A Curious Conversation

Recently, a reader of this blog started a series of rather curious comments. At least they seem somewhat strange to me. Since they seem emblematic of many political conversations going on today, I want to share them with you. Perhaps you can think of ways in which it might be continued fruitfully.

The Conversation

The conversation began with a comment to my post What Progressives Don’t Get About Wealth Creation and Corporations. The commenter goes by the moniker DONNIETRUMPSUCKSPUTINDROPPINGS. I will refer to him or her only as “the commenter.” He wrote the following all in caps: 

“WHAT A LOAD OF RIGHT WING BALONEY AND HORSE CRAP!!!! RIGHT WINGERS HAVE CONTROLLED THE USA FOR MOST OF THIS NATIONS HISTORY…. AND YET… ITS THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS FAULT THAT REPUBLICANS HAVE SCREWED EVERYTHING UP???? DEMOCRATS HAVE NOT CONTROLLED THE USA SINCE THE MID 1960S… EVER SINCE ALL THE RIGHT WING SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS STARTED VOTING WITH… AND THEN JOINING… THE REPUBLICAN PARTY…. AND IT IS NO ACCIDENT THAT THE USA HAS GONE DOWN HILL EVER SINCE THEN, AS REPUBLICANS HAVE BECOME EVER MORE POWERFUL… AND EVER MORE EXTREMIST AND SELFISH AND GREEDY AND SELF CENTERED AND SELF RIGHTEOUS AND JUST FLAT OUT STUPID!!!”

That pretty much set the tone. He (or she) then quickly added on my page About Me,

“I GUESS IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DISCUSS YOUR RIGHT WING OPINIONS, INSTEAD OF JUST CRAMMING THEM DOWN PEOPLES THROATS… YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO ALLOW UNFRIENDLY COMMENTS INSTEAD OF BLOCKING ALL OF THEM!!!”

Not that I blocked any of them, although I might have been a little tardy in approving them. In reply, I wrote

“You are answering my post with a series of assertions unsupported by empirical evidence. You say that right-wingers have controlled the U.S. for most of its history? In fact, since the mid-1960s, power has generally been split between the parties. In the periods when one party has controlled the executive branch, the other party has held at least one chamber of Congress. So, the big question becomes which party supports policies better supported by social reality?”

“An assertion I often make is that the more government tries to control its society, the worse off that country generally becomes. How would one either justify or rebut this claim? One requirement surely would be a series of figures of merit showing how well a country serves its people. In the past, I have used per capita GDP, the Gini Index, and the U.N. Human Development Index.”

“A second requirement would be an index that measures how much a country’s government controls its country. There are several of these. I have used the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and two indices jointly produced by the Cato and Fraser Institutes: their Economic Freedom Index and their Personal Freedom index. Values for both sets of indices are produced annually for every country on Earth for which data is available.”

“Finally, one would need a source for the values of the figures of merit in a given year for as many nations as possible. I have found them given by the World Bank and by the United Nations.“

“Using all this data you can produce scatter plots of the nations’ figures of merit versus a freedom index. One of my latest posts in which I went through this exercise was How Much Human Freedom Can We Find in the World?“

“I think this empirical data dispositively support the American Right’s view of social reality, not that of the progressive Left. Take a look and let me know what you think. You might also find the following posts useful: Biden’s Administration Should Take a Course in Economics 101, A Brief Review of the Classical Laws of Economics and Why They Still Matter, and How Progressive Democrats Try to Violate the Classical Laws of Economics.”

At this point, my interlocuter decided to become somewhat more civil and to make some mention of data supporting his attitudes. His next post was mostly in lower case.

“I use all sorts of data to explore how government serves the American people… but by far the simplest but also the most telling is… drum roll please…. the real minimum wage and how much it is and who it covers…. and the share of personal income accruing to the top percentiles of the US population. Those data tell me… very very clearly…. that Republicans and other conservatives have gained ever more total control over this nation since about the mid to late 1960’s, and that Republicans and other conservatives have used that ever greater control to effectively steal tens of trillions of dollars from the ordinary working people of this nation, and to use that stolen wealth to super enrich the very top most percentiles…. who have used their ever greater wealth to buy control of this nations economic, social and political systems…. and who have used that purchased control to ever more greatly enrich and empower themselves…. and to ever more impoverish and effectively enslave an ever greater portion of the US… and world…. populations!!!  All the other data that you and your fellow right wingers like to spew simply confuses the critical issues, and muddy the waters…. which helps you right wingers gain ever greater control…. because simple minded people are easily misled into supporting Republicans, mostly!!!  Yeah… most Democrats are not all that bright, either… but their MORAL compass tells them that Republicans and other conservatives are thieves and liars who have NO interest whatsoever in the well being of anyone but themselves!!! BY THE WAY…. IF YOU REPLY TO THE E-MAILS SENT BY THE OWNER OF THIS WEBSITE, THOSE MESSAGES WILL BE REJECTED…. JUST LIKE POSTS TO THIS SITE ARE BLOCKED…. UNLESS… APPARENTLY… THEY AGREE WITH THE RIGHT WING NONSENSE THE AUTHOR OF THIS SITE MAKES USE OF!!!”

