Hello everyone,
I am currently engaged in a political debate with some liberal progressives on another internet forum. I am trying to hone my debating skills. However, I am looking for the best answers to a couple of challenges I am getting on certain points.
Basically, I am being told that no one would have wanted to live in the 19th century due to terrible work conditions and exploitative robber barons. Of course we have all heard that before.
What is being claimed by many is that the middle class was basically "created" by progressive policies following World War 2. They claim that while there were some middle class prior to FDR, they were small in number. They claim that during the 19th century and early 20th century there were mainly two economic groups, one were the capitalists (exploiters) and the other were the workers and poor.
How would you respond to people who claim that we could never have had a strong middle class like we saw in the 1950s and 60s without government policies like the GI bill and other progressive policies?
How would you make the case that a market economy and true capitalism is better for the middle class and average person than heavy government subsidization of the poor and middle classes?
Thanks.
The image that they portray is a ton of people working 12 hour days with little pay pumping out items that go... Where? It goes into the hands of the poor and middle class. If people worked less hours for more pay there would be less goods and the standard of living would either not rise or rise much slowlier. :) Giving people more pay and having them work less cannot possibly increase a societies standard of living. There is this illusion that government intervention in industries improved working conditions, but that is only because the regulations entered at a time when people could now afford to work in better working conditions. So they were fixing a problem that was already being fixed. In a free market there is a big incentive to provide a good working environment for workers. This increases productivity and reduces the chance of costly litigation. What does regulation add to this? It's a check list that gets in between the worker and the boss, creating disincentives for new competition to enter the field, and adding governmental overhead to the system (ensuring that the regulations are being followed.)
Well, the late 19th Century was nowhere close to free market.
The closest there ever was to a free market in this country's history was during the Articles of Confederation and they were very popular in part because the average American didn't want to be taxed to subsidize the wealthy like the pro-welfare Federalists wanted.
Also, earlier in this country's history, the populists (Jefferson, Jackson) favored hard money, low public spending, and no regulations, while the elitists (Hamilton, Clay) favored paper money, the regulatory state, and high public spending levels.
Finally, ask him if thinks that the welfare state we have now has made the average inner city person anywhere close to as wealthy as the CEO of government-subsidized Goldman Sachs.
These might help
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbIIPtLEVbA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVAxNqRTKY
jrodefeld: Basically, I am being told that no one would have wanted to live in the 19th century due to terrible work conditions and exploitative robber barons. Of course we have all heard that before. Yeh, no one would have wanted to live in the 19th century, except perhaps the people in the 18th century. (Relative) Economic liberalisation and the industrial revolution did not create economic inequality, it already existed in a much more exaggerated form under mercantalism and feudalism and was greatly reduced after liberal reforms. JD Rockefeller, a 'robber baron' who died as a member of the ruling class, was born into the working class.
jrodefeld: Basically, I am being told that no one would have wanted to live in the 19th century due to terrible work conditions and exploitative robber barons. Of course we have all heard that before.
jrodefeld: What is being claimed by many is that the middle class was basically "created" by progressive policies following World War 2. They claim that while there were some middle class prior to FDR, they were small in number. They claim that during the 19th century and early 20th century there were mainly two economic groups, one were the capitalists (exploiters) and the other were the workers and poor. Ask him to explain how The New Deal created the middle class. jrodefeld: How would you respond to people who claim that we could never have had a strong middle class like we saw in the 1950s and 60s without government policies like the GI bill and other progressive policies?
jrodefeld: What is being claimed by many is that the middle class was basically "created" by progressive policies following World War 2. They claim that while there were some middle class prior to FDR, they were small in number. They claim that during the 19th century and early 20th century there were mainly two economic groups, one were the capitalists (exploiters) and the other were the workers and poor.
jrodefeld: How would you respond to people who claim that we could never have had a strong middle class like we saw in the 1950s and 60s without government policies like the GI bill and other progressive policies?
I would say the rise of the middle class is a result of rising wages, which are a result of economic growth, which is a result of saving and investment which is best created through laissez faire economic policies. jrodefeld: How would you make the case that a market economy and true capitalism is better for the middle class and average person than heavy government subsidization of the poor and middle classes?
jrodefeld: How would you make the case that a market economy and true capitalism is better for the middle class and average person than heavy government subsidization of the poor and middle classes?
I would simply point out that getting the government to defend the poor is like asking a registered sex-offender to be your babysitter, and that no government in history has ever subsidised the poor and the middle class. The function of the state is to redistribute wealth from society as a whole towards those with political influence, and the poor and the middle class do not have political influence.
