Is it Immoral to Disagree with Paul Krugman?
He Thinks So
A few days after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot, President Obama delivered a speech in which he urged Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Paul Krugman, the columnist for the NYTimes, responded with a column entitled “A Tale of Two Moralities” (Jan. 13, 2011). His piece is remarkable, although not for anything good.
In answer to the president’s plea, Mr. Krugman protests that listening carefully to each other will reveal only how far apart we are. This is because “the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues…it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs about what constitutes justice.”
Here is the key difference, according to Mr. Krugman. “One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state…morally superior to the capitalism…we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate. The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft…There’s no middle ground between these views.”
Nowhere in the article does Mr. Krugman identify a single person who has publicly expressed the view that taxing the affluent to help the needy amounts to theft; I am not aware of any public official or candidate for public office who has expressed that view. Still, at least in Mr. Krugman’s world, the great divide is between those who believe it is morally right to help the needy and those who don’t. “Regular readers of this column,” Mr. Krugman observes “know which side of that divide I’m on.” Of course, Mr. Krugman’s side is the truly moral side. Is it immoral to disagree with Mr. Krugman about the welfare state? Although he is too humble to say so explicitly, his answer must be “yes”.
But perhaps Mr. Krugman is mistaken. Maybe it’s possible to take the view that the welfare state should be shrunk or at least not expanded, not because one believes that the welfare state is necessarily supported by theft, but for other reasons that might actually be moral, even in Mr. Krugman’s view. It might be the case that the “divide” Mr. Krugman perceives is a function of nothing other than the narrowness of his moral imagination—just the kind of narrowness Mr. Obama warned against in his address to the nation.
A person might be in favor of shrinking, or against expanding, the welfare state, even if she believed that the affluent have a moral duty to help the needy, if she also believed: (a) that private organizations, rather than the government, are better vehicles for delivering aid to the needy, or (b) that the affluent already give their fair share (or more) to aid the needy, or (c) that there are other problems the nation currently faces, including the growing federal debt and concerns about the soundness of the dollar, that must take precedence for some period of time over maintaining or expanding the welfare state. The first alternative provides a perfectly coherent, reasonable ground for abolishing the welfare state and replacing it with private initiatives and organizations. The second and third alternatives provide coherent, reasonable grounds for objecting to the expansion of the welfare state. None of the alternatives relies on the view that “taxation is theft.”
The people who drafted our Constitution worried about what they saw as the natural tendency of the governing class to always expand its sphere of power. They took strenuous efforts to limit the power of government. Those limits were more or less observed and respected until the New Deal, but the New Deal marked a sea change.
Today, there is virtually no problem or concern that people on the left, such as Mr. Krugman, think should not be dealt with by federal regulation. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) has introduced federal legislation that would require producers of bottled water to specify on the label the source of the water. To such people, it is almost inconceivable that charitable organizations could minister to the needy, but this is a failure of their moral imaginations—it is not a result that follows from any principle that taxation is theft.
Moreover, even those who believe most fervently that the affluent should aid the needy would have to acknowledge that, at some point, the affluent will have given enough. How much is enough? Mr. Krugman no doubt is certain that he knows exactly the right amount, but those of us mortals who are less confident of our omniscience will sometimes be puzzled. Is it immoral to extend the Bush tax cuts for the highest income brackets? If a person believes that failure to extend those tax cuts will inhibit job growth (because taxes on those most likely to create new jobs will go up), is he immoral? For someone with the mind of a grown-up, this would be a silly question; for Mr. Krugman, the answer certainly is “yes”.
If the unfunded future obligations of the welfare state become so enormous that they begin to threaten the soundness of the dollar and the solvency of the federal government, is that a reason to decrease, or at least not expand, the size of the welfare state? Under such circumstances, would it be immoral to take such a view?
Abraham Lincoln once said, “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Yet, notwithstanding this univocal moral view, Lincoln’s first inaugural address is essentially a pledge that his administration would maintain slavery where it then existed, provided only that it not be expanded into new states or territories. So, in Lincoln’s view, even a moral wrong (slavery) could be accepted, if there were a more important end (preservation of the union) that required that acceptance. Surely it might be proper not to expand a moral good (aiding the needy), if the postponement is meant to ensure an even more important good (the continued solvency of the federal government). Again, no reliance on the principle that taxation is theft is necessary.
It must be a very comforting thing to know, as Mr. Krugman knows, that your political views are grounded on correct moral principles, while the views of your opponents are grounded on immoral principles. One would not need to listen to the asserted “reasons” proffered by one’s opponents; what “reasons” could justify immoral positions? Mr. Krugman is on the side of the angels, and those who disagree with him are on the side of…. Well, they are on a different side. Here we have a prominent columnist for a major national newspaper asserting a position that might be amusing if it were asserted by a child. Mr. Krugman ought to re-read Mr. Obama’s speech.
