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A couple of days ago I heard Jason Lewis on the radio talking about how socialism does not create wealth (after Obama’s “where opportunity is absent government must create it” comment it’s obvious that some people just don’t understand that fact) and that the only way that socialism can seem to work is if there are people in society selfishly creating wealth to be redistributed. While Jason started going on about how much better natural self interest is for society than synthetic altruism (my terms, not his) I began thinking that the right to be charitable is one that we must each earn in life.
As an example, I cannot donate a million dollars to help the relief efforts of Haiti. No matter how much I might want to I simply don’t have the money. There are other people who, through some combination of hard work and chance, have amassed a million dollars or more of money they don’t need for themselves and they can choose to donate that much money to help in Haiti. They have earned the right to make a decision about whether they will do something that generous, but I have not earned that right.
As I thought about it I realized that while we must earn any goods we might wish to be charitable with the choice to be charitable is one that anyone may make with whatever quantity of goods and skills they have acquired, whether they are objectively wealthy or not. The real catch between socialists and capitalists is that, unlike capitalists, socialists believe that it is possible for some person or group of people besides me to decide how charitable I should be with my goods. The socialists believe that the force of government should be used to enforce a minimum level of charity from each person in society whereas the capitalists think that each person in society should be free to make their own decisions about how charitable they should be with their possessions. Interestingly it is that capitalists that give more to charity than the socialists.
23 replies on “The Right to be Charitable (or Not)”
Socialists believe that you did not accumulate your goods in a vacuum. You took advantage of the legal system, the infrastructure, and the education, safety and protection provided by your government without which your store of good would be much smaller. You didn’t have to provide these goods for yourself because your ancestors and those of your fellow citizens developed the framework and the institutions that allowed you to take advantage of them far exceeding your contribution. All a socialist would ask you to do is pay your fair share of tax so that future generations could enjoy the same advantages you have had, and more if possible.
Socialists don’t believe in forcing people to be charitable, they believe in working to overcome the systemic failures that cause people to need charity. It’s also worth noting that there are very, very few socialists in the United States and virtually none in positions of authority. A liberal who believes that government has the power to improve the lot of the average citizen and should use that power is not a socialist.
Did I, or more accurately could I, force my ancestors to create the system that allowed me to accumulate more wealth than I might have accumulated otherwise? Obviously not. “More if possible” is precisely how a socialist would soften their rhetoric. The fact is that a great portion of the advantageous framework and institutions that we benefit from do not require money nearly as much as they require attention. Not only that but socialists are asking me to pay for new “framework and institutions” which have yet to be a benefit to anyone.
Socialists may not believe it (and capitalists may doubt it as well) but capitalists and socialists agree that we should preserve the advantages that we have been given through the efforts of our predecessors and and improve upon them to pass them on to our posterity. The difference between the two is whether that repayment is virtuous and voluntary or whether it is mandatory.
Socialists would not talk or think about forcing people to be charitable, but when they force people to pay for their programs aimed at overcoming the systemic failures that cause people to need charity that is exactly what they are doing. The capitalist approach would be to build such programs by soliciting the voluntary support of other people. That approach may seem slower, but the fact that people must actively choose to participate virtually guarantees that the programs will be more efficient and successful than programs that are funded by people who resent them and have no voluntary engagement to support them.
By the way, you are confusing “socialist” with “Socialist.” We do have very few “Socialists” in this country, and none in positions of authority, but socialist is a continuum and while some people are only mildly “socialist” I would be very surprised if you could find less than 30% of the population that are happy with the idea of government providing services that can and should be provided privately – even as they grumble about the approach of tax day. Every one of those people is “socialist” whether they would openly adopt the title or not.
If socialists and capitalists agree on preserving the infrastructure that provides our advantages and improving on them, then they have to agree that paying for them is mandatory not voluntary. We can’t keep our schools and roads open based on voluntary contributions. No program designed to overcome systemic failures can succeed without popular support, nor can it succeed without an adequate and reliable funding source. Democratic Socialists (the only kind worth discussing) work for majority support for government programs and work with communities rather than against them.
