Propaganda and Recall

The recall election is this Tuesday - which means that if you are in Wisconsin, you should get out and vote. But while I think that Scott Walker is an unmitigated douchebag, I have been sorely disappointed in Barrett's ad campaign. It reflects a deeper problem: the Tea Party has done a masterful job at bending rhetoric in their favor, and the Democrats have been horribly inept at doing anything about it. I'm not going to give reasons why Scott Walker's plans are failing/succeeding/whatever (honestly, 2 years is not a good test of how his policies will affect the economy, one way or the other; I claim that whenever a Democrat is in office, so fairness dictates that I do it now as well), nor am I going to say why Tom Barrett would be an improvement (largely because I do not have enough knowledge one way or another). I'm not even going to get into my moral opposition to Walker. I just want to get rid of some asinine assumptions in our current political climate so that we can start actually talking about important issues intelligently.

In particular, the Tea Party has made terms like "deficit", "government spending," and "taxes" out to be dirty words. Did someone fix the deficit? They must be good. Did they increase the deficit? They must be bad. And so on. So let's look at these three concepts at least:

1. "Deficit": A deficit is not always a bad thing. Did you take out student loans or a mortgage? You then implicitly agree with me. Sometimes, one spends money to invest in the future. In fact, the absolute worst time to get rid of a deficit may be when the economy is stagnant. Let's take an illustration: you are a minimum-wage employee in a bad economy. If you keep working at your job, there's not a whole lot of room for you to go. You have no college degree. If you stay risk-averse, your life won't improve much. If you take out student loans, then are smart in picking an affordable but decent college, you can in the long-term do much to increase your earning potential. The deficit in the form of a student loan is part of a long-term gain.

   Similarly, when the economy is bad, there needs to be some investment. Paying off the deficit looks great on paper, but it's worse than worthless if it also hurts the economy. You invest wisely in order to create jobs and opportunities, which then increase revenue - but that requires spending more money at the beginning and creating more projects. Now, not all spending is good, of course. Our minimum-wage worker above could end up blowing their loan money on booze or could choose a degree that is not in their best interests. And again, I am not making factual claims about how the money is or isn't being spent, or how it should be. I just want to be able to have a conversation about government spending without it automatically being considered a bad thing.

2. Which brings be to blacklisted phrase #2: "Government spending." When we talk about government spending, that sounds bad - like the government is wasting our money. But what is the government spending money on? Let's see - things like education, libraries, police, firefighters - you know, things I generally like having around in my community. Saying that the government "has decreased funding to education" sounds a lot worse than saying it "has decreased spending," doesn't it? But what do you think is getting decreased? Of course, there are government inefficiencies that should be rooted out and removed, and we can have informed debate between differing parties on what to spend money on. But any assertion that "increased government spending" must be bad (as Walker's campaign ads suggest) is vapid and worthless.

3. "Taxes": The government needs money for these things from somewhere. And that's where taxes come in. Look, no one actually likes to pay takes. But we not only want education for ourselves and our children, we also want to live in a society with educated people who make informed decisions, not least in voting. I want firefighters; not just for my house, but so that a fire in the house next to mine won't spread to me. And when I drive, I want a road that isn't going to total my car. Sometimes, pooling our money together is a more efficient way of attaining a goal than making individual purchasing decisions. Sometimes it's not, but every case needs to be looked at individually. When things are public goods and affect society at large, they need to be funded somehow.(And side note: if these people actually cared about fixing the economy, they would take some of these millions of dollars poured into campaigning and put it to use employing people, funding facilities, investing in Wisconsin projects, etc., so that you could pay less in taxes to enjoy the benefits.)

So let's all agree to not turn off our brains as soon as we hear these phrases. There can be discussions. Economics is tricky business, and there are parties with competing goals. But we can't even have these discussions when people can't get past smooth PR soundbites.