I think that the core belief of the Left is a moral objection to Inequality and a belief that the government has a moral duty to create Equality or at least important steps towards much greater levels of Equality.
The Right disagrees that the Quest for Equality should be the prime moral goal of government.
But why does the left support the SALT deduction? It can't be justified on inequality grounds. It's the most naked self interest of the professional managerial class of blue states I can imagine. It has zero intellectual, moral, or aesthetic support. Nobody of any intellect or conscious supports it. And yet, self interest finds a way.
In addition to supporting an ideology, professional politicians also need to look out for the economic interests of their key supporters, but I do not think any theorists on the Left have made SALT deduction a key part of their ideology. Nor are Leftist demonstrators mobilizing around the issue.
1) Environmentalism and climate activism, which is not about Inequality. But since virtually all Greens support the Left on Equality in other domains, this is not a big deviation from the overall focus on Equality.
2) Anarchists, who typically want Equality, but do not want government to create it. They believe that government is the cause of Inequality, so they want to abolish it.
It makes more sense to view the political spectrum as a triangle and not as a line segment. The libertarian ideal of personal autonomy is distinct from both the right-wing defense of mainstream customs, traditions, and incumbent power structures and from the left-wing attacks on such aspects of social life. Left and Right are both "anti-market" in the sense that their attempts to use the state to advance their respective values contradict the libertarian principle that individuals should be free to judge for themselves whether they should follow a given norm/tradition or not, whether they should consent to participation in a particular institution or not, etc.
The significance of individual liberty being constrained only by private ownership rights isn't simply a matter of economics; it has important cultural and religious implications too. Even if a given libertarian believes that one's human nature defines a particular final end that everyone ought to pursue, respecting the ownership rights of others commits libertarians to the principle that immorality by others ought to be tolerated as long as immoral people aren't transgressing against the rights of their neighbors. Achieving the good, in other words, must be a matter of individual responsibility for a libertarian, not a collective outcome that otherwise peaceable moral and immoral people must fight about.
What "left" and "right" have in common is that their focus is on achieving particular collective outcomes for everyone, not on achieving particular personal outcomes for themselves. As a consequence, there can be no peaceful resolution to their cultural warfare between each other nor tolerance for deviants who just want to be left alone. The phrase "mind your own business" is not in the vocabulary of the culture war zealots of both left and right.
I hesitate to leave a comment here because Bryan Caplan rarely replies or gives a reason to believe he's read it. I have better things to do with my time than write comments he doesn't read. However, I'll leave one more comment and wait to see what happens.
I tend to agree with the Lewis Brothers: the terms “left” and “right” don't denote any enduring essential political ideology. One reason is that the terms are ambiguous; they change meaning with time and place. The terms originated during the French Revolution, when supporters of the monarchy sat on the right of the National Assembly and their opponents sat on the left. Frederic Bastiat, who was a free-market advocate, sat on the left. The next time the terms were used was during the Russian Revolution. The left included the Bolsheviks, and the right included the Mensheviks. Members of both groups were Socialists. Later, fascists and Nazis were considered right-wing, although, like the communists, they were authoritarian collectivists. In the US, “left” and “right” have changed positions on many issues. The former used to support free speech, and the latter formerly supported free trade. The two sides seem to have switched positions on those issues. As the Lewis Brothers point out, neither ideology is internally consistent.
When the Nolan Chart was created in 1969, it was reasonably effective in dividing political ideologies into contemporary American liberal, conservative, libertarian, authoritarian, and centrist (moderate). However, due to ideological changes since then, it's currently less effective,
I propose a more nearly accurate political typology chart as follows. It resembles some versions of the Political Compass that I've seen online. It consists of a square having an x-axis running from left to right across the middle of the square and a y-axis running from top to bottom down the middle of the square. The halves of the chart represent the following: top half: authoritarianism, bottom half: libertarianism, left half: collectivism, right half: individualism. The center of the square contains a circle. Thus, the square is divided into five equal-sized sections: the upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right, and center sections. Those sections represent authoritarian collectivism, authoritarian individualism, libertarian collectivism, libertarian individualism, and centrism, respectively. The extreme corners represent totalitarian collectivism (e.g., totalitarian communism), totalitarian individualism (I'll come back to this), anarcho-collectivism (e.g., anarcho-communism), and anarcho-individualism (e.g., anarcho-capitalism). I believe the chart includes every possible political ideology except political nihilism, which is the only form of anarchism that is not libertarian, which is characterized by chaos and disorder, and which is what most people associate with anarchism. Totalitarian individualism appears to be a null class. The closest example of which I'm aware is Chile under Augusto Pinochet's authoritarian rule from 1973 to 1990. During most of that period, Chile had a relatively free market.
