Mona Charen Oct 18^th

Mona Charen has a column today which instructs us that capitalism is the savior of the poor. The poor, thus far, aren’t impressed. Many ardent capitalist politicians are eager to cut programs designed to help the poor, programs which these capitalists fervently believe are actually hurting them. Given this attitude, which is widespread, it will be difficult to convince poor people that they are better off without Medicaid, food stamps and rent assistance. Of course not all of the right wing politicians push against these programs: Governor Kasich of Ohio, who was roundly abused for extending Medicaid in his state, commented that, “When I get to the pearly gates I am going to have to answer for what I’ve done for the poor.”  The result of Kasich’s benevolence was that the Americans for Prosperity which had their convention in Ohio, Kasich’s home state refused to invite him to attend, all  on account of his episode of Christian charity. Mona doesn’t understand what a tough job she has to get poor people to believe that capitalists have their best interests at heart.

Mona is in attack mode against Bernie Sanders. Then she writes two consecutive sentences that contradict each other: First she writes that, “Bernie Sanders thunders that the U.S. can become a good Scandinavian style socialist paradise—but without the huge taxes on the middle class that supports those systems. (Denmark has the highest taxes in the world.) Sanders may be disillusioned to discover that Scandinavians have thriving private sectors and are in many respects  more business friendly than the United States.”

Wow! So the highest taxes in the world go with thriving private sectors that are in many respects more business friendly than the United States. Mona, what are you saying here? It seems you are telling us that very high taxes needed to pay for good social programs are not a hindrance to thriving private sectors. Glad you agree with Bernie about this!

Then Mona uses some clever gimmicks to show that individual incomes, even if heavily taxed, cannot pay the cost of all of Bernie’s programs. Notice that she doesn’t include business and corporate taxes, just an oversight I’m sure. Nor is there any mention of a wealth tax on the enormous private fortunes some folks have squirreled away.

She points out that some companies previously doing well are now bankrupt and that some people previously rich are not as rich ten years later. “Of those in the lowest quintile in 1996 more than half had moved up ten years later.” Good Heavens! Mona has rediscovered regression to the mean first described by Sir Francis Galton over a hundred years ago. There is more operating here than simple regression: Pick any group of high earners and ten years later many will have retired or partially retired and, as a group, will certainly be earning less money. Income increases with age up to a point and then declines, so low earners questioned ten years later will surely be further along in their earning/income cycle. Only an attorney with no background in statistics or in sociology could find this surprising. Or conclude as Mona seems to, that poor people should just be patient; eventually they’ll be rich!