which Brooks understands, isn’t that we have
elites. We always have. And it isn’t that we have the poor, who will
always be with us. But, when you join
the ever-widening gap with a stretched middle class, a demographic time bomb,
and a political system that is trapped in absolutist absurdities, you create
the potential for serious disruption. Income
inequality needs to be addressed, not out of some do-gooder impulse, but
because we have to. There is no other
way to expand our base of productive, taxpaying citizens, and, in the long run,
there is no other way to maintain a stable society.
We are running headlong, eyes open, but apparently unseeing,
into a declining future. The Republicans
like to call it “European” because it sounds more Socialist and effete--they
being the manly party that knows how to say no.
In fact, we are less Europe and more Japan.
The Japanese have been in a two decades-long recession; too
much incestuous cross-investing among business and the financial services
industry, a calcified social system, excessive bureaucracy, antiquated work
rules, and a rapidly aging population which needs more and more support, not
because they are lazy or unwilling, but because they are unable. The Japanese government has abetted all this,
printing and throwing money everywhere to keep all levels of society quiet. But there isn’t enough vibrancy in the private
sector, or enough young people, to support the aging and the economically
displaced, and fiscal policy may be reaching the end of the road. Sound
familiar?
How do we escape? We
probably do need a “Grand Bargain.” That
is where things get tricky, because we need to convince people that a little
bit of altruism is actually in their self-interest.
In Brooks’ communitarian society, that should be
self-evident. Communities take care of their own, providing economic support
while encouraging Protestant work-ethic values that ultimately lift all boats.
Brooks is right, at least in the laboratory of both ethics
and smart policy. Subtle societal pressures plus training takes a needy person
from eating the proffered fish to fishing himself. But outside the laboratory, the reality is
very different. Brooks’ belief in civic
virtue appears naïve; politicians conflate their own ideologies and ambitions
with the public good, and many people prefer to take or keep rather than to earn
or give.
In less myopic times, we would look for the problem to be
addressed nationally in that Grand Bargain.
It is clear that is unlikely now.
Washington fails because neither party really grasps the scope of the
problem, they merely use its existence as a boogeyman to continue stale policy
prescriptions. The Democrats seem to care
more about creating a permanent fish-giving entitlement, while the Republicans
prefer people to starve while they wait for tax cuts to induce a job creator to
order a trawler.
Of course, with no compromises, both sides need a clean win
to enact their program, and neither side has it in Washington. But, at the state level, the opposite is
true. More than 35 states are completely
controlled by one party or the other, two dozen by the Republicans. If Brooks is right, Governors and state
legislators will be more responsive to local needs, giving them more freedom to
experiment to find a cure.
Indiana is solidly Republican, notwithstanding Richard
Mourdock’s self-immolation. They
dominate the State House (69-31) and Senate (36-13). Outgoing Governor Mitch Daniels had
previously been George W. Bush Director of OMB, where he earned the name “The
Blade”, and not for Zorro-like looks.
The new Governor, Steve Pence, hard right as a Congressman, just gave
his first Inaugural Address as Governor.
Pence noted that one in five children live below the poverty line, and then
proposed a budget that while fiscally conservative, also increases funds for education,
job training, transportation, veterans, child-protective services, and health
care for the poor. That is one approach.
Stronger medicine is being administered in Kansas. There, Republicans have such a free hand that
they are comfortable purging all but the most ultra-right in their midst. Governor Sam Brownback, a social conservative
and tea party darling, has cast his cold eye upon the land, and found both
moral and economic sin. His panacea for
stagnant economic growth is not more investment in training and education
(Kansas ranks near the bottom in several quality measures of education ) but to
effectively eliminate virtually all income and business taxes. He finances those cuts, in part, by a regressive
higher sales tax, fewer basic services, and (naturally) significant
reductions in school aid. It would be
redundant to point out that these changes are entirely on the backs of working and
middle class families, who will, perversely, pay more and get less, while giving the top one
percent of Kansas taxpayers an average tax cut of about $21,000 per year. Brownback and his supporters claim this will
bring businesses pouring into Kansas.
Brownback’s Panacea might play well politically in Kansas,
which is deep crimson. Democrats have
only 9 seats of 40 in the State Senate, and 33 of 125 in the State House. Will it, in fact, attract business, and will
the promised economic growth do anything about income inequality? I am not sure Brownback cares about the
latter; he has a government that suits his philosophy. Presumably, it will suit the majority of
Kansans, who can always use the ballot to express their opinions. I’m betting Brownback keeps his position, and Kansas’s poor and working class keep theirs.
And that brings us back to Brooks’ Paradox. Does the social mobility afforded by elite higher
education benefit everyone, or is it merely transformative, taking 4-H kids out
of their communities and placing them in cloisters of the good life? Do they keep their communitarian values and
couple personal success with continuing efforts for the greater good? Or, do they just “forget where they came
from” and invest in their favorite politicians to get more?
If we are going to tackle the problems ahead of us, we are
going to need an answer, and soon. Power
and money are neither moral nor immoral.
It is what you do with them when you have them that counts.
David Brooks understands that as well. If you read “The Great Migration,” you may
find more than a little despair.
Let’s hope he’s wrong.
MM
