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Originally Posted by spence
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This article, claiming to be an objective, empirical, study is basically a selective statistical apologetic for what you might call "old news." It is an attempt to validate government hegemony above individual effort. There is no evaluation of cultural differences and their impact; no weight given to economic disparity
within minority groups and the individual efforts therein creating the intra-group income inequality as well as the unequal status and health due to individual differences therein.
It is a "study" that promotes egalitarian group think. That is evident toward the beginning when it states that "The Republican Party’s efforts to end slavery under Abraham Lincoln are the most obvious example of one party favoring a more racially egalitarian agenda than the other party." That is a subtle twist which casts Lincoln's abolishment of slavery as something it was not. It was not about egalitarianism. It was about liberty. Abe did not think blacks were "equal" to whites in an egalitarian sense, but that they should be so before the law.
And it is a testimonial for a "democracy" which is propped up by the Progressive version of an Administrative State. It gives lip service to Congress and the Courts, but lays the power of guiding the state almost exclusively in the hands of the chief administrator, the President. It rightly avoids our idea of a Constitutional Republic, because that obviously is not about the equality of groups, rather it is about unalienable rights of individuals. He says "We focus on the President because that office stands at the top of American Democracy." He claims that " The extent of Presidential power is an open question. . . There is a long-standing debate about the relative influence of Congress and the President." He claims a long-standing debate and bows to a hierarchy neither of which exist in our Constitution.
And the President he says, importantly for his thesis, is the head of a Political Party. He curiously says "The political parties created democracy." And that parties serve interests. This is the very factionalism that the Founders warned against and whose influence Madison said would be nullified because their large number and diversity would work against each other. But the two party system changes that as it subsumes the diverse factions and creates the binary factional war that could, as the Founders warned, destroy the Republic.
He attributes the closing of gaps between groups to Party policies. He says "Because the kinds of redistributional efforts (e.g.) taxing and spending tend to fluctuate extensively from administration to administration, they are, in our opinion, among the most logical sources of minority gains and losses across different administrations." That is, it is government redistributive policies, not cultural nor even individual differences within and between groups that determine the well-being of "groups." That is, dependence on government is the key to success. And the right President, the right Administration, will provide that for us.
The author says, "The more we can do to link minority outcomes to specific policy measures, the more we will be able to help disadvantaged minorities. In an age of growing inequality and sharp racial divisions in the vote, it is imperative that we use our research capacities 'to scrutinize the health of our democracy' and to look for avenues to restore its vitality"
It is amazing that our "democracy" has lost its vitality in spite of all the past policy measures. Maybe it is a because of them?
The article ends "If voters cannot tell whom government has helped and whom it has hurt, they will not know which party to reward and which to punish. . . . By assessing the relative gains and losses of different groups under competing regimes, scholars can contribute substantially to a healthy democracy."
It is the "competing regimes" and the scholars who assess them, that we (as "groups") must depend on--for a healthy democracy. But if a democracy is rule by majority, isn't it the perspective of that majority that determines what is healthy? And isn't that the rub in democracy? The majority determines who to reward and who to punish. If Latinos, as projected, become the majority, will they try to equalize the gaps, or use their power for advantage? Isn't individual liberty a better goal than group egalitarianism?