A Libertarian Labor Party?
If it's possible for political parties to actually accomplish anything, I'm starting to think there should be a Libertarian Labor Party. The "libertarianism" that the current Libertarian Party talks about makes assumptions that make them biased toward the nonproductive, wealthier classes instead of the working class, who are the real producers.
What would a libertarian party--or even just a libertarian movement--look like if it focused on the needs of blue-collar workers? I don't know--but here are some vague ideas:
Taxes: I hate to look at my paycheck and see how much goes out in taxes. Much like unicorns who grant wishes, everyone would love a flat tax if such a thing could be proven to exist. However, failing a class-neutral flat tax (and putting aside for the moment the image of a world without taxes), which would you rather have: a regressive tax that falls more heavily on those with less money, or a progressive tax that falls more heavily on those with more money. If you said you'd prefer a regressive tax, you can go shove The Wall Street Journal up your ass. If you said progressive tax, well, I do too, if you hadn't guessed.
But it's not just about the amount of money you have--otherwise every tiny raise a hardworking person earned would get frittered away in taxes, which often happens now. More importantly, it's how you get the money. In my humble opinion, we should reduce or at least keep steady the taxes on income earned through work--payroll taxes and income tax on people who work for a living and earn no "investment" income. So far as we need revenue for our libertarian "night watchman state", we should concentrate on taking as large a percentage of what we need to to take in taxes on stuff not connected to working--our old friend the estate tax, for example, and taxes on income from stock-market speculation.
What about the importance of investing in creating new jobs, and how taxing investment stifles job growth? Well, I'm in no position to argue against that old corporatist saw. However, let's say we compromise with the bourgeois enemy by doing the libertarian-ly unspeakable: making the tax code more complicated by giving tax breaks. I mean tax breaks for corporations and other investment actors who actually invest specifically in creating new jobs. If your investment creates new jobs, you get a tax break. If your investment does nothing but get you richer, I'm sure you won't mind sharing some of your casino winnings with the people who don't have jobs--because after all you didn't create any jobs for them.
Employee Ownership: Even today's lefties mainly admit that capitalism is an engine of prosperity and blah blah blah. But who says capitalism has to be controlled by capitalists? Employee ownership of the companies they work for--although currently a way for those who are really in charge of a company to get good PR--but it has definite possibilities. And even some business types like it for business-y reasons, which may not be cool in the same way a Che Guevara beret is cool, but could make for a smoother transition to La Revolucion.
The Welfare State: Whether working people benefit from the welfare state depends on both what you call working people and what you call the welfare state (God, I sound like a Democrat). Suffice to say I think that a lot of working people would have a slightly easier job of making it without the welfare state if they didn't pay so much in taxes (Ha ha! Now I sound like a Republican!). I only took one course in economics at my namby-pamby liberal-arts college, so I can't prove this--I just know I've calculated with my bad math skills, that I could make ends meet on my current nonskilled wage rate without eating into my savings (or doing my laundry at Mom's) if I actually took home what I'm earning, at least most weeks.
Anyway, in my utopia, whatever welfare state we would need would, as I discussed above, be financed as much as possible through taxes on non-working sources. According to the Republican conventional wisdom, less taxes on the workers + more jobs because of tax breaks for corporate job investment = less need for welfare programs, according to the Republican conventional wisdom. And according to the more-or-less current Democratic conventional wisdom, more taxes on the rich = less need for taxes on the workers, which feeds back into the Republican schema. How dare I blindly follow the conventional wisdom? Hey, I only said these were vague ideas--everything suggested here could use tweaking.
Affirmative Action: For my all-too-fallible opinion on affirmative action--which is relavant to the whole blue-collar thing--please direct yourself to my post here
Guns: No need to change the traditional libertarian position here, as far as I can see. More on this below.
Abortion: Too complex to get into here. I want to write a separate post dealing with this, but I'm not making any promises. Suffice to say I don't like it personally, whatever importance that has for either libertarianism or the working class.
