Reich's Coastal Theory
It always amazes me how fights over major public issues are thought to occur between liberals and conservatives, or between public advocates and big business. In reality, the most bruising fights in Washington occur between two different industries. For example: There was a big fight today in Congress over access to the U.S. continental shelf for natural-gas drilling. The media wants to describe the battle as environmentalists versus people concerned about energy independence, but that wasn’t it at all. It was the tourist industry versus oil and natural gas. Dems and Republicans were on boths sides of the issue depending on whether they were from coastal states or inland. Coastal tourist places don’t want drilling for fear of what a spill might do to their beaches. (For some time now, Jeb Bush has been one of the most outspoken opponents of drilling on the continental shelf because Florida is so dependent on tourism.)The tourist industry won. No drilling on the continental shelf, at least until the issue comes up again next year.
Talking about coastal versus inland, there’s an age-old political pattern that also bears mentioning. Forget tourism versus drilling, and forget for a moment the overwhelming dominance of business on our political process right now. Think bigger and over a longer period. Go back through history – European, Asian, United States – and you see an interesting pattern. Places closest to oceans and big rivers flowing into oceans tend to be liberal. Places farthest from oceans and big rivers flowing into oceans are conservative. New ideas and reform movements start in coastal areas. Reactionary movements start inland. The Greek, Roman, and Venetian cultures, and of the Dutch, French, and English enlightenments all started near coasts. America’s coastal districts are the most liberal. Central Europe and central Asia is where reactionary movements began, including fascism. Most “red states” are on America’s deep interior. (Study a map of Red versus Blue districts and you’ll see a blue-ish line up the Mississippi river as well.)
Why this pattern? Because since the dawn of civilization, water routes have carried people much more quickly and easily than overland routes. The result has been a mixing of ideas, nationalities, and new perspectives on coasts or along big rivers. Hence, inlanders are more parochial, and stay that way longer. They’re often offended by what comes to them from the coasts and big rivers. When they’re offended enough, they react.
RESPONSES TO SOME OF YOUR RESPONSES ON TAX OBSCENITY: The economy is growing but at a slower rate, on average, than the previous three recoveries. Growth is an inevitable by-product of a recession. Think about it: As an economy recovers from a recession, people get back to work and businesses start to invest again. This means the economy begins growing again. A tax cut can help in a recession, when there’s lots of unemployment and unused office space and underutilized equipment, because a tax cut can put extra money into peoples’ pockets so they’ll buy stuff and thereby “stimulate” the economy toward recovery. The best of these “stimulative” tax cuts go to lower-income people because they’re likely to spend any additional dollars they get. But a tax cut for the rich isn’t stimulative. The rich don’t need to spend their extra dollars. That’s what it means to be rich – you don’t have to spend any additional dollars coming to you because you’re already spending all you want.
Data on who pays what in taxes were drawn from the Center for Tax Justice, the Joint Tax Center, and my own calculations from publicly-available data.
As to Angeledes versus Westly, I honestly can’t say. I’ve been in California for a few months now and its politics baffles me. In most states, there’s both an “air war” (tv advertising) and a “ground war” (people organizing others to go door-to-door). But I haven’t seen any ground war in California. Is that because the state is so large that ground wars are inefficient? Or because TV has come to dominate politics in California in a way it hasn’t elsewhere? Without a ground war, it’s hard to tell who’s a better candidate, because “better” depends almost entirely on how much money can be raised for TV spots, rather than how inspired people can be to become involved.