First, I must say that I really respect the work you put into your thesis (I could say much more in the way of compliments but it would soon sound like damning with faint praise).
Having said that I find that Bryan’s thesis and exposition is correct because of its simplicity—like Occam’s razor: it says no more than is needed.
It is also testable and apodictic.
The left leaning supporter can never hold an absolutist position on markets (and remain on team blue). How many times has the left said something like, “capitalism is great but…..”. The “but” is sufficient to make that supporter anti-free markets: You can’t be a little bit pregnant!
On the other hand, right leaning supporters may be card carrying libertarians or MAGA—both extremes oppose the left for being the left (it doesn’t matter how many policies the left has in common with the right). The libertarian could say that their pro-market stance was the primary reason for opposing the left, but they couldn’t say it was the only reason.
So a core political constituency of the Democrats is the teachers union. It literally decides who wins the democratic primary in a lot of places, and it commands a lot of votes. This is why we are NEVER going to get universal* school choice in blue (or even purple) states.
Blacks would be a similar core constituency for Democrats. You've always got to pay off blacks somehow.
SALT is also an example of a "core principal" that cuts across party lines. All Blue Staters of both parties want the SALT deduction.
The foreign policy "blob" is kind of similar. They want more government contracts and more conflicts to justify them, and they work for both parties. Foreign policy is the least sticky thing in party politics as far as I can tell.
Republicans to me seem to have less core constituencies. More a bunch of people that want to be left alone.
*Sometimes democrats will experiment with vouchers for impoverished blacks (since they are another core constituency), but they are very firm about not letting middle class people have school choice.
It's basically a 32-37% discount on state and local taxes of UMC+ people in high tax blue states paid for by the federal government.
It's the ultimate "rich people tax deduction", but Democrats support it because it funnels money to well off blue staters. Republicans from Blue States support it for the same reason. There was a group of give congressmen that held up the OBBB simply to get a larger SALT deduction added.
It's also strongly supported by the teachers union. Most state and local taxes go to schools, so a 32-37% deduction on that taxes paid for by the feds is really valuable to them. The property and income tax rates in blue states have gotten ridiculously high in large part because the SALT deduction cushioned the blow.
Among economists or anyone with common sense its the worst deduction in the tax code. But naked self interest always comes out on top.
Is not opposition to the market (in some form) an “anchor belief” of the left? And if so does the experiment really distinguish between the Lewis theory and the Caplan theory?
> If anyone reading this can think of a way to tease out anchor beliefs, please let me know!
You can rule out "anchor beliefs" to some extent, by comparing the strength of the opposition cues on economic vs. non-economic issues. If left-wing respondents are way more likely to hold to doctrine in the face of opposition cues on questions along the market-government axis than on other topics, that's evidence against the "anchor beliefs", or at least evidence against them being somewhat arbitrary starting points.
So after reading cues vs. content I would offer these comments:
1. Each person comes with an implicit bias based upon their indoctrination/ education.
1a. High probability that your family structure, religious belief set are foundational in how you make decisions.
1b. A person like water will flow where there is the least resistance and/ or greater acceptance and it is the acceptance that imprints that persons empirical experience.
2. During the course of my life my thinking has radically changed based upon taking a more introspective approach to the rationality of the impact the a tribal perspective on life in general.
Example:
You work you eat.
A conservative perspective on the duty of every person to be responsible for themselves.
Those who are unwilling to work are entitled to the fruits of the labor of those who do work which is the perspective of a Woke Progressive Socialist Communist ideology.
We all have a duty to care for those who cannot take care of themselves because of health issues and in a civilized society that is the responsibility of the many to care for the few.
2. I am a firm believer in “ He who governs least governs best”.
The Woke Progressive Socialist Communist Manifesto is that you will own nothing and you will like it because an individual who educates their selves, works intelligently and is successful does so to the detriment of those who choose to do nothing because the Communist Manifesto will provide equally for all.
A conservative understands that equity is the process of meritocracy and not Diversity Equity and Inclusion.
A Woke Progressive Socialist Communist believes that they will profit from the meritocracy of the many by discriminating against the qualified and through an onerous tax system and burdensome regulation suppress human rights,dignity and freedoms for the great good of the many.
The current system is unsustainable and the thinking behind the Woke Progressive Socialist Communist is not well founded.
So the debate referenced in this article is hypothetical because in the real world it ignored the reality that socialism and communism stifle the human experience.
Empirical experience and critical thinking and analysis are the path forward and that cannot happen with a Woke Progressive Socialist Communist virus permeating the world.
I think that the core belief of the Left is a moral objection to Inequality and a belief that the government has a moral duty to create Equality or at least important steps towards much greater levels of Equality.
The Right disagrees that the Quest for Equality should be the prime moral goal of government.
Somewhat.