Other Social Issues: Since the working class is essentially an economic grouping, it'd be hard to make a case for a blue-collar libertarianism that would differ from corporatist libertarianism on most non-economic issues. Although I don't have poll results in from of me, it doesn't take a pollster to realize that a notable number of blue-collar workers--especially in rural areas--are conservative (read: non-libertarian) on social issues like gay marriage, flag-burning, and whatever new wedge issue rich Republicans come up with next month to convince working people they're one of them.
Of course, even a pro-lifer like me can see abortion is one of these wedge issues--just because it's a wedge issue doesn't necessarily mean it's not important, or even that the Republican platform isn't right about it (for the usual wrong reasons). This is what makes social issues in general so hard--even if there were a Libertarian Labor Party whose economic program working people could get behind 100 percent, there'd still be a lot of them who'd see their projected prosperity under that program as "blood money", to quote a friend of mine, because of abortion in particular. However, I already said I was leaving the abortion issue for the moment.
Frankly, though, all other wedge issues really pale in comparison to two: abortion and gun control. I don't mean to stereotype the rural working class, but I'm sure many political scientists would agree that huge hunks of red-state America would vote Democrat rapidly as long as the Democrats let people keep their guns and made people keep their unborn kids. I know we're not talking about Democrats, which only makes my point about the hypothetical Labor Libertarians even stronger: you don't have to imagine how much more rabidly red-state Americans would vote a ban on abortion, a broad Second Amendment and lower taxes for themselves, because they already think they are by voting Republican. Only instead of focusing most tax cuts on the rich while basically ignoring abortion, the heroic new party of my imagination would focus tax cuts on the working class and poor and would--well, again, I said I'd leave off on abortion for now, but you get the picture.
I should stress that neither my stance on the labor-libertarian idea nor my stance opposing abortion is meant only for the sake of votes. I don't plan to run for office and I'd definitely lose if for some reason I did. Getting votes is an important part of populism, so I can't say votes mean nothing, but I support what I do because I think it's right (I think).
So here you have it. None of this is guaranteed to work, largely because party politics is not guaranteed to work. Heck, the state isn't guaranteed to work, which is the whole point of both libertarian "minarchism" (as small as state as possible) and anarchism.
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Back to contents:
http://jlhart7.blogspot.com/2006/07/contents.html
What would a libertarian party--or even just a libertarian movement--look like if it focused on the needs of blue-collar workers? I don't know--but here are some vague ideas:
Taxes: I hate to look at my paycheck and see how much goes out in taxes. Much like unicorns who grant wishes, everyone would love a flat tax if such a thing could be proven to exist. However, failing a class-neutral flat tax (and putting aside for the moment the image of a world without taxes), which would you rather have: a regressive tax that falls more heavily on those with less money, or a progressive tax that falls more heavily on those with more money. If you said you'd prefer a regressive tax, you can go shove The Wall Street Journal up your ass. If you said progressive tax, well, I do too, if you hadn't guessed.
But it's not just about the amount of money you have--otherwise every tiny raise a hardworking person earned would get frittered away in taxes, which often happens now. More importantly, it's how you get the money. In my humble opinion, we should reduce or at least keep steady the taxes on income earned through work--payroll taxes and income tax on people who work for a living and earn no "investment" income. So far as we need revenue for our libertarian "night watchman state", we should concentrate on taking as large a percentage of what we need to to take in taxes on stuff not connected to working--our old friend the estate tax, for example, and taxes on income from stock-market speculation.
What about the importance of investing in creating new jobs, and how taxing investment stifles job growth? Well, I'm in no position to argue against that old corporatist saw. However, let's say we compromise with the bourgeois enemy by doing the libertarian-ly unspeakable: making the tax code more complicated by giving tax breaks. I mean tax breaks for corporations and other investment actors who actually invest specifically in creating new jobs. If your investment creates new jobs, you get a tax break. If your investment does nothing but get you richer, I'm sure you won't mind sharing some of your casino winnings with the people who don't have jobs--because after all you didn't create any jobs for them.
