American Myths

Some articles to cross my feed recently speak to each other, so I'll present them all together.

This is a surprise to no one I know, so I'm sure it still won't be enough to change to narrative. It will take more than evidence to change the minds of those who buy the myths that the rich pass on their wealth in the form of well-paying jobs, that they deserve their wealth by being harder working and more responsible than everyone else, and that requiring the rich to share their wealth through taxes amounts to theft. None of that is true.

Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn’t Trickle Down, Study Says

Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

The paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, found that such measures over the last 50 years only really benefited the individuals who were directly affected, and did little to promote jobs or growth.

“Policy makers shouldn’t worry that raising taxes on the rich to fund the financial costs of the pandemic will harm their economies,” Hope said in an interview. . . . 

The authors applied an analysis amalgamating a range of levies on income, capital and assets in 18 OECD countries, including the U.S. and U.K., over the past half century.

I agree with the author/interviewer below in his skepticism of the interviewee's claim that this is a reality we should accept instead of improve. Take a look at Free Market Values for evidence that putting things in business terms undermines the idea of citizenship in a shared community. Still, there's something to the idea he advocates of "advertising" government value. Pushing a narrative that taxes are worthwhile because of everything they provide, that participating in a cooperative enterprise is not just meaningful, but practical.

Americans Don’t Think Like Citizens. They Think Like Shoppers.

A lot of Americans think the country should be run like a business.

This is a problem on a few levels. Most obviously, a country isn’t a company. Businesses exist to turn a profit; countries do not, and competence in business rarely translates to competence in politics.

Treating the country like a business also encourages Americans to think of themselves as customers rather than citizens. . . . 

Here’s where a new book by political scientist Ethan Porter, The Consumer Citizen, makes a provocative claim: The conventional idea of citizenship is a fantasy, and the only language the vast majority of people understand is consumerism. If that’s true, Porter says, then we need a form of politics that accepts this reality and tries to leverage it to produce the best possible outcomes. . . . 

A consumer citizen approaches government the way he or she approaches a provider of consumer goods. Now, you and I both know government is not an ordinary economic firm, but nonetheless that’s how consumer citizens see government. And that means they’re wondering, what are they getting out of it? They’re wondering if they’re getting a fair return on their investment. Are the benefits worth the costs?

The argument of my book is that there’s a disjunction between what government is and the expectations people have from their experiences as consumers. And that disjunction helps explain some of the more interesting puzzles in American political life. . . . 

What does it mean to appeal to consumer citizens?

It means being comfortable with government, particularly in the US, advertising its services in a way similar to private companies. This is something that government used to do but doesn’t really do much of anymore. You can go back and see art from the New Deal period. Government actually used to be invested in this idea of promoting itself. It’s not really the case anymore. I think that’s unfortunate.

As I show in the book, there are different lessons we can take from consumer life. We can take those lessons and apply them to certain advertisements for government. Done right, such advertisements can actually increase trust in government and increase support for various forms of taxation and government spending. So government needs to get more comfortable with advertising itself again. . . . 

Progressives are often afraid to talk about the costs that government imposes and instead want to talk only about the benefits that government provides. I think progressive policymakers should not be afraid and instead should communicate to citizens that the government doesn’t just provide benefits, it provides you a fair deal for the costs that you’ve already paid.

This notion of a “fair deal” encapsulates both benefits and costs. It may be counterintuitive to politicians on the progressive side, but I think doing this will likely lead to people becoming more supportive of progressive taxation and also increase their trust in government. That’s what I showed in several studies in the book, at least.

Bottom line: If people are approaching government as if it’s a provider of consumer goods, the government should respond by emphasizing to citizens how it’s a fair provider of consumer goods. And that means government has to get back into the self-promotion game. It has to sell itself to people in the most universal language we have: consumerism.

Once again (see: nearly a third of my posts), the American cult of individualism being harmful during Covid-19. We don't want to be part of cooperative enterprises.

How the Belief in American Exceptionalism Has Shaped the Pandemic Response

At a minimum American identity consists of two sets of norms. One involves an evolving set of beliefs that anyone can follow. These beliefs harken back to Thomas Jefferson and the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”) The other set of norms depends on attributes such as one’s race and religion. . . . 

A lot of the things people think of as being uniquely American are appropriately called aspirational: the idea of individualism, equality of opportunity, self-governance and engaged citizenship. For as long as we’ve been asking people how important certain things are in being American, there’s not been much variation over time in those kinds of things.

You see more change over time on issues that are more explicitly about race and ethnicity. There’s this idea of being a nation of immigrants. It’s the American creed: the idea that anybody can become American if they do and believe certain things, and that your country of origin, the language you speak, your religion, all of that is separate from becoming American. It’s crucially tied to the notion of the work ethic and that the opportunities are here for the taking. Of course, we know in practice that hasn’t been true.

The aspiration is that race and religion don’t matter. And that anybody can be a true American. We know that in reality, certainly at an unstated level, when people think of what an American is many have an ideal in mind: It’s white, Christian and, honestly, male. . . . 

Most Americans believe in and want certain values to be prevalent in their lives and they want the government to support them. Some of these key values are freedom, equality and order. Those don’t always go together. And when they conflict—and politics can be thought of as a conflict between these values—the government has to pick one.

The article above complements the ones before it in considering some of our American myths, and even more so speaks to the one below about how those who don't (can't) fit a certain mold are excluded from the narrative as deviations from the ideal.

Obama and Harris Are Children of Immigrants. Would Voters Elect a Descendant of Enslaved Americans, Like Me?

Harris’ cosmopolitan, immigrant background — with its uncanny parallels to Barack Obama’s — makes me wonder if a woman like me, descended from Black people who were enslaved in America, can ever be viable on a presidential ticket. . . . 

Unlike Obama and Harris, I can’t claim any particular nation as an ancestral homeland. My ancestors were kidnapped and forcefully separated from their families, languages and traditions.

I see my heritage as uniquely American. And though that history is horrific and bloody, I take pride in my ancestors’ fortitude and strength. But leaning into my heritage on the campaign trail would likely turn off some voters because it would resurface an ugly history they wish to forget . . . 

Americans see immigrants of all backgrounds as hardworking. I do too, perhaps thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.” But this stereotype can be juxtaposed with racist ones about African Americans being lazy. . . . 

Harris is able to tap into a “superman mythology” of hailing “from everywhere and nowhere,” Greer told me. Like Obama, she has a multifaceted image that allows voters to draw on parts of her identity that resonate with them, just as Obama’s white Kansas ancestry — via his mother — helped him connect with white Midwestern voters. . . . 

Though African Americans have been here longer than the majority of white Americans, they are not seen as such — because America has historically been understood as a country for white immigrants. . . . 

Harris and Obama are not white immigrants. But their story is “seen as more consistent with the white American story,” Patterson said.

And how that exclusion from the narrative plays out in extremely practical terms.

Black Children Are 6 Times More Likely to Be Shot to Death by Police, Study Finds

Goyal and her team spent more than seven months combing through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's injury statistics to isolate the firearm-related deaths. They compared the data, from death certificates, using US Census Bureau information on racial and ethnic groups.

Their work adds to a growing body of data on the racial disparities Black children face compared with their peers.

Not a lot of original thought in this, but I wanted to let the ideas play together.