Posted on 11/08/2005 8:21:46 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Bush's Ownership Society
Why No One's Buying.
By Paul Glastris
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Conservatives have a knack for taking good ideas—say, patriotism or faith—to the sort of ideologized extreme that brands the ideas as theirs and leads liberals to abandon them. We're seeing that now with the issue of choice and individual empowerment. Those very concepts used to be associated with liberal causes like abortion and voting rights. But over the last couple of decades, conservative intellectuals have roped them to a larger agenda to revolutionize government.
And they're perfectly open about it. Talk to scholars at the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or to movement organizers like Grover Norquist, and they'll walk you through the strategy. Big government and individual freedom, they'll explain, are opposed to each other; more of one means less of the other. The three big areas of non-defense-related government spending are retirement (mainly Social Security), health care (mainly Medicare and Medicaid), and education (mainly K-12 public schools). For political reasons, it is practically impossible to cut spending in these areas. But it is possible to dismantle the government bureaucracies that administer them in a way that enhances personal freedom and makes possible big cuts down the road: privatize the benefits.
The father of this line of thinking is Milton Friedman. In the 1950s and 1960s, the conservative economist dreamed up the notions of education vouchers and private accounts for Social Security. Republican operatives and think tankers seized on Friedman's ideas in the 1970s, expanded them into areas like health care, and fleshed out their philosophic and political logic. Vesting individuals with more choice, control, and ownership of their government benefits, they argued, would not only enhance virtues like personal responsibility, but over time, it would also result in the shift of hundreds of billions of tax dollars from the custodial care of government to the corporations that would help manage people's private accounts. Best of all, from the conservative point of view, it would transform the electorate's political identity. Instead of government-dependent supporters of the Democratic Party, voters would become self-reliant followers of the GOP.
These ideas are the intellectual fuel of the conservative movement that has swept across the country in recent decades. They were well understood in the Reagan administration, and the Gipper's speeches are suffused with them. But it has only been in the last few years, with both Congress and the White House in conservative Republican hands, that the ideas have truly debuted.
Now, the reviews are in—and they are not good.
Consider President Bush's effort to sell the public on private Social-Security accounts. Last September, when he first began talking about the idea on the campaign trail, it looked like a winner, with 58 percent support in the polls. By December, only 54 percent favored his proposal. By February, following his detailed explanation of private accounts in his State of the Union address, support fell to 46 percent. And by June, when informed that private accounts would be paired with cuts in benefits for future retirees—as the president himself admitted they would have to be to have any impact on Social Security's long-run finances—27 percent of voters gave their approval, a level of support below that for legalizing marijuana and gay marriage.
Or consider another high-profile element of what Bush calls the “ownership society”: giving individuals more control over their government health-care benefits. In 2003, the president signed a landmark measure providing prescription drug coverage to Medicare recipients, with massive subsidies to lure beneficiaries into private plans. Prior to the law's passage, 90 percent of the public supported the idea of government helping seniors with drug costs. Today, a scant 31 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the new program. It's possible that, once the benefit actually goes into effect beginning next year, seniors will flock to it gratefully. But an interim effort offering seniors a choice of drug discount cards doesn't inspire confidence. Only 6.4 million seniors wound up getting the drug discount cards, a million fewer than the government predicted. Low-income seniors who signed up for the card were given an extra $600 subsidy to help defray the cost of co-pays—a benefit the government estimated would lure 4.7 million low-income seniors into the program. Only 1.9 million lower-income seniors actually did sign up.
Finally, consider the president's efforts to give parents more choice over the schools their children attend. Under Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, millions of students in failing schools can now transfer to other schools in their district. It is the grandest experiment in public-school choice ever attempted, and polls show overwhelming support for it. In practice, however, only about 1 percent of students in failing schools annually have taken advantage of the opportunity. That could mean that districts aren't eagerly publicizing the choice provisions, or that parents aren't impressed with the array of often-dysfunctional public schools they have to choose from.
That's why conservatives say the federal government should go the next step and provide students with vouchers for private schools. Yet a two-year-old federal voucher experiment in D.C. that provides low-income students a hefty $7,500 to attend private schools has garnered only modestly more interest. Only 7 percent of families with children eligible for the vouchers have applied for them.
You can begin to see a pattern here. Americans love the idea of choice—in the abstract. But when faced with the actual choices conservatives present, they aren't buying. The reason is that conservatives have constructed choices that fail to take human nature into account. People like to have choices but feel quickly overwhelmed when they lack the information or expertise to decide confidently, and they turn downright negative when the choices themselves seem to put what they already have at risk. Conservatives were bound to make these mistakes because their very aim has been to transfer more risks from government to individuals so that government's size and expenditures can be cut. That's not a bargain most Americans will accept. They like choice just fine, but they won't trade security to get it.
That's not to say individual choice and control can't be applied intelligently to government. In fact, doing so may be key to achieving important progressive aims like universal health care. But designing policies that use choice and that Americans would actually embrace won't make government weaker. Rather, it will require government to be stronger.
Dozen card monte
It's understandable that conservatives would think that giving individuals more choice and control over government services would be an easy sell. After all, consumers increasingly enjoy these things in the marketplace. Everything, from cars to computers to pastas, now comes in an astonishing array of styles, colors, and configurations. Consumers today have access to new tools that shift control to them, and the younger they are, the more comfortable they are with that control. No one under 30 these days calls a travel agent; they use Orbitz.
