Who's A Good Boy?

From Daniel Gross' article in Slate, "Why Democrats Should Be Thankful":

In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxes—the Southern and Great Plains states—while fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today's Financial Times as the "southern culture of tax cutting" has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster.

This is the essential flaw of the "culture war" – it predisposes people to think of everything in cultural terms. The cultural tradition of beatifying "character" as the crown jewel of the human experience has corrupted the ability of Americans to understand causal economic relationships. The tax giveaways to massive agricultural concerns in the red states are sold as "incentives"; slash & burn approaches to poverty assistance programs are likewise sold as "incentives". While on the face of it, such a deliberately inconsistent application of incentives would appear hypocritical. But it isn't. It's a values-based determination which relies on a very particular notion of "character". Americans of exemplary character will be encouraged into entrepreneurial behavior by the promise of tax breaks and, in some cases, free real estate or even cash handouts. Americans of diminutive character will likewise be encouraged to adopt a productive work ethic by withholding cash and destroying the "nanny state" (i.e. Social Security and other social safety nets). By applying this system of punishment and reward by using such a fallacious and subjective qualifier as "character", the government is sowing the seeds for the selfsame kinds of social and economic turmoil it is ostensibly trying to avoid. Personally, I've never encountered a person of means who didn't feel that they had acquired their fortunes as a direct result of the superlative nature of their character. And who wouldn't rather invest in a winner – irrespective of how they became a winner? The ability to generate wealth is, in fact, irrelevant; as the quote above makes clear. What matters, ultimately, is whether or not the person – or entity – is wealthy. Once the infrastructure of a corporate welfare queen is in place, it is virtually impossible for government to pry the remora loose.