Policy Spotlight: Free Trade

Free trade used to be one of those rare subjects on which most Republicans and Democrats could find agreement. That is, until the present Age of Trump, in which free trade has become something like a combination of Obamacare, cap-and-trade, and Common Core, with any who still support it being branded a RINO. It’s also notable as probably the only issue on which Trump has remained consistent for the past thirty years.

Consistently wrong anyway, unlike many other policies in which he manages to hold a principled, conservative stance for at least a few minutes before changing his mind again. Free trade as a general policy is good for the country, and is a natural outgrowth of conservative principles.

The entire goal of free trade is to lessen artificial barriers to trade, such as tariffs and excessive government regulation, and allow the free market to flourish. Protectionist policies such as increased tariffs, meanwhile, stifle that free market—choking healthy competition and ultimately hurting consumers. Free trade is good for the same reason that a domestic economy of low taxes and deregulation is good—it promotes a capitalist economic system in which businesses are allowed to compete on an equal playing field, and consumers have more freedom to make their own individual decisions.

In addition, competition encourages innovation, which ultimately helps businesses and individuals, as well as the economy; whereas a lack of competition encourages only stagnation. There are winners and losers from free trade agreements, to be sure, just as there are in any economic system, but overall these agreements help the country and individual citizens far more, particularly in the long run, than more protectionist trade policies.

This is not to say that every free trade agreement is a good deal. Not every agreement is created equal, and some can easily be used to encode, by way of an international treaty, certain policies binding on America that may be only loosely related to trade at all. Climate change and stricter environmental protections is one such example of this. But each trade deal should be examined on its own merits—and the fact remains that free trade, like capitalism, illustrates the point that when government allows market forces to play out, far more individuals will benefit than any protectionist policy of increased tariffs and regulations.

Policy Spotlight: Minimum Wage

This will be the first of a semi-regular feature here at The Conservatory. Every so often, I’ll post “Policy Spotlights” focusing on a particular issue currently in the news (such as gun control, immigration, or the minimum wage), and discuss and defend my own views on that issue.

The question of raising the minimum wage has long been seen by Democrats as one of their most effective wedge issues, peeling away working class votes from Republicans while solidifying their base of poor, urban, and primarily minority voters. But like so many other liberal policies, raising the minimum wage—though it purports to help the poor and working class—in reality hurts them the most, leading to a one-two punch of lost jobs on the production side, and higher prices for goods and services on the consumer side.

The minimum wage is perhaps one of the prime examples of how government intervention and interference in a free market economy stifles economic growth and productivity. As the government, whether federal or state, raises the minimum wage, companies are forced to spend more and more money to pay their existing workers. Any thoughts of expansion or of hiring new workers are quickly discarded, and soon, merely to break even, companies are forced to let people go.

And the first workers to leave are the lower skilled, disproportionately poor and minority workers, whose jobs are by definition the easiest to be performed by a smaller number of people. Lower-skilled, entry-level jobs—those most likely to earn minimum wage and therefore most likely to be affected by any mandated wage increase—are consolidated, under the basic principle that either some of the lowest skilled jobs are cut, and a few people lose their jobs; or else the company keeps every such job, paying an increased salary, and face negative profit earnings—and with it, the potential that the entire company will fail, causing everyone to lose their jobs.

So, many poor, working-class, and minority workers become unemployed through the increase in the minimum wage. But this won't be the end of their hardship, because they still have to buy goods and services, as consumers, and participate in the marketplace from the other side as well. And here is where the other angle of a minimum wage increase becomes apparent, because even after cutting some jobs, many companies will still face an increased drain in resources.

To attempt to make up for this, and avoid having the entire company fold or become unprofitable, they will be forced to raise prices on goods and services, with any additional revenue going directly to those increased wages. This will hurt all consumers, of course, but the ones hit hardest will be the recently unemployed, those who may have had a difficult time paying for an increase in product prices even had they not lost their jobs to the effects of a minimum wage increase.