I don’t really make a difference between “socialist” and “Socialist”. There are only a handful of “socialists” in positions of authority (Senator Sanders of VT being the only one I can think of) and he runs as an Independent, not a “Socialist”. The problem with your construct is clear in the statement about the “government providing services than can and should be provided privately”. Who says services SHOULD be provided privately? That’s a subjective judgment. If a service is necessary or greatly desirable, then the question becomes how can one provide it most effectively at the lowest cost. Democratic Socialists don’t reject private ownership nor do they insist that government provide all services. However, if a necessary service cannot be provided effectively to all that need it at a cost they can afford by private industry, socialists see nothing wrong with transferring responsibility for the service to government.
Although capitalists and socialists agree that we should preserve and improve the infrastructure that has been advantageous to us that is not the same as saying that we will preserve them – or at the very least it does not mandate how we will go about the processes of preserving and improving. That we paying for whatever preservation we undertake is mandatory is not a matter of opinion – it is natural law. If we pay for them they will be maintained and if we do not they will deteriorate.
The major difference between Democratic Socialists and Republican Capitalists is that the socialists don’t believe that voluntary charitable donations are and adequate or reliable funding source but they think that forced funding through government taxation is. Capitalists, on the other hand, recognize that there is more to support than dollars collected – that’s why they actually give more time and money to charity than their socialist counterparts according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics.
Feel free to argue that whether a service should be provided privately is subjective, but please make your argument on something less subjective than “greatly desirable.” I draw the line as “if it can be done privately it should be.” Some things can only be done by government and they should be and we should be expected to pay for them through taxation of whatever form we deem most appropriate. Much of what our government does is a duplication of services that are already offered privately but where someone has determined that they are “greatly desirable” and not “provided effectively to all that need it.” The fact that the government offers so many of their services by simply directing which private entities receive funding to provide those services is proof that government is involved in efforts that should be provided privately.
There are some aspects of our infrastructure that cannot be left to chance. If the method of paying for them is not reliable then we risk losing them. It’s a matter of valuing the public good (education, transportation infrastructure, legal system, park, etc.) more than a political ideology.
It has to be said that Republican Capitalists have more free time and money than socialists – that’s why they aren’t socialists of course. The difference isn’t about funding charity, it’s about changing the conditions that cause people to need charity rather than simply providing help if you feel like it.
I am not a fan of government paying private entities to provide services. First of all because it is wasteful. The private entity is not only providing the service but they are extracting a profit that is coming from taxpayers while diminishing the control taxpayers have over the service. If privately owned businesses in response to market demand provide a needed good or service at a reasonable cost, then there is no need for government to intervene except perhaps to aid the few who may be unable to bear the cost of the service. If the demand for a necessary good or service comes primarily from those who are unable to pay for it, or if the price of the service escalates beyond the point where most can afford it, then there is a case to be made for government to take over. Agreed we can have political arguments about whether a service is necessary, what is a reasonable price, etc., and we should have those arguments. I object to arbitrary decisions that it is wrong for government to do something or wrong for the private sector to do something on ideological grounds.
I consider myself a pragmatist. The American dream is that each generation’s children will have a better life than their parents and we have now fallen behind other (more “socialist”) nations like Denmark, Canada and Finland in economic mobility. Even white Americans have a lower life expectancy than their European counterparts while we spend far more of our GDP on health care than any European nation. We are falling behind in technology, education, transportation and many other fields while in every one of these areas we rely far more on private interests to provide these goods than the nations that are surpassing us. IMHO we have allowed our devotion to the gods of the “free market” to blind us to reality. If our children are to have a better future, they need a world class education, they need good paying jobs here in the USA, and they need the technological and transport infrastructure to move about freely and bring goods to market. The marketplace is not serving us well in this regard, and we need to make a change. Government ownership of the means of production is probably not the answer, but we need to control the market rather than be controlled by the market.
Could you please back that up with some data – I don’t buy it.
Comparing ourselves to other nations is not helping. The question is not whether we are falling behind nations like Denmark, Canada and Finland, the question is whether we have the opportunity in this nation for a child to provide himself and his family with a comfortable life through his own industry regardless of how well his parents provided for him. I’m not a going to argue that we do not have much room for improvement there, but lets get the question straight – looking outward towards our neighbors is only useful in very short glances. (That’s true whether you are talking about nations or about individuals.)
Besides the fact that technology, education, etc. do not define or even predict an adequate standard of living, the problem may be less about whether these things are provided publicly or privately and more about the fact that we spend all our time fighting against our own government in our efforts to innovate and improve. It should also be noted that much of the progress and higher standards of living in Europe and elsewhere in the world are directly due to their acquisition of American innovations and past or present dependence on American aid – if our standard of living is lower than theirs we should take into account how much of their standard of living is propped up by us, or at the very least (because many of those nations receive little or no aid from us) we should take into account how much we are giving away more than they are – hence they are less hobbled by the global expectation of being the engine of finance and aid for the entire world.