But why does the left support the SALT deduction? It can't be justified on inequality grounds. It's the most naked self interest of the professional managerial class of blue states I can imagine. It has zero intellectual, moral, or aesthetic support. Nobody of any intellect or conscious supports it. And yet, self interest finds a way.
I agree with that.
In addition to supporting an ideology, professional politicians also need to look out for the economic interests of their key supporters, but I do not think any theorists on the Left have made SALT deduction a key part of their ideology. Nor are Leftist demonstrators mobilizing around the issue.
The main exceptions that I can think of are:
1) Environmentalism and climate activism, which is not about Inequality. But since virtually all Greens support the Left on Equality in other domains, this is not a big deviation from the overall focus on Equality.
2) Anarchists, who typically want Equality, but do not want government to create it. They believe that government is the cause of Inequality, so they want to abolish it.
It makes more sense to view the political spectrum as a triangle and not as a line segment. The libertarian ideal of personal autonomy is distinct from both the right-wing defense of mainstream customs, traditions, and incumbent power structures and from the left-wing attacks on such aspects of social life. Left and Right are both "anti-market" in the sense that their attempts to use the state to advance their respective values contradict the libertarian principle that individuals should be free to judge for themselves whether they should follow a given norm/tradition or not, whether they should consent to participation in a particular institution or not, etc.
The significance of individual liberty being constrained only by private ownership rights isn't simply a matter of economics; it has important cultural and religious implications too. Even if a given libertarian believes that one's human nature defines a particular final end that everyone ought to pursue, respecting the ownership rights of others commits libertarians to the principle that immorality by others ought to be tolerated as long as immoral people aren't transgressing against the rights of their neighbors. Achieving the good, in other words, must be a matter of individual responsibility for a libertarian, not a collective outcome that otherwise peaceable moral and immoral people must fight about.
What "left" and "right" have in common is that their focus is on achieving particular collective outcomes for everyone, not on achieving particular personal outcomes for themselves. As a consequence, there can be no peaceful resolution to their cultural warfare between each other nor tolerance for deviants who just want to be left alone. The phrase "mind your own business" is not in the vocabulary of the culture war zealots of both left and right.
There's so much emerging science that suggests real and substantial neurological differences are linked to our political outlook.
I hesitate to leave a comment here because Bryan Caplan rarely replies or gives a reason to believe he's read it. I have better things to do with my time than write comments he doesn't read. However, I'll leave one more comment and wait to see what happens.
I tend to agree with the Lewis Brothers: the terms “left” and “right” don't denote any enduring essential political ideology. One reason is that the terms are ambiguous; they change meaning with time and place. The terms originated during the French Revolution, when supporters of the monarchy sat on the right of the National Assembly and their opponents sat on the left. Frederic Bastiat, who was a free-market advocate, sat on the left. The next time the terms were used was during the Russian Revolution. The left included the Bolsheviks, and the right included the Mensheviks. Members of both groups were Socialists. Later, fascists and Nazis were considered right-wing, although, like the communists, they were authoritarian collectivists. In the US, “left” and “right” have changed positions on many issues. The former used to support free speech, and the latter formerly supported free trade. The two sides seem to have switched positions on those issues. As the Lewis Brothers point out, neither ideology is internally consistent.
When the Nolan Chart was created in 1969, it was reasonably effective in dividing political ideologies into contemporary American liberal, conservative, libertarian, authoritarian, and centrist (moderate). However, due to ideological changes since then, it's currently less effective,
I propose a more nearly accurate political typology chart as follows. It resembles some versions of the Political Compass that I've seen online. It consists of a square having an x-axis running from left to right across the middle of the square and a y-axis running from top to bottom down the middle of the square. The halves of the chart represent the following: top half: authoritarianism, bottom half: libertarianism, left half: collectivism, right half: individualism. The center of the square contains a circle. Thus, the square is divided into five equal-sized sections: the upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right, and center sections. Those sections represent authoritarian collectivism, authoritarian individualism, libertarian collectivism, libertarian individualism, and centrism, respectively. The extreme corners represent totalitarian collectivism (e.g., totalitarian communism), totalitarian individualism (I'll come back to this), anarcho-collectivism (e.g., anarcho-communism), and anarcho-individualism (e.g., anarcho-capitalism). I believe the chart includes every possible political ideology except political nihilism, which is the only form of anarchism that is not libertarian, which is characterized by chaos and disorder, and which is what most people associate with anarchism. Totalitarian individualism appears to be a null class. The closest example of which I'm aware is Chile under Augusto Pinochet's authoritarian rule from 1973 to 1990. During most of that period, Chile had a relatively free market.
"the change in support for tariffs from 2015 to 2017 among leftists in the United States"
I was in the US from 2015 to 2017, but I wasn't a leftist. I have forgotten/never knew the particulars (the content). The cue doesn't get me there.