And still, even with all these measures, many small businesses will likely still be forced to close at some point after sustaining unacceptable losses. The number of businesses that would close, along with the number of jobs lost and the amount of price increases, would of course depend on the exact amount the minimum wage was raised. Hillary Clinton’s proposed $15 per hour minimum would hurt businesses, workers, and consumers alike, but this would pale before Elizabeth Warren's onetime proposal of an increase to $22 an hour.

Of course, a government mandate of a variety of additional worker benefits such as paid family leave, which would in effect act as a second minimum wage increase, would make the effects even worse. There's a reason that in Los Angeles, and many other places where workers have succeeded in lobbying for an increase in the minimum wage, businesses that initially supported the movement are regretting their actions, and unions are lobbying for their members to be exempt.

Meanwhile Donald Trump has predictably attempted to take both sides of the issue, from categorically opposing a minimum wage increase during the primary to championing higher wages for workers and seeming to support minimum wage legislation at the state level, while leaving his official stance ambiguous on a federal raise.

While this relentless flip-flopping is by now Trump’s expected position on virtually every issue, conservatives should embrace the minimum wage issue. Boldly making the case that raising the minimum wage hurts, rather than helps, the economy and low-income workers will finally begin to counter the simplistic liberal narrative on the minimum wage with real facts, rather than the more common incoherent rambling—good from both a political and policy standpoint.

Who God Is to Me

I want to try something a little different today. Over the past month I’ve focused almost exclusively on politics, with some pop culture thrown in, and I’ll continue to do so in the future. For a blog only one month old, with no name recognition on the part of either the site or the writer, the growth in readership has been impressive, and I want to thank everyone who takes time out of their day to read my latest thoughts.

But today I want to take a short break from both politics and culture, and tackle religion. I should note at the outset that I have no special qualifications in religious studies, no Doctorate of Divinity or past experience as a preacher, or anything apart from the same qualification as every other person on the planet—being made in the image and likeness of God.

Which really is all the expertise one needs to understand God (at least as much as any mortal possibly can). My understanding is intensely personal, because God speaks to each and every one of us on an individual level. Going to church and receiving communion is important, to be sure, but just as important is the way each person lives their individual lives they are in communion with God and His teachings on a daily basis.

My central understanding is that, ultimately, God is the only one who can grant admittance into Heaven, or can truly the actions of a particular person, and the reasons behind those actions. There are absolute right and wrong actions, and motivations, but at the same time God also offers absolute forgiveness. Only He can see into a person’s soul, judge both actions and motivations, and offer true forgiveness. That forgiveness is something He offers freely to those who want it, but each person truly has to seek forgiveness, through sorrow, in order to receive it.

This supports the broader concept, supported by Jesus throughout his ministry, and later by the apostles, that God seeks to have a closer, more personal connection with each of us. In the Old Testament, God could be a distant figure, a lawgiver and king remote from His people and only speaking to a select few. In the New Testament, however, He shows a softer side, becoming a father figure closer to His children, with Jesus actively seeking out all members of society, rich and poor alike.

This leads directly to another point—the common argument that Jesus’ teachings, by virtue of their focus on the poor, and on the wealthy who must give up their possessions in order to follow Him, demand some form of socialist-style, enforced-equality government. This deliberately misconstrues Jesus’ teachings, in which he specifically discusses individual, private action, rather than that mandated by government, as the key to entering into heaven. In fact, government-mandated generosity in the form of wealth redistribution directly contradicts His lessons, which rely on free will and the conscience choice to serve the less fortunate.

In general, however, I think it’s a mistake to attempt to use Biblical teachings to support any sort of economic system, whether capitalism or socialism, or most policy positions. A very few of the latter, such as abortion, are clearly against God’s will. But as long as we conduct ourselves and our affairs morally, and are fully aware of the dignity of every human life, He isn’t too concerned with the details of tax or immigration policy. The Kingdom of God isn’t any form of government as mortals would recognize it.

