June 30, 2004
Common Good
What exactly is it? Is it rounding up all HIV+ people and dumping them in a large quarantine camp? After all, with nobody with HIV the disease can't spread. If you don't have it this is clearly a benefit to you. Or how about rounding up people who eat fatty foods and don't have insurance. We can force them to exercise so they'll be less likely to have weight related health problems and save the rest of us some money. That is what I start to wonder about when I read pabulum like this from Senator Clinton,
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
The problem here is that this idea of the "Common Good" is totally open ended. Is taking 50% of people's incomes for the "Common Good" justified? Depends on what is meant by the "Common Good" doesn't it?
The "Common Good" isn't the same as Public Goods. Public Goods have a precise definition, that is a (pure) public good will satisfy the following criteria,
- nonrivalrous,
- nonexclusion.
That is, if I consume the public good it does not reduce the amount available for others to consume, also, people cannot be excluded from consuming the good. The problem is the non-exclusion means that a price cannot be charged and so private provision will tend to result is too little of the (pure) public good.
Theoretically speaking it is possible for the government to provide the (pure) public good and improve everybody's welfare. We could say that this is for the "Common Good".
The "Common Good" is not quite the same thing as externalities. An externality is where an individual, firms, basically and economic actor, does something (consumes, produces, etc.) that reduces the welfare of another economic actor. Again, theoretically the government can intervene and improve everybody's welfare. This too, could be seen as a case of government doing something for the "Common Good".1
The problem is that I know that Senator Clinton's views go beyond these two special cases of the "Common Good". How do I know this? HillaryCare--i.e., Senator Clinton's legislation that was introduced to Congress when she was still the First Lady and her husband was President. This dealt with the nationalization of pretty much the entire health care industry. Contrary to what many may want to believe health care is not a public good. Health care may have some issues with externalities, but it is far from clear that the solution is to nationalize one seventh of the U.S. economy.
Further, Senator Clinton supports transfer programs like Social Security and subsidy programs such as Medicare. These programs are not designed to address a public goods problem nor externalities. They are basically "gimme" programs from the working to one of the richest demographics in the country.2
So I am not thrilled when I hear invocations of the "Common Good". Nobody else should be either. In fact, they should, in my view, be asking exactly the same question I am. What exactly is the "Common Good"? I'm sure a great many of history's less savory characters have invoked "Common Good" as justification for their actions. I'm not saying Senator Clinton is among history's less savory characters, but I sure would like to know how far she'd go for the "Common Good".
Update: Via Kevin Drum, who also points to these post by Andrew Sullivan.
Notice of course the complete lack of concern in Kevin's post,
This is actually more revealing than his original comment: he was annoyed because HC invoked the "common good." This is apparently all it takes to drive some conservatives nuts these days.What a sad commentary. Of course the purpose of taxation is to provide for the common good and of course Hillary believes her agenda coincides with that common good. What else would she believe?
As I noted, I'm sure many of history's less savory characters argued they were doing things for the "Common Good", and some of them may have firmly believed it was indeed for the "Common Good". Such a justification for doing something collectively is, to me, hardly sufficient.
Update II: Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a good post on this. As does Prof. Bainbridge.
I should also point out that restricting "Commong Good" to externalities and public goods can be unpleasant as well. My initial example of gathering up and quarantining people who are HIV+ could be argued on the ground of addressing an externality.
Update III: That second update was a bit premature as I've found some more on this at the following sites,
I haven't found anybody so far, besides Kevin Drum, who wants to defend the statement.
Update IV: Ah-ha! Ted Barlow is defending the statement. Of course, he doesn't seem to understand the objection to the statement. Oh well.
Matthew Yglesias is also defending the comment without thought as well. His argument seems to boil down to: its a winning political strategy so therefore it is good. Yuck.
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1In the real world, things aren't quite as nice as the theoretical world. In theory, the government has access to things like lump sum transfers, knows consumer preferences, etc. Since it the real world these policy instruments and information are not available to the government the improvements that were possible in theory can quite often fail to materialize. There types of problem are handled in the literature called the Theory of the Second Best.
2Granted there are undoubtedly elderly who depend very much on these programs, but in general the retired elderly are actually a rich demographic. Consider that a couple working from 18 to 65 and saving around 5% of their income with a 4% rate of return (and 3% annual raises) would retire with around $285,000. Throw in a house that is paid off and a car or two that are paid off and you could very easily get close to $350,000. Increase the rate of savings by half (7.5%) and the final retirement fund has $430,000 (excluding house and cars). The idea here is that with compounding interest even a modest rate of savings can result in a sizeable amount of money over a working lifetime.
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
The first sentence promulgates the fantasy that the tax cuts only helped the well off. Tax cuts help everyone, even those who, in our overly progressive tax structure, pay no tax. The economy is booming in part because of the tax cuts.
The paragraph as a whole as a certain "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" character. I suspect the overwhelming majority of the listeners either (a) are so filthy rich that they really *can* absorb a tax increase with some equanimity; or (b) don't really believe that *they* are the ones Clinton is talking to. It's someone else, someone who is envied in violation of the Tenth Commandment, who is going to see their taxes go up.
I also find it amazing that Clinton has become so brazen that she no longer even bothers to phrase it as "we're going to ask you to give it up," but bluntly says "we're going to take things away from you." "We" being the anointed elite. In a way, this says more about Clinton than anything else she has ever uttered. She is not only a commissar on the inside, but she actually expects people to submissively treat her like a commissar. And she doesn't even wear black clothing and a hideous mask.* This borders on psychopathological.
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* "That's no mask!"
The whole argument ignores the important issue of pareto optimality.
