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Conservative Populism: Tucker Carlson vs. David French
Tucker Carlson has recently done an exposition on populism that has gone viral. It is biting and rangy, covering a bunch of topics related to populism but from a conservative perspective. This has drawn fire from some on the Right that view populism as an evil thing that good folks on the Right should avoid. David French has a response in National Review where he blasts Carlson and populism in general.
What is populism and does it fit with conservative values? I think it does when taken in good measure. I think Carlson and French are both too extreme.
In Tucker’s monologue, he does make a few assertions that are not evident (e.g., women won’t marry men that make less money than themselves), but, in general, he addresses a lot of valid points where some groups of Americans have struggled over the last generation. He correctly notes the global rise in populism from Trump in the US, to Brexit, to Poland, to Brazil. He also notes that elitist thought-leaders promote some conservative values (free markets) over other conservative values (rule-of-law, strong families). He complains about Libertarian laissez-faire attitudes. However, the best example of Tucker’s mindset is from an interview he did with Ben Shapiro where he said he would outlaw robots to save jobs. This is the exact thinking of the Luddites who famously smashed looms to prevent productivity improvements that would them some jobs.
On the other extreme is David French. He is so set on destroying the idea of populism, that after complementing Carlson, he concocts a series of fallacious arguments to blast Carlson and populism. Here is one example from French:
(By the way, it’s strange to hear populists of either party talk — as Tucker does — of elites thinking of market capitalism as a “religion.” Both parties in this nation have embraced a truly massive social safety net. Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare dwarf other categories of federal spending. Total federal outlays — not counting state and local expenditures — represent roughly 20 percent of gross domestic product.)
This is a false dichotomy whereby it is impossible to have both a social safety net and a misdirected industrial policy that causes undue harm to certain groups of Americans. It also falsely equates the value of a meaningful job with a handout, which no true conservative should do. When people argue against their own proclaimed principles it means that they have higher priorities, like maintaining the elitist purity of their circle and cleansing it of the working-class taint of populism. French’s attitude is one of “let them eat cake.”
Populism is simply government policy/culture that is beneficial to the common citizen. As Lincoln said, “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Conservatism is the preference for principles and systems that are time-tested to promote prosperous ordered liberty. What does conservative populism look like?
- Societal leaders publicly promoting the formula for prosperity: learn a trade, marry a life-mate, then have kids. As Adam Carolla wisely said, “[Successful people] should preach what the practice.” Instead, we have Hollywood and politicians saying “let your freak flag fly” and “don’t judge.” But the time-tested principle is to judge and promote education and family formation.
- Politicians should fight violations of law relating to international markets that affect American workers. Free trade has benefits in a Ricardo-way, but it also has costs. If another nation is breaking the law (moral code) of abusing workers/environment or massive theft of intellectual property, then the trade must be stopped. If free trade causes undue destruction of human capital by product dumping, then trade should be curtailed. Rule-of-law and preservation of capital are conservative principles.
- Politicians should avoid war for profiteering, which benefits the Beltway crowd at the expense of life and treasure of the common citizen. The Bush 43/Obama 44 wars have cost trillions in debt and thousands of lives and have provided no improvement to urban Detroit or rural Kentucky. Even accepting the special role of US hegemony, the time-tested principle is to minimize involvement in wars. Madison warned of the dangers of a standing army.
There are many other issues where conservative populism can be applied (immigration, global warming, healthcare, criminal justice,…). The point is that conservative principles are not only compatible with populism, but they demand a certain measure of it. The difference between medicine and poison is the dosage.
Published in Economics
True. Agree. In principle agree.
Me, too! I am so tired on my bicycle helmet!
The most generous interpretation is that the way agreements were written allowed American corporations to use other countries as labor plantations was an unintended consequence. The least generous interpretation is that is exactly what was intended. And if they needed trade agreements to pull it off that’s as active as you can get.
So were the negotiators stupid or willful?
Americans would have prospered while slaves suffered. If there were reason to restrict trade, it would have been moral not economic.
French’s point, which you again misstate is Carlson has it backwards. It is not that only the affluent can afford to be married but that marriage leads to affluence. The research in the subject is clear, marriage is as integral to affluence as higher education.
It is not the government’s concern where a company decides to employ people. Conservatives understand that.
I disagree. The wages for anyone in a trade which was competitive with slave labor would have sunk to cost of slave labor plus transportation costs of the commodity. Some Americans would have prospered, most would not have, and American strategy would have become much more stratified. Also less-innovative–the American focus on labor-saving machinery would have had much less power behind it given that the labor could be cheaply offshored.
To take a more recent example: If Henry Ford had been able to move the production of the Model T to Mexico, with labor costs of say 10 cents a day, would he have been incentivized to develop the assembly line and other labor-saving technologies?
Forgoing the question of the actual costs of slavery, many more Americans would have benefited from the low cost of products than suffered from the competition.
Ford was an engineer at heart and from everything I’ve read, his quest for efficiency was based on more than a desire for profit.
I’ve always read that slavery was inherently inefficient, and would have died out of its own accord.
I haven’t looked at any of this yet, and I can tell you what neither Tucker nor David French are explaining.
Listen to the interview of David Stockman around September 2016 on the Tom Woods Show and ContraKrugman. Then listen to the interview of David Tepper on the Super Investors podcast.
