economic conservatism and American dreams

Here are two separate but intertwined facets of American life that are, I think, increasingly at odds, and in a way that undermines standard visions of economic conservatism.

The first is that we are an aspirational country, perhaps the aspirational country, and our national consciousness is penetrated by ideas of increased affluence and abundance. In America, we are told, is the possibility for any man, if he has a work ethic and a decent respect for our laws, to rise above and grab a hold of financial abundance. This is commonly referred to as the American dream. It's an intimate part of our consensus portrait of what it means to be American, and though most of us interrogate it with a requisite amount of skepticism and caveats, I see little chance that it will die off anytime soon. This phenomenon, by the way, is at once concerned with advancing wealth and status, yet also populist. It's the little guy who can get ahead, and he can get ahead with only ingenuity, elbow grease and a smile.

The second facet is economic conservatism, which broadly speaking involves fidelity to free market principles, minimal governmental interference and a culture of individual financial responsibility, preserved by the first two. The government, in the mind of this orthodoxy, is incapable of providing the kind of economic security or prosperity that the individual aspires to. It is up to the individual working within the free market to secure his or her own economic situation. Attempts by the government to do so for him or her are ultimately quixotic, and worse, in the commission of these attempts the government creates a culture of dependance that deadens the individual's resolve to improve his or her own situation.

Now we've got this financial crisis, and this proposed automaker bailout, and I read posts like this from Matt Yglesias and this from Jim Manzi, and I really feel like, hiding in the reeds of contemporary conservatism, there's a fundamental contradiction somewhere. Opposition to unions has long been a conservative virtue. Recently popular is the notion that we've overexpanded the ranks of those who attend or have attended college, and that we've got to stop acting like everyone should go to college, or is qualified to. And we've got thoughtful conservatives like Manzi pointing out that it isn't actually possible for large groups of Americans to make a middle class living without a college degree.

I put it to you that this collection of factors simply can't be synthesized with the American dream in any kind of broadly applied sense.

Many conservatives believe that personal economic growth is the best (and for the less sober among them, the only) method through which large amounts of people are capable of having their lives improved. The way to help be, the thinking goes, is to get out of their way, keep their taxes as low as possible and let them enjoy the fruits of increasing material wealth. This is entirely in keeping with the American dream. Conservatives, however, tend to be rabidly opposed to unions which, whatever else is true, raise wages and benefits for their constituents. The Two Minutes hate that is directed against the UAW by scores of conservative bloggers is not the product of a failure of the union to gain increased wages and improved benefits. In fact, it is the product of the exact opposite: the union has been too good in improving the employment conditions of its members, and management reports-- and many uncritically repeat-- that this makes it impossible for the companies to remain fiscally solvent. In any event, conservatives are opposed to unions, so they would remove this tool that workers have to attain increased affluence.

Another method that people use to improve their earning potential is through attending college. A college degree has a marked effect on the wage potential of the average person. And, following World War II, attending college changed from being the limited to the affluent (and the white, male and Gentile) and became instead an avenue for a much larger slice of the population. (This expansion has never been as complete or equitable as is commonly supposed, but that's a question for another time.) Now, however, it is quite in vogue in many circles, both conservative or otherwise, to declare that our experiment in college for most everyone has been a failure. Not everyone is meant for college, we're told, and that may well be true. A college diploma has lost its strength as a sorting mechanism, we are told, and the value of a diploma has gone down. Again, perhaps true. We should stop shoehorning everyone into college and try to change the culture that causes young people to think that if you don't go to college, you're a loser.

The problem is that, economically, if you don't go to college, you really may be a loser. Your odds of being an economic loser are in fact significantly higher than if you had your BA or BS. There simply doesn't exist, on anything approaching the scale of the past, a mechanism in this country for workers without a college education to make a living commensurate with the vision of the American middle class life. The lack of such a mechanism or industry, by the way, seems to me to be a large contributor to many of the social ills that conservatives are particularly dismayed by-- crime, fatherlessness, the disintegration of community. The American auto industry is one of the few remaining industries that is capable of providing an uneducated worker the kind of lifestyle we think of as middle class. (The standard markers of that lifestyle, aside from college, being home ownership, multiple children, a car for each parent, etc.) And the auto industry largely affords that opportunity because of the union.

I find in the wash of all these factors a rather cruel situation for the kind of "average Joe" who is so valorized in the American dream. No more factory at the edge of town, no more union, and now, no promise that he will be able to gain a college education to heighten his earning potential. Balance this against not only the dream, but against standard American boilerplate populist politics, the kind engaged in enthusiastically by both parties, and our President-elect. Some would say that the American dream doesn't promise anything to all people, only that any individual has the chance to succeed. That's a principled position, I guess, but one that is deeply at odds with our rhetoric, both conservative and liberal. Increasing our individual affluence many times over is, really, a key part of what we perceive as our national project. Surely, we are not comfortable with the idea of a nation of Eloi and Morlocks, where some are wealthy but some are denied any meaningful mechanism for improving their situation. Even when things look bleakest, we are lucky enough to live in a country where the percentages of people living in abundance to those not is favorable. But even then, who is comfortable with that situation? Like it or not, we have decided that we are a society where most everyone should have the ability to succeed financially.

