June 14, 2012 |
Authors of THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: The Essential Guide to Thinking
and Talking Democratic, where morally-based framing is discussed in
great detail.
In his June 11, 2012 op-ed in the NY Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond
economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing
that determines economic policy. He speaks of “the people the economy is
supposed to serve” — “the unemployed,” and “workers”— and “the
mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming.”
Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by
nature. They are constructed — by laws, rules, and institutions. All of
these have moral bases of one sort or another. Hence, all markets are
moral, according to someone’s sense of morality. The only question is,
Whose morality? In contemporary America, it is conservative versus
progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems
of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.
Most Democrats, consciously or mostly unconsciously, use a moral view
deriving from an idealized notion of nurturant parenting, a morality
based on caring about their fellow citizens, and acting responsibly both
for themselves and others with what President Obama has called “an
ethic of excellence” — doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for
one’s family, community, and country, and for the world. Government on
this view has two moral missions: to protect and empower everyone
equally.
The means is The Public, which provides infrastructure, public
education, and regulations to maximize health, protection and justice, a
sustainable environment, systems for information and transportation,
and so forth. The Public is necessary for The Private, especially
private enterprise, which relies on all of the above. The liberal market
economy maximizes overall freedom by serving public needs: providing
needed products at reasonable prices for reasonable profits, paying
workers fairly and treating them well, and serving the communities to
which they belong. In short, “the people the economy is supposed to
serve” are ordinary citizens. This has been the basis of American
democracy from the beginning.
Conservatives hold a different moral perspective, based on an idealized
notion of a strict father family. In this model, the father is The
Decider, who is in charge, knows right from wrong, and teaches children
morality by punishing them painfully when they do wrong, so that they
can become disciplined enough to do right and thrive in the market. If
they are not well-off, they are not sufficiently disciplined and so
cannot be moral: they deserve their poverty. Applied to conservative
politics, this yields a moral hierarchy with the wealthy, morally
disciplined citizens deservedly on the top.
Democracy is seen as providing liberty, the freedom to seek one’s self
interest with minimal responsibility for the interests or well-being of
others. It is laissez-faire liberty. Responsibility is personal, not
social. People should be able to be their own strict fathers, Deciders
on their own — the ideal of conservative populists, who are voting their
morality not their economic interests. Those who are needy are assumed
to be weak and undisciplined and therefore morally lacking. The most
moral people are the rich. The slogan, “Let the market decide,” sees the
market itself as The Decider, the ultimate authority, where there
should be no government power over it to regulate, tax, protect workers,
and to impose fines in tort cases. Those with no money are
undisciplined, not moral, and so should be punished. The poor can earn
redemption only by suffering and thus, supposedly, getting an incentive
to do better.
If you believe all of this, and if you see the world only from this
perspective, then you cannot possibly perceive the deep economic truth
that The Public is necessary for The Private, for a decent private life
and private enterprise. The denial of this truth, and the desire to
eliminate The Public altogether, can unfortunately come naturally and
honestly via this moral perspective.
When Krugman speaks of those who have “the mentality that sees economic
pain as somehow redeeming,” he is speaking of those who have ordinary
conservative morality, the more than forty percent who voted for John
McCain and who now support Mitt Romney — and Angela Merkel’s call for
“austerity” in Germany. It is conservative moral thought that gives the
word “austerity” a positive moral connotation.
Just as the authority of a strict father must always be maintained, so
the highest value in this conservative moral system is the preservation,
extension, and ultimate victory of the conservative moral system
itself. Preaching about the deficit is only a means to an end —
eliminating funding for The Public and bringing us closer to permanent
conservative domination. From this perspective, the Paul Ryan budget
makes sense — cut funding for The Public (the antithesis of conservative
morality) and reward the rich (who are the best people from a
conservative moral perspective). Economic truth is irrelevant here.
Historically, American democracy is premised on the moral principle
that citizens care about each other and that a robust Public is the way
to act on that care. Who is the market economy for? All of us. Equally.
But with the sway of conservative morality, we are moving toward a
1 percent economy —
for the bankers, the wealthy investors, and the super rich like the six
members of the family that owns Walmart and has accumulated more wealth
than the bottom 30 percent of Americans. Six people!
What is wrong with a 1 percent economy? As Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out in
The Price of Inequality, the
1 percent economy eliminates opportunity for over a hundred million
Americans. From the Land of Opportunity, we are in danger of becoming
the Land of Opportunism.
If there is hope in our present situation, it lies with people who are
morally complex, who are progressive on some issues and conservative on
others — often called “moderates,” “independents,” and “swing voters.”
They have both moral systems in their brains: when one is turned on, the
other is turned off. The one that is turned on more often gets
strongest. Quoting conservative language, even to argue against it, just
strengthens conservatism in the brain of people who are morally
complex. It is vital that they hear the progressive values of the
traditional American moral system, the truth that The Public is
necessary for The Private, the truth that our freedom depends on a
robust Public, and that the economy is for all of us.
We must talk about those truths — over and over, every day. To help, we
have written The Little Blue Book. It can be ordered from
barnesandnoble, amazon, and itunes, and after June 26 at your local bookstore.
George Lakoff is the author of
Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate'
(Chelsea Green). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
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