Conservative economic ideology seems to follow a basic frame:
- Anything that directly benefits the wealthy and powerful will indirectly benefit the middle class.
- Anything that directly harms the wealthy and powerful will indirectly harm the middle class
- Anything that directly benefits the middle class will indirectly harm the middle class
Basically, their entire argument on economics is based on indirect effects. Everything that directly benefits the wealthy is good, but it is good because it indirectly benefits the middle class. Anything that directly helps the middle class is bad because is indirectly hurts the middle class.
The end result is that middle class conservatives consistently support economic policies designed to directly harm them under the belief that they will see indirect benefits.
- Anything that directly benefits the wealthy and powerful will indirectly benefit the middle class.
- Anything that directly harms the wealthy and powerful will indirectly harm the middle class
- Anything that directly benefits the middle class will indirectly harm the middle class
Conservative economic ideology seems to be like this:
If you cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulate everything possible and allow unregulated mergers it will help our economy function better and create high paying jobs (1)
If you raise capital gains taxes, estate taxes, income taxes or dividend taxes it will destroy jobs. New regulations or enforcing old regulations will destroy jobs and/or businesses will pass the cost onto the consumers. (2)
If you have a minimum wage, unions, labor laws, environmental protections or consumer protections, it will cost jobs and reduce business. (3)
So this frame seems to play a big role in helping the middle class enslave themselves by telling them that if they spend their lives in service of the wealthy, they will indirectly benefit. This is no different than me telling someone else that anything that they do to benefit me will indirectly benefit them too, but anything they do to directly benefit themselves will just hurt themselves so they shouldn't even try. It is a form of exploitation that turns people into willing pawns. Devote your life to me and you will be rewarded. Eventually. Devote it to yourself and you will be harmed. Eventually.
What can be done about this? Should evidence for how this doesn't work be used? Corporate profits climbed dramatically under Bush. So did the income of the wealthy. But job creation stagnated. The 1999-2009 period was the worst in 70 years for job creation. This is despite the corporate profit levels jumping from $600 billion to 1.4 trillion, and the incomes of the superwealthy doubling while their taxes were cut.
Under Clinton, who had higher taxes on the wealthy, job creation climbed.
What is the progressive narrative/frame on this issue? Progressive values are things like fairness and egalitarianism.
In the last 30 years all the economic growth due to higher worker productivity and all the tax cuts have gone to the top 5% and corporations. They have not created new jobs or higher paying jobs, and have instead kept the money for themselves. As a result, we need higher taxes on the wealthy to encourage them to invest their money in job creation rather than keeping it for themselves. Higher taxes on the wealthy will spur the wealthy and corporations to reinvest into job creation to avoid those higher taxes.
We also need more progressive taxes and more worker protections to ensure that the benefits of the economy are spread evenly among everyone rather than congregated at the top.
Skimping on labor, consumer or environmental protections, either publicly or privately, costs more wealth than it saves. Every dollar saved by lowering consumer safety protections or environmental protections causes more than a dollar to be lost due to lower productivity, higher health spending and higher environmental damage. Trying to save a few billion by not rebuilding Katrina's levees in the 1990s cost hundreds of billions in lost productivity and property damage. Trying to save a few billion by manufacturing in China due to lower environmental standards costs China $300 billion a year in higher health costs and lowered productivity.
Every $1 that is saved from tax cuts which neglect infrastructure, or deregulation of environmental and consumer safety rules results in at least $2 in higher health spending, environmental damage and lowered productivity. Tax cuts and cutting regulation is nothing more than living on a credit card. Spend $100 on something now but pay $300 in interest over the next 10 years.
Since we have a demand based economy (70% of economic growth is consumer driven) finding ways to build and maintain a wealthy, strong middle class is paramount to creating and keeping jobs. Without demand, the economy crumbles. And a middle class full of layoffs and low wages will kill demand.
Keeping business competitive means improving infrastructure to lower costs. An educated, healthy workforce with access to inexpensive healthcare, high energy efficiency, low cost communications technology and better transportation will out compete a business full of poorly educated, unhealthy people who cannot quit or leave their jobs for fear of losing their healthcare. And a company with higher energy, transportation and communications costs will lose out to one with lower costs in those areas. So to remain competitive economically we have to invest in our transportation, energy, education and health care systems to make them world class and offer high services for low cost.
Encouraging foreign nations to raise their own labor and environmental standards will ensure that the economy works efficiently by eliminating the opportunity for corporations to 'race to the bottom'. We need strong international labor and environmental standards and movements.
That seems to be a counter frame that also takes advantage of progressive core values. This frame also accomplishes several things aside from providing a narrative to promote progressive economic beliefs:
The conservative frame is that we should ignore infrastructure, lower taxes (on the wealthy), lower regulations (that protect the middle class). A counter frame has to show how all of those things destroy far more economic growth than they could create.
The concept of 'tax cuts' has to be synonymous with living on a credit card (putting immediate benefits and gratification first and paying far more down the road due to the lack of responsible self control). Katrina is an example. Katrina was a good example of what happens with tax cuts. You save $5 billion now (by not investing in infrastructure) by causing $500 billion in property damage and lost productivity down the road. That isn't even including the psychological damage, which you can't put a number on. So is deregulation of financial industries. You deregulate them so they can make an extra $1 in profit, bu they end up costing the US $10 in lowered productivity as a result of that $1. Living on a credit card with 100%+ APR.
Progressives have been at the forefront of every effort to make our society more egalitarian, fair, just, inclusive and sustainable. Any attempt to expand the social, legal, economic & political sphere and make them more inclusive and fair was supported by progressives and opposed by conservatives.
Progressives wanted to give the elderly pensions and healthcare. We wanted to give women the right to vote. We wanted to abolish child labor. We wanted to combat police brutality. We wanted to give minorities rights.
Conservatives wanted to stop us in each of these things. But they failed, even if it took 100 years to defeat them (like it did with child labor). As a result we have social security, medicare, women's suffrage, the 1938 fair labor standards act and various laws to stop brutality and promote civil rights.
But they still want to roll back these advances. They want to privatize or eliminate social security and medicare. They want to roll back women's and minorities rights. The Bush admin's department of labor didn't investigate child labor abuses (according to Thomas Frank). They want to allow for more government oppression and brutality.
Conservatives have to be portrayed as irresponsible, incapable of self control, always on the wrong side of history (and the future), pawns of wealthy oligarchs,
Do progressives have a strong frame? Lakoff said that Dean was a huge fan of his work, and he (Lakoff) said Obama had tons of potential to encapsulate these frames (this was back in 2004). But it seems Obama doesn't do as good of a job of promoting progressive frames as he did as a senator.
Either way, improving our message to take advantage of frames (rather than issues) is important to affecting beliefs and opinions of voters.