P.S. The very idea that we can control markets is debatable. We can interfere with markets and make them less efficient, we can open the gates and allow them to operate, but we cannot force them to flow nor can we prevent them from operating in some form. We have abandoned a free market for an ideological one – neither side can win that.
The quote was an attempt at humor. These days I suppose your unemployed socialist has even more free time than an philanthropist.
I don’t think it’s OK for Americans to simply get by. I’d like for us to be the best, call it jingoistic nationalism if you like, but I see no reason why our standard of living has to decline. I think if you look at the data, you’ll discover that Americans provide a much smaller per capita contribution of aid to other nations than many other Western democracies. If you discount military assistance (which is really self-serving), then we are not among the most charitable nations.
As for markets, we have opened the gates and they have flooded us. If we must have some inefficiency in order to reap benefit from the market then that’s better than simply leaving it alone and suffering the consequences.
I can accept humor – sorry I mistook it as serious.
What our government gives in aid is about half of what Americans give in aid personally – and that in turn is dwarfed by what foreigners working in the U.S. send back home (remittances). I doubt that any other nation comes close when the full picture is considered. I’m not suggesting that private aid, or remittances should cease, but we need to recognize how much is flowing out of our economy before we will be able to make an accurate comparison. I also believe that our military assistance is hurting us and those we are “serving” in the long term.
I don’t think that we should strive for mediocrity nor that our standard of living should decline, but I do think that we should stop hiding behind government interaction in hopes that we won’t actually have to reap the rewards of our actions – that’s exactly what is happening with the government leeches I mentioned earlier.
If you are referring to the housing bubble as an example of getting flooded by opening the gates for free markets you are mistaken. (If you had another example in mind please let me know.) Those things were not a result of lack of oversight (although there was some lack of oversight involved) – they were examples of active market manipulation by government through subsidization. The government accepted a data point about home ownership and created an artificial priority to stimulate it. The result was that people could own a home without doing as much work beforehand. This helped some people, but it encouraged many to speculate and drive up prices thus taking the dream of independent home ownership out of reach of some who were working towards it. Over time there was much more debt in homes fueled by a bubble of worthless specie which finally came home to bite us. A free market would not have made buying a home with other people’s money nearly so easy and it would have adapted to irrational price jumps much earlier.
I’m not sure I would count remittances as aid from America. It’s typically citizens of other nations who are sending money back home isn’t it?
I was referring to the economic snafu in which the housing bubble played a part. While the “ownership society” nonsense (yes it started under Clinton) did exert some pressure on private banks to lend to poor people, most of the sub-prime lending was not a result of that program, it was a result of the desire for quick profits and the irresponsibility of lending institutions. The bubble really had little to do with the subsidization program. We have had a series of asset bubbles of which housing was only the latest. An unregulated financial market where lenders and those who re-package loans stand to gain billions will naturally drive up prices. We have long viewed housing, particularly new housing construction, as a key economic indicator and a public good – hence the mortgage interest deduction that has been around a long time. Housing construction and remodeling is big business and over the post-war years has provided a bonanza of jobs and profits for big and small businesses alike. IMHO, the existence of safe, habitable housing is a public good, but I’m not so sure our love affair with new housing construction has been as beneficial as we like to think. Like so many good ideas, it had some unintended consequences that weren’t good for us.
When prices began to rise precipitously after the free-market advocates removed financial regulation, one could make the case that government should have intervened in the market to suppress the bubble, but I’m sure you’re not making that case here. It was precisely the freed up market that advertised day and night to convince people to buy houses they could not afford with almost nothing down, and take out a home equity loan a few months later to put in the granite countertops. It was the banks that decided not to require 20% down. It was the banks that decided not to do credit checks. Blaming the government here is just not supported by the facts. I will readily admit the government should never have passed Gramm-Bliley and that Greenspan and Bernanke did a crappy job of supervising the financial system, but they did these things in the name of free-market capitalism.
I did not mean to claim the remittances were a form of aid, I meant to list them as one way that major sums of money flow out of our economy to the benefit of other nations. As you say, it is typically citizens of other nations sending money home.
