David Brooks' Fantasyland

David Brooks via Wikimedia Commons

New York Times columnist David Brooks lives in a fantasyland.  Brooks, like most, is a product of his environment.  He's hobnobbed with the conservative elite of New York and Washington DC like the late William F. Buckley for years.  I would suggest that the circles Mr. Brooks inhabits has perhaps left him out of touch with the day-to-day reality most people face.  This has been clear for a while and is particularly evident this Friday as he writes in puzzlement on the millennial embrace of Bernie Sanders.  From his NYT column:

...Sanders would weaken the ability of members of the middle class to make choices about their own lives. He would raise taxes on the rich, but there is only so much money you can squeeze out of such a small group of people...

I'm not sure if Brooks realizes this, but the middle class has all but vanished thanks to many of the policies embraced by Brooks and those of similar ilk.  You know what hampers choice?  Relying on your employer to provide benefits that are universally guaranteed in other developed nations.  While it is true there is only so much money to be squeezed from the wealthiest among us, they are the ones who can afford to chip in a bit more for the system that has helped them amass such a level of wealth.

Continue Mr. Brooks...

Middle classes across Europe bear a much higher tax load than the American middle class. As Austan Goolsbee, a former economic adviser to President Obama, has noted, you really can’t have a Swedish-style welfare state without a broad high tax burden. That means less spending power for most Americans, and fewer resources to choose one’s own lifestyle.

Again, Mr. Brooks concern for the rapidly vanishing middle class is cute.  Sure taxes would be higher under such a system, Sanders has admitted as much, but it's not as if I'm not paying health insurance companies right now who are skimming profits off the top and it's not as if I'm not paying taxes for Medicare, Medicaid, and tax incentives for employer based health insurance.  Whether my money disappears into a government bureaucracy or a private bureaucracy, the money is still disappearing.

Go on...

It’s possible that entrepreneurs, company founders and others would pay these rates without changing their behavior, but I wouldn’t count on it. When you make risk-taking less rewarding, you get fewer risk-takers, which is exactly what you see across the Atlantic. When you raise taxes that high, the Elon Musks of the world find other places to build their companies.

It's always interesting how mega rich people betting money where if they lose they'll still be mega rich is characterized as "risk taking".  Look, I've never shied away from making more money for fear of paying more taxes and since the end of the Second World War when the top marginal tax rates were much higher there is little evidence that rich people do either.  Furthermore, Elon Musk in particular has benefited from considerable government subsidies for many if not all of his business ventures.  I would be so bold as to suggest that if Musk decides to pack up shop, we cut him off.

Mr. Brooks is gravely concerned with the prospect of free tuition as well...

Fourth, Sanders would Europeanize American public universities. It sounds great to make college free. In fact, it’s a hugely expensive program that would mostly benefit the already affluent.

The first part is a little puzzling. While it would certainly be an expensive program at an estimated $75 billion a year, it is roughly the same annual cost as our Iraqi adventure, a policy that Brooks supported.  Does Brooks think that because college would be free for people who are already affluent that these people would somehow gain an additional benefit over everyone else?  It seems like if more people were getting degrees with less debt perhaps that would actually reduce the advantage held by the already well off.

...It would create, as in Germany, a legion of eternal students who have little incentive to leave school because the costs are so low... 

Not Germany!  God forbid we become anything resembling the Germans with their low unemployment, high productivity, high median income, long life expectancy, and non-crumbling infrastructure.

...It would give Washington officials greater control over state universities, determining what sort of faculty they could hire and what sort of programs they could run. It would threaten hundreds of private colleges, which could no longer compete against the completely subsidized state system... 

I hate to break it to Mr. Brooks, but there was a time in America when going to college was much cheaper and even free depending on the state.  Private colleges still existed and there was less influence by Washington officials then there is by wealthy donors now.  Just as the residents of Flint how wonderful state control is.

...It would reduce the pressures universities now feel to reform themselves because it would cushion them with federal largess. Slowly, American universities would look more like their European counterparts. They’d be less good.

What exactly are these "reforms" Brooks speaks of?  It certainly has nothing with do with reducing costs for students, or paying staff, or hiring professors.  Perhaps Brooks is worried that a more educated populace might be less likely to buy the steaming pile of horseshit he pedals on a regular basis.

Brooks then sums up his bafflement...

It’s amazing that so many young people want to mimic a continent that has been sluggish for decades. It’s amazing that so many look to the future and want a country that would be a lot less vibrant.

Real wages have been stagnant or declining for decades in the United States, as we have embraced the neoliberal policies to which Brooks subscribes.  It's amazing that so many people evidently to look to Brooks as someone worth paying to write.
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