Customer Reviews

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics

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I am reluctant to give 5 stars to any review, but I succumbed to the temptation in this case simply because for what it does this book is just about as good as it gets.

It reminds me somewhat of Paul Krugman's scarily prescient book "Fuzzy Math" that predicted all of the fiscal calamities that followed the enactment of the Bush tax cuts.

Chait's book is similar to Fuzzy Math on two counts: first, it offers a sustained, cogent criticism of Bush economic policy; and second, it is extremely well-written. Chait has an admirable ability to make fairly technical subject matter completely clear to a lay audience. He increases readability even more by sprinkling his prose with a healthy dose of humor. I couldn't put the book down, devouring it in a weekend.

However, The Big Con has a considerably more ambitious scope than Fuzzy Math, which was essentially limited to an analysis of Bush's 2001 tax cuts. The Big Con focuses upon the entire history of supply-side economics, the philosophy that has, as Chait aptly demonstrates, completely captured the Republican party despite the fact that it has virtually no support among professional economists.

If you want to learn something about economic policy while enjoying a thumping good read, I can't recommend a better choice.

The title of Jonathan Chait's book is its worst aspect. It makes him seem like a left wing demagogue, which he isn't. But it does force on him this witty introduction:

"I have this problem. Whenever I try to explain what's happening in American politics - I mean, what's really happening - I wind up sounding a bit like an unhinged conspiracy theorist. But honestly, I'm not... so please give me a chance to explain myself when I tell you that American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane"

Chait's thesis is hardly novel: In recent decades, the Republican Party has turned a hard right, pulling the entire American political landscape with it. And yet, ironically, the American Public is moving in the opposite direction, becoming increasingly Liberal.

One of Chait's main theses is that journalists, including those in leading outlets, don't understand economics. Yet based on his footnotes, most of Chait's Economics, Sociology and History comes from the popular press. He quotes neither official data nor scholarly literature.

He consequently makes embarrassing mistakes: minor ones, like claiming that Communists wanted the US to enter WWII before the USSR nonaggression pact with Germany, which was actually signed before the war's outbreak (p. 259). Substantial ones, too: he misconstrues the story of the Supreme Court confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Chait sometimes applies a single label (predominantly "Conservatives") to refer to different groups with different agendas: Libertarians, K-Street Lobbyists, Bush Cronies, etc. And I suspect that at least some of the economic data he offers can be differently interpreted.

And yet... even if Chait isn't right about everything, I think the picture he paints is essentially correct and disturbing.

Since the 1970s, the GOP changed from a moderate party committed to smaller government and balanced budgets to an extremist faction wedded to a socially conservative ideology that few Americans support, and to an economic agenda that virtually none do: Not merely extreme tax cutting, but Corporate well-fare, massive corruption, and a bigger, not smaller government.

How did that happen? Mainly because of the new constituency of the Republican Party. The traditional Republican Party, like the Democrats, had a large constituency, with different interests and ideologies. In classic Madisonian fashion, these various factions and interests mostly balanced each other out: corruption and partisanship were checked by the need not to alienate parts of the delicate conservative coalition.

But the contemporary Republican Party constitutes several tribes with remarkably different goals. The Social conservatives care almost exclusively about so called "moral issues"; the foreign policy hawks about US military preparedness. Skillfully, the small (but moneyed) corporate-well-fare tail managed to wag the economically indifferent dog. Because Social and Hawkish Conservatives don't really care about economics, they don't moderate the Republican Party economically.

Without significant competing economic interests to please, the Republicans lined up behind its two major economic initiatives: Tax Cuts and Corporate hands-out. And they found a new and powerful weapon: the business lobbies.

Traditionally, the business lobbies were fairly unpartisan; they joined interests in both parties to promote their goals as the case demanded. But because each party's positions would shift according to its internal politics, they did not remain committed to any one party. This, says Chait, changed in the 1990s: "when Republican won control of Congress... they set about to reshape [The Lobbies] as a partisan Republican force... Republicans demanded total loyalty from [the Lobbies] and offered total loyalty in return. The business lobby and the GOP would no longer be separate parties with overlapping interests but partners in an ironclad alliance" (p. 56).