The funny thing about your claim that the data does not support blaming the government for the housing crisis is that you note that we use housing starts as an indication of a healthy economy. The very assumption there is that government should be managing the economy and stimulating as necessary. Government was already in the business of promoting home ownership half a century ago. The fact that they allow deductions for mortgage interest indicates that either a) they are taxing us too much to begin with, or b) they are actively encouraging (stimulating) home ownership.
Long before those regulations were lifted but the government had demonstrated that they would not allow large businesses to fail. This helped encourage the risky investing that the banks engaged in to cause the bubble to rise and pop. You note the ridiculous consumer behavior – driven by advertising – of buying with nothing down and refinancing to pay for more unnecessary upgrades but you fail to connect that foolish behavior with the government response after the crisis of rewarding those who made such poor decisions by underwriting their loans and demanding that banks avoid foreclosure and rewrite the terms of their loans. The fact is that consumers were almost always willing partners in this scheme, very few were helpless dupes. We subsidize failure and wonder why we are getting more and more of it. Once upon a time we became the greatest nation on earth without government standing by to hold our hands and prevent us from scraping our financial knees. But somehow what got us to greatness is not the right formula to return us to greatness.
You’ll get no argument from me on the premise that the government should not bail out businesses that fail. Any corporation that is too big to fail is too big to exist. If the failure of one private company can plunge the entire nation into recession, then the government should break up that company, not bail it out. We became the greatest nation on earth for a time because government kept corporate greed in check. We had laws that prevented institutions from becoming too big to fail and prohibited the kind of irresponsible behavior that brought down the financial system. What we need to do is return to the strong financial market regulation and strong antitrust enforcement that kept us safe and solvent.
As for home ownership, clearly the government intended to encourage home ownership and real estate development and suburban sprawl because it helped business – created jobs and profits. While it did help a lot of small businesses and it certainly provided benefit to some individuals and families, the purpose was always to help big business and that it certainly did as well. For about 40 years or so, that formula worked on the economic front at least. (There were cultural problems that we could discuss but we did grow the economy.) The housing bubble was not a result of that policy. We had a rational rise in housing prices from the late 1940’s through the late 1990’s that created a lot of wealth (or apparent wealth) but not a bubble. Should government have encouraged new housing in this way? I would say no. I think a socialist would have advocated policies that provided low cost housing for the poor but didn’t encourage middle and upper income families to build or buy bigger homes. The problem from a socialist perspective is that there was no planning. We allowed developers to build however and wherever they chose and then saddled local taxpayers with the burden of providing infrastructure extensions to these developments. The lack of government planning and control created the monster and it is government (the taxpayers) who are saddled with the bill for supporting this mess.
I would have said we became the greatest country because people came here and worked hard while the government largely stayed out of the way. When people started substituting greed for plain hard work our improvement slowed. When government began “keeping corporate greed in check” our improvement slowed more. Now that greed has discovered how to profit from the very regulations that were supposed to have been keeping it in check our greatness is rapidly declining.
I think you have summed up the socialist position perfectly: government intervention worked just like it was supposed to but there were unexpected side effects that indicated the need for more central planning and bigger government. The problem is that there are always side effects and the grander the plan the bigger the side effects.
Could it be because socialists are, for the most part, atheists while The United States constitution was formed by people who were mostly Christian and as "one country under God". Tithing is a Christan practive- it is the practice of giving 10% of what ever amount one rceives to a charitable cause. Atheists want to impose giving by the rule of Man's law- which they consder to be the highest law.I have always thought it a great thing about capitalism that a person can decide where and whom the wealth they create can benefit- another right that the administration and congress want to take away from the people to place in their own hands. So generous of them!
Tithing is not the practice of giving 10% to a charitable cause – it is giving 10% back to God as a show of our gratitude for His blessings in our lives (at least that is the intent even if we actually hand the tithe to our religious authority rather than our Heavenly Father Himself).
[snark]On the other hand, I (like you) am ever so grateful that our federal overlords are willing to shoulder the burden of deciding where our wealth should be distributed as aid.[/snark]
That is one interpretation of tithing but not the only interpretation. It's kind of like saying there is one religion and all others don't count. I follow hermetic christianily not one orthadox version. I think arguing over the use of the word "chaitible cause" of "heavenly father" is not important, since they are actually one and the same, by my view.
