Take the test to see whether you are what you think you are, then give it to a friend of the opposite persuasion. You may find you agree on more than you thought.
Quick, without looking at the answers – or at what your favorite pundit is saying - how would you answer the following questions:
- Is being opposed to rescuing the big financial institutions a Progressive or Conservative position? (Circle your response) P C
- Is wanting America to become (more) Energy Self-Sufficient a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is being in favor of expanding the Space Program a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is being in favor of winding down America’s involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is supporting the family farm vs. supporting large agribusiness a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is supporting Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is supporting a check on the Executive and Legislative branches by the Judicial branch a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is supporting the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act in favor of returning to the Constitutional provision in Article 1, Section 8, which says "The Congress shall have the power...to coin money, regulate the value thereof (instead of the Federal Reserve)" a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is being in favor of a strong National Parks system, wherein the Parks are preserved for recreational use, kept clean and safe, and not for commercial development a Progressive or Conservative position?
- Is being in favor of strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is being in support of a strong and well-funded Veteran’s Administration system for the health needs of ex-soldiers a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is wanting to preserve Medicare and Social Security for future generations a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is wanting to provide deficit-neutral health coverage for the 46 million uninsured Americans, by, for example, cutting waste and abuse in health care delivery, a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is wanting to balance the Federal budget a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
- Is being in support of monitored, open, and verifiable Elections a Progressive or Conservative position? P C
Wait, we’re not done yet. Whether you identify yourself as progressive or conservative, please find some friends or family who identify themselves as the opposite from you to take this test.
You may be surprised at how close your answers are to each other. For example, on question 14, Conservatives and Progressives may both want to end the deficit spending that’s ballooned since Ronald Reagan – though Conservatives want to do it typically by cutting spending, and Progressives want to do it typically by collecting taxes from the more affluent.
I think Conservatives will be surprised how many Progressives support a strong space program (#3) – as long as it is demilitarized – while Progressives will be surprised at how many Conservatives are in favor of supporting the Family Farm (#5).
So yes, we may disagree on the methods of obtaining the goals, but we can still agree on the actual goals.
Then what is going on here? Why are we shouting at each other in the media, in the streets, and in person? Could it be that we are not so divided as we think, or even that we have a common enemy, something that we can agree to dislike?
Here is another question to help clarify things:
A. Do you agree with the following statement: America should be a country where anyone can work hard and honestly, and get a better life for themselves and their families? Yes No
Now, a slight variation on this question:
B. Is America a country where anyone can work hard and honestly, and get a better life for themselves and their families? Yes No
I can’t see your answers, but I am willing to bet more of you answered yes to the first question than to the second. In fact, the majority of answers might even be flipped. This is bad. This means the American Dream – paraphrased in questions A and B above, has come into serious question.
Why? Well, take a look at the your answers to questions 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15 and that of your friends’ of opposite political identification. Discuss. Does a common theme something like the following come up: ordinary people do not have the same opportunities and rights as certain very wealthy people and corporations in America today? That is, do you and your friends who identify themselves as from the opposite political spectrum agree that something is just not quite right in the system (anymore)? Perhaps you are not so opposite after all. Perhaps there really is more that unites us than divides us. I’ll leave it to you to decide to whose advantage it is to make us think we have less in common than we do (Politicians? Media (including those pundits with vocal opinions on TV)? Big Corporations (who maybe make us act against our own self-interests in order to preserve their profits)?)
