I’m workshopping an idea on differences between the left and the right when it comes to prices and costs. This is based on my sense of vibes. I get that there may be contradictions, and differences within the sides (IE- technocrats VS workers rights on the left, self-sufficient libertarians VS subsidies for rural areas on the right.)
Costs, Price and Subsidies on the Left
The left seems to have a view that good things should be subsidized by people who don’t have much say in this use of their income. One way this manifests is that there is a problem of elite overproduction within a society that produces people with the credentials of elites, but not enough positions in academia and the media to go around.
They want symbolic capitalism, with access to prestige and recognition. The main solution is subsidies, with more money for colleges to hire more people, more arts funding and more regulations to mandate best practices resulting in more employment of people with the appropriate resumes.
The costs of these subsidized good things can come from taxes, but since that’s unpopular, it’s often sent to another entity. So the business has to pay the cost of various health insurance and retirement plans of employees, as well as all the regulations (Buy American-made! Keep more records to satisfy compliance demands!) Or a developer is mandated to build more rent-controlled apartments, which shifts the costs to the people buying from the increasingly small share of available housing. Or a company has to shift to renewable energy.
Cost, Price and Subsidies on the Right
The right is generally anti-subsidy. There are some exceptions. Trump is very pro-tariff, but Biden has stuck with some tariffs (and Harris isn’t claiming she’ll abandon them), so this isn’t a partisan issue. There are also plenty of examples of Republicans benefiting personally from previous spending, or not considering things they like to be the equivalent of subsidies (Disaster aid to rural white people, farm aid, military benefits.)
Sometimes it gets shameless. A gross recent effort at a subsidy was a proposed regulation that would mandate the Oklahoma government purchase the Trump bible, because it satisfied conditions to the extent that the bill seems to be a reason to send Trump money.
Attribution (CC BY 2.0)
The main Republican problem with costs is that there are situations where a producer does not incur all the costs (pollution, adverse health reactions, overfishing, etc.) The Republican desire for less regulations worsens it.
Another wrinkle is who should do the work. There are wannabe free riders on the left and right, who want to make what they consider to be a decent living even if no one’s voluntarily willing to pay them the salary they want for the work they want to do. Conservatives will complain that liberals don’t know how to create wealth, while unions will observe that society functions only because some people are willing to work hard.
Conservatives will say that restrictions make it difficult for people to make money by working more, while progressives will say that people shouldn’t have to work that hard in the first place and that it pressures public-facing workers like teachers, nurses and social workers with skills that are the result of years of training to provide uncompensated labor and also cover out of pocket expenses.
Comparing, Contrasting and Takeaways
For the most part conservatives seem to understand that the money has to come from somewhere, but that isn’t always apparent from the way the left talks about salaries and other costs. There’s a lot of dead weight in the public sector, where people are kept in jobs that would have been eliminated in private business. One way to consider this distinction is whether the point of a job is to provide a person with a decent salary, or for somebody to get compensated for adding value. Obviously conservative attitudes change when it’s a discussion about more funding for their interest groups and communities.
I’m looking at discussions about the cost of elder-care, and a major problem is that to provide somebody with around the clock one-on-one care requires paying multiple salaries. This physically requires more than one person even before you consider administration, paperwork and errands, so where does the money to compensate them come from?
This may also be part of why income inequality is such a concern on the left; it warps considerations. When one person is able to afford to pay three people $100,000 a year each to provide an average of 40 hours of care a week to his mother with dementia, those nurses are less interested in working more hours for less pay in a way that will contribute more good to society. It’s also something that can’t scale up very much.
In these conflicts, it’s not a case that one side’s always correct. Unions sometimes ask for too much, and employers also take advantage of workers. Revealed preferences are a thing, but it can also be the result of coercion. Sometimes the government knows better. Sometimes it doesn’t. This is a tension that may not be resolvable, since sides that dominate politically tend to go too far, and then the other side takes over. Until it goes too far.
Do you agree with the authors balanced take on costs on the Left VS the Right? Let us know in the comments below and if you like this work from him check out Geopolitical Cynicism: Americans Against Ukraine
