The Reagan Consensus - Part 4

The Reagan Consensus and its Other Enemies

The other chief threats to the above are three: the Big "Crisis", State Dependency and Debt.

First, the "Big Crisis". The chief recent examples of this are COVID and Climate Change. But the Opposition has used past crises like the Great Depression, the Cold War and The Great Recession to too much effect to advance their assault on economic liberty and, frankly, our general freedom as well and to expand the state. The most memorable iteration publicly of this Left wing strategy is Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel's infamous assertion that,"You should never let a good crisis go to waste." In other words, the Left will use a mortal or severe usually "unprecedented" emergency to drive through projects that normally the people would never democratically approve in the normal course but can be scared into doing by the crisis or distracted enough and disempowered enough to let happen anyway even if it has nothing to do with the crisis. For example, Social Insurance was inaugurated by the US during the Great Depression even though it had nothing to do with the chief problem of that era - younger (18-35 year old) workers being jobless. Obamacare was introduced and passed in the midst of a recession caused by bad mortgages not high medical bills. Again, the combination of fear and ignorance is irresistible especially when you can depict those on the Right as "heartless" for not agreeing with measures that generally are irrelevant and may even make things worse but seem humane.

Today, the twin examples of this are clearly COVID and Climate Change, although the latter has been around for three decades and the other obviously more acute and recent. They have one thing in common, the use of a crisis to gain more control of and reduce the freedom and choices of people and expand the powers and freedoms of the state. They (as to some degree the other crises also did) have another even more disturbing thing in common - PC wrath. In other words, there appears a "consensus" especially in media and academe and politics that one must feel only one way about the issue (that is, it is urgent and must be dealt with at all costs) or pay the price of being suppressed or even oppressed in the form of firing, shaming or worse. A similar trend is seen in the Race Riots of the past two months. Not just politicians but business and schools and communities are being bullied into complying with the BLM view of the World. There is but one consolation from the last example - it is unlikely to directly affect the Reagan Consensus but it is still a striking and chilling example of the Big Crisis strategy of public advocacy on the Left.

Of COVID or Climate Change, clearly it is Climate Change (as an issue) that has the most potential for damaging the Reagan Consensus. While COVID's impact on economics generally has been historically damaging, it is unlikely to be a factor in the long term. Although, it must be said that the unprecedented assault on civil liberties to defend against a not especially deadly virus could be a useful example for the Left to use to justify future more permanent damage.

Climate Change programs of Carbon Emission control and management have already cost the World's major economies (except of course Russia, China, India, Brazil and most of the so-called "developing countries" like world class ocean polluter, Vietnam) trillions, the lost opportunity of which cannot be measured, millions of jobs and 1000's of businesses actual or potential for little apparent proven benefit. But the most important result has been the restriction of people's freedom to make their pwn lifetstyle and business and financial choices thus undermining the genius of the Reagan Consensus and its proven ability to grow economies and lift people out of poverty and generally improve the Standard of Living. All of these schemes, even the tortured and proven failures, the Carbon Pricing systems, have expanded state power and reach and presumption into our lives and business in a way we would never normally tolerate if we were not convinced by the Opposition that the Earth was going to fry in 12 years (as AOC, Greta and others with greater pretensions than them have told us as they told us 20 years ago).

This use of Climate Change must be fought and contained before it does the kind of damage its policy thrust can do, especially, the United States, which has led the Reagan Consensus since at least 1981. How to do it? First, you fight it with the best weapon you have that the other side claims they own - the Science. Keep pointing out that the Earth has not significantly warmed since 1997. That the "Hockey Stick" is a fraud. That many fine climatologists are on your side in this regard. This is important above all because it attacks the fear and ignorance on this matter that is so crucial to the Opposition succeeding on this issue.

However, as we have seen in the past, the Opposition's friends in the Media and Academia will suppress or bully sources contrary to the "Cult" of Climate Change. For example, despite predicting in 2003 that Manhattan would be underwater by 2012 in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore is still celebrated as a CC Hero even as he lives in a house that creates more Carbon Emission than a whole village. You are liable to be labelled a crackpot for trying to fight this only by attacking what the Press practically has made it Style Guide material not to dispute..

What is also needed is an approach which at once solves the "problem" posed by Climate Change but also builds on the Reagan Consensus. This should never mean selling out to the imperative of Climate Change or even admitting it is anthropogenically caused. It means proposing a solution that reinforces the free markets that are the core of the Consensus but at the same time proposing an idea that the moderate non-partisan voter will perceive as constructive. Indeed, this approach would truly help to reduce pollution in general not just carbon emissions. It is a proposal to reduce or eliminate income taxes in favour of consumption taxes. The conservative does not have to worry about what to call it but can use whatever moniker they think will curry favour with the average voter, the Press and even the Green Lobby. Call it the Carbon Tax, the  Pollution Tax, the Garbage Tax or the BBQ tax. It only matters that conservatives be seen to fight the "crisis" at hand while at the same time not just protecting the Consensus but adding to it. 

The Boon from such tax reform (which to help with another danger to the Consensus, the Debt, should be as revenue-neutral as possible) would be as incalculable and myriad as the damage from CC programs have, to this point, been. Such an approach does not just protect one's freedom but expand it. For, after all, most of us have no choice but to earn a living but we can choose whether or not to buy most things except the staples. A world of consumption tax leaves the consumer free to expand their income and whether to invest it (without tax) or spend it on some extra bauble and pay the (relatively high) tax for doing so.

A country that goes to such a model (as only too few and relatively small nations have shown) would become a magnet for capital and see its economy roar, per capita income explode, innnovation blossom and its jobless disappear. All of the benefits of the Consensus thus would be trebled. And, yes, it would be just by dint of its great prosperity (studies show the richest nations are the freest and the cleanest) but also due to its punishing polluting activity via taxation be much cleaner still than  before.

By this strategy, the conservative statesperson both sees off one of the most pervasively dangerous and damaging enemies of the Reagan Consensus and takes that Consensus to new heights. As in the old phrase, we can make chicken salad out of the chicken doodoo of politics and the issues of the day. A way to compound this virtuous effect - recall it was Reagan and Mulroney who got rid of Acid Rain and call for any surplus revenues from the Consumption Taxes to be paid towards building new plant for water and sewage treatment. We can be the Green (blue) Party in reality (as opposed to the radical marxist one that talks a good game but hasn't cleaned a damn thing in its whole existence) that cleaned up our harbours, lakes and rivers and conserved them for generations to come. Thus we also demonstrate we know that money is not everything but it can help with the rest.

This approach can also work with COVID - for instance, tax holidays and suspending (in a lovely intersection of two Crises) the Ontario Hydro "Feed-in" contracts for renewable energy that have so damaged the economy in the name of CC. Whenever an Emmanuel says that a Crisis is too good a thing to waste, we need to agree and then propose the urgently needed conservative ideas for expanding freedom and the Consensus that the Crisis demands!

More on the Debt and Dependency tomorrow.