Sixteen for ' 16: A Progressive Agenda for a Better America

Citation

Peter E. Tanzer (2016), "Sixteen for ' 16: A Progressive Agenda for a Better America", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 43 No. 5, pp. 549-550. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-11-2015-0302

Professor Babones’ book, Sixteen for ‘16, reads a little like an anthology of a political progressive’s dreams. Since the liberal dream is also the conservative’s nightmare, one might contest the claim of Babones, who is associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney, that his proposals for the issues he treats in this book are uncontroversial. The mere mention of four of the issues he discusses, taxes, abortion, global warming, and minimum wage, suffices to stir up discord in daily political life.

Professor Babones views the matter otherwise. For him, the policies he outlines in this book are all applications of received wisdom within academic sociology. His book expresses, in popular, pamphlet form, the state of sociological art as applied to the current economic and political problems facing the USA. He provides technical solutions for those issues that political and economic commentators of the think tank variety, egged on as they are by intellectual fetishes, dramatize in public in the form of political and ideological bouts.

Therein lies one of the virtues of the work; it signals, very clearly, the difference between the sociologists of the academy and those of the think tank. Whereas the latter make their living directly off the current controversies, and are funded to present intellectual support for one side in those controversies, the former are beholden less to views, and more instead to methods and models. And the professor states that the sociological consensus is that a minimum living wage, higher taxation for the rich, single-payer health care, and an end to the current reign of the big bankers, will all contribute to economic and social health. Whatever we think about the ideology implied in adopting these policies, their sociological value is empirically demonstrated.

Whether or not Professor Babones has adequately represented the views of academic sociology, his work here, dealing as it does with topical issues while sidestepping the long and tedious, and usually unsound arguments that have grown up around them, serves as a reminder that it is possible to speak about these issues without constant reference to current political passions.

So we can be grateful to Professor Babones for directing our attention to what we easily overlook or forget, to wit that the experts of the think tank are often not giving us opinion formed by the best methods, or even by any methods. These partisans offer not merely error, but sophisms, in Bentham’s sense. In his work on Bentham and the formation of political radicalism, the historian Élie Halévy explained that a public man was dealing in sophistry when he wanted the interests of his own group to be taken for the general interest.

A second virtue of this short book is that it performs a similar task regarding economic issues. Americans need jobs that place a normal life within reach. We count principally on the market to create the jobs, but, as Professor Babones points out, the market delivers the goods only when there are goods to deliver. Public discussion, led by economists (once again, mostly of the think tank variety), gets bogged down in endless dispute over the proper mechanisms and adjustments necessary or sufficient to provide jobs while maintaining economic stability. “Forget about private-sector job creation through tax rebates, investment incentives, and all the other freebies that CEOs and industry lobbyists tell us they want,” Babones says. He calls for direct government intervention in creating jobs, in lieu of these inducements and adjustments which make investment more attractive in the private sector, because entrepreneurs see profit in them, but which in the end do not create jobs.

Jobs in any case come not from mechanical adjustments of economic tools, but rather from new sectors that open up in the overall economy, especially when these new sectors have wide market outlets that create new stores, salespeople, distributors, and trained experts in maintenance and upgrading. “It is hard to take conservative economists very seriously when they tell us that the problem today is too much regulation, or too much taxation, and too much government spending,” he writes.

Since Thomas Piketty’s recent Capital in the Twenty-First Century, readers are more aware of the inequality issue. Professor Babones, who himself is a leading specialist in the sociology of inequality, makes the point that the inequality which has developed since the 1980s is bad not only for society as a whole, but also for the market. The market works best when money serves as a common measure of consumers’ wants. In times of great inequality, money no longer serves that purpose. It no longer measures the same thing for the rich as it does for the poor. Great inequality means, in a sense, the loss of a certain valuable kind of information.

Professor Babones intended his book to be a useful compendium of the progressive policies that have a firm basis in sociological knowledge. Although he treats the topics briefly, and suppresses argument, he still makes his case about topics such as social security. His exposition of both the history and logistics of it in any case do the duty of argumentation. One would find it difficult to assent to the facts he presents about payroll taxes, while dissenting from the proposals that he makes concerning them.

Doubtless this book will give rise to incredulity. In a country where even the most minimal realization of a health care plan cost nearly the whole bank of liberal capital, how might we expect a candidate to adopt more than a couple of these policies for which Professor Babones has made himself the sociological spokesperson?

The way to do this is to make, in the voice of a political candidate, a direct public appeal for the adoption of these policies. It is here that I might voice a reservation about the professor’s style. Intending to speak directly to the public, he too often has recourse to a cheerleading motif, along the lines of “Come on America, you know you can do it!” This might work for politicians, but not for a sociologist who is basing his practical political suggestions on his knowledge of his field. He does not in any case need this tone, especially since he has already made his book direct and useful by stripping away the long digressions and moral pleading, and has presented a list of clear policies based on sound sociological thinking.