I suspect what the commenter means about “posts to this site are blocked” are his own comments. Yet, I have never blocked them. I might reconsider that policy if they become merely repetitive. To this last comment, I replied,

“You say that the data you pay attention to is ‘the real minimum wage’ and ‘the share of personal income accruing to the top percentiles of the US population.’ Please state your data sources.”

“I would like to point out a couple of points. First, according to the wage growth tracker of the Atlanta Federal Reserve, the wages of the fourth (bottom) quartile of wage earners grew fastest under the Trump Administration. It had not had this place since sometime around 2008. Following this wage quartile in decreasing order the faster-growing quartiles were the third, second, and first quartiles. Under Biden, all quartiles are rising extremely fast. This is evidence of a wage-push inflation, as they all are growing very fast but below the current CPI inflation rate of 8.2 percent.”

“The second point I would like to make is that as the economic freedom of a country increases, its Gini index tends to decrease. By economic freedom, I mean the freedom of individuals and companies to make their own economic decisions independent of the government. As you may know, as a country’s Gini Index decreases, its GDP becomes more evenly distributed among the population. Again, I would urge you to read the post How Much Human Freedom Can We Find in the World?“

I will skip a couple of his following comments that have to do with left-wing conspiracy theories about a coming Trump coup d’e´tat. You can find those comments on my About Me page.

In a couple of his following comments, he makes assertions that the New Deal policies of the 1930s were responsible for what made the U.S. the richest and freest nation on Earth.

“… MOST OF THE IMPORTANT STUFF IN AMERICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY HAPPENED AFTER 1970… WHEN REPUBLICANS STARTED TO DESTROY AMERICA BY DESTROYING THE NEW DEAL PROGRAMS THAT DEMOCRATS USED TO MAKE AMERICA THE RICHEST AND MOST POWERFUL… AND FREEEST…. NATION ON EARTH!!! REPUBLICANS HATED THAT, BECAUSE THE NEW DEAL PROGRAMS DESTROYED THE ABILITY OF THE CONSERVATIVE ELITE TO TOTALLY AND CMPLETELY CONTROL THE LIVES AND WELL BEING OF ALL THE REST OF US!!!”

In one of his last comments, he states,

“IF YOU WERE TRULY SERIOUS ABOUT TRUE ECONOMIC WELL BEING OF THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION, THEN YOU WOULD BE WELL AWARE OF THE HISTORY OF THE MINIMUM WAGE…. AND OF HOW TO ADJUST THAT FOR INFLATION TO GET THE REAL MINIMUM WAGE. AND YOU WOULD ALSO BE WELL AWARE THAT AT LEAST 50 TO 60% OF ALL WORKING PEOPLE EARN WAGES THAT ARE TIED TO THE FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE… MEANING THAT THE FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE…. THAT REPUBLICANS HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSING FOR OVER 40 YEARS… IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT POLICY. AS FOR SHARES OF INCOME, THAT DATA IS ALSO WIDELY AVAILABLE, AND ANYONE WHO FOLLOWS INCOME DATA WOULD ALSO BE VERY VERY AWARE OF THAT EXTREMELY IMPORTANT DATA SERIES. BUT SINCE YOU ONLY CARE ABOUT THE WELL BEING OF YOUR RICH RIGHT WING FASCIST REPUBLICAN MASTERS, I GUESS YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF THAT DATA… OR OF ITS DEEEEP IMPLICATIONS. AS YOUR HERO TRUMP WOULD HAVE PUT IT… SAD!!! “
 

What This Conversation Suggests to Me

Throughout my interlocuter’s comments, one can see faith in a beneficent government having the competence and capability to protect the people from evil conservative elites. Yet, all these views are so riddled with falsehoods, that it is hard to decide where to begin.

