TIMOTHY NOAH OCTOBER 27, 2011
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Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo reports that Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) committed a hilarious gaffe when he gave a speech yesterday about income inequality.
Here's the problem passage:
"In societies marked by class structure, an elite class made up of rich and powerful patrons supplies the needs of a large client underclass that toils, but cannot own. The unfairness of closed societies is the kindling for class warfare, where the interests of 'capital' and 'labor' are perpetually in conflict. What one class wins, the other loses.
"The legacy of this tradition can still be seen in Europe today: Top-heavy welfare states have replaced the traditional aristocracies, and masses of the long-term unemployed are locked into the new lower class.
"The United States was destined to break out of this bleak history. Our future would not be staked on traditional class structures, but on civic solidarity. Gone would be the struggle of class against class.
"Instead, Americans would work, compete, and co-operate in an open market, climb the ladder of opportunity, and keep the fruits of their efforts."
It's an excellent debating point: America has more opportunity but less equality, while hidebound Europe has more equality but less opportunity. So there! The trouble is that it isn't true. Europe these days has more equality and, to the extent we have data on this, more upward mobility too. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!
Beutler cites a report from the Pew Charitable Trust's Economic Mobility Project that shows the U.S. has fallen behind France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. The only criticism I'd make of Beutler's methodology is that he forgot Australia and Spain, which also enjoy more mobility than the U.S. And, in fairness, Beutler forgot Italy, which joins the United Kingdom in having less mobility than the U.S. (See page 7 of this OECD report.) Thank goodness someone does.
As I wrote last year in a Slate magazine series about income inequality, survey data shows that Americans believe in the possibility of upward mobility more fervently than do people in European countries that actually experience it more. We think we have more upward mobility. But we don't. Ryan, despite his wonky reputation, apparently is among those who embrace this widely-held illusion. Perhaps he thinks it would be unpatriotic to do otherwise.
Ryan and his aides must not be watching the Republican debates, because (as David Frum and my TNR colleague Alec McGillis have pointed out) Rick Santorum keeps using them to bring up America's lagging upward mobility relative to Europe. You can't really blame it on Obama because the international comparisons date to the Bush administration (2006 for Pew, 2007 for OECD). But bully to Santorum for bringing it up at all. Bully to Frum, too.
The Republican congressional leadership is now 0 for 2 in tackling income inequality with anything even approaching coherence. (See my earlier "Eric Cantor, Lake Wobegon Egalitarian.") It's a tough issue for them, and if I were hired to advise them I'd say just shut up about it, because it will only help Democrats tax the job-creators. (Santorum can't win with his mobility musings for similar reasons, but since the Republican nomination is another thing he can't win I say go for it.) An alternative for the GOP congressional leaders would be to minimize income inequality or try to argue that it doesn't exist at all, as some conservative intellectuals have done. But that's risky because it requires fanciful interpretation of extremely compelling data assembled by their very own budget office. No, I'm afraid the only thing for Cantor, Ryan, McConnell and the rest to do on income inequality is stonewall.
30 comments
I'm not really seeing the blunder here. He starts out explaining class warfare, then lies about the situation in Europe, and basically avoids the question by talking about how things are supposed to be and the situation they want to have here. Typical political strategy of using half-truths to fool people into siding with you.
- GSpinks
October 27, 2011 at 4:35pm
I'm with GSpinks here, it's not a gaffe since Americans believe what Ryan is saying. The only way it becomes a gaffe is if the facts become the accepted truth instead of the lie. Good luck with that.
- tmmats
October 27, 2011 at 4:54pm
Why would Ryan let facts get in the way of perfectly good myth that America is the land of opportunity (comparatively)? If President Obama's efforts to raise revenue to run the government is the work of the devil then running up huge deficits with tax cuts must be the Lord's Work.
- Nusholtz
October 27, 2011 at 4:55pm
And I dig the pseudo-Alfalfa look in that image.
- tmmats
October 27, 2011 at 4:57pm
Perhaps Ryan believes income inequality exists, but is not caused by human activity.
- Fishpeddler
October 27, 2011 at 5:10pm
Does Ryan not see that his first paragraph essentially describes the America of today?
