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Don’t Ask Government for Love, Tucker
Tucker Carlson is completely right about one thing – the decline of marriage is a great challenge of our times. I’ve written a whole book about it. So, you’d think I would rejoice that Carlson’s rant-heard-round-the-right focused on it. Sorry, no. I’ve rarely seen such a cynical and misleading use of television.
Everything that is going wrong with this country, Carlson instructed his viewers, is the consequence of “uncaring” politicians. They don’t care about your 19-year-old son who’s high on pot. Why? “It’s not an accident.” It’s because “our leaders understood that they could get rich from marijuana.” Never mind that 62 percent of voters say they want to decriminalize marijuana.
“Our ruling class,” Carlson intones, doesn’t care that firms like Bain Capital strip mine companies and leave retirees without benefits because “it’s the way they run the country.” To the barricades, comrades!
Citing election results in France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, and Germany, among others, Carlson detects “entire populations revolting against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.” Not quite. France chose a centrist by a huge margin. In Sweden, the fascist party made gains but still received less than 18 percent of parliamentary votes. In Germany, Angela Merkel is being replaced by her own hand-picked successor. Sounds like continuity. Only Brazil and the Philippines made big changes.
But focus on that word “refuse.” Governments are not misguided or simply unsuited to cure the woes of mankind. Nor are they following the will of electorates who demand lower taxes and higher benefits. No, they are lining their own pockets and laughing. Yes, Carlson actually suggests that our unhappiness results from indifferent leaders:
Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children. They’re what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
Kim Jong-un, call your office.
Carlson comes within range of some important matters – but only to shed heat rather than light. He states that “manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but disappeared over the course of a generation.” That’s false. As a share of total employment, manufacturing has declined steadily for three generations; from 33 percent in 1947 to 8 percent in 2015. And yet, thousands of high paying manufacturing jobs are going begging. It’s estimated that 2.4 million manufacturing jobs may go unfilled in the coming 10 years due to a shortage of skilled workers. And sectors beyond manufacturing are also hurting for workers. Trucking, agriculture, hotels and restaurants, and Silicon Valley are all having trouble hiring.
When Carlson compared the situation of inner cities in places like Newark and Detroit with current strains in rural America, I hoped he was going to make a worthwhile point about what family disintegration does to communities. Instead, he made no sense. He made slashing reference to liberals not caring about high-crime, low-employment, broken-family inner cities because “they were benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes.” Conservatives, he continued, diagnosed a failure of big government. But that was not entirely true because “virtually the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways, rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.”
Wait a second. If the problem was government programs that encouraged a culture of poverty, the extension of the same patterns to new populations supports, rather than undermines the case, doesn’t it?
But Carlson isn’t interested in analysis, he’s interested in incitement. For him, the demon is free market capitalism, which he blames for “destroying families.” He doesn’t explain how it is that intact poor families so often manage to enter the middle class or above despite capitalism.
A better explanation for the troubles of inner cities as well as rural areas is that single-parent families damage people’s capacity to achieve. They cause poorer school performance, more mental illness, more crime, less employment, more drug abuse, and, yes, less overall happiness. One is tempted to say that if Tucker Carlson really cared, he would take the time to examine the families who are doing well despite economic changes. He would note that married men with only high school diplomas are more likely to be employed than unmarried men with some college.
Carlson did no more than state the obvious when he thundered that culture is linked to economics. Who has ever denied this? Describing our troubles as the result of bad faith on the part of our leaders (who do not love us, sniff) or “worship” of capitalism, is infantilizing and manipulative.
Published in Politics
I agree with you. Quite a misreading.
Carlson uses “free market” with the same cynicism with which I use the term. Our “free market capitalistic” economy is a system by which the people who own a few House of Reps and at least one Senator ensure that several hundred million dollars is given to their Big Pharmaceutical company. In return, the Pharmaceutical company does some research, discovers a breast cancer drug, and then offers it for sale at exorbitant prices.
Unfortunately the users of the drug don’t realize it was their tax payer monies that went to fund the research. After all, the cancer patient’s concern is now with their treatment and hoping somehow they will live through the first year of treatment so they can begin the second year of treatment. Of course, they may well find out that they ended up using all of the total amount of their health insurance during Year One, so even if they survive, they won’t have an ability to go on with year two unless they dip into retirement funds or sell their home. Then the Big Pharma concern returns some 10% or so of the government’s gift back to the Fed or US Treasury and goes on happily gobbling up other monies for other newer drugs. Meanwhile the executives at the firm celebrate having some 2 billion dollars added to their company’s coffers. (This discussion is based on an actual case study of Pfizer and their governmental money usage while developing and then profiting from, a breast cancer drug.)
