Adam Smith And Our Modern Political Debate

A post at the Dish:

An antidote to the right's current madness from the indispensable Adam Gopnik:

Smith, as I wrote, does not think that “government is the problem”; he thinks problems arise when the rich are able to make the government take their side. A healthy sovereign state is what serves the public against the producers. (He was all for high wages, by the way, on the now old-fashioned grounds that the actual wealth of a society can be discerned not by how much its top class has—you can find rich topsters in Ur or ancient Egypt—but by the dissemination of wealth to the many. “The high price of labor,” he wrote, “is the essence of public opulence.”)
It isn’t just that a free market can survive regulation; it’s that the free market is the product of regulation, regulation designed to protect the public from the kind of arrangement that, let’s say, allows people with undue influence on the government to have a lower tax rate than people who don’t. This makes Smith, as I wrote, a firm believer in public goods: his state has an obligation to build roads and schools, establish an army, build bridges and highways, and do all the other things necessary for a sane polity in which the market can function naturally. Everyone should pay for them, and the rich should always pay more than others. “The rich should contribute to the public expense not only in proportion to their revenue,” Smith writes, “but something more than in that proportion.” (He also thought, Mitt, that taxes should be paid with joy, as a contribution to the well-being of all.)

Gopnik's quite marvelous long essay on Smith is here. It helps you realize how today's rightists simply misunderstand the thing they claim to love..

 I'm sorry I'm posting all of Sullivan's entry, but I think this is really important.  The supposed father of modern, supposedly "laissez-faire" economics was really a moral philosopher.  He just happened to realize a lot of things about the human condition.  But remember, he was of the Scottish Enlightenment, and wasn't tainted with the postmodernism of today's Republican party.  He was much more likely to take into account the importance of the seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues (even though my understanding of them is shaped by my Catholicism that he definitely didn't share).

Take a look at the controversy over the President's "you didn't build that" line.  The whole point of the speech was that no matter how hard we work, we owe a bit of our success to others, because we don't exist in a vacuum.  Other people have some impact on our lives.  I think that is an irrefutable statement.  However, the Republican party has thrived on stoking up what is considered the most deadly of sins, pride.  The opposite Cardinal virtue of pride is humility.  But listen to the Republican talking heads like Limbaugh and you would find humility sorely lacking.  They trump up pride.  Accomplishment should be recognized and honored, according to them.  You know, they already are, since they make a lot of money because of their accomplishment.  But maybe the most successful of us should be a little humble, because things happened to break their way at some point. 

The whole argument reminds me of Frank Grimes on The Simpsons.  Every terrible thing in the world happened to Frank, and yet, he managed to reach his goals (even though he got his job because Mr. Burns was touched by the news story about Grimes).  But once he got there, he realized that Homer, a blundering boob, had managed by extreme luck, to end up even better off than he had through all his hard work.  This realization eventually led to his untimely demise, because he couldn't come to grips with it.  This argument strikes a real chord with me, because after watching that episode of The Simpsons, my college roommate called me to point out the similarities between myself and Homer, and of our other roommate, The Professor, and Frank Grimes.  It made me laugh, mainly because I was being compared to Homer (he also called to point out the similarities between Homer's  boxing career and mine).  But beyond that, there was a real comparison between the Professor and Frank Grimes.  Both had worked extremely hard to get where they were at.  Both became angry that somebody else got by without working hard (envy of Homer and I).  But I always accused the Professor of falling victim to the sin of pride (it is a running joke between us that while sloth and gluttony were my failings, pride was his), because he never seemed to realize that he actually didn't have to work that hard, he was lucky that he was extremely intelligent (he is one of the three or four smartest people I ever met).  His type A personality drove him to work so hard, and he damn well wanted recognition for it.  While he deserved that recognition, that is why humility is a virtue.  It is a personal sacrifice to not seek the recognition, and also an inspiration that someone who is successful realizes that he got where he was at not solely of his own merit.  I don't understand how the attitude of Ayn Rand (that self-sacrifice is a moral failing) has trumped the historically Christian tradition of humility and altruism.  Rand's relishing of selfishness and avarice are the polar opposite of Christianity's humility and charity.  How did a party of supposed Christians stray so far from Christianity?  And why should we honor those faults?  If Adam Smith were alive today, I would guess he would think that Republicans were right-wing loons.