- KELLEYANNE
October 27, 2011 at 5:19pm
"Our future would not be staked on traditional class structures, but on civic solidarity. Gone would be the struggle of class against class." I think this is the key passage. Ryan is tapping into the appeal to all of us for the ideal. And it's how conservatives can appeal to ordinary Americans who may know better but cannot escape that appeal. Here is what Alan Wolfe says in his review of Corey Robbins new book (The Reactionary Mind: From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin): "Conservatives . . . long for an imagined world too rarified ever to survive; they are theorists of loss. That is why, no matter how small the circle of privilege they defend, they have a certain appeal to the much larger collection of ordinary people whom they otherwise hold in contempt. Who has not experienced loss? Who would not want to return to an ideal world? The sacred is always more appealing than the profane. Try to make the world a more just place and you eliminate the sublime from it." So while Ryan may be wrong on the facts, he is exactly right on the politics.
- rayward
October 27, 2011 at 5:19pm
An interesting conundrum arises here; clearly this cannot be called a "gaffe" or "blunder" as it is no doubt said by Ryan quite intentionally, regardless of its zero factual content (GSpinks and many others have made the point quite well). So, what to call it? Option One: cop a line from Harry Frankfurt and call it "Paul Ryan's Bullshit." Highly descriptive, captures the spirit of Frankfurt's usage of the term, and also quite keenly evokes the odor of this and virtually everything else that comes from Paul Ryan's mouth. I'm not sure how tnr.com's gatekeepers feel about 'bullshit' in a headline, though. Option Two: Paul Ryan's Lie. Accurate enough, though some might quibble as to whether Ryan actually intended to deceive or was merely bs'ing as above. But then, Ryan is so glorified as the most intellectual and even wonkish Republican out there, so we should be allowed to assume he would know the relevant statistic, yes? (Unless he's going to hold a press conference dedicated to the notion that he really isn't that smart, for which I am not holding my breath.) Other problem, of course, is that using the L-word opens up Mr. Noah to the charge of being (horrors!) partisan (shudder), a charge Republicans and their media dupes can routinely use to turn even the most hardened liberals all tremulous and jelly-kneed (despite the fact that Repugs themselves engage consequence-free in such scabrous and vulgar rhetoric as to make William Jennings Bryan blanch with shame and withdraw from speechmaking, had he ever been caught in such). Oh, the dilemma.
- cspencef
October 27, 2011 at 5:55pm
Ryan said: ""We're coming close to a tipping point in America where we might have a net majority of takers versus makers in society." If this phrase becomes associated with Ryan the way "I did not have sex with that woman," "I invented the internet" and "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" are associated with the people who uttered them, we'll know we have the "makers" on the run. Maybe they'll get to take a little of what the 99% has been taking for the last thirty years.
- GeoffG
October 27, 2011 at 6:02pm
I think rayward sees it accurately. Ryan's story is rather like the insight that the South had after the Civil War. The Confederacy had been defeated, its project and self-image humiliated. But defeat is, in some important ways, more productively romantic than victory, and the political mileage the South was able to extract from loss and a theory of "nobility in defeat" made up for -- for a century, almost -- whatever it failed to win by arms. Even people who had fought the war for the Union were often very open to buying the "Lost Cause" shtick.
- ironyroad
October 27, 2011 at 6:10pm
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.aspx LSE has conducted credible research on social mobility and its correlation to high tax, highly regulated, European socialist hell holes. Needless to say, freedom hating societies that tax the rich more; have tighter regulation on enterprise and universal education and health systems provide greater social mobility than the American Dream, which as we know, you have to be asleep to believe.
- IggyPop
October 27, 2011 at 6:50pm
Three cheers for Alan Wolfe. I have been reading him in The New Republic for around 17 years and I have read most all of his books. I have his new book, Political Evil: What It Is and How To Combat It, on our end table in the living room, which I will begin soon.
- liberalref
October 27, 2011 at 6:56pm
Come on, people, those studies Noah cites showing greater upward mobility fail to measure one key factor creating greater upward mobility in the USA: America's physical proximity to Latin American cocaine, heroin, cannabis and methamphetamine production. Sure, Europe has its drug peddlers but they operate in a much more supply-constrained environment than those who work Stateside. Nowhere in the EU can a young person look forward to getting rich slinging dope the way he and in the Land of the Free.