The Republican commitment to rabid tax cutting and crony Capitalism faced a serious problem: the majority of the American people do not support those policies. Most Americans support taxing progressively, balancing the budget, and oppose privatizing Social Security.

This is where the "Big Con" comes in: how did the Republicans manage to enact their agenda against a potentially hostile public opinion? Essentially, Chait claim, they did it by lying. Instead of proclaiming their economic agenda, they concealed it: the rationale for the Bush tax cuts kept changing; the extent of its regresivity suppressed; and cronyist policies were disguised by Orwellian renaming: a timber hand out was "the Healthy Forest Initiative"; pollution became the "Clear Sky Act". (Full Disclosure: these are complicated issues, and I am not suggesting anyone take me, or Mr. Chait, as a final authority on them. But I think the general picture is telling).

The Republicans encountered little opposition from the press. Institutionally geared towards "balance" and generally ignorant of economics, environmental science, and the like, the press fell easily into the kind of stories the Republican wanted, stating implicitly that the truth was on both sides and that the Democrats were no better then the republican. It played into the hands of republicans by focusing on the politicians' "character" rather than agendas, and by bestowing equal credibility on both sides. As Paul Krugman famously put it, if the white house were to declare that the Earth was flat, newspapers' headlines would be "Shape of the Earth: Opinions Defer".

But Chait fails to explain why the Republicans advantage in press manipulation: Democrats are on general more educated and media savvy. if Britain's Tony Blair could out spin the best of his rivals, why can't US democrats?

I think Chait underemphasizes the widespread feeling that in the 1970s, America veered too far to the left. In the 1990s, as Bill Clinton acknowledged, even Democrats became "Eisenhower Republicans" (p. 234). The radicalization of the Right may be mostly an over-compensation.

For there are limits to the Republican Revolution: the failure to significantly restrict Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The major edifice of the New Deal seem to have survived the onslaught of the Radical Republicans. Perhaps the Big Con isn't so big, after all

It's a pretty good book. Those who think that conservative economic policies are well-supported by some kind of professional consensus among economists will be shocked, shocked to learn that on at least one of the key elements of Republican Party economic policy thinking -- their obsession with cutting taxes -- the ideas being put forward to justify it by the Bush administration, The Wall Street Journal, and all the rest are crackpot economic notions that are being mainstreamed only by virtue of (what else?) relentless message discipline. These same crackpots (and presumably liars) would have you believe that returning to Clinton-era levels of taxation would wreck the economy, that retirement security can best be provided to all by expanding tax breaks for rich people, that health care can best be improved by expanding tax breaks for rich people, that sound education policy requires expended tax breaks for rich people, and so on. Um, wrong on the facts, wrong according to the ACTUAL consensus.

George W. Bush's economic plan can be summed up in two words... cut taxes. In a 2008 interview Bush mentioned that his administration had a `strong-dollar' policy. One commentator added that Bush's ASSERTION of a strong-dollar policy was the full extent of the policy. Tax cuts really are the entire philosophy of the cult of supply-side economics. Sure, they talk about pro-growth, trickle-down and starving the beast but lowering taxes is not an end to a means it is the end. For supply-siders lowering taxes is a good idea when the government is running a surplus, running a deficit, fighting inflation, entering a recession, in a war, at peace. Lowing taxes will increase government revenue, help poor waitresses and probably walk your dog on a snowy day.

To see how powerful the supply-siders have become in the current GOP one only needs to look at the 2008 election campaign. All the major candidates ran as supply-siders including John McCain who was famously against Bush's absurdly tilted tax cuts. Now McCain has totally reinvented himself as a born again supply-sider calling for the exact tax cuts on corporations and wealth that he used to stand against. Ironically this is just about the opposite of what polls show the electorate would prefer which is a reduction in the deficit and more money for government services. The GOP has a stunning track record of winning elections while running on an economic platform that's completely non-representative of the wishes of voters.