Employee Ownership: Even today's lefties mainly admit that capitalism is an engine of prosperity and blah blah blah. But who says capitalism has to be controlled by capitalists? Employee ownership of the companies they work for--although currently a way for those who are really in charge of a company to get good PR--but it has definite possibilities. And even some business types like it for business-y reasons, which may not be cool in the same way a Che Guevara beret is cool, but could make for a smoother transition to La Revolucion.
The Welfare State: Whether working people benefit from the welfare state depends on both what you call working people and what you call the welfare state (God, I sound like a Democrat). Suffice to say I think that a lot of working people would have a slightly easier job of making it without the welfare state if they didn't pay so much in taxes (Ha ha! Now I sound like a Republican!). I only took one course in economics at my namby-pamby liberal-arts college, so I can't prove this--I just know I've calculated with my bad math skills, that I could make ends meet on my current nonskilled wage rate without eating into my savings (or doing my laundry at Mom's) if I actually took home what I'm earning, at least most weeks.
Anyway, in my utopia, whatever welfare state we would need would, as I discussed above, be financed as much as possible through taxes on non-working sources. According to the Republican conventional wisdom, less taxes on the workers + more jobs because of tax breaks for corporate job investment = less need for welfare programs, according to the Republican conventional wisdom. And according to the more-or-less current Democratic conventional wisdom, more taxes on the rich = less need for taxes on the workers, which feeds back into the Republican schema. How dare I blindly follow the conventional wisdom? Hey, I only said these were vague ideas--everything suggested here could use tweaking.
Affirmative Action: For my all-too-fallible opinion on affirmative action--which is relavant to the whole blue-collar thing--please direct yourself to my post here
Guns: No need to change the traditional libertarian position here, as far as I can see. More on this below.
Abortion: Too complex to get into here. I want to write a separate post dealing with this, but I'm not making any promises. Suffice to say I don't like it personally, whatever importance that has for either libertarianism or the working class.
Other Social Issues: Since the working class is essentially an economic grouping, it'd be hard to make a case for a blue-collar libertarianism that would differ from corporatist libertarianism on most non-economic issues. Although I don't have poll results in from of me, it doesn't take a pollster to realize that a notable number of blue-collar workers--especially in rural areas--are conservative (read: non-libertarian) on social issues like gay marriage, flag-burning, and whatever new wedge issue rich Republicans come up with next month to convince working people they're one of them.
Of course, even a pro-lifer like me can see abortion is one of these wedge issues--just because it's a wedge issue doesn't necessarily mean it's not important, or even that the Republican platform isn't right about it (for the usual wrong reasons). This is what makes social issues in general so hard--even if there were a Libertarian Labor Party whose economic program working people could get behind 100 percent, there'd still be a lot of them who'd see their projected prosperity under that program as "blood money", to quote a friend of mine, because of abortion in particular. However, I already said I was leaving the abortion issue for the moment.
Frankly, though, all other wedge issues really pale in comparison to two: abortion and gun control. I don't mean to stereotype the rural working class, but I'm sure many political scientists would agree that huge hunks of red-state America would vote Democrat rapidly as long as the Democrats let people keep their guns and made people keep their unborn kids. I know we're not talking about Democrats, which only makes my point about the hypothetical Labor Libertarians even stronger: you don't have to imagine how much more rabidly red-state Americans would vote a ban on abortion, a broad Second Amendment and lower taxes for themselves, because they already think they are by voting Republican. Only instead of focusing most tax cuts on the rich while basically ignoring abortion, the heroic new party of my imagination would focus tax cuts on the working class and poor and would--well, again, I said I'd leave off on abortion for now, but you get the picture.
I should stress that neither my stance on the labor-libertarian idea nor my stance opposing abortion is meant only for the sake of votes. I don't plan to run for office and I'd definitely lose if for some reason I did. Getting votes is an important part of populism, so I can't say votes mean nothing, but I support what I do because I think it's right (I think).
So here you have it. None of this is guaranteed to work, largely because party politics is not guaranteed to work. Heck, the state isn't guaranteed to work, which is the whole point of both libertarian "minarchism" (as small as state as possible) and anarchism.
--------
--------
Back to contents:
http://jlhart7.blogspot.com/2006/07/contents.html
posted by jlhart7 at 8:00 AM
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