- AaronW
October 27, 2011 at 7:09pm
...the way he can in the Land of the Free.
- AaronW
October 27, 2011 at 7:10pm
Good call tnmats, I was thinking more along the lines of a frat-boy-two-by-four-to-the-head look
- WandreyCer
October 27, 2011 at 7:53pm
A gaffe? not with those dreamy eyes and the furrowed-in-faux-concern brows.
- miceelf
October 28, 2011 at 12:58pm
Facts? We don't have to show you no stinkin' facts! Republican hypocrisy, dishonesty, and damaging obstructionism provide the best opportunity for an effective campaign offensive by O, and they just keep handing him ammunition. He's a better than 50% bet already, and the odds will only go up if he doesn't get suckered into launching a Big Government vs The Rich class struggle riff that plays into already pretty effective Republican spin. The percentage of Americans who trust government to do the right thing most of the time is now 15%, lowest ever and in spectacular decline since it was a persistent 70% before the Seventies. Congressional Republicans currently exemplify what's wrong with Big Government, and that should be the thrust of O's re-election campaign.
- Robert Powell
October 28, 2011 at 2:00pm
Not to mention, one COULD consider Paul Ryan a taker par excellence. It is interesting how those with less are "takers" while those with more are "not takers." How exactly does this work??? Logically, it makes no sense. One would assume those with more would de facto be those who take stuff. Look. You have two monkeys in a forest. One has two nuts and the other has ten nuts. Who's the taker?
- Sophia
October 28, 2011 at 2:52pm
PS, I don't suppose there is even a hint of a prayer this guy could lose the election? Then he could get a real job, like waiter, farm worker, carpenter, chemist, print shop worker.... I dream....
- Sophia
October 28, 2011 at 2:53pm
In which he is not supported by all us "takers" who provide Paul Ryan with his livelihood including his gold plated Cadillac health care and retirement plan. Just sayin'
- Sophia
October 28, 2011 at 2:55pm
One interesting side note on social mobility is that immigrant social mobility is very high in the US, and very, very low elsewhere, and especially low in nordic countries. Yes, our social mobility for native-born has fallen. Not sure what that says when the two are considered together. It might suggest that there's a permanent group of takers in the US that couldn't break out of their social status even if they tried. Or that the government has made it very comfy for them to remain there. But frankly, doesn't the fact that immigrant mobility is so high speak volumes about the American Dream being alive and well?
- seattleeng
October 28, 2011 at 3:37pm
"Not sure what that says when the two are considered together. It might suggest that there's a permanent group of takers in the US that couldn't break out of their social status even if they tried. Or that the government has made it very comfy for them to remain there." The stronger social safety nets in Europe would suggest that it would be even more comfy for what you call the "takers" to remain in their low economic class, yet we nonetheless see greater upward mobility there, so it appears that social safety nets do not diminish peoples' motivation for upward movement. "But frankly, doesn't the fact that immigrant mobility is so high speak volumes about the American Dream being alive and well?" Despite its common misuse to refer to individual success, the term "American Dream" arose as a description of prosperity for ALL, so pointing to prosperity for a particular group doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the state of the American Dream. I think the upward mobility of immigrants in the U.S. relative to Europe mostly tells us about the enormous failures of European policies toward their immigrant populations.
- Fishpeddler
October 28, 2011 at 4:42pm
I think that one of the problems of the American Dream is that it meant that the ordinary citizen could aspire to a reasonably prosperous life, ownership of property (white picket fence etc) in a way that was essentially impossible for working people in other countries. However, times change, and the dream is achievable in a whole list of other places too (Czech Dream, Irish Dream, what have you), and indeed in those other places people note that they have e.g. universal health care as well as upward social mobility, which makes our model look a bit ambiguous. It's a bit like the problem of democratic participation and civic freedom -- once upon a time we were the only nation with it, apart from perhaps Singapore, so we could crow about it. But in the meantime (over the last century, primarily), a lot more countries have set up reasonably open democratic systems, and the flaws in our particular system are more embarrassingly obvious.
- ironyroad
October 28, 2011 at 5:14pm
Sorry, in that last paragraph I meant of course Switzerland. I've no idea why I wrote Singapore, except I'm secretly a masochist who wants to be arrested for dope smuggling so I can be punished with the cane.