...Check out The Ultimate Beginner meta-thread
I wouldn't, because that's not a debate. Someone else mentioned the proper response already, ask them how those policies did what they are claiming. The mere statement that they did isn't a debate, it's just a statement. Once they go about explaing how you will find they are either simply repeating what they learned in high school, or they will make arguments that you will have a much, much easier time taking apart. Any answer you give to the mere statement they made will likewise be another statement, and you will head down an endless thread of open ended nonsense. Ask for the particulars, trounce him, and move on.
This link should help clear up some misconceptions:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/pa1a2/well_i_have_officially_made_it/c3ow93i
http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Thermidor-of-the-Progressives.pdf
Kevin Carson does a great job of pointing out the contradiction in Progressive thought.
Tell them about the parable of the broken window.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4jhlPLVVs
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
""I am being told that no one would have wanted to live in the 19th century""
A common argument tha people love to use is the "21st century argument". What I mean by this is that they like to justify statist policies because well.... ITS THE 21ST CENTURY!!!. New fresh ideas!! don't agree with me? then you want to take us back x amount of years. All you have to do is point out that the arguments and views they hold are anything but unique to the 21st century at all. Then press them on why we must eact their views. Their views are as old as capitalism and in many cases older then capitalism itself.
In fact, by the next century people will look down upon the 21st century as the century of debt. Think of it this way, do you want to live under 19th century levels of debt or 21st?
Aiser, I just want you to know I had not realized your avatar moves, and so it suddenly freaked me out when I noticed it out of the corner of my eye.
That is all.
No, that is not all.
The person you're debating makes an obvious straw man. Hardly anyone would choose to live in the 19th century. Why? Because we didn't have as much capital accumulation and technological progress. Durr.
I suggest you try this thought experiment with them:
What if we took the entire Federal Register of regulations and applied all of them to Bangladesh? Would everything suddenly become safe, clean, and nice with near-full employment?
Of course not. Why? Because government can't wish wealth into existence.
There's a whole host of considerations here.
If you want to look at what created the middle class, you need to consider Britain's experience as the industrial revolution began. It was the IR that created the middle class, plainly and simply.
The IR was caused by a laissez faire attitude by the government--it was too new for the gov to realize they wanted to regulate it--and by a buildup of savings and the consequent availability of investment and productive capital.
To say the middle class was created by WWII is utterly ludicrous. Much less to say that it was created by government.
One can easily see this because we have always had government throughout recorded history, going back some 5000+ years. If government was the cause of the middle-class, why did the industrial revolution and the middle class appear first in countries that were largely unruled and unregulated--britan and the united states?
We have always had government, we have not always had a populace with enough freedom to do what they liked, a population with rights that the gov was forced to respect. The production of such a society was largely historical accident and unique combinations of historical events. The British got freedom by forcing their king to sign the Magna Carta, the world's first constitution.
The American experience follows from the similar accident of time and place, of the shores of the US being so very far away from Britain, and the British general laissez faire attitude towards the American colonies brought about by weak British kings for hundreds of years. It was a strong king arriving on the throne, George the 3rd, who tried to bring the american colonies back under crown control that finally fomented revolution.
But, it happened in perfectly the right historical epoch. Had it happened much before, the americans wouldn't have had military experience such as they received fighting for the British some years before in the French and Indian war, which gave the Americans many experienced military personnel, including George Washington.
Had it happened a generation later, they again would've had no military experience. And what's more, the advances of the industrial revolution would've made it harder and harder to secede from Britain, as better arms and ships came about.
Should Britain have had the tech of WWI, who knows whether the US would've been able to pull away, much less become a great power.
But, to return to your question, if the government creates the middle class, you must ask why places with the strongest governments still to this day lack a middle class.
The truth is, the free market creates the middle class. Governemnt has never created wealth. It cannot. It produces nothing. All it can do is get in the way of wealth by spinning its spiderwebs of laws. The US is an elephant and it's taking a long time for the webbing of laws to bind its feet, but other smaller economies are bound much sooner and much easier.
If the gov creates wealth--same thing as saying the gov created the middle class--why did the USSR have no middle class, why did communist China have no middle class. It was only when China de-communized their economy that they began to see rapid gains and investment. And even then, they have only let in a few drops of capitalism, becoming in truth a fascist state, allowing some ownership but with total central control still.