A couple of nights ago, Sir Charles Barkley made an appearance on The Larry King Live Show. Barkley, who supports Obama in this election, describes himself as an independent. According to him, the United States is tragically divided--not along partisan lines, not along racial lines, but along socioeconomic lines. For Barkley, it is the rich against the poor, the haves against the have-nots. The poor are losing and have been losing for at least the last eight years, and that is why Sir Charles Barkley supports the Obama-Biden ticket.
But when asked about the economy and the respective merits of the economic policy proposals put forth by McCain and Obama, Sir Charles Barkley declined to comment and instead deferred to the opinion of his fellow guest on the show, Ben Stein, an economist.
Joe the Plummer, in an interview he gave for a news channel, recently called Obama's tax policies socialist. Why should Americans be penalized for financial success? Why would we want to "spread the wealth"? In reality, Obama is merely calling for returning to the Clinton-era tax rate of 39% for households earning more than a quarter million. Was the US a socialist country under the Clinton administration?
What Barkley and Joe show is that the Economics IQ of the general American population is somewhat lacking. Economics is a tough subject, and, in matters of the economy, most of us defer to "the experts." When political commentators tout the economy as the deciding factor in this election, general public ignorance about the mechanisms of the economy troubles me. How is one expected to vote as an informed voter?
As evidenced by last night's discussion of Joe the Plummer, both candidates claim to champion the needs of the middle class. How many voters in this country can give coherent arguments about why their candidate is right and the other candidate wrong?
In an age where people defer to "the experts" on most issues, how is one to remain independently-minded?
In a slideshow presentation that Richard Dawkins once gave at Swarthmore College, he put up a slide of two kids standing side by side. Underneath one kid was the caption, "Keynesian," and under the other kid, the caption, "Monetarist." Dawkins was poking fun at the idea that kids could subscribe to religious belief systems at such a young age.
What shocks me in this election is how readily people, especially my peers, are to proclaim themselves "liberal" or "conservative." Obviously, we can't all be experts on all issues, but it seems a more rigorous examination of one's beliefs is called for.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
First of all, I would like to echo the sentiment that you need to get a job. Preferably one that you like.
Second, you're an elitist douchebag.
I definitely agree with the sentiment of the necessity and responsibility for voters and citizens in general to be informed and aware about the decisions they make not only in their civic actions, but also just generally in their support and allegiance with certain ideologies/politics. I think people often don't understand what they are really supporting or why they are supporting it, and in line with that I think we should support every instinct that pushes us away from blind following and toward critical evaluation.
That being said, I think there's a simple impossibility in saying that we should not rely on the experts. It is ridiculous to argue that it is possible for individuals to be totally informed about any given decision we make, political or otherwise. The reality is, people just don't understand the world. If there are professional economists who don't understand the "real" root of the economic crisis, or who can't agree on the ideal set of policies, how the hell is joe the plumber going to be able to make this kind of decision? My point is not to say that we should abandon hope of trying to fully understand the pressing issues of our time, but simply to point out that it is impossible for ANYONE, much less an average "joe" to be able to make a totally informed decision about ANYTHING.
What then, can we rely on to make decisions, both personal and civic? I would argue that ultimately we have to act on some kind of generalized preconceptions and instincts about most things. I do not fully understand the economic crisis. I do not fully understand the implications of the free market system, and whether or not increased capital gains taxes do really have a systemic effect on the entire populace. But I do have a feeling of egalitarianism and community that drives my general sense that a graduated income tax is just. I cannot fully articulate the economic arguments in favor of it, and I would certainly have to defer to the experts on certain things, but I still make a decision to defer to certain experts versus others. All the time, explicitly or not, people are still making "independent" judgments, even when they're deferring to experts, by privileging certain social domains of knowledge over others. The more important point in my opinion, is not whether or not people defer to experts, which is inevitable, but rather whether or not people are willing to be critical of experts and also themselves and their own belief system.
Also, I'm a liberal.
I love you
Post a Comment