First, I must say that I really respect the work you put into your thesis (I could say much more in the way of compliments but it would soon sound like damning with faint praise).
Having said that I find that Bryan’s thesis and exposition is correct because of its simplicity—like Occam’s razor: it says no more than is needed.
It is also testable and apodictic.
The left leaning supporter can never hold an absolutist position on markets (and remain on team blue). How many times has the left said something like, “capitalism is great but…..”. The “but” is sufficient to make that supporter anti-free markets: You can’t be a little bit pregnant!
On the other hand, right leaning supporters may be card carrying libertarians or MAGA—both extremes oppose the left for being the left (it doesn’t matter how many policies the left has in common with the right). The libertarian could say that their pro-market stance was the primary reason for opposing the left, but they couldn’t say it was the only reason.
I would also add "core political constituencies."
So a core political constituency of the Democrats is the teachers union. It literally decides who wins the democratic primary in a lot of places, and it commands a lot of votes. This is why we are NEVER going to get universal* school choice in blue (or even purple) states.
Blacks would be a similar core constituency for Democrats. You've always got to pay off blacks somehow.
SALT is also an example of a "core principal" that cuts across party lines. All Blue Staters of both parties want the SALT deduction.
The foreign policy "blob" is kind of similar. They want more government contracts and more conflicts to justify them, and they work for both parties. Foreign policy is the least sticky thing in party politics as far as I can tell.
Republicans to me seem to have less core constituencies. More a bunch of people that want to be left alone.
*Sometimes democrats will experiment with vouchers for impoverished blacks (since they are another core constituency), but they are very firm about not letting middle class people have school choice.
It doesn't even matter what sort of principle you're referring to. I don't recall what SALT is.
You sure it might not be SILT? Or SATLE?
SALT is the State and Local Tax Deduction.
It's basically a 32-37% discount on state and local taxes of UMC+ people in high tax blue states paid for by the federal government.
It's the ultimate "rich people tax deduction", but Democrats support it because it funnels money to well off blue staters. Republicans from Blue States support it for the same reason. There was a group of give congressmen that held up the OBBB simply to get a larger SALT deduction added.
It's also strongly supported by the teachers union. Most state and local taxes go to schools, so a 32-37% deduction on that taxes paid for by the feds is really valuable to them. The property and income tax rates in blue states have gotten ridiculously high in large part because the SALT deduction cushioned the blow.
Among economists or anyone with common sense its the worst deduction in the tax code. But naked self interest always comes out on top.
Is not opposition to the market (in some form) an “anchor belief” of the left? And if so does the experiment really distinguish between the Lewis theory and the Caplan theory?
> If anyone reading this can think of a way to tease out anchor beliefs, please let me know!
You can rule out "anchor beliefs" to some extent, by comparing the strength of the opposition cues on economic vs. non-economic issues. If left-wing respondents are way more likely to hold to doctrine in the face of opposition cues on questions along the market-government axis than on other topics, that's evidence against the "anchor beliefs", or at least evidence against them being somewhat arbitrary starting points.
So after reading cues vs. content I would offer these comments:
1. Each person comes with an implicit bias based upon their indoctrination/ education.
1a. High probability that your family structure, religious belief set are foundational in how you make decisions.
1b. A person like water will flow where there is the least resistance and/ or greater acceptance and it is the acceptance that imprints that persons empirical experience.
2. During the course of my life my thinking has radically changed based upon taking a more introspective approach to the rationality of the impact the a tribal perspective on life in general.
Example:
You work you eat.
A conservative perspective on the duty of every person to be responsible for themselves.
Those who are unwilling to work are entitled to the fruits of the labor of those who do work which is the perspective of a Woke Progressive Socialist Communist ideology.
We all have a duty to care for those who cannot take care of themselves because of health issues and in a civilized society that is the responsibility of the many to care for the few.
2. I am a firm believer in “ He who governs least governs best”.
The Woke Progressive Socialist Communist Manifesto is that you will own nothing and you will like it because an individual who educates their selves, works intelligently and is successful does so to the detriment of those who choose to do nothing because the Communist Manifesto will provide equally for all.
A conservative understands that equity is the process of meritocracy and not Diversity Equity and Inclusion.
A Woke Progressive Socialist Communist believes that they will profit from the meritocracy of the many by discriminating against the qualified and through an onerous tax system and burdensome regulation suppress human rights,dignity and freedoms for the great good of the many.
The current system is unsustainable and the thinking behind the Woke Progressive Socialist Communist is not well founded.
So the debate referenced in this article is hypothetical because in the real world it ignored the reality that socialism and communism stifle the human experience.
Empirical experience and critical thinking and analysis are the path forward and that cannot happen with a Woke Progressive Socialist Communist virus permeating the world.