Both Tucker and I sneer at the concept of supposed “US free market” business models. In a real free market, nobody has to own a Senator and other Congress critters to get money so that they can have much of their cost of developing a product paid for by taxpayers, while then offering the final product to those very tax payers at an exorbitant price.
This is great, James. I do not excuse Carlson. The comment is silly. Carlson is a populist, and populism solves nothing. It creates its own problems. That is the issue with Carlson. A once good commentator has gone off the riles, in, I believe, an effort to capitalize (forgive the pun) on the current state of affairs.
Both can be true, uncaring elites are to blame because they do not undo or even talk about the Federal programs, regulations and barriers to more flexible markets, and that foster unemployment, dependency, drug additions and crime. They continue to leave a banking system in place that grabs an exaggerated upside for the managers of the biggest financial institutions and passes the losses to depositors and tax payers. And to a lesser extent similar crony deals exist throughout the corporate and organized interest world. The educational establishments are deteriorating and creating kids that won’t be able to compete as the demands for a more educated population increase and constantly change.
So it is crony capitalism, government monopolies writ large and ubiquitously not free markets that are the problem.
On the other hand, we have left in place post war structures and policies that were designed when the United States was the world’s monopoly manufacturer and we’re calling these free market policies. The threat from “anti capitalist” rhetoric from the left and the right is that we could confuse dysfunctional corrupt crony capitalism which is the problem with free markets economics which is the solution.
We must address the current multi-polar war and the emerging cold war with China and external debt and entitlements. All require more market freedom and less civilian government. We face tremendous challenges and the only way to confront them is to understand them, and to understand why government is always and by definition will always be dysfunctional even though good law and good governance and security are vital roles it must play. There is very little understanding and a lot of indifference in Washington and little effort to gain understanding or prepare the population for the challenges . A few conservatives do seem to understand but none of the old Democrats and the newly elected Democrats will make rational discussion even more difficult.
There is a video on Real Vision, interview with Doug Nolan, that explains this. Production got outsourced far faster to China etc. than it should have, due to Western central bank policy. China produced cheaper stuff we gave them cash and then they bought our treasury bills and mortgages. Deficit spending and asset bubbles. Now housing’s too expensive for the poor. It’s insane. The only people that make out are people in government people that make money off of asset bubbles.
He’s not very good at explaining it, but he’s right. The problem is no one on TV wants to understand a bunch of abstract crap about central banks, China, and the connection to the poor.
I know none of you guys care, but if central banks do anything but back up the financial system in a punitive way, you’re better off without them. All they do is grow government and cause social problems.
This is dead-on.
As far as I know the only people working on this are Representatives Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer.
If you are mad about Trump and populism, I suggest you read some David Stockman and David Horowitz.
Just for the record, I wouldn’t put this in the category of Mona’s worst columns on Trump. She’s had about four of them that are just inexplicably non-cogent.
This is what all of those Republicans in Mona’s orbit don’t get or don’t want to get. They also don’t get that we are bad at finishing wars.
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
Per Byland
What happens is, central banks and the government intervene too much. Then it blows up, and then they intervene more, and then a bunch of people get screwed and start behaving badly. Then people wonder why we have so many crazy politicians controlling everything..
This is going to end badly.
Ben Sasse is wrong about everything.
Per Byland
This is a good summary. Similarly, I’ve heard it expressed that the Tea Party was voters asking nicely. Donald Trump is voters asking not quite as nice.
Just so we’re clear: Mona is a ranter.
And once again, “populism” is not a dirty word (nor is it a term Tucker Carlson even used), and I tire of so-called conservatives (who I always thought were on the populist side of the scale) suddenly deciding that elitism is the way forward.
You can have your oligarchy if you like. But please take it elsewhere. I’m in favor of a nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” (aka, populist.)
In an age when human capital is key to economic success and the pursuit of happiness, Mona defends the leaders who live in gated communities while stating that walls will not make us safer, who have security details to protect them while doing everything they can to disarm the citizenry, send their kids to private schools while allowing public education to go down the toilet. Mona is pimping for these people while she probably thinks of herself as a “conservative”. Disgraceful.
I will readily admit that this is pure speculation on my part, but I’ve been trying to connect the dots that led to this attack (not just a critique) on Carlson. I’m guessing that anyone, such as our contributor, who thinks the Republican base is populated by a significant “swath” of bigoted people recognizes that a notable portion of that base (and the Trump coalition) is made up of working class or lower middle class whites. Listening to those folks is ergo “populist” and amounts to listening to a “swath” of people whose thoughts and motives aren’t pure. Populism bad–whether it’s actually “populist” or not.
Don’t get me started.
Imagine a world where are we actually had free markets and the government wasn’t mucking up education and social safety nets.
Game, set, match.
(And with that, another tiresome Mona submission can quickly pass down the main feed without sucking any more oxygen…and intelligence…out of the site. Please? No, really. Please?)
