Comments Elsewhere

Brandon Berg:

Whether poverty is the result of bad luck or bad behavior is a very important factor in deciding how to deal with it.

Of course it’s true that how you should treat poor people depends partly on the reasons that they are poor — just as the way you should treat anyone depends partly on their virutes and vices. What I deny is (1) that there’s any reason why, if people are poor because they are foolish or bad or failures, we shouldn’t try to provide for some forms of relief for them anyway (because I don’t think that anyone deserves to suffer like that); and (2) that believing (1) or not believing (1) has any bearing at all on the libertarian arguments against the legitimacy of Social Security, TANF, etc.

If the poor aren’t responsible for their lot—if the only difference between them and us is luck—then maybe income redistribution isn’t such a bad idea. On the moral side, it’s not their fault. And on the practical side, there’s not much moral hazard. It’s not as though subsidizing bad luck is going to encourage people to be less lucky.

Brandon, this only follows if you think that moral hazard, incentive structures, moral desert, etc. are the only reasons that you shouldn’t rob one person in order to help out another. But I don’t think that: I think that robbing one person in order to help out another is immoral. Not because I have any opinion at all about the virtues or vices or the right way to treat the recipient, but rather because of the way that treats the victim. That’s the essential libertarian case against government “welfare” programs. The rest, whether true or false, is a bunch of policy wonkery, and secondary to the moral question of whether or not you can legitimately force people to go along with your favorite social programs. Isn’t it?

First, if everything is controlled by moneyed interests, then why do we still have a corporate income tax, and why do the rich still pay the highest personal tax rates?

Brandon, you are aware that there are forms of taxes other than the personal income tax, aren’t you?

Why does something like 70% of the Federal budget go towards giving money away to the lower and middle classes?

… It doesn’t.

About 19% of the broader budget goes directly to military spending (not counting legacy spending such as veterans’ benefits) and about 9% to repayment of interest on the federal debt. Unless you intend to claim that the rest of the broader budget not devoted to “giving money away to the lower and middle classes” constitutes 2% of the broader budget, it’s not mathematically possible for the Feds to be spending 70% on that.

It’s worth noting here that the two (by far) largest entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare, at 21% and 14%) that the government maintains are not means-tested and are funded by the regressive FICA tax. Characterizing either program as “giving money away to the lower and middle classes” would be a serious error.

Jake Squid:

Brandon Berg is a perfect example about why I fear (even more than currently) for the poor under a free market system. People can’t avoid making moral judgements about others and inevitably people will want to see the poor as at fault for their own poverty (we don’t like to believe that it could happen to us, therefore the poor are morally bad or stupid or whatever). That being the case, you wind up with far fewer resources dedicated to alleviating poverty.

Jake, if you think “people” (I’m not sure whom or how many you intend to include) “can’t avoid making moral judgments about others,” and that “inevitably,” “people” “will want to see the poor as at fault for their own poverty,” then why do you trust the government to responsibly and adequately provide for respectful, helpful poverty relief?

The government’s made of people, too, isn’t it?

Jake Squid: Have there been any real world examples of this?

I’m not sure what you’re asking for. Real world examples of government intervention and ossified structural poverty hurting poor people and aiding the rich? Sure, lots. Kleptocratic government is a pretty well-known phenomenon, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Or real world examples of the benefits of free markets for the worst-off? Well, sure; but it’s harder here because there are so many different cases to consider and because there isn’t any way to quantitatively compare actual state-distorted markets with counterfactual free markets under otherwise equivalent circumstances, or actual free markets with counterfactual state-distorted markets under otherwise equivalent circumstances. But here are some examples of ways in which freer markets would help the worst-off more than the better off: by ending the “War on Drugs” (which imprisons and destroys the lives of lots of people, usually the worst-off people, because the best-off people rarely take the fall); by stopping police harassment of women in prostitution; by ending agricultural subsidies that systematically subsidize huge planters and agribusiness to the detriment of the rural poor; by drastically reducing food prices currently inflated by those same agriculture subsidies and price floors (which matter more to the worst-off than to the best-off); by repealing the (regressive) payroll tax, thus directly increasing poor people’s income by a greater percentage than rich people’s; by removing regulations and red tape that systematically constrain small competitors against established corporate players; etc. There’s a lot of different ways in which government intervention harms the poor, and a lot of different ways in which prosperous free markets tend to help the worst-off most of all (N.B.: as opposed to pseudo-prosperous mercantilist markets of the sort that bond traders and politicians like to promote). I realize this hasn’t clarified very much but I’d really probably need a more specific question to give a better illustration or explanation.

