To add one more banal observation on top of another (as per a recent WaPo article I read), the extent to which both sides of the standard political spectrum feel the need to cling to parts of MLK's ideas just displays the strength of national civic religion - and I see it as a win for civility in general.
To the extent someone may disagree with King - be it his views on class solidarity in favor of a kind of racial maximalism akin to standard woke movements, or his views of material redistribution and egalitarianism - the fact that the disagreement centers King, and that the side seen as more exemplifying his message is correct, is a win for progress.
I think it’s uncharitably unfair and intellectually lazy to say that conservatives *don’t want* to eliminate slums, have full employment, and have an excellent education system for all. Maybe there are some fringe nut jobs who don’t want those things, but the vast majority of conservatives would hear King’s words and cheer. What they disagree about is *how to get there,* and to a lesser extent, about what is possible in the real world.
Liberals sometimes think they can legislate reality away. The chief example is housing, where we have an intense housing shortage caused by a history of regulating development ever more strictly so that only “good” development can happen. No density, no boarding houses, etc etc. because from a certain person’s aesthetic those kinds of housing are just abhorrent and “nobody should live like that.” But if we ban all cheap forms of housing then we won’t have any cheap housing and many people end up unhoused entirely, which is far, far worse. Hence we have MY campaigning for a very conservative solution: less regulation and a pursuit of housing abundance.
In my experience most conservatives take unintended consequences of policy very seriously, while most progressives focus on “intent” and ideological purity while being quite hand-wavy about actual outcomes.
(Note that I am NOT defending the current crop of do-nothing / reactionary / populist / chaos muppets that have taken over the Republican Party. They aren’t conservatives anyway.)
Yes, as Matt says, it’s ok to agree with historical figures on some things but not others - even, I would add, within the same speech. MLK was a great moral leader but not an economist. One can share the moral goal of alleviating poverty while sincerely and sharply disagreeing on the means to achieve that goal.
I do think that conservatives of that era made some fundamental mistakes. They were so afraid of The Left exploiting the condition of Black Americans but failed to see that the best way to avoid that would be to make sure that Blacks could fully participate in capitalism. Rather than engaging the Civil Rights movement and encouraging it to be a force for opportunity, not entitlement, the conservative movement allowed the party that freed the slaves to be seen as the party that was, at best, indifferent to the concerns of Black Americans.
Love the reposting of old gems I may have missed. I often find myself sitting down on Sunday mornings with a pot of coffee thinking that I wish I had a Slow Boring piece to read. Maybe on one or two of the weekend days it would be cool to send out old articles that are still relevant or worth a read like you did today? This would give subscribers something to read over the weekend, shine a spotlight on interesting things they may have missed, and (I assume) wouldn't require much work on Slow Boring's end. Thanks for all the interesting content!
"[Rustin's] basic vision — improved public services, an enhanced welfare state, a robust commitment to full employment — is exactly what I think a sound political vision looks like."
improved public services - yes!
an enhanced welfare state - yes, with some attention paid to where you're starting to create perverse incentives (see below).
a robust commitment to full employment - hmmm... I'm unconvinced.
I once read a book where the author (possibly Tom Friedman, but I can't remember for sure) was visiting a poor Asian country and saw a bunch of men squatting on a lawn, trimming the grass with sickles. His host explained to him that to maintain stability, the government had to strive for full employment above all. From the local government official's perspective, it was much better to hire ten men to cut the grass with sickles for a pittance than to hire one man with a lawnmower and have nine unemployed men sitting around.
Is this what we want for America? Crappy make-work to achieve full employment?
And if the answer is "why no, we want high quality, well-paying jobs for all," the questions immediately become "who is going to pay for all these jobs?" and "what about people who are not qualified for them?"
Also, notice that a robust safety net and full employment trade off against each other, to a certain extent. The better the unemployment benefits, the more people will make the logical choice to subsist off benefits rather than work. Disability benefits can hypothetically range from "horribly stingy and cruel, disabled people must force themselves to work or else starve" to "so lenient that many able-bodied but lazy people can successfully fake being disabled and live off the benefits without having to work."
Thanks for reposting this. Really enjoyed rereading this. Two things.
(1) Your grand-dad was a wonderful writer with a rich legacy. As someone who grew up in Tampa and went to school in Ybor City at OLPH, I came to love the area and it's history. You've probably seen this article, but just in case:
Typo, it’s canon, not cannon. I wouldn’t have bothered posting, but the “cannon of national heroes” sounds like an amazing circus attraction, way better than Disney’s hall of presidents.
King’s economic radicalism becomes even clearer if you look at the 1964 income tax brackets. The top rate was 70%. Those with incomes of $20k ($193k today) paid a marginal rate of 32%. At $40k ($386k today) the rate was 48%. Only $60k ($595k today) was exempted from the estate tax.
King was saying that, a country with a more progressive tax system than any big European country has today, woefully underserved the poor.
