Every political movement eventually reveals what it truly believes, not by the ideals it professes, but by the costs it is willing to bear. The modern American Left insists that universal health care, subsidized college, generous paid parental leave, government-funded childcare, and an ever-growing catalogue of government benefits are not merely desirable but morally imperative. And we’d have all of those things, of course, if not for those rascally Republicans!
Actually, no. We’d have all of those things if the people who want programs like that were willing to pay for them themselves. The Left’s greatest obstacle is not conservative opposition, but rather its own unwillingness to finance its own ideas. Because the Left does not want to bear the costs itself — even though they insist that these programs all somehow pay for themselves — they demand that their preferred programs be universal and compulsory, requiring everyone else to pay for benefits they may neither want nor use. If progressives were willing to fund their own priorities with the people who share them, they could implement many of those ideas without demanding that the entire country participate.
Notice here the peculiarity of a political movement that describes its ideas as overwhelmingly beneficial, economically transformative, morally indispensable, and so obviously superior in every way, yet refuses to finance those ideas with the people who believe in them. If universal health care is truly superior to the private alternatives, if subsidized college creates widespread prosperity, if generous paid leave strengthens families, then why must millions of Americans who reject those priorities be compelled to participate in and pay for them? Let the people who want them pay for them, and leave everyone else alone. You want Medicare for All? Wonderful! Create the program, and have it paid for exclusively by the people who actually want to participate in it. If it’s so wonderful, you’ll have no shortage of people signing up. Same with paid family leave, or subsidized college, or whatever other great idea you have that you want to impose on others. Simply create the program, let people sign up, and tax those people accordingly. You’re upset that USAID was cut? Donate the money! What’s stopping you?
The United States is one of the most politically, culturally, economically, and philosophically diverse societies ever assembled. We routinely celebrate that diversity when it concerns religion, culture, ethnicity, or lifestyle. Yet when the conversation turns to economic policy, the Left insists on federalizing everything with a one-size-fits-all model. Rather than leave such things to the state and local levels, or better yet, individual choice, we are told there must be one health care system, one parental leave policy, one retirement system, one college financing system, one labor model, and one tax structure into which every American must be enrolled, regardless of whether they agree with it. Diversity, it seems, is admirable until someone wishes to diversify.
But why should that be so? If these proposed programs are so wonderful and cost-effective, then create them for those who want them and those who want them can pay for them.
This should present no obstacle. Half of this country is Democratic — fully 75 million Americans voted for Kamala Harris, a population larger than France or Britain, both of which finance large welfare states — and we are told this is the smarter, more educated, more professionally successful half. These are the wealthy blue-staters, after all, who pay for all the benefits of the unwashed red-staters! Surely, then, there is no shortage of wealth among them to redistribute to finance these programs, nor any shortage of people among whom to redistribute it. And if these programs really do pay for themselves, as we’re so often told, then such redistribution shouldn’t even be necessary! Either way, these affluent Americans should have no difficulty paying for their own priorities, and please, I ask that they do so absent any sense of obligation to include those of us who are insufficiently aware of our own best interests. Let us suffer from our own bad decisions. We’ll never learn otherwise.
The great thing about America is that we don’t have to agree, and there is nothing inherently objectionable about Americans choosing different social arrangements. Some people may happily exchange higher taxes for more generous public benefits. Others may prefer lower taxes and greater personal responsibility. Some businesses may decide that six weeks of vacation, or four-day workweeks, are excellent investments in employee retention and productivity. Others may choose to compensate workers differently. A large, pluralistic republic should have room for these competing visions of the good life. What it should not require is that every disagreement be resolved by compelling one side to finance the preferences of the other, especially since one side is apparently standing in the way of progress.
Except that side is not the Right; it’s the Left. They’re standing in their own way because of their own refusal to support their own policies.
If progressives genuinely believe their policies represent the future, they should have the confidence to build them with the people who already agree. If the results are every bit as extraordinary as promised, others will undoubtedly choose to follow. That’s democracy. But if the programs cannot succeed without first conscripting millions of unwilling participants to finance them, then perhaps the greatest obstacle to their progress has never been conservative resistance at all, but that progressives themselves have never quite believed in their own ideas.
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