Let us begin with the ideas that governments are both competent and capable to solve difficult social and economic problems for most people. There is a truly enormous database that exhibits the exact opposite. They show that the more governments control their societies, the more they do bad things to them. This can be seen in the empirical data discussed in the post How Much Human Freedom Can We Find in the World? That this data is drawn from every single country on Earth is a testament that my assertion is culturally independent. American Leftists will not be able to change the harmful effects of an autocratic government simply by changing our culture.

What then about the capability of governments to change social and economic conditions? The answer to this question does appear to be culturally dependent. If a country has a highly progressive tax structure, i.e. the tax rates rise steeply with the income of the taxed individual or company, then most tax revenue is received from the richest. In the United States in 2017, about 40 percent of income tax revenue was taken from the top 1 percent in income. The top 5 percent in income provided about 60.3 percent of income tax revenue, and the top 10 percent in income paid 71.4 percent.

The highly progressive nature of U.S. tax brackets has given rise to something called Hauser’s Law. This law states that Federal tax revenue is about 19.5 percent of GDP plus or minus 1 percent. This is shown in the plot below.

Hauser’s Law has been in effect ever since the mid 1940s, as shown below.

Moreover, the percent of GDP the government recieves in taxes is independent of the exact value of the top individual tax bracket.

Therefore, if the country’s GDP either decreases or grows very slowly due to increased government control, the government’s ability to pay for expensive social projects decreases or increases very slowly. The more government tries to control, the more it destroys its ability to control.

Another issue of importance to my commenter is the minimum wage, which varies a lot among the states. The idea that increasing it a great deal will benefit the country — or, ultimately, even those who work for a minimum wage — is a common progressive Democratic delusion. The delusion arises from a belief in the Iron Law of Wages, propounded by Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. Not all progressive Democrats know about the Iron Law of Wages, but if they do not believe in it knowingly, their belief is instinctive. What that so-called “law” claims is companies have no motivation to pay their employees more than is required to sustain their lives. Therefore, almost all employees will be living on subsistence wages. Now, modern-day Democrats may not go that far in their estimation of companies’ greed, but they certainly believe companies will pay their employees far less than what their labor is worth.

Yet, over the 2+ centuries since the Iron Law was expressed, workers —most especially in the West — have fared far, far better than simple subsistence wages. It used to be a farely common observation that the common man in the West today lives considerably better than miedieval kings. The Iron Law of Wages has been completely debunked by historical experience.

How has this come about? The answer is that human labor, most particularly skilled human labor, is itself a scarce economic resource. All companies must bid against each other for the use of the human labor they need.

Also, the commenter believes in a hugely incorrect estimate of how many people are on the minimum wage when he writes,

“AT LEAST 50 TO 60% OF ALL WORKING PEOPLE EARN WAGES THAT ARE TIED TO THE FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE.”

However, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics stated the following in February 2021.

In 2020, 73.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.5 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 247,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 865,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.1 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.5 percent of all hourly paid workers.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

A figure of 1.5 percent is a long way away from “50 to 60 percent of all working people.”

Yet another idea that the commenter has expressed is that so-called “conservatives” support an evil elite controlling the country. After all, the support of a country’s elites has been the definition of “political conservatives” ever since the French Revolution. I put the scare quotes around the word “conservatives” because those labeled conservative in the U.S. are anything but that. A much better description for them is “neoliberals.” Since neoliberal has been used in different ways over the years, I need to define what I mean by it. A neoliberal is a believer in the classical liberalism of John Locke. A neoliberal also believes in the fundamental goodness of free-market capitalism. American progressives might think of themselves as liberals. Yet, as they have put their faith in government and continually try to increase the government’s powers, they have forfeited any claim to be liberals.

But I digress. With the political troubles we have had over the past decade or so, we have come to the realization that it is not neoliberals who support most of the American elites. The defection of many corporate managements to the political Left is particularly distressing. It is instead the American Left that supports the academic, cultural, and much of the business and political elites. It is those elites who have decided they know best how Americans should live. They need the government, in partnership with the American Left, to enforce their views.

I hope you can appreciate my frustration when I come across comments like those displayed above. I am more than ready to engage people like my commenter in ideological debate. However, what can one do when the other side not only ignores the data offered to them, but makes assertions without giving the source of their “data.” Conversations like this are curious and strange because so much publicly available data from sources like the World Bank and the U.S. government are ignored.

Can any of you provide any suggestions? If so, please leave a comment on this essay.

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