who needs experts

     I'm retired, so I have a lot of time to read.  I'm also kind of an information junkie, so most of what I read is stuff about what's going on in the world.  In my last blog I talked about "motivational reasoning" and the tendency we all have to seek out the facts that support the conclusions we've already formed.

     I'm as guilty of that as the next guy, I'm sure, but in my reading, I try very hard not to be.  I'm pretty much what you might call an "equal opportunity" reader; if I see a title or headline or caption that suggests content having to do with the state of our world, I read it.  Sometimes I find the material to be conservative in its perspective, sometimes progressive.

     I mention this because there are three broad categories of subject matter that are commonly referred to in popular media as "controversial" or "hotly debated" or "politically divisive" that, when you read the literature pertinent to each subject, are in fact none of those things.  The three subjects are these: budget deficit, global climate change, and tax reduction.

     On the budget deficit, most everyone agrees that less of a deficit would be a good thing.  In the literature  of the field, one finds honest and intellectually intriguing differences of opinion as to how much less deficit should be sought, but virtually no one argues that the level of spending v. revenue imbalance the federal government experiences now is a good thing or even a sustainable thing.  That's what you find in the literature.

    When you move to the political arena, however, the "hot debate" and "controversy" centers on how the budget deficit should be lessened and what level of priority doing so should be given, and here there is a stark contrast between what is said by many in the halls of congress and what is said in the literature.

      Political conservatives say the deficit should be reduced to zero (i.e. expenditures and revenues should be exactly equal), that reduction should happen as immediately as possible, and it should be accomplished entirely by reductions in spending.  Federal revenues not only should not be increased (by raising or adding taxes), they should in fact be decreased (by reducing or eliminating taxes).

     Political progressives say the deficit should be reduced, but not necessarily to zero, that accomplishing that reduction should not be the only priority (economic stimulus should have co-equal focus), and that reduction should be accomplished by a combination of spending cuts and revenue enhancements.

     In general, the media has treated this as a legitimate debate, one in which there are solidly defensible points on both sides.  Here's where what's in the literature becomes both relevant, and, in a way, confusing.

     Let me make clear before proceeding what I mean by "the literature."  I'm not talking here about what's in Forbes or The Nation--house organs both.  I'm talking about what's in the journal articles, monographs, essays, interviews etc. put out by people who have studied economics extensively and in many cases worked in areas that influence how budget deficits occur or are influenced by the existence of budget deficits.  As a collective, these folks would be called economists.

     When you look at the literature thus defined, what you discover is that easily 90% of it says a certain level of budget deficit at the federal level is not only unavoidable, it's necessary.  The current level of deficit, these economists agree, is not sustainable and needs to be reduced.  They also agree that focussing entirely on budget reduction and ignoring economic stimulus (mostly in the form of job creation) is short-sighted.  They further agree that reducing budget deficits solely by cutting spending is intrinsically self-defeating.  The two ideas taken together (sole focus on budget reduction accomplished solely by cutting spending) is rather like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

     That is all pretty consonant with the progressive position in the political arena.  If you simply read the expert literature, you have to wonder why the media says there is a controversy.  More to the point, you wonder why there are politicians who take such factually unsupported positions, and wonder even more pointedly perhaps why they have constituents who allow them to.

     The same kind of dichotomy exists with respect to climate change.  If you read the literature, even that portion (small) of it that was tainted by "climategate," probably more than 90% of it makes it very clear that the climate is warming globally to degrees that can't be explained by purely natural phenomena, and that unless humanity does what it can to at least stop exacerbating the problem, very significant physical and geo-political damage is going to result.

      Again, you read the literature, you wonder why the media keeps referring to the "global warming debate."  Among 90% of the people who study climate for a living, the only real debate is what we need to do in the face of a currently on-going process and how quickly we need to do it.  Still politicians, most of them on one side of the aisle, thumb their collective noses at expert advice and garner cheers from their followers for doing so.

     Without question, the "politically divisive" issue that is the most confounding when one examines the expert literature is the notion that reducing federal taxes increases federal revenue.  Those of you old enough will remember the late '70's when an economist named Arthur Laffer began promulgating what he called the Laffer Curve--a graph that indicated how cutting taxes would stimulate economic growth and thereby grow government revenues.  Ronald Reagan adopted the Laffer Curve as dogma and used it to justify the massive tax cut he engineered in 1982.  Three years later, Reagan was forced to at least tacitly admit that the Laffer curve was indeed a laugher and raise taxes to prevent Washington from plunging into what was then regarded as too deep a budget hole.

     Economic growth declined again after George H.W. Bush cut taxes in 1989, causing him to swallow his "read my lips" pledge and raise them again.  Refusing to be guided by his father's experience, George W. Bush pushed through the major tax cut we are presently living with, and the economy tanked again.

     What again 90% of the literature makes clear is that lowering tax rates, individual or corporate, has no demonstrable effect on economic stability or growth.  It doesn't create jobs, it doesn't expand markets, it doesn't foster innovation.  It does create wealth, but only for those already in the highest income brackets.

     So you read the literature and you have to ask yourself, where's the beef?

     Well, it's mostly to be found in that other 10% of the literature.  When it first started occurring to me a year or so ago that despite my field of dreams approach to informative literature (if you write it, I will read), I was very rarely coming across material that denied (or even doubted) climate change, that argued the budget could (and should be quickly) balanced simply by cutting enough programs, or that the best way to stimulate the economy was to cut taxes.  Who were these writers, I wondered, who seemed so out of step with the vast majority of their colleagues?

     So, I started investigating.  I wasn't particularly surprised by the existence of what I found, but I was badly discouraged by the credence and the influence it seemed to generate.  What I found was that a very high percentage of those rare contrarian pieces I found were written under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or other lesser known conservative "think tanks" funded--and in some cases founded--by conservative scions like the Coors or Busch families (what is it about beer makers?) or the Koch brothers.

      I've known of the existence of these outfits for a long time of course, but when I did a little research on them, I discovered that buying "expert" opinion to support their political agenda has from the beginning been their objective.  If you come across an article denying climate change, you can pretty well take it to the bank that its author is directly or indirectly on the payroll of AEI or Heritage or one of their cousins.  These outfits aren't "think tanks" so much as "motivational reasoning" tanks.  They don't support scholarship aimed at finding truth; they support scholarship aimed at defending a particular truth.

     What's sad is that the media treats the paid for ministrations of Heritage Foundation hacks as legitimate science.  And that allows politicians to use the material the hacks churn out as justification for their particular political agenda.  And what's saddest of all is that we the public accept the notion that there is an actual  controversy among real experts over climate change, or that there is some legitimacy to the claim that lowering taxes raises revenue, or that it's even possible to balance a federal budget without increasing revenue AND lowering spending.

     This is a democracy and I wouldn't have it any other way.  But having to live in a country dominated by people and politicians who willfully ignore facts and objective scientific inquiry is a real bummer.