The interesting thing is that supply-side economics was developed by non-economists and the reason it has flourished has nothing to do with its effectiveness. The author writes, `The lesson for cranks everywhere is that your theory stands a stronger chance of success if it directly benefits a rich and powerful block" In addition, the author points out, "Crackpot economic theories... enjoy an inherent advantage over other sorts of crackpot theories because it's harder for ordinary people (or even elites) to recognize the lunacy" The economic policy of the modern Republican Party is neither Conservative nor Liberal in fact it doesn't adhere to any ideology. In reference to the Medicare debacle the author states that, "Essentially nobody except their direct beneficiaries, and the politicians whose loyalty they reward, supports these measures" What politics needs is a term for an ideology that describes slavishly showering rewards on lobbyists. Crony capitalism is probably the most applicable label.

My big problem with the `Big Con' was that it didn't really deliver as advertised. The subtitle, `...How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics' is highly misleading. The first couple chapters focus on supply-side economics but then the book veers off into basically a recap of the books `Off Center' by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson and `The Conscience of a Liberal' by Paul Krugman. In fact the author directly quotes Hacker and Pierson several times. The meat of the book is about how politicians, who are increasingly divorced from the desires of the electorate, can continue to get elected. He talks about how Republicans vigorously push personality over policy and habitually lie to the electorate in order to mask their true aims. Unfortunately after well over 7 years of the Bush administration this has sort of reached the level of a dog bites man news story. `Big Con' is a decent book with a lot of important information but a large portion of the center of the book is just a rehash of other, better books.

Let me state up front that I do not subscribe to all of Jonathan Chait's tenets. I do not believe, for example, that a graduated (what he would call progressive) income tax rate is fundamentally just. Hence I do not consider it immoral for the government to cut taxes on the wealthy, since the wealthy already pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes.

It is, however, grossly irresponsible to cut taxes and go on a credit spending spree. Deficit-financed budgeting compromises not only our economy but our national security, and subverts the traditional Republican ethos of self-reliance. Critics who dismiss Jon's arguments because they do not share his ideological underpinnings only illustrate his complaint about the lack of consensus in Washington. Increasingly America is becoming a place where we cannot agree even to disagree.

Yet this is not ultimately a treatise on the merits of conservatism or liberalism, but "a book about the disappearance of the center and the triumph of the extreme," as he notes in the introduction. Republicans may not want to listen to Jon Chait, but if they continue to wallow in economic junk science, then they may find themselves with a lot more time to consider what he has to say.

In this brilliantly-written book, Jonathan Chait, senior editor at the New Republic, shows simply and lucidly how a tightly knit group of politically and economically motivated men have taken over the US state.

Right-wing economic extremists and business lobbyists now control the terms of the debate and determine the political climate. He shows how this tiny coterie has turned the Republican Party into a machine for protecting and expanding the wealth of the very rich.

It has been a coup on behalf of the plutocracy, resulting in a massive looting of the Treasury, huge corporate subsidies, vastly increased inequality and growing poverty. Since the 1970s, the top 0.1% of Americans has tripled its share of the national income; the top 0.01% has quadrupled its share of national income to 3%.

The chosen policy is single and simple - cut taxes on the rich. This is supposed to increase incentives, making the economy grow. Tax cuts supposedly increase tax revenues - less is more, greed is good. How differently we run things here in Britain!

The policy does not reflect what most Americans want. They want a more active government, providing more services, taxing the rich more through a more progressive tax system. The government does not even reflect what most Republican Party members or voters want, but only what its funders want.

Because the government does not reflect public opinion, it has to lie about its policies. The media, owned by the very rich, fail to analyse or challenge these policies. Instead, they focus on the presumed strengths or weaknesses of politicians' characters.

To pursue its unpopular economic agenda, the American government has had to break down the American political system, corrupt American politics and defeat democracy. The separation of powers is no more, and there is no rule of law.