Arianna Huffington – she of the ‘left,’ whatever that means anymore – has said repeatedly that there are no longer right/left issues, there are special-elites-with-vast-power vs. the rest-of-us issues. Now, before you accuse me of being anti-rich, let me ask you another question:
Is there a moral difference from someone who becomes rich by creating a ‘better mousetrap’ (e.g. a way to charge an electric car in 5 minutes and get 300 miles on a charge, a cure for cancer, an inexpensive, clean, renewable energy source etc.) vs. someone who lives off the wealth of the ‘land’ (land/oil/monopoly-on-money-making or loaning) or his ancestor’s fortune? Or, to put it more generally, is it OK to get rich from the results of your own labor, but not OK to get rich from monopolizing resources (land/water/commodities like oil, coal etc.) while simply profiting from the increase in cost due to scarcity resulting from monopolization, or simply inheriting a fortune without working for it? Yes No
This is a more complicated question, so take your time. But, if you answered Yes, you might want to consider if there is another way America should reward its citizens. Some way that supports the innovation and productivity that springs from the Free Market of ideas, while at the same time, doesn’t reward people who have ‘gamed the system’ through laws or connections, while not really producing anything of value (note: if you think gathering enormous stock options, or profiting from providing borrowers with loans they ultimately could not repay – even if those borrowers should not have taken them out - or simply convincing legislatures to grant your special group lower taxes because you contributed more to their campaigns – are somehow a measure of ‘value,’ then stop here. Put the test down).
See a pattern yet? Americans, perhaps all civilized people, believe in rewarding someone who works hard and honestly to get ahead, but not in rewarding someone who just gets ahead by manipulating laws and the system, or monopolizes resources and excludes others. Perhaps you believe that parents should be able to leave their children something when they die but that it should be, in the words of Warren Buffet, "Enough to do anything they want, but not enough to do nothing at all."
What kind of system would let you have it both ways? Well, it turns out there is such an economic system, and it has been around for 130 years, but going back in a more diffuse form for thousands of years. It’s called Georgism, named after the political economist, Henry George, who said ‘tax the use (and abuse) of the world’s resources, but not the results of production (wages, capital).’ What would this do? It would:
A. Spur innovation and productivity
B. End speculation by taking away the 'fuel' for it
C. Eliminate most poverty by freeing up natural resources now lying idle and 'owned' by speculators just waiting for the price to go up
D. Eliminate urban sprawl (see C. above)
E. Reduce squandering of scarce natural resources by taxing them at their true, market-determined, value (we have a whole army of land and resource 'assessors' whose job it is to determine the raw value of land, oil, water, copper etc. and if that doesn't work, we can just hold an auction)
F. Reduce (greatly) pollution by treating clean air, clean water, clean land, as a natural, and finite resource, and not as something nature provides for 'free' or as an externality that business does not have to account for in their balance sheet. Whether pollution is accounted for or not in a business balance sheet is irrelevant to the cost, because someone pays -right now, that is the taxpayer, or perhaps in the case of people living in Appalachia, or Tennessee, the people living near coal mining companies, for example.
G. End most forms of debt, which are really based on speculators cashing in due to (unrightful) ownership of land. After all, J.P. Morgan or Wells Fargo did not create the land, did they? Why should they profit from writing a mortgage upon it? Sure, you can borrow to build a home, but that cost is typically much, much smaller than the cost of the underlying land. Think of it this way: imagine a brand new home being built in central Kansas, where land is cheap. What would the cost of that be for just the home, taking out the cost of land? Maybe $40,000. Now, imagine the cost of building that home in midtown Manhattan - it's actually the same cost. You might be saying that no one could afford to build a home like that in midtown Manhattan, but that is because of the high cost of land, not the home itself. Where people are concentrated, as George recognized, the cost of land goes up.
OK, this is a bit more than I promised at the beginning of the article, but remember the test at the beginning, and consider that the common opponent of both Progressives and Conservatives may be the same: the Monopolizers of resources – natural, but also including political power. Now, knowing that it is not the country that is poor, it is the people (or, at least, too many of the people), where should our focus lie? Should we spend our time making largely false accusations at people we have allowed others to label as different from us, or at the real source of the problem, the 1% of the people who own 90% or the country’s wealth, via a monopoly and not from production (which cannot provide that kind of wealth alone)? Maybe we should return to that question I discarded earlier after all: In whose interest is it that we fight against each other and not against...them?