You have to admire someone who can decry the oversimplification of his views on the one hand, and then write something like, "The conservative requires you to have faith in God, the liberal replaces "God" with "the state" or "society" [The Dartmouth, "A Few Good (Straw) Men: Part II," Oct. 21]. Robert Sutton fancies himself so ingenious and insightful, he thinks that he alone has pierced through the intellectual haze the government has placed around modern political issues. In reality, the unpopularity of Sutton's world view can be attributed to a far more mundane cause. Simply put, for the first 150 years of this country's existence, its economy was guided by precisely the laissez-faire values Sutton so admires. The result was a culture so steeped in misery that the people demanded a more interventionist government.
Many of Sutton's individual arguments can be dismissed easily. Concerning the minimum wage he writes, "Moreover, the need to pay higher wages to newcomers will make businesses much less likely to hire people, making it far harder for those on welfare or unemployment to find jobs." This is false. President Clinton raised the minimum wage during his first term. The unemployment rate went down. Several years ago the state of New Jersey decided to set its minimum wage higher than the federal requirement. They did this despite protests that the result would be a corporate exodus from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, a state with a cheaper labor force. The feared exodus never occurred. The fact is that raises in the minimum wage have never had a long term impact on unemployment.
Later Sutton describes the heartwarming story of how thousands of starving children took advantage of jobs offered by magnanimous factories at the turn of the century to lift themselves out of poverty. "Child labor ended," he writes, "not because of some law but because families no longer needed it." This is dishonest. The reason child labor is less important today than in the past is that government decided to provide free food to poor people (through food stamps), free medical care (through Medicaid) and a free education (through the public schools). His assertion that some nebulous working of the market led to higher wages and better working conditions completely ignores the efforts of labor unions in that direction. As for his contention that child labor laws simply create black-market industries for industrious children, there is no need to theorize. We passed child labor laws, no black market resulted.
And Sutton takes a flying leap off the logical deep end when he writes, "By eliminating the concept of 'reputation,' government intervention ... has only made things worse." This is absurd. Is he really suggesting that because food producers are forced to adhere to minimum standards they no longer care about their reputations? That some impure food still makes it to market is a non sequitur. Laws against murder have not eliminated it. Shall we eliminate murder laws? The claim that these standards have made things worse is factually untrue. Far fewer people get ill from eating impure food today than before food standards were enacted. I defy Sutton to provide any evidence that people were eating higher quality food before the standards existed.
And so it goes. He suggests that the popularity of religion is the result of confused people not being exposed to enough anti-religious views to make a rational decision. He argues that the market will force companies to offer handicapped parking and spurn racism, despite the fact that most corporations did neither until the government forced them to. He attributes the high child mortality rate at the turn of the century to starvation and lack of money, ignoring such factors as disease, unsafe living and working conditions and (dare I say?) impure food.
Sutton makes precisely one claim that really merits debate. He writes, "I do not believe ... that one man's need gives him a moral claim on another man's ability." I would argue that in many cases it does, but ultimately this is beside the point. Much of my time and treasure will be lost to poverty regardless of anything the government does. My health insurance is more expensive because there are poor people. I have to endure a longer commute to work because there are no safe living spaces in the city. The productivity lost from having so many people living on the street means higher prices and fewer choices in the market. I find all of these things far more annoying than the thought that the government is redistributing a few of my hard-earned pennies to places where they will do more good. If Sutton would turn that highly rational and logical mind of his to the reality of poverty, he would see where his self-interest really lies.
It is simply absurd for Sutton to believe that in a world as interconnected as ours anyone can truly exist as an island of individualism. I suspect that Sutton and his ilk might enjoy living in a world governed by their own contradictions. His mistake is in believing that anyone else would like it.