This is an excellent exploration of some of the economic ideas that have dominated American thinking over the past thirty years. As Chait correctly charts, these ideas have never made a great deal of sense, since they are predicated on a radically unfettered free market, something that never has and never could exist. Karl Polanyi, in his great 1944 classic THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, using the tools of anthropology, history, and economics, dismantled the idea that societies in any way tend towards free markets (he shows that historically there had never been any economies in human history that were "free" in the sense that the free marketers insisted were the "natural" state of things). And nothing in the past sixty years has undermined Polanyi's conclusions, despite almost fanatical efforts to force the world to believe that a radically unfettered free market was somehow basic to human existence. And interestingly, no nation has ever willingly embraced a radically free market. In South and Central America markets have been made radically free only under duress (usually with the World Bank and ICF blackmailing countries to "liberalize" their economies or receive no loans), while polls during the Reagan and Thatcher years showed deep opposition to their economic policies (even in the brief periods when Reagan was personally popular). Polls show Americans strongly in favor or a progressive tax system, of the elimination of economic inequality, and passionately in favor of heavy regulation of industry and Wall Street.

What Chait does in this book is examine in some detail the abject silliness surrounding the truly crackpot economic theories that have been proffered by the Right in recent decades. Extravagant claims were made throughout this period about the glorious results that would stem from embracing radical free market principles. Those results never materialized, as the U.S. economy over the past three decades concentrated wealth more and more in a narrow segment of society, while the actual economic situation of most Americans either stayed stagnant or got worse. And through the first decade of the new century the economy remained sluggish and eventually collapsed due to the lack of regulation of dangerous financial products. Meanwhile, in the various countries around the world where the U.S.-controlled World Bank and IMF had forced economic "reform" saw one struggling economy after another, with many of those countries rebelling and eventually instituting their own counter reforms. Chait's point is that their ideas were silly to begin with, but should have been dismissed for the snake oil that they always were after the long term failure of those theories wherever they have been tried out.

Chait also explores in some detail the larger structures that have managed to make such patently silly economic theories believable. In particular he looks at the media, which has ludicrously been presented as "liberal," when in fact the media is corporate owned and controlled.

Today's Right is an uneasy alliance between several different interest groups. While each group holds some interests in common with other groups, they are at their strongest united against what they perceive as a common enemy. The previous reviewer felt that the value of the book was lessened because it dealt with events during the Bush era, but that misses the point. During the Bush years there was some unraveling of the Right wing alliance, especially during Bush's second term, but against Obama they are reunifying to engender a national stalemate.

The title of Chait's book focuses primarily on the libertarian, radical free market ideologues who have foisted half-baked economic theories on us that have not merely crippled the economic well-being of the nation but have been force-fed down the economies of a host of Third World countries that didn't want or believe in them. But I think it is important to distinguish between these ideologues and those who are part of the Religious Right. The latter actually tend to be far more liberal in their economic thinking than the Libertarians, just as the Libertarians tend to be liberal on social issues (as a rule economic Libertarians are pro-choice). One thing that both of them and almost everyone on the Right today have in common is a deep irrationality. The irony is the number of right wing books accusing liberals of being crazy, insane, ignorant, or traitorous. This despite the fact that every poll that has ever been undertaken shows a stark "knowledge gap" between the Right and Left - those on the Right are vastly less likely to possess even elementary knowledge about world affairs or other countries. The facts are clear: those on the Right evidence widespread ignorance. I believe that one reason they are so virulent in accusing liberals of insanity or ignorance is to mask the widespread lack of knowledge by the Right. It also shows some of the hostility towards highly educated people. Academics are overwhelmingly liberal, which is one of the things that lead to the extreme anti-intellectualism on the Right. If those who are most knowledgeable strongly disagree with you, simply deny the importance of being knowledgeable. This is truly a bizarro world that the Right has wrought.

What Chait does not adequately deal with - though there are any number of other recent books that do so - is the Manichaeism that has come to define so much of today's Right and which is the reason that it is so hard to reason with them and explains why the Right feels so comfortable "fighting dirty." This has probably increased since the election of Obama, but the Right seems incapable of thinking of the world in anything other than stark, demonizing terms. The philosopher Peter Singer wrote a book about George W. Bush entitled The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush. That actually typifies so much thinking today on the Right. The rhetoric on the Right concerning Obama has been so extreme and absurd as to beggar credulity. Comparisons of Obama (who politically is moderate-left) to Hitler (who was seen in his day as radical right both by his enemies and his supporters) have become commonplace. Commentators on Newsmax have advocated a military coup. Famous insane person Glenn Beck warns Americans that Obama is making plans to take all Americans guns away (even though gun control has never been an issue that has played an important role in Obama's political agenda, which should made everyone with a brain to conclude that Beck is engaging in blatant fear mongering) and - expanding on his absurd babbling - insists that Obama will put huge numbers of Americans into concentration camps. A few years ago Bill Moyers commented that in our age the fringe has become mainstream. To a disturbing degree this has sadly become true.

