If you pay any attention to left-of-center commentary these days, you would know that an identity crisis is in full bloom. The left is having a major debate over what liberals should and shouldn’t believe.
A focal point of the debate is Abundance, a new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. It argues that liberal fondness for regulation has undermined their ability to achieve other liberal goals.
If you find it surprising that liberals are arguing with each other about what liberalism really is, that is probably because you think liberalism is an ideology. It is not.
Libertarianism is an ideology. So is socialism. But conservatism and modern liberalism are not ideologies. They are sociologies.
What’s the difference?
An ideology is a set of ideas that cohere. They fit together in a logical and predictable way. A sociology, by contrast, is a set of ideas that mainly reflects likes and dislikes of people with similar world views. They are not necessarily consistent and, taken as a whole, they may not make any coherent sense at all.
Think about an alien visitor from Mars. If he sampled a belief or two from an ideologue, he would probably be able to predict many other beliefs held by the same person. This wouldn’t necessarily be true for a sampling of beliefs from a member of a sociological group, however.
Here is why this matters: the American political system is not a clash of ideologies. It reflects a conflict of likes and dislikes.
Policy Likes and Dislikes
Have you ever heard someone express outrage over the fact that “the US spends more on health care than any other country, but our health outcomes are very mediocre.” What about outrage over the fact that “the US spends more on public education per pupil than any other country in the world, but we rank dead last among developed countries in outcomes”?
It’s not obvious that the first problem is any better or worse than the second. But the former concern is likely to be expressed by a liberal, and the latter by a conservative. Rarely do you find someone equally concerned about both problems. People who are equally concerned about both problems are being logically consistent, but they are probably neither conservative nor liberal.
Party Likes and Dislikes
The Medicare Advantage program, under which private insurers offer an alternative to traditional Medicare, has come under relentless attack in recent years. Many of these attacks have been in scholarly papers published in such journals as Health Affairs. Others are screeds by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Paul Krugman, asserting that private Medicare plans are a private insurance company rip-off.
But private insurers also provide virtually all of Obamacare exchange insurance and manage two-thirds of Medicaid plans. Have you ever heard anyone on the left complain that Obamacare insurance or Medicaid is a rip-off by profit-hungry private insurers? I bet you haven’t.
So, what’s the difference? Although Medicare Advantage is generally thought of as a Republican program, Medicaid and Obamacare were created by Democrats. That’s about the only difference I can think of.
The best evidence that liberal sociology (as opposed to ideology) is at work comes about when people like or dislike the exact same policy, depending on which party enacts it. Lots of people on the left are vocally critical of DOGE policies under Donald Trump. But they had no problem with the similar efforts implemented by Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.
Hypocritical Likes and Dislikes
Almost all our large cities are run by Democrats. And the pattern is pretty much the same. Low-income, predominantly minority families are forced to live in the worst neighborhoods, send their children to the worst schools, endure the worst environmental pollutants and receive the worst city services — including police protection, trash removal, etc.
Further, the more liberal the city the worse these problems are. The most liberal cities have the most homelessness, the most income inequality, the worst housing segregation, the worst school segregation, etc.
Here are some specific candidates for hypocritical likes and dislikes:
Wealthy liberals oppose school choice but send their own children to private schools or to elite public schools that are not accessible by ordinary folks.
They’re against red-lining and racial discrimination in housing, yet they support zoning regulations that keep the riff-raff out of their neighborhoods.
They may believe the police are racists and even call for defunding the police, but there is no lack of police protection in their neighborhoods.
The tax system provides another example. The left tells us repeatedly that the rich take advantage of tax loopholes and don’t pay their fair share.
Yet the most outrageous loophole in the tax code is a favorite tool of “trust fund babies” (more than a few of whom are very liberal). Many of them live off trusts established by their parents or grandparents and see no need for gainful employment. Instead of paying taxes on their trust fund withdrawals, the withdrawals are characterized as loans that may never be paid back.
When was the last time you heard a liberal politician call for an end to this loophole? I bet you never have.
Likes and Dislikes When Policies Conflict
Many on the left are enamored of big spending projects, like high-speed rail. On the other hand, they also like government regulation and almost never call for deregulation.
One result noted above: the liberal penchant for big projects is undermined by excessive regulation. As Noah Smith explains:
California’s high-speed rail, hyped so much over decades and given billions of dollars in funding, still doesn’t exist. “Affordable” (i.e. subsidized) housing often costs half again as much to build as privately built housing. Biden’s programs to build nationwide systems of electric vehicle chargers and rural broadband ended up producing almost zero chargers and almost zero broadband.
Likes and Dislikes without Economics
Whatever causes conservatives to have the policy preferences they have, they are lucky to have one thing going for them. Most of what they think is consistent with economic theory.
Not so on the left of the political spectrum. No economist believes inflation is caused by greed, and you won’t find that idea in any economics textbook. Yet knowing this, former President Biden nonetheless believed that condemning greed inflation was an effective way to communicate with his base.
Understanding Each Other
The late Charles Krauthammer was fond of saying, “Liberals think conservatives are evil, and conservatives think liberals are stupid.”
Of course, neither of those views is correct. But if the two sides understood each other perfectly, they would still find themselves far apart.