God is intimately acquainted with and involved in the details of each of our lives, and by no means is he aloof from the concerns of the world. We are all His children. Yet He endowed us with free will for a reason, and gives us the autonomy to make our own decisions. Choosing the moral path and taking care of our fellow man is what, in my mind, truly pleases God.

The Genius of Capitalism and a Federal Separation of Powers

Especially since the 2008 financial crisis, capitalism has come under attack, most recently culminating in Bernie Sanders’ attempt to mainstream socialism as an alternative during the Democratic presidential primary—and getting 12.4 million votes in the process. With this in mind, it’s worth remembering just why capitalism is the most successful economic system in history, and why it so effectively complements America’s unique system of a federal separation of powers—another system under attack by both the current President and the two major-party nominees to succeed him.

Unlike economic systems such as socialism and communism, which attempt to redistribute wealth, enforce absolute financial equality on everyone, and are in general overly idealistic to the point of delusion regarding basic economic principles and human nature, capitalism is an essentially realistic model that is clear-eyed about human nature. While socialism attempts to enforce social equality based on what a few people believe human nature should be, capitalism incorporates what human nature actually is. People will generally, for good or ill, act based on what is best for their own interests. Capitalism, unlike socialism, acknowledges this—and then harnesses basic human impulses for good results.

Capitalism rests, essentially, on greed—the idea that people will always want more money, compared to both other people and their own current wealth. What the capitalistic economic model does so effectively, however, is to channel that greed, generally considered a negative impulse, into a force for good. In a free market, capitalist society, greed becomes competition, as rival businesses and corporations attempt to outdo each other with regard to two major factors: the quality of the product or service being offered, and the comparative price of that product or service, relative to a competitor’s price for a similar product. Greed is channeled into a drive to create better-quality, cheaper products, all to the benefit of the consumer and the ordinary citizen.

Aside from the obvious (and related) philosophical arguments regarding freedom of choice, capitalism over the long term raises up the working and middle classes far more effectively than socialism. The latter, using brute force in an attempt to make the population equal, instead traps them in poverty (even in the most well-intentioned socialist nations); while the former, embracing and channeling human vices such as greed, lifts the population to higher standards of living, a fact proven by a simple analysis of standards of living worldwide, compared to national economic systems.

What truly highlights the genius of this basic concept, as well as America’s unique relationship with capitalism, can be highlighted by our Constitution’s basic concept of a federal separation of powers. Where in the capitalist economic model greed was the propelling aspect of human nature, in the government model of separation of powers it is power. The three branches of the federal government—legislative, executive, and judicial—are set against each other, with no branch clearly superior or subservient in terms of delegated power. The legislative branch makes law; the executive branch implements those laws; and the judicial branch applies the law, and enforces the Constitutional restrictions on law. Meanwhile, the federal government as a whole is also set against the various state governments, which have their own distinct spheres of influence.

As with the system of capitalism in economics, the American theory of separation of powers is a realist perspective on human nature, recognizing that people will in general seek to accumulate power for themselves. The Founders, knowing this human propensity would endanger the long-term survival of the experiment of the American republic, decided to instead channel the quest for power as a means for the government to control itself. Well-versed in the work of Adam Smith, a British contemporary who helped establish the economic theory of free market capitalism, the Founders saw that his basic economic philosophy could be applied to government as well.

Something the Founders never expected, of course, was that members of one branch of government would willingly cede power to another branch. This relatively recent phenomenon, in which primarily Democratic members of Congress have increasingly pushed for more legislative power to be taken on by the executive branch, is a result of several factors the Framers of the Constitution could be forgiven for not entirely accounting for—including an increased willingness to defer to the judgments of unelected bureaucrats, and the emergence of a party system that many, such as George Washington, argued against.

Nevertheless, the basic model of American constitutional government remains sound, absent a continued willingness by members of multiple branches to damage it in the future. The basic model, unique in government when the Founders first envisioned it two centuries ago, demonstrates both the genius of the Founders and an inherent compatibility—if not symbiosis—between capitalism and the basic structure of American government that few Sanders voters would likely appreciate.