And why has the Right been willing to engage in such extreme, outrageous, patently false thinking? Because of the way they have demonized all who do not think like them. They truly do think in terms of good and evil. And because they make no sharp distinction between rational and irrational thinking (remember, no real distinction between Obama and Hitler), because they embrace the most absurd idea as if it made perfect sense, they are left with only anti-reason. Besides, when your enemies are (at least in your own fevered imagination) followers of Satan, any strategies you can employ are sanctified in our cause. Hence, Obama = Hitler.

So, in a way, things are worse than when Chait wrote his book. Chait was at least able to confront ideas. But things have deteriorated since then. The Right is not in the grip of ideas so much as suffering from group insanity resulting from mass hysteria. I honestly don't know what can be done. A few years ago with the libertarians you could at least argue with them. Libertarianism has always been an extremely simplistic, easy-to-parrot economic theory, but at least there was something to argue with. But when someone equates Obama with Hitler and advocates a military coup, what is there to argue with I do hope that in the 2010 midterms the electorate will respond by supporting moderate and liberal candidates. But I don't think that will halt the craziness on the Right. It may be that we will just have to wait for the Right to burn itself out. There have been other times when there was mass insanity in American politics. If you have read or listened to (thanks to YouTube) the rantings of Father Coughlin or Gerald L. K. Smith in the thirties or the most extreme of the anti-communists in the fifties (such as those who accused Dwight Eisenhower's brother of being the controller assigned by Moscow to give Ike his orders). I strongly encourage any and every America to read Richard Hofstadter's 1964 classic ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE. Change a few names and it could be about today's America.

I hope that my fellow Christians begin to speak out more against the complicity of many Christians in this nonsense. I was a Southern Baptist for most of my life, until the SBC declared that women were to be subservient and obedient to men. Until Christians begin to speak out forcibly against the un-Christian and irrational ideas that have started to permeate our culture this situation might not improve.

In the meantime, if you are not a lunatic, this book could provide an intelligent and insightful analysis of some of the silliness on the Right. Sadly, the people Chait are made to look like savants by those who have come to dominate right wing rhetoric in the past couple of years. But still, they are still there.

I have just one minor criticism of this book: the subtitle, "The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics." Strange to say this somewhat misrepresents the content of the book. The real con was played on the American public not just Washington, and it was more of a political con than an economic one.

It is true that the Reagan and especially the George W. Bush administrations systematically stole money from the middle class and gave it to the rich, but that is only part of the story. The real con, as Jonathan Chait makes clear, is in their attempted destruction of the checks and balances of our democratic/republican form of government as established by the founding fathers. The Republicans have simply made Congress irrelevant in many respects. Chait shows how the Bush administration was able to stifle opposing views by intimidating a cowardly press, and with a near dictatorial level of executive privilege in the White House and a storm trooper like control of committees and procedures in the Congress, was able to empty the treasury and fatten the pockets of cronies in big corporations.

In their zeal to make government smaller, the voodoo economists, the neocons, and their clueless allies, the evangelical social conservatives, have eviscerated the machinery of government to the point that all the appointed posts are filled with Bush buddies, party hacks and corporate henchmen, many of whom are incompetent and loyal not to the American people but to the very institutions and corporations that they are supposed to oversee and regulate. Furthermore Bush has greatly weakened America abroad with his wasteful and immoral war in Iraq while at the same time has strengthened both Al Qaeda and the theocracy in Iran. Additionally, Bush's personal incompetence and immorality in international affairs has made the US not just the butt of jokes but has brought shame upon the US, once arguably the moral leader of the world.

