Posted on August
7, 2017 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Better Deal” platform has
gotten some favorable press, being framed as a “populist turn,” and Democrats plan to “spend the next fifteen months talking about it.” Our Revolution‘s “People’s Platform” (#PeoplesPlatform) has gotten far less
coverage, the party establishment is silent about it, and it’s gotten virtually
no coverage in the press. (To their credit, Robert Borasage and Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote pieces comparing and
contrasting the two, soon after a “Better Deal” was issued.) In this post, I’ll
compare and contrast the way the two platforms deliver concrete material
benefits[1]. (I’ll leave tactical issues like process, framing and voter appeal for another day.) At the end of the post, I’ll
say a brief word on anti-trust, a key differentiator between the two. Now let’s
look at the two platforms:
Figure 1: A Better Deal
Today, Democrats are offering
A Better Deal that will focus on three goals:
Raise the wages and incomes of
American workers and create millions of good-paying jobs: Our plan for A Better
Deal starts by creating millions of good-paying, full-time jobs by directly
investing in our crumbling infrastructure and prioritizing small business and
entrepreneurs, instead of giving tax breaks to special interests. We will
aggressively crack down on unfair foreign trade and fight
back against corporations that outsource American jobs. We will fight to ensure a living wage for all Americans
and keep our promise to millions of workers who earned a pension, Social
Security and Medicare, so seniors can retire with dignity.
Lower the costs of living for
families: We will offer A Better Deal that will lower the crippling cost of
prescription drugs and the cost of a college or technical education that leads
to a good job. We will fight for families
struggling with high monthly bills like childcare, credit card fees, and cable
bills. We will crack down on monopolies and the concentration of economic power
that has led to higher prices for consumers, workers, and small business – and
make sure Wall Street never endangers Main Street again.
Build an economy that gives
working Americans the tools to succeed in the 21st Century: Americans deserve
the chance to get the skills, tools, and knowledge to find a good-paying job or
to move up in their career to earn a better living. We will commit
to A Better Deal that provides new tax incentives to employers
that invest in workforce training and education and make sure the rules of the
economy support companies that focus on long-term growth, rather than
short-term profits. We will make it a national priority to bring high-speed
Internet to every corner of America and offer an apprenticeship to millions of
new workers. We will encourage innovation, invest in advanced research and
ensure start-ups and small business can compete and prosper.
(OK, I said I wouldn’t look at
framing, but for those new here I just couldn’t help underlining the familiar
weasel words; I don’t know which Democratic strategist has sold these guys on
the Washington
Generals-style “fight for” verbiage, but I wish they’d just stop it.
“Fighting for” and never winning isn’t a good look.)
Figure 2: The People’s
Platform
From Our Revolution:
Medicare for All: H.R. 676
Medicare For All Act
Free College Tuition: H.R.
1880 College for All Act of 2017
Worker Rights: H.R.15 – Raise
the Wage Act
Women’s Rights: H.R.771 –
Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH Woman) Act of 2017
Voting Rights: H.R. 2840 –
Automatic Voter Registration Act
Environmental Justice: Climate
Change Bill – Renewable Energy (More details soon!)
Criminal Justice and Immigrant
Rights: H.R. 3227 – Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2017
Taxing Wall Street: H.R. 1144
– Inclusive Prosperity Act
And now let’s compare the two.
Compared to the #PeoplesPlatform[2]:
“A Better Deal” is not a
serious effort. The Better Deal is a list of bullet points supported by White
Papers. The People’s Platform is a list of actual legislation, which elected
representatives can be pressured to support, and around which hearings could be
organized. Which is the more serious? (To be fair, you can argue that since
bullet points and white papers appeal more directly to the political class,
especially the more wonkish elements of the press, “A Better Deal” is indeed
more serious. I’ll leave that one up to the judges.)
“A Better Deal” offers trivial
benefits. To caricature — see below on antitrust for a more serious topic — the
Better Deal offers cheaper cable, cheaper beer, and cheaper prescription drugs.
Well and good, but isn’t saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars with
#MedicareForAll the truly better deal? Politically and morally? And doesn’t the
Democrat Party’s willful refusal to focus on, or even name this issue,
reinforce the “never, ever” message sent by the Clinton campaign debacle?
