Ratcheting Up The Leftist Agenda

Ratchet best

As you probably know, a ratchet is a mechanical device that allows movement in only one direction.  Try as one might, pushing or pulling in the opposite direction is futile.  Government spending and programs often act just like a ratchet – you can add more programs, spending, and regulation with relative ease, but reversing the process can require herculean strength, like trying to turn a ratchet the wrong way.

This is why so much on the leftist agenda is essentially irreversible.  A right or payment or entitlement granted can rarely be rescinded.  It almost always becomes politically impossible. The left is all about establishing new rights and payments and entitlements.  And they have long coveted, and brought to pass in greater measure than ever in recent years, the payoff – the fact that such an agenda will produce permanent voters for their side.

That’s why the left remains relatively unconcerned about losing much of the traditional suburban middle class vote that used to be considered essential to any winning coalition.  In the “47%” era, this is no longer the case.  Barack Obama’s victory in 2012 was achieved mostly on the strength of those who benefit from government largesse.

Obamacare is the most obvious example of the ratchet effect.  Hard as it was to pass this law given the stubborn opposition of clear majorities of the American people, and disastrous as it has been since the rollout four months ago, repealing it may still prove unachievable, for it conferred a new, previously undiscovered right, and requisite entitlement.

Then consider unemployment benefits.  Even though we know well of the disincentives to work inherent in the continuation of unemployment benefits, we refuse to end them, because it would involve taking away something that has been granted and repeatedly renewed.  And it only gets harder to reverse course with each additional renewal, as those who are willing to point out the inherent disincentives for productivity in continuing these benefits are automatically, and effectively, labeled as inhumane.

And how about climate change?  In an era marked by a president intent on stretching the bounds of his executive authority, even environmental rules and regulations that failed to pass the congress can simply be added by executive fiat, and will ultimately prove very difficult to undo, especially when the left is willing to equate those who refuse to be alarmed about climate change with those denying the holocaust.

We have spent trillions of dollars fighting poverty in the last 50 years, and the poverty rate today is actually higher than when the war on poverty began.  But good luck trying to repeal any of the 126 federal anti-poverty programs.  That ratchet can’t be pulled back the other way.

Indeed, this ratchet effect doesn’t only occur with sacred cows like social security – often referred to as the third rail of American politics because, like the powered rail of an electric train, anyone who touches it gets killed – but also with many lesser programs.  This is especially true when the programs, as they so often do, create a concentrated benefit, but spread around the accompanying burdens and losses.

A big part of the problem is that politicians are often, quite simply, bought.  They may not get cash in a brown paper bag delivered in a back alley, but the effect is just the same.  Campaign contributions lead to all sorts of new policies and regulations.  Too often groups and individuals motivated by receiving a concentrated benefit lobby and press for rules and laws benefiting themselves directly, as is the case with insurance companies and Obamacare.

The support of the insurance industry was one of the left’s selling points for Obamacare.  Well, what business that cares not a whit about fidelity to the Constitution and with an eye only to the short term bottom line, wouldn’t support a policy requiring that people buy its product?  Can you imagine how McDonald’s would feel about a new federal law requiring the daily purchase of a cheeseburger?  The idea that we should be surprised or somehow moved that entities who will benefit with massive profits guaranteed by government policy, support that policy, does not pass the laugh test.

We are also witnessing campaigns for rules and regulations to hobble competition.  This frequently shows up when a group decides the government should license certain jobs – which inflate costs by decreasing competition.  The examples of this type include yoga instruction, tour guides, and florists.  Do you really care if a florist you patronize has been approved by the government?  Or do you prefer a system that increases the number of florists you have to choose from, unleashing competition’s supreme power to improve service and reduce cost?  Nevertheless, leftists have become quite agile at adding more and more regulations that will be far more difficult to reverse than they were to pass.

In the president’s State of the Union address, among all the other new initiatives and programs to help his friends and favored causes and punish his enemies, President Obama declared his strong support for a $10.10 federal minimum wage.  He said doing so “does not involve any new bureaucratic program. So join the rest of the country. Say yes. Give America a raise. Give them a raise.”  As if requiring some businesses to significantly increase their payroll costs is no heavy burden.  Sure, give them a raise – hey, it’s not your money he’s spending, just some businesses which will be better off anyway for having happier workers.

Per my column here just last month, and as should be obvious, this just isn’t true.  The minimum wage hurts all workers with few skills and training because businesses will not hire them if they can get away with it.  There are lots of businesses who would take a chance on somebody at a very low wage and see how it worked out.  There are lots of unskilled people who simply need to start somewhere, but will not find a job because a wage of $10.10 an hour does not make business sense.

I can hear leftists gasp “every human being is worth a living wage.”  But the labor market is and always has been just that, a market.  It doesn’t care about what it costs to send kids to college or put gas in the tank.  Why would we expect it to be the only instance in the economy where costs, value, and supply and demand are not the rules governing action?  This is a fantasy and in fact, the truth is that raising the minimum wage hurts those at the very bottom of our society.  It prevents businesses from taking a chance on many people they might otherwise hire and provide with a chance to learn more marketable skills to raise the value they can bring to a job, thus ultimately earning more money.

What we have here is yet another sad example of the left’s one-step thinking.  Problem: people aren’t making a good enough wage.  Solution: pass a law mandating a pay raise (or in Obama’s case, forget the law and just mandate it with the stroke of his pen).  Problem solved.  Except of course, it isn’t.  It may be a boon to those who are not downsized due to automation or other increases in efficiencies now made viable or necessitated by the law, but it leaves most of those at the bottom far worse off, and they don’t even realize it.  But facts are stubborn things: Youth unemployment has doubled in the last ten years.

Econ 101 tells us that if something is more expensive, we will use less of it.  This is as true with labor as it is with gasoline.  When it costs more to hire people, less people will be hired.  Is this actually all that difficult for the left to understand?

While there is opposition to an increase in the minimum wage, there is no serious movement in Congress to eliminate it.  This is not because doing so is seen as a bad idea, but because of the ratchet effect. Once the minimum wage is increased, it can never be lowered.

The only answer to the left’s largely irreversible agenda is to prevent that ratchet from turning in the first place.  Because as we have found out more in the last five years than in many a decade, new rights and entitlements, once granted, become virtually perpetual.

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