- ironyroad
October 28, 2011 at 7:49pm
A Santorum - Ryan ticket in November, 2012 could bring a new dimension to "balance," with one realistic about economic opportunity and one deluded. Applying the FOX standard for balance, that is. At Ryan's last district "listening" session (which is more Ryan talk than listen) on Friday, Oct. 28, a few were evicted from the auditorium for muttering his claims were false. From www.kenoshanews.com: "The vocal opposition that turned out at U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s Friday listening session in Kenosha likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, the congressman concedes. "Ryan, in a short interview after the listening session, said some of the noise is coming from out-of-state organizers who have targeted Wisconsin as a must-win state for Democrats next year." In point of fact, the 8 or 10 sign carriers at the entryway were all constituents, as were the several evicted from his audience. It would seem Paul Ryan has resorted to making up explanations and voicing rationales passed to him by others.
- lespin
October 29, 2011 at 12:47am
Seattle makes a good point--our high rate of illegal immigration depresses our stats in areas like infant mortality and literacy, but that upward mobility rate should be a point of pride. It is far from "comfy" for most folks at the bottom of our economic scale, far less so than in Europe, but there immigrants are truly trapped in velvet ghettos. They are well provided for in terms of housing, income, healthcare, etc. but will NEVER be able to assimilate, start businesses, become citizens, etc which is why Europe is a major nexus for Islamist terror--lots of bored young guys with lots of time on their hands to contemplate life's injustices, protected by political correctness like exotic zoo animals. Here if you go to work and tend to your business, you will be quickly accepted. Ours is the better model.
- Robert Powell
October 29, 2011 at 4:38am
In some ways, ours is a better model. But there is no all or nothing. It is quite possible for us to have economic growth and a much more balanced distribution of income. We had it for 40 years from 1940 to 1980, both higher growth and more equitable distribution, until Reagan appeared spouting economic nonsense, what George W. Bush properly called "voodoo economics." Indeed, there is strong reason to believe that economic growth depends on a more balance distribution of income -- income from work that is, not income from welfare. We now have thirty years of evidence that the claims of supply-side economics, that promoting the interests of capital and the wealthy promotes growth, are drop-dead wrong. See here for a short explanation why: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opinion/its-consumer-spending-stupid.html Invariably, libertarian economic arguments, if you can call them that, conflate the situation of those who are working and those who are cyclically unemployed with those who are structurally unemployed, because the latter present so much more appealing targets. But this has nothing to do with reality.
- roidubouloi
October 29, 2011 at 8:41am
Livingstone is right as far as it goes, but let's not extrapolate too much from our economic history during WWII and it's aftermath. Unless we're prepared to nationalize the entire economy, draft the entire work force, and reduce our international competitors to rubble by strategic bombing, that was then and this is now.
- Robert Powell
October 29, 2011 at 1:13pm
Look, upward mobility is extremely difficult without access to food, shelter, clothing, education and medical care. So? Is it any wonder that societies who provide strong support for people enjoy better results in the long run? Also, when too much money is concentrated in too few hands, that reduces opportunity for the rest, contrary to the baloney that the rich create jobs. This is especially so when American wealth is hoarded, travels overseas, is misused, or is passed from generation to generation so that people outside the wealthy in-crowd don't have a chance. Look at Ivy League schools were the dim bulbs in the family get to go to Y***. And wind up, because of their wealth, becoming P********. It's becoming a very closed system and that's a catastrophe for Americans as a whole.
- Sophia
October 29, 2011 at 5:35pm
It's also worth saying that this term "job creators" is at least potentially misleading as it implies that all anyone has to do is create a vacancy, and then productivity and profit just, you know, happen. "Vacancy creators" might in fact be a better description, as the vacancy only then becomes a job, and the work done only then makes a profit, by dint of the people who fill it. And their work, their competence and initiative and energy, is what fuels success. That is exactly why the scale of CEO pay to regular salaries is so grotesque -- there is absolutely no way that the guy at the top, smart strategist though he may me, does 450 times more to add value to the company than the people who labor away to actually make the company work as a company. This is the theft, the unfairness if you prefer, that people are feeling now all over the country.
- ironyroad
October 30, 2011 at 12:08am