Unfashionable

Dean Baker brought up some interesting—but unpopular—ideas.

The Peace Monument and the United States Capitol.

“How are important ideas excluded from the national conversation in the US?”

“I think that any analysis of the media would demonstrate the obvious, which is that Baker’s ‘genuinely unfashionable’ opinions are ‘almost never given a fair hearing’.”

“It’s up to the activists to widen and expand and unchain the national conversation—there’s no reason to tolerate the ‘veiled censorship’ that silences criticism.”

I just wanted to do a short little piece on some interesting policy ideas that Dean Baker has advanced.

Baker laid out—in a 10 July 2022 tweet thread—which of his policy ideas he thought were the most unpopular in policy circles. He listed the following policy ideas and the following reasons why each policy idea is unpopular among policy types:

• (1) “Free-market prescription drugs”—this would “allow new drugs to be sold as cheap generics from the day they are approved by the FDA, saving hundreds of billions annually in drug expenditures”

• “the pharmaceutical industry would kill to prevent steps in this direction”

• it interrupts a doctrine that policy types are “hugely invested” in, namely the doctrine that technology—not government policy—drives inequality

• (2) “No Cold War with China”—a conflict with China would be dangerous and would be wasteful, so Washington should instead pursue “maximum cooperation with China in areas of mutual interest, like health care and climate, with shared research”

• “Democrats like to look tough”

• “the military industry is drooling over the prospect of massive increases in spending that will make them richer than ever”

• the pharmaceutical sector—and the clean-energy sector—would “hate the idea of making money off of research contracts rather than the current system” of government-granted patent monopolies

• it interrupts the previously mentioned doctrine about technology—not government policy—driving inequality

• (3) “Changing rules on corporate governance to make it easier for shareholders to rein in the pay of CEOs”

• it interrupts the oft-repeated story that “companies are being run to maximize returns to shareholders”

• “policy types like to believe that the bloated pay for top corporate executives, which affects pay structures throughout the economy, is a market outcome, not the result of how we wrote the rules of corporate governance”

• it interrupts the doctrine—which is similar to the previously mentioned doctrine about technology—that “the natural workings of the economy” drive inequality

• (4) “Rewriting the corporate income tax to make it a simple calculation based on returns (capital gains and dividends) to shareholders”

• “it would put tens of thousands of tax lawyers and accountants out of business”

• this would make “very simple” something that’s currently “very complicated”—policy types “hate simplicity”

• (5) “Free trade in the services of highly-paid professionals, like doctors and dentists”

• “free trade for doctors’ services puts downward pressure on the pay of the parents, siblings, and children of people in policy positions”—there “are some things that are more important than the principle of free trade”

You can read about (2) in Baker’s 23 June 2022 piece, you can read about (4) in Baker’s 14 August 2020 piece, and you can read about the other three policy ideas in Baker’s free 2016 book Rigged.

How are important ideas excluded from the national conversation in the US? The answer is simple—just take a look at the following excerpt from George Orwell’s introduction to Animal Farm:

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

I think that any analysis of the media would demonstrate the obvious, which is that Baker’s “genuinely unfashionable” opinions are “almost never given a fair hearing”.

It’s up to the activists to widen and expand and unchain the national conversation—there’s no reason to tolerate the “veiled censorship” that silences criticism.