"Middle-class people can largely control what they earn"
Would any true theorist of the market, like Hayek, write something like that?
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July 18, 2004 EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/business/yourmoney/18every.html?pagewanted =print&position= In the Political Blame Game, Somebody Has to Be 'It' By BEN STEIN
ONE constant in the modern approach to the care and feeding of toddlers is to tell them that when they make a mistake, it's not their fault. If a tyke spills milk or leaves the door open so the cat can escape, the indulgent modern parent says, "It's not your fault." That way, children can grow up without low self-esteem or guilt and can eventually deal with the concept of responsibility for their actions.
This comes to mind because I have been reading the Web sites of the Democratic National Committee and the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Under the headings about the economy and the "middle-class squeeze," I have come upon a strangely illogical and demagogic set of "it's not your fault" allegations and conclusions. (Of course, the sequel is, "It's President Bush's fault.") They are so dangerous to the well-being of the unwary reader that I thought I might try to clear the air a bit.
On the Democratic committee's site, a major heading is an allegation from a group not usually friendly to the Republicans - a group of mayors - that new jobs created in 2004 and 2005 will pay, "on average, $8,000 less than old jobs," namely, jobs created in 2001 to 2003. That is a bit strange, because in many other places on these sites, it is explained that there were no net new jobs at all in 2001 to 2003. It is, of course, absolutely and totally impossible to forecast what future jobs will pay or what those jobs will be. In fact, most economic forecasting is valueless, but that's another story (though the Bush campaign site is not above the same sort of partisan prognosticating; it has data that apparently show that new jobs will pay much more than old jobs). In any case, economic Chicken Littles have been forecasting a nation of burger flippers for decades. It has never come true. But leave that aside as well.
The real point is personal responsibility: almost any worker has a chance to make a job a well-paying job by acquiring more skills and education. The jobs are not parceled out to the Passaic Workers' Commune by the Commissar of Jobs. People get the jobs for which they are qualified, by skill and education. If a young person gets a college degree with good grades, then gets a business school degree with very, very good grades, he'll get a job at Goldman Sachs that will pay him about $200,000 in the first year. If he goes to nursing school and learns operating-room skills, he can expect to make $80,000 a year almost immediately in many hospitals. If she learns to do electrical work in houses in Los Angeles, she can expect to make $40 an hour, plus overtime.
That is, pay is not a given. Of course, there are constraints of time and circumstance, but people who want good-paying jobs can get them by dint of education, which is available everywhere.
Another note on the Democratic committee's Web site says that "a record 1.6 million families will declare bankruptcy in 2004" and that an additional 11 million are in danger of doing so. Those figures came from that well-known nonpartisan statistician, Bill Moyers, a former press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson, and from several news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Orlando Sentinel and "NBC Nightly News." All cited statistics from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
The real point is that it's not as if President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton are going around fraudulently using 11 million people's charge cards to make them buy boats, high-definition TV's and motor homes they cannot afford.
Middle-class people get into excessive debt and then face bankruptcy mostly because they spend too much. (Believe me, I see them all around me, and often get letters from them asking to borrow money.) This is their own decision. Except in the rarest of circumstances, no one is forcing it on them. There are an additional 100-plus million families that do not declare bankruptcy and are not in debt over their heads. For Kerry-Edwards and the Democratic Party to imply that overspending and undersaving are somehow not the fault of the people who are overspending is carrying the "it's not your fault" mantra to a new level.
On the Kerry campaign's Web site, there is also scare material on how consumers are being squeezed by high mortgage costs as houses become more expensive. Not mentioned, of course, are the stunningly cheap mortgages of the past few years, or the astounding gains in home values that have enriched tens of millions of people. But who is forcing people to move out of plentiful and cheap rentals and to buy more house than they can afford? Not Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney. If home buyers want to get in on a good thing - the housing boom - it's their decision, not anyone else's.
Don't get me wrong. I don't claim that President Bush is perfect, although I like him a lot. On his Web site, I see claims of how his tax cuts have helped everyone in the nation, but it's hard for me to see how they help the unemployed. Or, as my father used to say in response to John F. Kennedy's pitch for his tax cuts: "A rising tide does not lift all boats. It doesn't lift the ones under water."
And I don't see an enormous difference between the president's plans for the middle class and John Kerry's plans for the middle class, except that Mr. Kerry's health care proposal will cost a trillion dollars and that he expects to pay for it by taxing only people with yachts. But the rhetoric is very different in terms of personal responsibility - a big subject to us fathers of teenage sons.
Politics aside, we live in a free society. Middle-class people can largely control what they earn. Their children can very largely control what they earn. They can control what they spend, above a certain floor. If they are "squeezed" on their mortgage payments because they bought more house than they could afford, whose fault is that?
If the middle class is being squeezed, it is very largely squeezing itself. Or, to put it another way, no matter what Daddy John and Mommy John say, "Yes, darlings, you're old enough now - maybe it is your fault."
Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz at nytimes.com.