In a recent column, George Will laments that the NYT uses the headline “Economy Pulls Ahead” and says then that the American economy is “an island of relative strength.” This, says Will, is an example of what Patrick Moynihan called, “defining deviancy down,” that is, of viewing something as good or normal that used to be considered deviant. Yet, if we look closer, we can see that Will’s column is, ironically, a clear example of “defining deviancy down.” Will demonstrates how columnists can now get away with producing logically weak, blatantly partisan, utterly inane columns. Of course, we’ve always had political hacks churning out such garbage, but Will has sometimes been held up as intellectually superior to the run-of-the-mill propagandists on the right.
To read Will’s column, follow this link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-defining-economic-failure-down/2015/02/04/39e44eee-abd1-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html
Will is correct to note that economic growth in recent years has not been as robust as in other recoveries and that there has not been as much concern about this as one would expect. At the same time, the NYT headline and its description of the US economy were perfectly correct. Note that the NYT said the economy was “an island of relative strength.” They did not say simply “strength” nor did they say “great strength.” Rather they were careful in their wording, clearly implying that a truly strong economy would be different. This contradicts Will’s claim that we now consider modest growth as acceptable. In fact, in recent years progressives have repeatedly called for measures to improve economic growth but Republican obstructionism has prevented the government from doing more. The real question is “Why have Republicans not done more to help the economy for all sectors?”
At this point, Will had two paths he could have explored. One, he could have explained why we have had slow growth and, two, he could have explained why slow growth is not criticized as harshly as it could be. He does not attempt the latter, and what he offers in regard to the former fails miserably.
Here are his main arguments for the causes of the weak and slowly growing economy:
- Economic weakness is due to “alarming cultural changes”: There were fewer births in 2010 compared to 2000 and 49% of people 25-34 today have never been married as compared to 12% in 1960.
- To a “considerable extent,” the economic weakness is the government’s fault because of the “uncertainties created by the Affordable Care Act” and because of too many government regulations.
- Unemployment benefits hurt the economy (they are supposedly an example of “iatrogenic government” or a cure that actually harms) and the slight improvement recently “may” be due partly to the Republicans preventing an extension of unemployment benefits.
Stop a moment and ask yourself, “Could changes in birth rates and the time people marry, the ACA, government regulations, and unemployment benefits really be the main drivers of economic weakness? Are there no other factors that should be brought up here?”
Argument #1: In this one, George Will throws out a grand statement: Our economic malaise is “both a cause and a consequence of alarming cultural changes.” The idea that the vicissitudes of an economy can affect the culture and vice versa is obvious. It is only of value if one shows carefully the actual cause and effect processes. Since the interaction of economy and culture can go in both directions, it would be of interest to analyze which aspect is of more importance in this case. Yet Will gives us nothing–no explanation as to why fewer births and fewer marriages among younger people cause economic weakness. The population is still growing thanks to immigration, so one cannot blame problems on a shrinking market due to fewer people. Although married people tend to me more stable economically because of tax breaks and the ability to share expenses, Will does not show how that translates to a better economy. In fact, when people are single (and not living with anyone else), they must spend more individually on such items as housing and a car. More spending should mean more money in the economy. It’s much easier to see how a poor economy makes it more likely that people will delay when they marry and have children, but Will is a lazy here. He can’t be bothered to go into details; you just have to trust his great insight.
Argument #2: The claim that the ACA creates uncertainty and thus hurts businesses makes no sense, mainly because the only real uncertainty about the ACA is whether or not the Supreme Court will find a way to gut it. The law is in place in the meanwhile, and there is no significant uncertainty about what businesses must do. Will’s claim about regulations hurting the economy is just the usual right-wing talking point against regulations. It is and will always be nonsense. The issue is not how many regulations you have, but whether you have enough good ones. We clearly don’t have enough good regulations, and that has a severe negative impact on the economy and on our tax burden. The government must clean up the mess when extraction industries pollute the environment, when the financial sector recklessly crashes the economy, and when businesses in general offer the lowest wages and benefits they can get away with, thus requiring many working people to apply for government assistance or live in abject poverty in their old age.
And even if we admit that the ACA causes some increase in expenses for some businesses, to be fair, we must also admit some ways the ACA helps the economy, thus counterbalancing any drag on the economy that Will claims to see. By helping Americans be healthier and avoid medical bankruptcies, the ACA helps the economy in the long term. Also healthier employees will help a business by reducing work force disruptions due to illness and employees with healthcare will have less incentive to leave to find a job that includes healthcare benefits.
Argument #3: This is yet another argument that makes no sense. Cutting people off from extended unemployment benefits is not going to have a noticeable positive effect on the employment rate. People don’t suddenly get jobs because their benefits weren’t extended. Employers don’t start hiring because benefits weren’t extended. Employers start hiring because they see an increased demand for their goods or services and they need more employees in order to take advantage of that.
Also, not extending benefits actually reduces the amount of money going into the economy since unemployment benefits have the advantage of going to people who need to spend every bit of it right away on essentials. So, it’s money immediately going into local economies. However, it’s not a huge amount; in fact, according to CNN Money, we’re talking about approximately $30 billion, a pittance so small in comparison to the economy as a whole that it would be hard for a statistician to find the effect on the economy. (See http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/29/news/economy/unemployment-benefits-cost) And if a few more people got jobs because their benefits were cut, perhaps because in desperation they took low paying jobs well below what they were qualified for, the amount of money they in turn would be putting in the economy would not be large enough to identify as a cause of the improvement, even slow improvement, in the economy.
Will’s arguments are all weak, and poorly supported, if at all. One can only conclude that he has no interest in attempting to explain any real reasons for our lackluster economy. One can list many reasonable possibilities—stagnant wage growth, ever increasing income and wealth inequality, insufficient efforts to stimulate the economy by the federal government (thanks to Republicans), unnecessary tax breaks for the wealthy, unnecessary layoffs of state, county, and city workers, insufficient protection of American jobs from unfair global competition, and so on. Will’s interest then must be in helping the Republicans hide their role in destroying the American economy. They have profited much by deceiving Americans into pouring their energies into fights for unneeded measures, such as prayer in public schools or voter IDs, or fights against imaginary dangers, such as gay rights. Their base is so caught up in thinking the Republicans might deliver on these hot button issues, that they don’t see the harm they are suffering or why. And they don’t seem to learn when year after the year the Republicans don’t deliver. Again and again, Reagan would tout the need for school prayer, but he could never deliver it and I’m sure he knew it. Of course, if it ever happens that the Tea Partiers get everything they want, you’ll see disaster for this country and then hopefully the collapse of the rightwing as a result, for they will be revealed for the frauds that they are.
In his column, Will simply took two phrases from Patrick Moynihan that caught his eye—“defining deviancy down” (ooh, alliteration) and “iatrogenic” (ooh, big word)–and then quickly spun a shallow fairy tale around them. As with so many opinion pieces from rightwingers, if you don’t bother to analyze and research what they are talking about, you are more ignorant after reading them. Thanks to the media who coddles him by paying him well for his drivel, Will sets a low standard for political writing. He himself has defined deviancy down. And if you want to impress your friends with the an example of an “iatrogenic” cure, just look at the austerity programs that conservatives love so much, but have failed around the world, much like the blood-letting medical practice of centuries ago.