I do like Steve Verdon's discussion and think he is on point. In a world of heterogeneous preferences, finding a single "common good" will not be possible. Any attempt to define one by force will leave winners and losers. Hence, a market solution wherein people are allowed to make an infinite number of tradeoffs to realize their own personal preferences (think invisible hand here) will lead to the most efficient allocation of societal resources.
(And for you dopey people who will want to bring up "market failures" -- which includes the provision of public goods such as national defense -- as for why this doesn't work, I can tell you that pure market failures are few and far between. The problem today is that too many goods are defined a pure public goods leading people to suggest government intervention/regulation.)
Posted by: John Lemon on July 1, 2004 06:15 AMSlightly OT, in the comments section of another blog on this subject I noted that income redistribution was ipso facto Utopian Socialism and was absolutely nonplussed to receive substantial disagreement. The consensus appeared to be that only Marxism was socialism i.e. centralization of the means of production vs. focussing on the equalization of income. Can anybody give me some help here?
Posted by: Dave Schuler on July 1, 2004 06:40 AMDave,
If you search my site you'll see I was harping on Kevin Drum about income inequality for quite sometime. I was interested in why he thought it was important to reduce it, and if there were any problems with doing so. He was totally unable to rise to the task to say the least.
Anyhow, one of the problems with collapsing the income distribution to a single point (i.e., everybody has the same income) is that it is not incentive compatible. That is a fancy way of saying, people will just sit on their collective asses and do jack shit all day long. Why should they work as their income will have to be gauranteed since to do otherwise would be to introduce income disparity.
The technical analysis can be found in this post of mine. Basically it looks at the whole issue of inequality from the angle of incentives. Perfect equality and a rule assuring people of perfect equality destroys the incentive to work. This is one reason why places like the former Soviety Union and the Eastern Bloc were such shit holes.
My conclusion on income inequality/redistribution is that don't expect much from the bulk of the liberal bloggers. You might get something good from Max Sawicky or some of the guys as Crooked Timber and Brad DeLong, but by and large most of them will just give you worthless pabulum that you can ignore as being the dribblings of the uninformed.
As for Marxism, one of the central tenets is the following:
From each according to his ability, to each to his needs.
While this might not lead to perfect income equality it sure does point towards perfect equality in welfare (i.e., individual well being). Again, you'll have the same incentive problem as noted above. Why work hard to "get ahead", when you know the State will intervene to make sure you stay right where you are?
The centralization of the means of production, IMO, follows from the above principle. Unless you centralize the means of production people could start to become better off than others and this violates the principle above.
As I noted Dave, chances are you are going back and forth with Left Wing mouth breathers and not necessarily those who can think well on these kinds of topics.
Posted by: Steve on July 1, 2004 07:23 AMI agree with your skepticism about "antecedent" definitions of common good as opposed to "emergent" ones, but re income [in]equality if you want an interesting conversation, starting out with an academic black-and-white corner case -- absolute income equality -- is probably not the right way to go.
What's confusing me is that you appear to be soliciting Kevin's comments on an interesting, thorny, and debatable proposition, but you're not taking an interesting, thorny and debatable position on it. Your point appears to be that:
Perfect equality and a rule assuring people of perfect equality destroys the incentive to work.
Er, yeah, what you said. But that's a pretty unremarkable observation by itself, because it goes straight to the extreme end of the distribution spectrum and doesn't let us know whether you think that's a qualitative truth or a quantitative truth. If you're suggesting that that's a qualitative truth you're arguing a position that pretty much precludes meaningful analysis. It's like arguing that "ownership of all property by a single individual destroys the incentive to work." Well, duh. What's the point of discussing it further?
But if it's a quantitative truth, it's worth talking about how wide the spectrum is, and where the sociopolitical "green, yellow, and red" lines might be (if indeed they exist). Because the really interesting and thorny question is whether and when a polity which is approaching one of those lines should enact policies which promote either the diffusion or concentration of property, and with how much force. That's something really worth talking about, and not easy to get a grip on either.
FWIW I submit that there are such lines on both ends of the spectrum (i.e. that polities near either edge do not survive), and that while the US is still in the green, taking into account the number of people who are in prison it's definitely moving rapidly towards the yellow zone on the inequality side. As for what policies would make sense right now, that's a whole long post in itself and anyway I doubt that I'd fully agree with myself after I wrote it. One thing for sure is that I prefer emergent definitions of common good to antecedent ones.
Posted by: radish on July 1, 2004 11:34 AMRadish,
I have at least a half dozen posts on this topic and some that look at some of the relevant economic literature. Don't take my off topic comment in a related post as the ultimate guide to my view on this issue.
You can start here. The try this post and the paper that is linked. Then I'd recommend this post. This one is amusing.
Posted by: Steve on July 1, 2004 02:51 PMSteve:
Thanks for the response. You mention the "from each according, etc." which is a paraphrase of St. Paul , IIRC. All Marxism is socialism but not all socialism is Marxism. What amazed me was that none of the commenters appeared to have any idea of what socialism was. All they seemed to understand was sloganeering.
Posted by: Dave Schuler on July 1, 2004 05:53 PM"From each according to his ability, to each to his needs."
A lot of highly successful families are run this way. However, I've yet to see a polity larger than an Israeli kibbutzim make this work. This should not surprise us, as few things in life scale well over many orders of magnitude.
Socialism works just fine if (a) the folks involved genuinely love each other; and (b) one of the "tough love" options is kicking out the deadbeats and wastrels. Love is one of those things that scales very poorly. If you love your mother, or your wife, with all your heart, that leaves nothing for the other quadrillion inhabitants of the Galaxy. An important psychological insight whose significance I leave for the student to work out.