“A Better Deal” delivers many
benefits indirectly, through the market. The #PeoplesPlatform delivers the
universal concrete material benefits — Medicare for All, free college tuition,
raising wages — using government as a vehicle (which is appropriate when
benefits are universal; markets don’t do universal). The Better Deal, by
contrast, focuses on tweaking the market to deliver benefits, in such a way
that the role of government is not visible. For example, the Better Deal’s
solution for lower cable and beer prices — the bread and circuses parallel is
almost too exact — is better policy on antitrust. Suppose their approach works
(see below) and cable bills are lowered by some unknown amount. Will the consumer
perceive the benefit as a result of government action? Or as how the benefit
will be marketed: A voluntary action freely undertaken by beneficent
corporations? If you want to create a virtuous cycle where government action
brings perceived benefit, strengthening popular support for further government
action, bringing more benefits, how does that happen if the benefit is
delivered indirectly, though the market, and imperceptible as a public good
achieved by government?
“A Better Deal” does not
address electoral infrastructure issues. The People’s Platform includes
“Automatic Voter Registration.” The Better Deal does not address expanding the
Democrat’s electoral base at all. That seems odd; one would think the Democrats
would wish to bring maximum electoral power to bear on those opposed to their
platform.
A Note About Antitrust
“A Better Deal” has
this to say on antitrust:
We will crack
down on monopolies and the concentration of economic power that
has led to higher prices for consumers, workers, and small business – and make sure Wall Street never endangers Main
Street again.
(Once again, I’ve helpfully
underlined the functional equivalents of “fight for.”) That’s not very
meaningful, so we turn to Schumer’s Op-Ed:
Right now our antitrust laws
are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of
investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and
airline tickets to food and health care. We are going to fight
to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting
consumers and to make it harder for
companies to merge if it reduces competition.
(Once again….) Leaving aside
Schumer’s odd failure to mention ginormous Silicon Valley monopolies
like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, this is still pretty vague, so we turn to the Democrat’s White Paper (PDF) on this topic.
Laudably, the paper proposes standards that seem to be tougher — we await
forthcoming legislation — but “standards are wind,” as they say, so we look for
an enforcement mechanism. Here it is:
A new consumer competition
advocate: In recent years, antitrust regulators have been unable or unwilling
to pursue complaints about anticompetitive conduct. Our new competition
advocate would research current market
activity, receive consumer complaints, and
proactively recommend [3] competition
investigations to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of
Justice (DOJ). The advocate will consider
the full range of potentially anticompetitive behavior, from traditional areas
like price fixing to newer challenges like the role that online platforms[4]
play in keeping our markets fair and open. The advocate’s recommendations would
be made public, and the regulators would be required, if they choose not to
pursue a recommended investigation, to publicly justify why. This office would
devote resources to ensuring complaints about market exploitation and
anticompetitive behavior are treated seriously and regulators are held
accountable. In order to inform the public on the general status of the
markets, the office would also compile and publish
data regularly on market concentration and abuses of economic power. It would
also provide demographic breakdowns,
including the impact of market concentration on communities of color.
I hope I don’t seem like I’m a
pro-monopoly curmudgeon if I say that the “competition advocate” seems like
pretty weak tea, to me. I’ve helpfully underlined the powers of this new
office, and I don’t see “enforcement” there. I grant that a “bully
pulpit” for anti-trust is a good thing, but don’t we have a President for
that?[5] And Senators, who can hold hearings to perform every single function
listed? Critically — once again, a serious effort with legislation would
clarify this — the nature of the competition advocate’s funding is left unstated.
Will the competition advocate be independently funded, as through successfully
collected fines? Or will the advocate be funded by the very department it is
supposed to force to “publicly justify” its failure to pursue recommendations?
One cannot help comparing the
“Better Deal” proposal with the
approach taken by the European Commission to one “online platform”:
The European Commission has
fined Google €2.42 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. Google has abused
its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to
another Google product, its comparison shopping service.
The company must now end the
conduct within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average
daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Commissioner Margrethe
Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “Google has come up with many
innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives.
That’s a good thing. But Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service
wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those
of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine
by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and
demoting those of competitors.