You have no idea what you are talking about. And, just like those who can’t justify what they are saying, you call names. So sad, Drew. So sad.
I shall try to continue to ignore you. I just couldn’t help answering your (usual) attacks.
I guess the “name calling” you detected above was the term “so-called conservative”? Yes that was a very brutal attack wasn’t it?
Please try harder to ignore me.
I will. But just a correction: Your idiotic use of the term “so called” was not it. It was that you accuse people like me of wanting the elite to prevail. It is rather the people who are unable to think, and use the term “elite” so promiscuously (as the left uses the term “racist”) that we have to watch for.
Have a good life.
Thanks! I have a great life!
I liked Oren Cass’s response to Tucker’s monologue on Jonah’s Remnant podcast at 20:32-23:32. I think it’s unfair to attribute most problems to leaders who don’t care. Some problems, probably most, come from personal irresponsibility and some come from leaders who care but get it wrong. I definitely teach my children to have personal responsibility instead of blaming others for their problems or to rely on the government. With that said, I was happy that Oren didn’t let Jonah continue before clarifying he thought David French’s piece went too far with personal responsibility.
I think the great majority of Tucker’s monologue should be heeded rather than dismissed as “infantilizing and manipulative.”
For once, we agree. Too often on the right, serious problems are avoided by mentioning the “collapse of the family,” and that just about all problems would be solved if more people would get married. I feel like Peggy Noonan and Mona have been suggesting marriage as a solution to just about everything for years.
Getting married to someone that you can stand is not easy nor would it solve America’s problems. More Americans getting married will not make US GDP rise faster than China’s GDP. Getting married will not make factories return to dead towns. I’m not even sure that, in and of itself, the birthrate will rise all that much if more people got married.
Well, I agree, but there’s some straw men too. I don’t believe advocates of marriage are suggesting it as a very wide-ranging solution (just about everything), but they are pointing out information supporting the existence of stable, two parent households, which generally (but not always) means marriage. There are very decent arguments to be made that certain significant societal ills could be at least mitigated by more stability in families, and some of those ills reflect themselves in economic circumstances.
She seems to be suggesting that just about everything that is wrong with the country can be linked to single-parent families and hence to marriage.
She calls it a “better explanation.” She uses comparative words like “poorer,” “less” and “more.” These are not the words of a cure-all. She says nothing about China or GDP.
She doesn’t say anything about China or GDP, yet I would rate China as the most important problem facing the US.
Considering that she thinks that marriage issues are better explanations for problems in rural and urban America than the entire economic system on which the US economy is based, I would say that she does seem to think that marriage can be linked to just about everything.
The preferable alternative being, what? Collective farms and tractor factories with Five-Year Plans? The dole for all?
I’m serious – what would your ideal replacement look like?
I think the government has all the tools that it needs right now.
The US government should let the coal mines go out of business if they are unprofitable, let the dirty jobs in general go away if they are being outsourced, and allow people to live off of welfare while they get job retraining, while also acknowledging that this is an inevitable consequence of a sufficiently free market. The US has the tools for such a policy right now.
Why is it so great for a coal miner to work in a job that is hazardous to his health and creates enough externalities that his job harms the economy as a whole? Conservatives speak about “The Dignity of Work.” How is it dignified that he must work a job that, for many of these mines, only exists thanks to a subsidy? Why should we romanticize a job that shouldn’t exist and causes health problems while consisting of nothing but drudgery and repetition? How is that more dignified than accepting welfare and learning a new skill?
Trump is our President due to his understanding that the Rust Belt and other similar places need a return to jobs that allow Americans to feel they have a purpose.
We used to build it, and by “it” I mean everything. We built the tractors, the cars and trucks, the aircraft, the merchant ships and destroyers, and we smelted the steel inside the steel mills so we could do all that work. Then far too much of everything was built overseas. Is it even a good idea to have the Chinese putting together the computer control panels for our rockets?
Once his tax bill that lowered the corporate tax rate went into effect, major companies in Europe started re-investing in our nation and our work force.
Young people who have decent jobs, and and buy a new car and purchase a house usually get married. If they live at home with their folks, they don’t. Return our real jobs back to us, and marriage rates will increase. This is not just my opinion: this was the opinion of Ford Motor Company executives back in 2016. That year Ford came out with a very exciting series of ads for Ford products aimed at getting the millennials into their showrooms. The ads worked as far as getting young people to come in for test drives. But most of those who showed up could not afford new cars. So the executives started saying “Maybe this supply side economics has a down side – if everything is built overseas, we don’t have young people with wallets fat enough to purchase any consumer goods.”
This is clearly wrong. Protests in the streets for 8 straight weeks and Macrons approval rating is in the single digits. Is being wrong some kind desperate trolling?
Let me fix that for you.