Of course, the safety net in 1964 was pretty thin. Defense spending was 8% of GDP, more than twice the present figure. Higher taxes basically went for tanks and missiles to keep the communists at bay, which is why sensible chamber of commerce types were willing to pay them.
I tend to agree however the DEI fight is a modern incarnation of the same struggle. Perhaps not a perfect incarnation worthy of King’s legacy but at least an earnest attempt to move the ball forward.
I find it all too fitting we see portions of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, ones you specifically refer to here regarding police brutality, edited out of today. They demonstrate too plainly the same forces thrive today as they did 60 years ago
Matt, this is a good post, but I think you miss one thing that would have made it stronger. King did explicitly support what we now call affirmative action: the granting of preferential treatment to members of an ethnically disenfranchised group to compensate for the lingering effects of past inequities. It existed as a real phenomenon in India for members of lower castes, and King explicitly endorsed bringing that phenomenon to the US. On my blog I have the full quote from King and a discussion of it: https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2021/05/how-to-reach-a-colour-blind-society/
Can I ask, what may be a dumb question, but when you talk to conservatives about personal finance they're very into Dave Ramsey and view taking on personal debt for consumption as a morally suspect task. They're very wary of the power of compound interest and how it can restrict your life.
But in the sort of macro social realm they basically believe that ending formal legal segregation was all that was required. There was no compounding effect of hundreds of years of discrimination. It doesn't make any sense to me how there's just not a tremendous material, debt to be paid in both material and non-material ways.
I think Matt is being too cute with the "there's nothing in here about equality versus equity" stuff. Matt's own analysis is basically that King really was focused on equity and not merely surface equality. There's much more overlap with DEI -- especially Ibram Kendi -- than Matt acknowledges.
Communism has never been successful and this basically what you are saying MLK is proprosing. Real prosperity will only come through capitalism and yes only if all can participate. The gains of minorities since the death of MLK are significant although never fast enough for some. Great changes in the culture of those who are oppressed are changing and they must continue to change. My son goes to Temple University where 50% of the students are of color and the president of the university is African American. However, this great univeristy is surrounded by crime and poverty mostly due to the policies of current socialistic politicians which continue to keep minorities dependent on entitlements to keep their authoritarian power.
To add one more banal observation on top of another (as per a recent WaPo article I read), the extent to which both sides of the standard political spectrum feel the need to cling to parts of MLK's ideas just displays the strength of national civic religion - and I see it as a win for civility in general.
To the extent someone may disagree with King - be it his views on class solidarity in favor of a kind of racial maximalism akin to standard woke movements, or his views of material redistribution and egalitarianism - the fact that the disagreement centers King, and that the side seen as more exemplifying his message is correct, is a win for progress.
Who is going to pay for "massive material redistribution"? Are there any downsides?
I so wish that progressives would address these and not simply assume them away.
I think it’s uncharitably unfair and intellectually lazy to say that conservatives *don’t want* to eliminate slums, have full employment, and have an excellent education system for all. Maybe there are some fringe nut jobs who don’t want those things, but the vast majority of conservatives would hear King’s words and cheer. What they disagree about is *how to get there,* and to a lesser extent, about what is possible in the real world.
Liberals sometimes think they can legislate reality away. The chief example is housing, where we have an intense housing shortage caused by a history of regulating development ever more strictly so that only “good” development can happen. No density, no boarding houses, etc etc. because from a certain person’s aesthetic those kinds of housing are just abhorrent and “nobody should live like that.” But if we ban all cheap forms of housing then we won’t have any cheap housing and many people end up unhoused entirely, which is far, far worse. Hence we have MY campaigning for a very conservative solution: less regulation and a pursuit of housing abundance.
In my experience most conservatives take unintended consequences of policy very seriously, while most progressives focus on “intent” and ideological purity while being quite hand-wavy about actual outcomes.
(Note that I am NOT defending the current crop of do-nothing / reactionary / populist / chaos muppets that have taken over the Republican Party. They aren’t conservatives anyway.)
Yes, as Matt says, it’s ok to agree with historical figures on some things but not others - even, I would add, within the same speech. MLK was a great moral leader but not an economist. One can share the moral goal of alleviating poverty while sincerely and sharply disagreeing on the means to achieve that goal.
I do think that conservatives of that era made some fundamental mistakes. They were so afraid of The Left exploiting the condition of Black Americans but failed to see that the best way to avoid that would be to make sure that Blacks could fully participate in capitalism. Rather than engaging the Civil Rights movement and encouraging it to be a force for opportunity, not entitlement, the conservative movement allowed the party that freed the slaves to be seen as the party that was, at best, indifferent to the concerns of Black Americans.
Love the reposting of old gems I may have missed. I often find myself sitting down on Sunday mornings with a pot of coffee thinking that I wish I had a Slow Boring piece to read. Maybe on one or two of the weekend days it would be cool to send out old articles that are still relevant or worth a read like you did today? This would give subscribers something to read over the weekend, shine a spotlight on interesting things they may have missed, and (I assume) wouldn't require much work on Slow Boring's end. Thanks for all the interesting content!
