That Barney Frank Quote
Southpol defends Barney Frank from my criticism, but I think my original point holds. In America, people pursue their dreams … they aren’t handed to them. No one is guaranteed success; no one is guaranteed a job. Barney Frank may think jobs and success should be guaranteed, but he can’t credibly argue that this would be the “American” way. ”Soviet” way, perhaps. But not American.
When Frank says that it isn’t the “American way” to let people go bankrupt, he’s just throwing the word “America” out there because, well, who could be against America? You may remember that Jennifer Granholm said it was “Un-American” to be against the bailout a few days ago. You see, it is impossible to justify taking billions of dollars from you and your employer in order to give it to car companies. Because bailout proponents have no good arguments, they resort to a couple of bad ones. The first is to simply yell things like “America!” and “USA!” The second is to point out that we already gave money to banks, so why stop with only one massively-bad mistake when we can make several?
All of this comes back to one central fiction—the notion that the Government can manufacture or save jobs. (Obama talks about it all the time—he’s going to create 2.5 million new jobs, right?) The government can’t really create or save jobs … at least, not very well. What the Government can do is pick and choose which jobs will survive. But, as Crazy Nut Job (don’t let the name fool you) notes:
When we debate that we should bail out the auto industry, we are implicitly debating that the Big 3 are somehow more worthy of saving than the companies that have failed. We are debating that the auto workers are more worthy of having jobs than the millions who’ve lost their jobs. We’re implicitly debating that those that work directly for the Big 3 are more worthy of having jobs than those that work for the dealers and suppliers. Otherwise, why aren’t we bailing them out too? Why aren’t we drawing a line in the sand and saying, “No More?” Where do we draw the line? If we can’t issue such a decree, which job is the first job not worth saving? Is it a biotech research job? Where do we draw that line?The sad things is that the people whose jobs won’t be bailed out are the people who are the most vulnerable. They aren’t getting bailed out because they don’t have strong political interests pulling strings and bribing politicians.
But it’s not just about the jobs that are already gone. It’s about the jobs that will disappear because sometime, way down the road, the Government will have to confiscate money to pay for the massive bailouts. And this is worse, isn’t it? To saddle our kids with the cost of temporarily saving some jobs now. Why do we do this? I suspect it’s because kids are the only large group that can’t vote. They have no massive AARP-like group guarding their interests in Washington. So naturally, we stick them with the cost and call it the “American way.”
My main point was not that Frank was right, but that, to my eyes, there was some misconstruction of his argument. I don’t think it has anything to do with the aptness of bankruptcy per se, just with the question of which sort of outcomes you want to pursue and whether or not those are bigger things than adherence to free market rulebooks. It’s possible to believe (as I do) that Frank was wrong while not committing oneself to thinking that what the congressman said was through the looking glass or off the dep end, etc.
I’m basically in line with what you and CNJ are putting forth about the bailout (though not with some of your macroeconomic premises, but I doubt that’s surprising). I will say this: regardless of the justness or the fairness or the logic of the bailout, if I were convinced that it would actually make the recession less severe, I would support it. You don’t think it will. Barney Frank does. I am not sure, and lean towards you, but live in the midwest and am really frightened about all of this. That, it seems to me, is what the debate is about. Not whether or not bankruptcy is American or not. Barney’s a national politician, so he has a quota for insertion of the word “America” in any context. I think this “American” or “Soviet” stuff is really a distraction. I like it when you just convince me it’s a bad idea regardless of some ideological label, which you’re doing a good job of.