As Chait chronicles it, this thievery and desecration of America was tried before during the reign of the robber barons and continued until the power structure realized that if they kept stealing from the masses they might invite the specter that was haunting Europe into the heartland of American--that specter being communism. Now with communism nearly dead, the new robber barons are again emboldened. The thievery began again in earnest during the Reagan administration with the laughable economics of the Laffer Curve. The idea is that--miracle of miracles!--you can increase government revenues by lowering taxes. Yes! If governments tax at too high a rate people will lose the initiative to work or invest because of diminishing returns from their labor and capital. But if you lower taxes allowing people to keep a higher percentage of what they have earned, low and behold they work harder and invest more and this stimulates the economy!

This idea, as Chait acknowledges, contains a germ of truth. There probably IS a point on the Laffer Curve at which the optimum amount of revenue can be collected from any given economy. Of course knowing exactly where this point lies would involving understanding much more about the American economy than can really be known. And of course the locus of that point would be constantly changing with changing circumstances. No matter. If, through high toned pronouncements from think tanks and control by intimidation of the media, the idea of lowering taxes for the investing class can be sold to a gullible public as good for the hungry masses, then we are home free! Call it all part of the dumbing down of America on the way to creating a huge and permanent underclass.

And so it came (partly) to pass. And then in the George W. Bush administration they went--how shall I phrase it?--ape sh-t! However nobody in Washington seemed to notice that across the Atlantic Ocean where the corporate and income tax rates were much higher than in the US, the dollar was getting clobbered. The average American's net worth vis-à-vis the average Chablis-swilling Frenchy was in free fall, not to mention how the burghers in Deutschland were making out. Whereas Tokyo used to be the most expensive city on earth for Americans, now it was London where the dollar bought only a fraction of the Euro.

The rhetoric from the right intones: "You earned it. You ought to be able to keep it!" But this simplistic slogan ignores the fact that even the road you drive on was built and paid for by somebody else. All the riches that can be created today out of the economy cannot be considered riches that you or I earned alone. Without the vast infrastructure already in place we would be as poor as African Bushmen. And yes the rich should pay more in taxes since they have more to conserve and protect, and therefore benefit disproportionately from the military, the police, and all the other institutions of government aimed at insuring domestic tranquility and safety--and that includes social welfare services which help keep the masses from the ramparts.

What Chait demonstrates only too well in this very readable tome is that of late the greed has gotten out of control. I suspect that those with half a brain on the right who are in positions of power will recognize that there is a limit to how much you can steal and get away with it. No communist menace is at hand, but an incompetent government and an internationally weak America may bring about some unwelcome changes, such as the US becoming a gigantic banana republic ripe for revolution.

A good companion volume to this excellent work, covering much of the same ground from a similar point of view, is John W. Dean's "Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches" (2007).

If you read "What's the matter with Kansas", you likely learned
about voters in the U.S. voting against their own self interest,
that is, voting to elect politicians that pass legislation that is
against their constituents' interest.

So, your next step might be to learn *how* voters are tricked or
"conned" into voting in ways that result in support for policies that
they don't really want. This book by Jonathan Chait will tell you
about those strategies, devices, tricks, and cons.

Here are a few:

- Using the memory of beloved "Saint Ronald Reagan", even though
that memory is a distorted one.

- Using the "big government is bad; small government is good" trick,
even with those who are most in need of government services and
those who depend on and want government benefits.

- Blocking out the alternatives -- These is a lack of intellectual
expression for fiscal moderation among Republicans, in part because
the radical, anti-tax wing of the republican party has all the think
tanks and media outlets.

- Following a hard-core anti-tax ideology in spite of the fact that
most Republican voters favor taxes for services and benefits.

- Rationalizing and prettying up the George W. Bush tax cuts -- (1)
the tax cuts will spur growth; (2) we must fight a coming recession;
(3) these tax cuts will make the tax code more fair for the poor.
None of these rationals turned out to be true. But, as Chait says,
when you've already made up your mind that you want tax cuts, "any
rational will do".