Brandon Berg:

If you do, you’ve failed. You had your chance, and you blew it. Then you had another chance, and you blew that one, too. And almost certainly several more. It may take magic powers to save adequately for retirement on minimum wage, but it doesn’t take magic powers to get a job that pays more.

Whether this is true or false, it’s irrelevant.

There is some population, greater than zero, of people who, whether for reasons that are culpable or reasons that are blameless or a mixture of the two, will make wages at or not very much above minimum wage their whole lives. Whether or not this makes them “failures,” whether or not it makes them bad people or foolish people or contemptible people or pitiful people, they are going to get old and they are going to reach a point in their lives where it will be very hard for them to continue working, and if they have neither accumulated savings nor a pension (gov’t issued or private), then they are going to suffer a lot in their old age.

But that doesn’t mean that they deserve to suffer, or to suffer that badly, whatever you may think of how they have lived their lives. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that a free society could — indeed ought to — include things like mutual aid for health, retirement, etc. needs in old age, charity for people facing extreme poverty, and so on. The only requirement is that people can’t legitimately be forced to turn over money for it. That’s what’s wrong with government “welfare” programs, not whatever vices or failings you might think the proposed recipients might have.

Moralistic contempt for poor people forms no essential part of the libertarian argument against the moral legitimacy of Social Security or other government “welfare” programs. In fact free market economics suggest that an end to government interventionism will help out the people with the worst economic prospects the most, since government intervention and ossified structural poverty systematically hurt poor people and aid the rich. The idea that libertarian theory is the body of economic thought of, by, and for Ebenezeer Scrooge has just got to die.

Numbers added for expository purposes.

Gonzman: Thing is, too, I’m not claiming – I’m pointing out [1] that ya’ll are claiming it, that people take the most radical rhetoric and hold it as representive of all feminism, [2] that it produces the “I’m not a feminist, but…” women because they are afraid of being associated with it. That such things are an issue speak loudly of a public image and perception problem.

Look, I don’t like it when feminists do this, because I think it’s a destructive tactic that caters to anti-feminist baiting. (On the other hand, I’m biased, because my sympathies lie with radical feminism anyway.) But in any case, (1) and (2) are separate claims, and, in my experience, most feminists who do say this sort of thing make claim (1) but not claim (2). The main people who blame radical feminists for fence-sitting or anti-feminist attitudes are the fence-sitters and anti-feminists themselves. Most actual feminists who make claim (1) are simply making the point that feminist thought isn’t a monolithic hive mind, and they blame anti-feminists, not radical feminists, for treating it as if it were. Now, maybe the opinions of fence-sitters and anti-feminists are signs of “a public image and perception problem,” and maybe they aren’t, but even if they are, I don’t think it’s accurate to claim that it’s feminists rather than you who are stressing this point. But the point of feminist theory and practice is not necessarily to persuade more non-feminists to become feminists. So how seriously to take such a “problem,” so far as it exists, depends on a lot more than just the reactions of non-feminists to radical feminist rhetoric, where it is aired.

Anyway, I don’t know that you’ve understood my original point. People (women, mostly) who actually identify themselves as radical feminists don’t generally feel that their views are widely aired or discussed, and that their positions and contributions have been marginalized and continue to be marginalized. Not only by others IN the movement, but also by those OUTSIDE the movement. (They are widely “quoted” by certain factions within the anti-feminist movement, but that’s itself a minority faction.) Maybe you think they’re just wrong about the content of the discussion. But, really, which of the following do you think is better known and more widely discussed outside of feminist circles?

• Betty Friedan, or Shulamith Firestone?

