Big Sis, as some of us here at CFO like to call our sister publication, The Economist, has been mostly on the money in its coverage of the financial crisis. Until now, she's shunned the demagoguery that's clouded the coverage on many of the major networks and not a few newspapers.
Instead, Sis has held to her beat and looked closely at the current crisis through the lenses of facts and reason. But in this week's issue, she's begun to dip her toe in the muddy waters of the income-equality debate so beloved of the far left and far right.
The equality game began on the political left. Evoking dim memories of Marxism, the likes of filmmaker Michael Moore have long cited huge discrepancies in compensation that exist between the average CEO and the worker on the line. Their solution would be to narrow the wage gap by fiat. What they neglect, however, is the way such arbitrary pay guidelines could freeze the motivational fuel that feeds the growth that in turn enables Average Joe and Jane to prosper.
Lately, right wingers have joined the game. In their version, Big Government has enabled a takeover of our economy by Wall Street and the banks. And look how much these lousy bankers and traders who led the country to ruin are making, they are arguing, while people who "work hard and play by the rules" (as Bill Clinton used to say) lose their jobs and their houses.
Neither fringe is letting up on this pseudo-populist drivel. Unfortunately, in this week's "Lexington" column, Big Sis appears to have begun trafficking in the equality game. Citing Arthur Brooks, the head of the American Enterprise Institute, Lexington appears to approve of Brooks's notion that the nation's new culture war is about the size of the national debt and the size of government.
"Everyone agrees that Wall Street messed up last year, but many are disturbed by the expansion of government that followed the crash," the columnist writes. "Voters particularly dislike the way the state is using their money to reward deadbeats, says Mr Brooks. They themselves work hard and live within their means. They see their neighbour, who borrowed more than he could afford to buy a fancy house, getting a bail-out to save him from the consequences of his own poor judgment."
Acknowledging that the media critics of big government are "a bit hysterical," the columnist nevertheless seems to say that the resentment does have a basis in reality. To that, I say, so what? If we are to truly emerge from the economic mire we're in, it will be through clear thinking and reasoned debate about the effectiveness of our attempts to spur sustainable growth, not through the politics of resentment. We should all stop playing the equality game.
|
Video