- Campaigning as one thing, governing and legislating as another. The
glaring example of this was George W. Bush's presenting himself as a
"compassionate conservative" during the presidential election
campaign, then governing from the far right (tax cuts for the rich
and privatization of Social Security) when elected.

- Focusing on "character" during political campaigns rather than on
issues as as means of avoiding discussion of policies that are
unpopular even though they are a part of the Republican right's
agenda.

Part of the message of this book is that there no longer is a
moderate right and a moderate left in U.S. politics. There is only
a radical far right and a centrist left. Thus, there is no
effective counter-balance to the Republican swing to the far right.
Radicalism in the Republican party is no longer the fringe, it has
become the mainstream of that party.

For more on the Republican swing toward radicalism and the schemes
used to produce it, you may also want to read my review of
Stefan Halper "America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives
and the Global Order".

In the U.S. we are headed for an extreme inequality of wealth.
Republicans block a discussion of that move toward inequality by
labeling it "class warfare". Reading this book of Chait's at least
gives you a warning about how that result is being produced and,
hopefully, will encourage us to discuss it.

This is an excellent exploration of some of the economic ideas that have dominated American thinking over the past thirty years. As Chait correctly charts, these ideas have never made a great deal of sense, since they are predicated on a radically unfettered free market, something that never has and never could exist. Karl Polanyi, in his great 1944 classic THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, using the tools of anthropology, history, and economics, dismantled the idea that societies in any way tend towards free markets (he shows that historically there had never been any economies in human history that were "free" in the sense that the free marketers insisted were the "natural" state of things). And nothing in the past sixty years has undermined Polanyi's conclusions, despite almost fanatical efforts to force the world to believe that a radically unfettered free market was somehow basic to human existence. And interestingly, no nation has ever willingly embraced a radically free market. In South and Central America markets have been made radically free only under duress (usually with the World Bank and ICF blackmailing countries to "liberalize" their economies or receive no loans), while polls during the Reagan and Thatcher years showed deep opposition to their economic policies (even in the brief periods when Reagan was personally popular). Polls show Americans strongly in favor or a progressive tax system, of the elimination of economic inequality, and passionately in favor of heavy regulation of industry and Wall Street.

What Chait does in this book is examine in some detail the abject silliness surrounding the truly crackpot economic theories that have been proffered by the Right in recent decades. Extravagant claims were made throughout this period about the glorious results that would stem from embracing radical free market principles. Those results never materialized, as the U.S. economy over the past three decades concentrated wealth more and more in a narrow segment of society, while the actual economic situation of most Americans either stayed stagnant or got worse. And through the first decade of the new century the economy remained sluggish and eventually collapsed due to the lack of regulation of dangerous financial products. Meanwhile, in the various countries around the world where the U.S.-controlled World Bank and IMF had forced economic "reform" saw one struggling economy after another, with many of those countries rebelling and eventually instituting their own counter reforms. Chait's point is that their ideas were silly to begin with, but should have been dismissed for the snake oil that they always were after the long term failure of those theories wherever they have been tried out.

Chait also explores in some detail the larger structures that have managed to make such patently silly economic theories believable. In particular he looks at the media, which has ludicrously been presented as "liberal," when in fact the media is corporate owned and controlled.

Today's Right is an uneasy alliance between several different interest groups. While each group holds some interests in common with other groups, they are at their strongest united against what they perceive as a common enemy. The previous reviewer felt that the value of the book was lessened because it dealt with events during the Bush era, but that misses the point. During the Bush years there was some unraveling of the Right wing alliance, especially during Bush's second term, but against Obama they are reunifying to engender a national stalemate.