What Google has done is
illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to
compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European
consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.”
Here are Commissioner
Margrethe Vestager’s powers. They are, in fact, rather similar to those
proposed by the “Better Deal” white paper, with an important exception I have
underlined:
Responsibilities
Mobilising competition policy
tools and market expertise to contribute, where appropriate, to creating jobs
and promoting growth.
Developing the economic and
legal approach of assessing competition issues and monitoring the market.
Effectively
enforcing competition rules in the areas of antitrust, cartels, mergers and
state aid.
Strengthening the Commission’s
reputation worldwide and promoting international cooperation in competition
issues.
David Dayen, in “The Quiet Audacity of the Democratic ‘Better Deal,'”
frames the “Competition Advocate” as part of a larger, and fresh, Democrat
approach to governance. Excerpting the key portions of his thesis:
The Democrats continue to roll
out their agenda, and I’m noticing a pattern. Want to lower the cost of
prescription drugs? They’ve got a “price gouging” enforcer, the director of a
new agency dedicated to investigating drug
manufacturers that jack up the cost on their products. How about breaking
concentrated corporate power across all fields? They’ve got a
consumer-competition advocate who would recommend
investigation of monopolistic industries to the Justice Department and the
Federal Trade Commission….
[These new proposed agencies]
stand out, particularly because the new suggested positions duplicate existing
structures within the federal government. The FTC (and, to a lesser extent, the
Food and Drug Administration) is supposed to monitor drug prices, as well as
other monopolies. ….
Of course, building new
agencies with targeted missions was a hallmark of the New Deal. And like under
FDR, these Better Deal agencies are an admission that the current framework is
fatally corrupted, unresponsive to public needs. …
The Better Deal isn’t entirely
about building a new government atop the old one. But that tendency stands out,
and, while it’s something of a dodge, it’s also as quietly radical as anything
we’ve seen recently from a major political party.
OK, grant the validity of this
technocratic approach. If you want to “build a new government atop the old one”
because “the current framework is fatally corrupted,” why leave the enforcement
function in the corrupt framework, instead of moving it to the new one? And
what about funding? Will that be a function of of the existing, corrupt
framework, too?
Conclusion
A famous meme is “This is why we can’t have nice things.” A
Better Deal says three things: (1) “You may have slightly better things,” and
(2) “You must get those better things through the market,” and (3) “We will
make the market work by adding new layers of complexity atop the system we all
know is corrupt.” Whether this is a winning strategy is, again, one I’ll leave
to the judges. For myself, I believe that a platform that delivers universal
concrete material benefits, especially to the working class, is the way forward
for a Democratic Party, or whatever party succeeds it, if Democrats go in
another direction. Considerations of justice and electoral politics aside, a
key form of collective brain damage inflicted over the last forty years by
neoliberals of both parties is the belief that government can’t deliver
benefits effectively. (Granted, neoliberals went out of their way to sabotage
government’s ability to do just that, so the belief has a basis in reality.) I
believe the remedy for that brain damage is, unsurprisingly, government that
delivers benefits effectively (which is why #MedicareForAll is an important
wedge issue, but adopting the simplest and most rugged form of single payer is
also important, as opposed to some Swiss Watch-like program with lots of
complications and dials and moon phases and such). A government that delivers
benefits effectively is also a prerequisite for many other policies, chief
among them dealing with climate change.
NOTES
[1] So I’m not an anarchist.
Sue me.
[2] I’d use a #BetterDeal hash
tag, but all the usage examples seem to have been invented by random
Twitter posters who oppose it. Since Twitter is heavily read by journalists,
this also supports the idea that the Better Deal is not a serious effort.
[3] What on earth does
“proactively recommend” mean? Is it opposed to “passive-aggressively
recommend”?
[4] I suppose that “online
platforms” means Amazon, Facebook, and Google, but it’s hard to say. Unlike
AT&T, Time-Warner, Anheuser-Busch, and Luxottica, among others, no online
platform is actually named.
[5] President
Theodore Roosevelt: “We can not tolerate anything approaching a monopoly,
especially in the necessaries of life, except on terms of such thoroughgoing
governmental control as will absolutely safe guard every right of the public.”
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