Yours is a view that I have not previously encountered. In my defense I thought my statement was generic enough to accord with a majority of at least Christian viewpoints – not to mention that the idea that there is only one religion and all others don't count is not unknown 😉
Well- it certainly is not an idea that our founding fathers supported.
Tithing is not the practice of giving 10% to a charitable cause – it is giving 10% back to God as a show of our gratitude for His blessings in our lives (at least that is the intent even if we actually hand the tithe to our religious authority rather than our Heavenly Father Himself).[snark]On the other hand, I (like you) am ever so grateful that our federal overlords are willing to shoulder the burden of deciding where our wealth should be distributed as aid.[/snark]
It depends a lot on which period of history one refers to. If you feel the robber baron era was the period when we became the greatest country on earth, then perhaps you have a point, but then you’d still have to explain the high tariffs and the massive government giveaways to the railroads. If you are referring to the post-WWII boom that ended in the late 1970’s, then you are referring to the high point of government regulation and marginal income taxes.
There weren’t “unexpected side effects” of government intervention, there were undiscussed side effects to the reduction in government intervention. The grand de-regulation, tax cut, privatization, corporate trade policy, and military Keynesianism of the last 30 years had big side effects too: a government deeply in debt and completely beholden to corporate interests, a financial market that operates like a corrupt international casino, no manufacturing base, millions of jobs sent overseas permanently, and a military budget that consumes well over 50% of our tax revenue while being unable to protect us from guys who set their pants on fire. Yep, that grand plan had some big side effects.
We may not have been as economically dominant during the robber baron era as we were during the post-WWII boom but I think that the nation was at its pinnacle of greatness then. I think the high tariffs were ill advised but you have never heard me argue that government has no role in basic infrastructure. The giveaways to the railroads, insofar as they were temporary and necessary to develop the intercontinental railroad system that has been a backbone of our productivity ever since, were perfectly reasonable. In the post-WWII era a similar undertaking to create the interstate highway system has also failed to garner any criticism from me. The problem with government funding in private enterprises is when it is perpetual or when it is done to encourage an action that the private industry was already able essentially willing to do on its own. We’re not talking about rail to every town, or roads to every house, but about the central network to which further infrastructure can connect to the benefit of the nation as a whole.
You yourself said that there were cultural problems from allowing developers to develop how and when they wanted under the governments encouragement of home ownership. And I have consistently argued against the unfunded tax-cut mentality so ably demonstrated during the Bush years as well as the military Keynsianism that encourages foreigners to set their pants on fire (on our airplanes) and is doing everything it can to add to our budgetary woes. Those actions are outside the bounds of capitalism – even if they are advocated by some of the vocal supporters of the idea of capitalism.
It seems my understanding of capitalism and yours of socialism differ and thus we argue somewhat around each other rather than against one another. Perhaps a neutral term or two might help. My problem is with something I might call Friedmanism, after Milton Friedman, the unquestioning acceptance that all unfettered market operation is good and all government activity (always excepting military and law enforcement) is bad. I also resist those who conflate the economic, business and moral principles of a small family firm with that of a large multinational corporation. If one assumes that the latter operates like the former, one is likely to be unpleasantly surprised.
Transportation infrastructure has always been a area where government has borne the brunt of the cost but has failed to reap the benefits. By funding railroads but not controlling their creation or growth, we ended up with lots of waste and corruption and a rail system that no longer functions well. We did a bit better with the interstate highway system insofar as there was a master plan, but there were lots of unintended consequences like the assumption that there would always be cheap gasoline, like unplanned real estate development and the death of towns and cities, etc. In both cases, we might have benefited from more government involvement.
I agree with you that Friedmanism is not exactly good policy. It’s unfortunate that it is so widely accepted among supposed conservatives. (I don’t know how you can be really conservative and think that military and law enforcement should be free to do anything short of taking away the guns of the citizenry.)
You may argue that we did not reap the maximum benefit possible from projects like the interstate highway system and the transcontinental railroad, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that the country has failed to reap the benefits of those government financed undertakings. The fact is that decisions, whether master planned by government or organically evolved by free markets, will have unintended consequences. The difference between the two is scale and response time. The government planning will generally result in more widespread consequences, slower reactions to them, and less detailed responses. Free market choices will generally result in more localized consequences and faster reactions to them. As the responses to the problems will be individually made those responses will be much more detailed and specific rather than sweeping generalizations.