But as choices and individual control have expanded, economists and behavioral psychologists have begun to document some unexpected ways people actually react to these new marketplace choices. Swarthmore social theorist Barry Schwartz explored their findings in his book The Paradox of Choice. On the one hand, notes Schwartz, having control and choice clearly benefits us. People who peruse a variety of options before choosing tend to make objectively better decisions. There are important psychological benefits as well. The ability to express one's identity via the choices one makes—in everything from the clothes we wear to the charities we contribute to—greatly increases human happiness.
On the other hand, having an ever-expanding number of choices doesn't necessarily make us happier, just as bigger and bigger food portions don't make us healthier. Indeed, too many choices tend to stress us out. Even trivial choices often require expenditures of time and energy to make informed decisions. When the variables are too numerous, people often decide that the effort isn't worth it. In one study, individuals were offered tastes of six different exotic jams and given a coupon worth a dollar off any of the jams. Another group was offered a choice of 24 jams and a coupon. Those in the first group were more likely to buy jam than those in the second.
As choices have proliferated, we feel overwhelmed, as if we're losing control—the very opposite of the feeling choice is supposed to bring. These anxieties, plus the natural human tendency to procrastinate, means that most people, most of the time, respond to choices by doing nothing. They choose not to choose. The big flaw in the drug discount-card program was the complexity and incomparability of the choices it provided seniors. Had the GOP lawmakers and administration appointees who designed the program been less enamored of market principles and corporate lobbying agendas and been willing to impose stricter guidelines on the participating companies, so that the different features of the cards could be more easily compared, more seniors might have participated. After all, the program did offer Medicare recipients something they wanted and didn't have: financial help paying for prescription drugs.
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Because he's not selling.
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Because he's not selling.
>>>>
I take it to mean because Bush is a poor communicator, and had it been Reagan, the idea would have widespread popular support ??
Bla bla bla....
Well, at least I know where all those out-of-work Pravda editors ended up.
The author of this piece apparently wants us to just "listen to Big Daddy Government...He'll take care of all of your problems."
Bunk. The American people want to choose for themselves. Fear tactics of the left and the press (but I repeat myself) notwithstanding.
I think Bush needs to sell his ideas every day almost in a mini-campaign mode. I think he got lazy this year. Otherwise, I know Bush can be very effective.
I agree the article is bunk, but I think Bush needs to be more effective in communicating how good things are going.
Not just Bush - the Republican party. They just sit back and take the lies put out by the Dems. Makes me really angry.
I belong to the P\/\/N4G3$|-|1p 50c137'/
>>The reason is that conservatives have constructed choices that fail to take human nature into account.
Liberals tout concepts like "human nature" when it suits their purposes, but they deconstruct them when it does not.
I agree with the writer, however, that the nature of the mass of humanity is to hate freedom and to desire a strong state, to have limited choice in broad, abstract issues (such as how much the government is involved in the economy or education, etc) but unlimited autonomy on personal issues (such as who one sleeps with or where one shops).
We have evolved into a post-bourgeois, adolescent culture that is unconcerned with individual liberty as a good.
This is all very well for the managerial class that writes for/reads publications like Washington Monthly, but not so good for the remnant that yearns for freedom. I can only dream of a restoration, since I am nearly certain it won't happen in my lifetime.
Hey, I am in complete agreement with you. I have been cooing about this for 6 months now. Bush and the GOP have to fight back, and they have to do it every damn day, just as the democrats do. Not just one speech a month, but every damn day. It makes me angry as well. Its a disservice to the party base, the military, and the American people.
[...I think he got lazy this year...]
Lazy? Please!!! Take a look at his battles.
CIA undermining him
Social Security Reform
Tax Reform
CIA undermining him
WOT
Plamegate
Judicial Reform
Katrina
CIA undermining him
FEMA
Wilma
I'd say he's been busy. And the list goes on and on.
Oh he is sell alright. It is just that about every fourth time he opens his mouth he tries to sell us his guestworker shamnesty. It is very difficult to believe somebody, even if you know they are right, when they are blatantly trying to sell you something that you know is bad for you. Sales is about trust and every time he mentions his shamnesty, people trust him less.
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CIA Undermining Him
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Wow, it looks like a war between the CIA and the White House. But lets not forget that Bush made a little boo boo with the Harriet Miers nomination ( which to Ms Miers credit, she herself corrected ). But with Sam Alito, he's back on track.
But what about Social Security ? Not talking about the looming baby boomer retirement and the coming shortfall ain't gonna get us out of this mess.
As for Tax Reform, I am REALLY disappointed with the Connie Mack proposal. It isn't any better than what we have.
UR spnding TMT on the IM.
Yes, very lazy in the areas of PR. At one point in the Spring and Summer he made speeches about Iraq about once every 6 weeks, if that. Everyday his opponent was demonizing him as a liar about the war. Therefore, he has a 39% approval rating. Proof is in the numbers.
Bottom line is that whatever communication effort has been put forth from the White House has been amazingly ineffective.
Bottom line is that whatever communication effort has been put forth from the White House has been amazingly ineffective.
______
It's hard to get out the message when the MSM won't cover it; and, when they do cover something, they distort the heck out of it.
Early adopters or pioneers blaze the paths for others to follow. That's all.
[...CIA Undermining Him...]
I don't know what to think about the Miers nomination. I wish we could have heard her out. I trust Bush and wonder if this wasn't just a "rope a dope".
Privatizing Social Security is a good idea. I think the author of the article forgets that Communism doesn't work. More individualism, makes for a smarter civilization.
I need some education on the Connie Mack (interest rates?) proposal. We need to let the fair tax idea sink in a little. I've been talking it around a bit. Most people get it confused with the flat tax.
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