Mar 8th 2011, 21:54 by R.A. | WASHINGTON
TODAY'S recommended economics writing:
• Starving the moral beast (Modeled Behavior)
• Who suffers from oil at $115 a barrel (FT beyondbrics)
• How Seattle transformed itself (Economix)
• Ignore hawkish rhetoric (Tim Duy)
• Social Security is not welfare (Mark Thoma)
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"Starving the moral beast" is appalling. It says that the reason the US does not have as big a welfare system as Canada is because of lack of fellow-feeling between southern whites and blacks - racism. It admits that some intellectuals have objections to an expanded welfare state, and those objections are not racist, but they are denied to have any validity, and racism is declared to be the only explanation for the difference in welfare programs. (The intellectuals are therefore implicitly declared to be either racist or stupid. None of their thoughts are considered to merit even mention, let alone discussion, let alone refutation.)
And, because racism is waning, the article declares that the US is therefore destined to a Canada-style expanded welfare state, because the only obstacle is racism. Appalling.
"Starving the Moral Beast" tells the story of how the South will complete its destruction of the Republican Party. As social wedge issues (including, but not limited to racism) gradually lose their power, more people will see where their true economic self-interest lies.
rewt66, the few people, from one political extreme to the other, who actually *think* about economic matters are utterly negligible in electoral terms.