• NOW, or the Redstockings?

• The Feminine Mystique, or Sexual Politics?

• Ms., or off our backs?

(N.B.: if you think that, in any of these four pairs, both are examples of the “radical” or “extremist” tendency in feminism, then you’ve made it pretty clear that what’s going on is that you have a very different picture of what constitutes radicalism than self-identified radical feminists do.)

Hugo: Rad, do you honestly believe that Q Grrl’s whopping generalization about all Christians was less offensive than my reply?

Whether her claims were correct or incorrect, and whether they are offensive or inoffensive, they are not based out of simple ignorance of Christian feminist thought. I think it was a mistake for you to treat her on the presumption that they were, particularly in the pedagogical tone that you chose to take.

I hope you don’t mean to equate “radical” with “man-hating.”

I don’t. But I have a different view of what constitutes “man-hating” from the view that most anti-feminists have, so I don’t take charges of “man-hating” in their mouths very seriously or feel any particular need to cater to their views by trying to distance myself or others from the “charge,” such as it is.

Amp: Several people have suggested, more than once, that my blog is not a feminist blog because of my moderating policies. A few people have suggested that, by extension, I’m not a feminist. I believe that similar comments have been made about Hugo’s blog, and possibly about Hugo. This brings up the “big tent” issue; is “feminist blog” defined broadly enough to include Hugo’s blog and “Alas,” and is “feminist” defined broadly enough to include myself and Hugo?

Well, O.K., fair enough; but it didn’t seem like that was what was at issue in the thread that Hugo was commenting on, and Hugo seemed to me to be writing about it as if the issue at hand were his attitude towards the claims of third parties to the “feminist” name, not his own claim to it.

That said, the issue has come up explicitly now, so maybe you’re right that it was there all along. Anyway, not much sense in pressing the point now that it clearly is part of the debate.

Hugo: Q Grrl, anytime you want a feminist Christian reading list, let me know!

Hugo, that was a really patronizing comment.

Gonzman: I’ve heard a lot of feminists here complain that they are tired of being regarded as gender seperatist, female supremacist, man-hating radicals.

Hey. I can’t say that I personally know any female supremacists, but some of my best friends are gender separatist, man-hating radicals.

Gonzman: And even though I’m sure someone will point at me as being hostile but I will say it anyway – those are the voices coming loudest from the discourse of the “feminisms.”

See, here’s the thing. All the radical feminists I know feel that their views are unfairly marginalized, ridiculed, and used as rhetorical foils both within the movement and in discussions of the movement from the outside looking in. So there’s clearly a disconnect here. Either (1) you (and whoever it is you’re citing) have a very different impression of the content of public discussions about feminism, or (2) you (and whoever it is you’re citing) have a very different impression of what constitutes “radical feminism” (or “gender separatism” or “man-hating” or whatever) than many self-identified radical feminists do.

Mike: Is it ironic that ginmar exemplifies the negative stereotype of a feminist, and hence undermines the very movement she supports?

Mike, do you think ginmar’s goal is to persuade anti-feminists that the “negative stereotypes” they hold are mistaken? I doubt that it is. Or that it should be.

Hugo: As always, some (including this blogger) want to define feminism broadly; we’re the “big tent” folks. Others worry that we big tenters are “dumbing down” feminism, or setting the bar so low that virtually anyone (even those with ugly sexist rhetoric) can define themselves as feminists.

Hugo, this is an old argument but I don’t understand how this argument comes into play in the comments you’re discussing. The comments critical of you have generally been about your comment moderation policies and the way that you allow explicitly anti-feminist commenters to act on your website. Not about how broadly or narrowly you define “feminism.” Is there something that I’m missing?

Soulhuntre: Of course “don’t insult me” is generally followed by “but I demand the right to insult you pivileged mysoginist scumbags!’ – so it tends to lose a little of it’s impact. I know, I know… thats not rudeness or ignorance, thats the righteous anger of the vitim and it is “anti-feminist” to question such things.