The title of Chait's book focuses primarily on the libertarian, radical free market ideologues who have foisted half-baked economic theories on us that have not merely crippled the economic well-being of the nation but have been force-fed down the economies of a host of Third World countries that didn't want or believe in them. But I think it is important to distinguish between these ideologues and those who are part of the Religious Right. The latter actually tend to be far more liberal in their economic thinking than the Libertarians, just as the Libertarians tend to be liberal on social issues (as a rule economic Libertarians are pro-choice). One thing that both of them and almost everyone on the Right today have in common is a deep irrationality. The irony is the number of right wing books accusing liberals of being crazy, insane, ignorant, or traitorous. This despite the fact that every poll that has ever been undertaken shows a stark "knowledge gap" between the Right and Left - those on the Right are vastly less likely to possess even elementary knowledge about world affairs or other countries. The facts are clear: those on the Right evidence widespread ignorance. I believe that one reason they are so virulent in accusing liberals of insanity or ignorance is to mask the widespread lack of knowledge by the Right. It also shows some of the hostility towards highly educated people. Academics are overwhelmingly liberal, which is one of the things that lead to the extreme anti-intellectualism on the Right. If those who are most knowledgeable strongly disagree with you, simply deny the importance of being knowledgeable. This is truly a bizarro world that the Right has wrought.

What Chait does not adequately deal with - though there are any number of other recent books that do so - is the Manichaeism that has come to define so much of today's Right and which is the reason that it is so hard to reason with them and explains why the Right feels so comfortable "fighting dirty." This has probably increased since the election of Obama, but the Right seems incapable of thinking of the world in anything other than stark, demonizing terms. The philosopher Peter Singer wrote a book about George W. Bush entitled The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush. That actually typifies so much thinking today on the Right. The rhetoric on the Right concerning Obama has been so extreme and absurd as to beggar credulity. Comparisons of Obama (who politically is moderate-left) to Hitler (who was seen in his day as radical right both by his enemies and his supporters) have become commonplace. Commentators on Newsmax have advocated a military coup. Famous insane person Glenn Beck warns Americans that Obama is making plans to take all Americans guns away (even though gun control has never been an issue that has played an important role in Obama's political agenda, which should made everyone with a brain to conclude that Beck is engaging in blatant fear mongering) and - expanding on his absurd babbling - insists that Obama will put huge numbers of Americans into concentration camps. A few years ago Bill Moyers commented that in our age the fringe has become mainstream. To a disturbing degree this has sadly become true.

And why has the Right been willing to engage in such extreme, outrageous, patently false thinking? Because of the way they have demonized all who do not think like them. They truly do think in terms of good and evil. And because they make no sharp distinction between rational and irrational thinking (remember, no real distinction between Obama and Hitler), because they embrace the most absurd idea as if it made perfect sense, they are left with only anti-reason. Besides, when your enemies are (at least in your own fevered imagination) followers of Satan, any strategies you can employ are sanctified in our cause. Hence, Obama = Hitler.

So, in a way, things are worse than when Chait wrote his book. Chait was at least able to confront ideas. But things have deteriorated since then. The Right is not in the grip of ideas so much as suffering from group insanity resulting from mass hysteria. I honestly don't know what can be done. A few years ago with the libertarians you could at least argue with them. Libertarianism has always been an extremely simplistic, easy-to-parrot economic theory, but at least there was something to argue with. But when someone equates Obama with Hitler and advocates a military coup, what is there to argue with I do hope that in the 2010 midterms the electorate will respond by supporting moderate and liberal candidates. But I don't think that will halt the craziness on the Right. It may be that we will just have to wait for the Right to burn itself out. There have been other times when there was mass insanity in American politics. If you have read or listened to (thanks to YouTube) the rantings of Father Coughlin or Gerald L. K. Smith in the thirties or the most extreme of the anti-communists in the fifties (such as those who accused Dwight Eisenhower's brother of being the controller assigned by Moscow to give Ike his orders). I strongly encourage any and every America to read Richard Hofstadter's 1964 classic ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE. Change a few names and it could be about today's America.

I hope that my fellow Christians begin to speak out more against the complicity of many Christians in this nonsense. I was a Southern Baptist for most of my life, until the SBC declared that women were to be subservient and obedient to men. Until Christians begin to speak out forcibly against the un-Christian and irrational ideas that have started to permeate our culture this situation might not improve.

In the meantime, if you are not a lunatic, this book could provide an intelligent and insightful analysis of some of the silliness on the Right. Sadly, the people Chait are made to look like savants by those who have come to dominate right wing rhetoric in the past couple of years. But still, they are still there.