"[Rustin's] basic vision — improved public services, an enhanced welfare state, a robust commitment to full employment — is exactly what I think a sound political vision looks like."
improved public services - yes!
an enhanced welfare state - yes, with some attention paid to where you're starting to create perverse incentives (see below).
a robust commitment to full employment - hmmm... I'm unconvinced.
I once read a book where the author (possibly Tom Friedman, but I can't remember for sure) was visiting a poor Asian country and saw a bunch of men squatting on a lawn, trimming the grass with sickles. His host explained to him that to maintain stability, the government had to strive for full employment above all. From the local government official's perspective, it was much better to hire ten men to cut the grass with sickles for a pittance than to hire one man with a lawnmower and have nine unemployed men sitting around.
Is this what we want for America? Crappy make-work to achieve full employment?
And if the answer is "why no, we want high quality, well-paying jobs for all," the questions immediately become "who is going to pay for all these jobs?" and "what about people who are not qualified for them?"
Also, notice that a robust safety net and full employment trade off against each other, to a certain extent. The better the unemployment benefits, the more people will make the logical choice to subsist off benefits rather than work. Disability benefits can hypothetically range from "horribly stingy and cruel, disabled people must force themselves to work or else starve" to "so lenient that many able-bodied but lazy people can successfully fake being disabled and live off the benefits without having to work."
"The cannon of national heros"
4th of july just keeps getting more exciting
Ugh, public posts really bring out the conservative trolls, don’t they?
Thanks for reposting this. Really enjoyed rereading this. Two things.
(1) Your grand-dad was a wonderful writer with a rich legacy. As someone who grew up in Tampa and went to school in Ybor City at OLPH, I came to love the area and it's history. You've probably seen this article, but just in case:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1396&context=tampabayhistory
(2) On the subject of wealth (not income) inequality, Sandy Darity at Duke is doing great work. Here are links to a couple of his papers.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00027162211028822
https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DarityAddoSmithCEP2020.pdf
Typo, it’s canon, not cannon. I wouldn’t have bothered posting, but the “cannon of national heroes” sounds like an amazing circus attraction, way better than Disney’s hall of presidents.
King’s economic radicalism becomes even clearer if you look at the 1964 income tax brackets. The top rate was 70%. Those with incomes of $20k ($193k today) paid a marginal rate of 32%. At $40k ($386k today) the rate was 48%. Only $60k ($595k today) was exempted from the estate tax.
King was saying that, a country with a more progressive tax system than any big European country has today, woefully underserved the poor.
Of course, the safety net in 1964 was pretty thin. Defense spending was 8% of GDP, more than twice the present figure. Higher taxes basically went for tanks and missiles to keep the communists at bay, which is why sensible chamber of commerce types were willing to pay them.
https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1964
Great piece.
I tend to agree however the DEI fight is a modern incarnation of the same struggle. Perhaps not a perfect incarnation worthy of King’s legacy but at least an earnest attempt to move the ball forward.
I find it all too fitting we see portions of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, ones you specifically refer to here regarding police brutality, edited out of today. They demonstrate too plainly the same forces thrive today as they did 60 years ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1614742904521596928?cxt=HHwWgIC9ubmH3OgsAAAA
Matt, this is a good post, but I think you miss one thing that would have made it stronger. King did explicitly support what we now call affirmative action: the granting of preferential treatment to members of an ethnically disenfranchised group to compensate for the lingering effects of past inequities. It existed as a real phenomenon in India for members of lower castes, and King explicitly endorsed bringing that phenomenon to the US. On my blog I have the full quote from King and a discussion of it: https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2021/05/how-to-reach-a-colour-blind-society/
Can I ask, what may be a dumb question, but when you talk to conservatives about personal finance they're very into Dave Ramsey and view taking on personal debt for consumption as a morally suspect task. They're very wary of the power of compound interest and how it can restrict your life.
But in the sort of macro social realm they basically believe that ending formal legal segregation was all that was required. There was no compounding effect of hundreds of years of discrimination. It doesn't make any sense to me how there's just not a tremendous material, debt to be paid in both material and non-material ways.
I think Matt is being too cute with the "there's nothing in here about equality versus equity" stuff. Matt's own analysis is basically that King really was focused on equity and not merely surface equality. There's much more overlap with DEI -- especially Ibram Kendi -- than Matt acknowledges.
Communism has never been successful and this basically what you are saying MLK is proprosing. Real prosperity will only come through capitalism and yes only if all can participate. The gains of minorities since the death of MLK are significant although never fast enough for some. Great changes in the culture of those who are oppressed are changing and they must continue to change. My son goes to Temple University where 50% of the students are of color and the president of the university is African American. However, this great univeristy is surrounded by crime and poverty mostly due to the policies of current socialistic politicians which continue to keep minorities dependent on entitlements to keep their authoritarian power.