Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning. One of the callers chastised him and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for supporting socialism. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez last week defeated Representative Joseph Crowley in the primaries for the 14th district. The 14th district is heavily Democratic, having favored Democratic presidential candidates all the way back to William J. Clinton. Sixty-one percent of the 14th district’s voter population is black or Latino. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is favored to win and Establishment Democrats are not too excited about a Bernie Sanders supporter (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez worked on Senator Sanders’ campaign) infiltrating the halls of Congress.
Republicans may see this single win as a virus that is about to spread through the Democratic Party and may position themselves as the cure. While Nancy Pelosi may express outwardly a lack of concern about a democratic socialist win in a single district, democratic socialism has attracted more attention since the November 2016 election as an alternative to a Democratic Party that has been enjoying a quarter of a century of corporatization.
No doubt Establishment Republicans are enjoying the schism being caused by a socialist insurgency, but I sense run-of-the mill conservatives within and outside the Republican Party like the C-SPAN caller are concerned that a seemingly increasing number of young people are moving toward socialist philosophy. Mr. O’Donnell adroitly addressed the caller’s vitriol arguing that the United States has a political economy that mixes certain aspects of market and centrally planned economies. Conservatives tend to focus on the anti-freedom approaches of socialism such as limited speech, and a lack of universal suffrage at the voting booth. They focus on the brutality of a socialist State toward dissidents, currency manipulation, and closed access to economic markets. They assume that socialism is the only top-down, lock down system on the planet.
They are wrong.
Just one look at America’s monetary system alone should tell a critical thinker that the economy of the United States is top-down and centrally planned. Most people do not issue their own currency. That job is for America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve. See mortgage rates going up and you can reasonably tie some action by the Fed to your pain. And while Republican members of Congress scream about free markets and alleviating the tax burdens of entrepreneurs, they add to the entrepreneur’s burdens by increasing budget deficits creating spending gaps that have to be filled by more borrowing which increases demand for loanable funds which leads to higher interest rates which leads to businesses facing increased barriers to entry into the credit markets. This is top down, centrally planned, oppressive economics in American form.
And let’s not forget our tax system. Talk about centrally planned. Have you ever been asked to give direct insight and opinion on whether your marginal tax rate or effective tax rate should be increased? Of course not. America’s version of the National People’s Congress does that, with the only difference between China’s legislative body and America’s is the frequency of meetings and the amount of checks they place on their executive.
Conservatives would argue that the American electoral system is indicative of an open democracy. That fallacy has been exposed twice in the past eighteen years where the “people’s choice” lost because a small body of unknown electors decided five weeks after a presidential election who the winner was and had that decision certified three weeks later by members of Congress. Top-down. Centrally planned.
Lastly, if Obamacare didn’t convince you that your healthcare finance system is centrally planned, then the history of Medicare should inform you as to the impact and influence the federal government has on the insurance industry. Medicare opened up two markets for the private insurance industry: the administrative services market, where private insurers invested in and provided the administrative infrastructure for serving an influx of newer patients, and underserved market of people over the age of 65 and medical insurance supplemental market, where insurance services gaps in Medicare are filled by private insurers. It is hard for conservatives to argue that the free market met these needs when on the contrary government action created the markets and the opportunity for private insurers to increase revenues.
You can probably find more examples, but the point here is that too many Americans express their lack of economic literacy when wailing about the ills of central planning. While I don’t want to give liberals credit for much, they do make a point when clarifying that the United States’ economy is a mixed one and expose the irony that many critics are likely enjoying some of these socialist programs themselves.
When asked to choose an “ism”, my response is either one, whether socialism or capitalism, represents top down suppression of individual choice because government exercises an inordinate amount of influence under either paradigm. The individual has no say in the crafting of policy in either framework. It is a take it or leave it scenario either way. The questions conservatives should be asking themselves is, can I create a better benefit for myself on my own terms?