Now a lot of this, I suppose, is a problem only because of the whims of our conceptions of what, exactly, constitutes full engagement with the American vision of success. That's a reading I'm very attracted to. Certainly, one method might be to begin to ratchet back the expectation of what exactly constitutes the middle class lifestyle. People don't actually need flat-screens, and the average family can get by just fine with one car, thanks. The idea of what it means to be middle class has taken a serious climb in recent decades. I personally value the idea of an America less bent on endless consumption, materialism and competition for status objects. Perhaps the easiest and most efficient way to deliver more people into the franchise of middle class success is to define down what being middle class actually entails. I see a lot of enthusiasm, and often in unexpected places, for a new ethic of restraint, frugality and material humility.

But I insist that we confront what such a change often means. Many times I hear people argue that the working class or poor should just stop expecting so much and be smarter with their money. You can't just orphan that thought out there! Such a venture, if it's undertaken with respect and integrity, has to mean real changes to our culture. We live in a culture that doesn't just value material wealth or affluence, but revels in excess, brags about largess and profligacy, makes a virtue of ostentation and a fetish of the most obscene and useless expense. That has to change, if we're going to accept the idea that we should all be happy with less. I know people kind of detest the language of compassion in politics, but it is a cruel thing, a cruel thing, to live in a culture that values wealth and only wealth, and then turn around and tell someone that they are irresponsible and wrong to be bent on acquiring it. It's easy to tell other people to delay gratification. It's much harder to actually be the one delaying it, when VH1 and the E! network are telling you everyday that you're nothing if you don't get that purse or that blouse or that goddamn enormous television. I'm all for endorsing a modified American dream, but modifying it means a lot more than being a scold.

Additionally, those who pursue growth at great cost and see growth as our vehicle to happiness are going to have to accept that ratcheting down our definition of middle class happiness and middle class identity is going to slow growth. People spending like mad and dreaming of a life they can't really afford and we can't really offer them has some corrosive effects, but it does spur growth. I just don't know that we have the ability to continue to grow that way, the wisdom to know when to limit that growth, or the compassion to help those who find themselves outside of that river of growth.

Now, I'm an unreconstructed lefty, so I have my own visions of what this country, and its aspirational dream, should look like. I'd like a country where anyone who wants an education can get one, but those who aren't qualified or willing to go through college can get a job that offers them full-time work and some meaningful opportunity for advancement. I'd like a country with a healthy union system, where workers organize together to bargain for what they need and provide a counterbalancing force for corporate power. I'd like a country with a robust system of government enabled health care where the corporations bargaining with the unions have a much lower burden to deal with in those negotiations. I'd like a country that still values and aspires to the free market, which still attempts to access that system and its efficiency, but is unafraid to balance that respect with healthy governmental intervention when necessary. I'd like a social democracy, here in the United States, with all that entails.

The standard bloggy thing to say in response, of course, is "and a pony!" Well you can stuff your "and a pony" in a sack. I'm talking about American dreams, after all, and mine is no more naive than those who imagine that the undisturbed free market will someday deliver us to a place of justice. Yes, the government will introduce inefficiency. Yes, government is inherently imperfect. No, things won't be just the way I want them to. But I think the secret of this Wall Street bailout, which will come slowly creeping into our consciousness, unnoticed and uninvited, is that socialism and capitalism aren't mutually exclusive enemies, but perhaps eventual partners, each capable of teaching the other important lessons. My gut instinct, and it's nothing more than that, is that one day the capitalists will see the advantages of occasional governmental intervention, and rather than imagining these forays by government as inherently destabilizing or detrimental to proft, they will instead be seen as key tools to be used sparingly but unapologetically, when the need arises. This is the idle notion that has been kicking around in my head for ages, that the profit motives (and thus the most enthusiastic capitalists) will move us towards socialism.

Who knows. These utopian fantasies of mine may have little chance of coming true at all. Perhaps time will tell. I recognize that few people and no conservatives are likely to have a vision much in keeping with mine. But my questions, I think, are perfectly fair, and I ask them openly and seriously. There seems to be some real contradictions growing between conservative positions on economics and the opportunities of the working class, and the American Dream that conservatives so often claim as their own. I'd love to hear from conservatives on this, their ideas and their criticisms.

Update: To put it more succinctly, how can opposition to unions, college-for-all, and propping up industries that give uneducated Americans access to the middle class, be synthesized with a vision of success for almost everyone? As I said, I'm inclined to change what we define as "success", to make material gains less important and to redefine what we believe to be the consumptive markers of middle class identity. But that's gonna take change, to both our culture and our political rhetoric.