Yeesh. I think I am developing a better understanding of why the conservative backlash narrative works so well. People on the losing side of major legislative and electoral battles in America really do have a habit of calling the winners stupid. When discussing the defeat of the bailout today, the pundit tone on television was almost universally patronizing, sneering disbelief. This even though the pundits were talking about members of Congress who almost all have advanced degrees, who all were democratically elected by hundreds of thousands of people, who acted under enormous stress and in opposition to all available leadership, and who by virtually every available measure are all really, very successful, hard working, people who work in public service. And yet, the disbelief as to how this group of Neanderthals would dare to put the country in such a grim position by daring to vote against this bailout is surely a sign of not only idiocy, but of the failure of the democratic process itself.
After being told at least two dozen times today that my opposition to the bailout is not valid because I don't have enough college credit in economics, I think a few things need to be said. I say them in the extended entry.
There are literally hundreds of Ph.D. economists on every side of the bailout argument. There are hundreds of economists who agree with the bailout, as is. There are hundreds of economists who agree with the House Republicans. There are hundreds of economists who don't think anything should be done. There are hundreds of economists who agree with the progressives. There are hundreds of economists who agreed with Paulson, and Bush, and Frank, and Dodd, and pretty much everyone involved with this argument.
Having an advanced degree does let you realize the foundational truth that the public lacks. In fact, in my experience of six years in graduate school, people with advanced degrees actually disagree with each other more than do people without advanced degrees. I believe in study, research and increasing your understanding of the world, but opinions do not narrow when people study more. Graduate students do not all slowly come to see eye to eye as they approach the end of their coursework. Increased study does not necessarily lead you to the right opinion--it just leads you toward a more informed opinion. And being right and being more informed are by no means the same thing.
Further, it is important to remember that no one understands something as complicated as the economy. While certainly there degrees of understanding, the truth is that the highest level of understanding of the economy ever attained by any human is still pretty frackin' puny relative to the ginormous scope of the subject matter. Just as it is important to study, it is important to always demonstrate humility about our understanding of pretty much everything. Keep in mind, for example, that humans who live now are just as smart as we were 50,000 years ago, but it still took 48,000 years for even the smartest of humans to guess that the world we inhabited that entire time was actually a sphere. And it took another 1,500 years to actually prove it.
I have a word of friendly, concern troll advice to all those who lose electoral or legislative battles in a democratic system: don't talk down to the winners. This applies in pretty much any electoral or legislative situation, and not just in the specific case of the bailout. You didn't lose because your opponents are dumb. You lost because you failed to convince enough people you were right. That is actually a failing on your part, not of your opponents. In this specific case, it is a massive failing on the part of the people who supported the bailout. They had both presidential candidates, the leadership of both parties in both branches of Congress, virtually the entire national media, and all of the moneyed interests in their corner, and they still couldn't convince a majority of either the public or congressional backbenchers that it was a good idea. If you ask me, that is actually pretty frackin' pathetic. Some might even wonder if there is a fundamental stupidity at the core of this proposal if, with virtually all the levers of public influence supporting it, the majority of the country still thinks it is a bad idea.
Besides, if there is one subject where everyone in America is something of an expert, it is the economy. Everyone is forced to live in it, everyday, and so we all have on the job training and experience in how it works. To then tell people that their lifetime of experience is not enough for them to hold a valid opinion on how it should be fixed is only bound to increase their resentment of you, and thus their opposition to your policies.
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