AEI's relatively new leader, Arthur Brooks, has a weird op-ed in the Journal today that basically tries to gin up an economic culture war in the classic conservative manner: uniting the wealthy with people who think they share the interests of the wealthy. Brooks is sort of a weird character -- check out this profile by TNR's Marin Cogan -- who mixes his cultural and economic analysis into a very strange brew called "ethical populism," which is different from unethical populism in that it allows the rich to continue paying lower taxes. A perfect example:
Take public attitudes toward the estate tax, which only a few (who leave estates in the millions of dollars) will ever pay, but which two-thirds of Americans believe is "not fair at all," according to a 2009 Harris poll. Millions of ordinary citizens believe it is unfair for the government to be predatory -- even if the prey are wealthy.
Later on, of course, he trashes advocates of fairness, and never bothers to explain why taxing millions of dollars in windfall income is "predatory." The whole piece is silly in the typical Wall Street Journal way, you know, conflating high deficits with socialism, citing weird projects that got federal money, and suggesting anyone who thinks the incoherent tea party protests were, well, incoherent, opposes the free market. He also refers to "social democrats" as though there was some kind of social democratic movement hard at work in America's government, but the three most prominent social democrats I can recall off the top of my head (Harold Meyerson, John Judis and Bernie Sanders) aren't really trying to tear down capitalism; they're mostly concerned with income inequality and union density.
Watching Republicans harp on the socialism canard has been pretty funny; after all, it's not true and it's not working for them as a political strategy -- maybe Brooks didn't get Saul Anuzis' memo. That's probably because, as Brooks observes, "We need to offer specific, market-based reform solutions." Of course, none of those solutions find their way into his article, so I await future dispatches from this ethical populist explaining the market-based solutions to the market-based failures that brought down our economy. Reminds me a little of this oft-cited and NSFW Onion article.
-- Tim Fernholz
