by David Safier
Columnist David Brooks is a sometimes conservative, sometimes neo-conservative. Lately it's been hard to figure out what he is. For the next few days and weeks, the best way to describe him might be Neo-bama. Brooks likes the new Prez, a lot, and he's disillusioned with his right wing buddies.
In a recent column, An Economy of Faith and Trust, Brooks says treasured economic models have broken down in the latest debacle. He goes after Republican economic ideology severely, basically saying they got it all wrong. He seems to think Democrats don't have it all right, but are closer.
Here's a paragraph about Republican economic myopia that, for me, is astounding in its insight:
For years, Republicans have been trying to create a large investor class with policies like private Social Security accounts, medical savings accounts and education vouchers. These policies were based on the belief that investors are careful, rational actors who make optimal decisions. There was little allowance made for the frailty of the decision-making process, let alone the mass delusions that led to the current crack-up. [emphasis mine]
He's exactly right. The social security privatizers said, "Who needs government to help us save for retirement? The market is moving ever upward, and we're all smart enough to get better returns by investing on our own."
If you want to check someone's sanity these days, ask, "So, does SS privatization still look like a good idea?" If the response is, "You bet it does!" smile, nod your head and back away slowly.
But to add school vouchers to that bankrupt economic ideology is a surprising leap for Brooks, who leans conservative when he writes about education. But he's absolutely right. Advocating that educational consumers -- parents -- should be given vouchers to spend at unregulated private schools in the belief that they will be rational actors is using the SS privatization model. It's just fine, so long as investors parents can tell the difference between sound investments good schools and bad investments bad schools sold to them by hucksters. Unfortunately, in the real world, things don't work out as neatly as they do in tidy conservative models.
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