No one can make good TV or radio out of this except for one just retired Rep. Jason Lewis of Minnesota.
They are doing every single thing wrong in the face of wage deflation from robots and globalized trade. Debt-financed stock buybacks and excessive corporate consolidation is destroying labor for no good reason.
Congress and the Fed is doing every single thing wrong. So of course people want Trump or socialism.
Mises.org is right about everything.
I’m not sure what we should characterize as populism and what not. Conservatism in America however, must mean freedom under the rule of law and while law can be good or bad, popular or unpopular, the constitution specifies who gets to create it in this country. Capitalism is a vague term invented by the left and all economies are capitalistic. Free markets under the rule of law in contrast has meaning in the US and English speaking countries but doesn’t mean the same thing in Europe or Latin America, nor to some of our own leaders.
The problems we have are not from free markets under the rule of law; they are from the administrative state that makes, enforces and interprets its own laws and a Congress and executive branch that ignores the constitution, a court that has run roughshod over it for decades and administrations that are run by innumerate economic illiterates that think free market means we let predatory states do what they want to penetrate our markets and steal our technology. We’ve got so many problems it will take years to unwind them but we must do so in ways that do not increase the power and leverage of the administrative state. The administrative state is inconsistent with freedom, the constitution, with reasons for our historical material, cultural, and political success, and if we want to restrict and shrink the administrative state we must do so with laws and interventions that do not increase the administrative state’s discretion and power. Free markets under the rule or law must continue, but what laws govern it are crucial. I’ve yet to hear Tucker say things that are particularly inconsistent with the comment I just made.
This is a complete joke right now for a variety of reasons. You are better off trying to steal from your fellow citizen with government.
40 trillion in unfunded liabilities, minimum. It could be double that, easy. Why does that make any sense? Why didn’t they have hard actuarial stabilizers in that stuff?
This is why I dislike Ben Sasse telling everyone what they “ought” to do. Listen to the last time he was on Jonah Goldberg’s podcast. There were a bunch of pointed questions at the end he had a great deal of difficulty answering. This system is a joke, both from incentives and basic theft and force from central planning.
No one would care if this stuff actually worked. It doesn’t.
Why does the Fed need to generate 2% inflation if robots and globalize trade make stuff cheaper for us? Make our money go further.
This destroys and retards human capital. It’s regressive.
The issue is, why does capital have so much leverage over labor right now?
What are you talking about? Carlson is arguing that the affluent do for themselves differently than they promote for proles. Specific example given was Hollywood. Hollywood does not promote marriage first or intact families. Neither do their stars. Yet the elite that invest in it are more likely to have done marriage first, then kids (lest scandal).
I don’t know if that is true. It seems that expensive labor is a bigger driver of innovation than inefficiency.
The market can withstand large amounts of inefficiency without 1) more efficient competition or 2) expensive labor market. Inefficiency simply limits the amount of product and as demand goes up, so does price. The pressure to be more efficient is when price sold at can’t meet production cost. Cheap/free labor keeps costs down and inefficiency keeps prices up (for a high demand product).
The Fed charges roughly 3% for its management services; it’s what it generally lends out it’s out money at (which is why it wants to raise interest rates again). I once had a conversation with an econ grad who said “Of course 3% inflation is just about right.” That effectively ended that conversation.
Carlson said,
“Rich people know it best of all. That’s why they get married before they have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in America can afford.”
They don’t know how to manage the inflation or the asset bubbles they’re creating. Maybe they used to, but not anymore.
It’s hard to “insure domestic tranquility” and “promote the general welfare” if your people aren’t working in jobs that provide for their family.
If employment status is not the concern of any government, then Conservatives “understand” that all employment restrictions should be ignored. Indentured servitude? 80 hours per week? No limits?
Not exactly correct. What Carlson was referring to was a Cato (I believe) study that showed parenting before marriage led to poverty 98% of the time, and marriage before childbearing was associated with getting out of, or avoiding, poverty 98% of the time. Marriage does not in itself lead to affluence, not by a long, long shot.
I stand corrected.
However, a few years ago, The Atlantic published a deep piece on the effects of welfare on impoverished families. One man said his kids get more money when he lives with his girlfriend and her kids while his children and their mother live with her mother than when they were together.
So, yeah, there’s something wrong here.
I wish I could find the link. It is ages old, though, and I don’t know the search terms to get it to pull up.
Nice try but the Constitution’s preamble is a statement of purpose, not an open invitation for government intervention in private business.
Concern for how your citizens are treated is quite different than deciding whether a private company should be compelled to employ them. FWIW, the government itself regularly worked be 80 or more hours a week.
You needn’t be corrected. You were right the first time.
One of many on the subject.
Arrant pedantry. Not one of many on the subject. What your study shows is a statistical propensity in a non-causal way, for marriage — in some timeline or context — to promote a statistical chance of “affluence” — a point with which, by the way, I agree. What I’m talking about is a study which shows that 98% of people who do two things, one of which is delay childbearing until after marriage, get our or stay out of poverty 98 cases out of a hundred.
THAT’s what Carlson is talking about.
So a “statement of purpose” is not an invitation to fulfill that purpose? I see. It’s people like you that give conservatives a bad name.
As evidenced by?
Now, now. He doesn’t know yet.