You know, whether this is a fair representation of what the specific folks you’re referring to say and do (I don’t think it is), you haven’t actually offered anything, other than the tone of facile sarcasm, to show that there’s anything wrong with conducting yourself like this. Most people make a distinction between (1) righteous anger in response to a genuine wrong, and (2) belligerence that isn’t justified by the circumstances. There may be cases in which that distinction happens not to be relevant; or you might think that feminist women’s anger at anti-feminist men isn’t, actually, justified by the circumstances. But you can’t expect feminists to agree with you about the latter, and you’ve done nothing to demonstrate the former. You’re just trying to get by on sarcastic references to different standards, as if that just by itself proved the difference to be unfair.

It doesn’t.

stanton: Even the most essentialist of feminists (MacKinnon? Gilligan?) acknowledge the role of genetics/nature in gender.

Elinor: Saying that gendered behaviour is NOT essential (MacKinnon) is essentialist?

My suspicion is that “essentialist feminist” is being used here more or less as a synonym for Christina Hoff Sommers’ “gender feminist.” That latter was itself pretty clearly used as an attempt to mean something like what is meant by “difference feminist,” which is why Gilligan gets included and also why you might think that the whole program can be described as “essentialist.” The problem, of course, is that “gender feminist” was also intended to mean something like “any feminist whose views Christina Hoff Sommers regards as too radical,” so it ends up meaning nothing coherent at all, and stridently anti-essentialist radical feminists such as Catharine MacKinon also get included on the list.

“Freedom,” as libertarians use the word, never seems to mean anything other than freedom from government intrusion. Real freedom, however, means having a wide range of attractive options. When someone’s options are eliminated by the marketplace, by illness, or by lack of available assistance, that is as real a threat to their freedom as government intrusion.

This is a common misunderstanding (and there are a number of libertarians, even, who encourage it by their practice). “Freedom” in the political sense that libertarians use it doesn’t mean “freedom from government intrusion;” it means “freedom from violent coercion” (hence the “non-initiation of force principle”). Government comes into the picture only when libertarians go on to suggest that government officials don’t have any special prerogatives to violently coerce peaceful people any more than ordinary civilians do. (But this entails — though vulgar libertarians don’t tend to recognize it — that systematic violence such as lynch law in the Jim Crow South, or union-busting gang violence, or pervasive male violence against women, are just as much matters for libertarian concern as invasive government is.

Nor do most libertarians claim that this is the only thing that can be intelligibly described as “freedom,” or that it’s the only valuable form of freedom, or even that it’s the most important form of freedom to any particular person at any particular time. What libertarian theory does demand is that you not try to promote other forms of freedom at the expense of freedom from violent coercion, because forcing people against their will to be “free” in other senses is (1) unlikely to work well, or (2) immoral, or (3) both. (Which one of these options the libertarian appeals to will vary depending on what kind of libertarian she is.)

(More to say, but it’ll have to wait until after work…)

Someone working for $5.15 an hour is not free to save for retirement; they’re spending their whole income on rent and don’t have enough left over for food and heat, let alone savings.

I don’t understand this argument.

People who make $5.15/hour are already forced to turn over 6.2% of their wages to FICA and another chunk to the state and federal government in tax withholding. The FICA withholding is, according to the government’s accounting fictions, “saving for retirement” in the form of funding Social Security and Medicare. So presumably if there were no FICA (or better, no tax withholding at all) they could voluntarily put aside up to 6.2% of their wages for savings in an IRA and be no worse off than they were before.

You might say, “Oh, but if they wouldn’t put aside that money if they’re not forced to, because they have all these other pressing costs that they need to pay now.” There are certainly cases where that’s true, but it doesn’t follow from that that being forced to put the money aside is the best thing for them. Having lived on around $5,000 a year myself (due to a combination of low-paying jobs and long-term unemployment), I can tell you that when you don’t have enough money to spare for savings, being forced to put the money aside anyway has a direct consequence: debt. If (ex hypothesi) I’m being forced to put aside money that otherwise could have paid off current bills, then those bills still have to be paid off somehow, and when I don’t have the money now, that means they have to go on the card. And the debt accumulates a lot quicker than whatever “returns” I’m supposedly getting on my “investment” in Social Security and Medicare.