OPINION:
The Committee to Unleash Prosperity in its excellent daily newsletter the Hotline stated a few days ago that data suggests that, with respect to income, things have been pretty good for members of the middle class for the last 40 or so years
The committee offered: “Median family income reached $78,000 in 2020, which is $20,000 a year higher than it was in 1983. That’s about a 35% increase over the period.”
That sounds great and has the advantage of being true.
Unfortunately, the committee used that data fragment to attack national conservatism, which is a political movement based on the old-fashioned idea that there are things other than economics that matter to people and nations.
National conservatives, generally speaking, are concerned that what we are doing as a nation may be adding to, rather than solving, our problems.
They routinely raise questions such as whether it is wise to allow 6 million immigrants to enter the nation each year to reduce the wages of American workers. They aren’t sure that the free trade regime we have been pursuing for 30 years has made the United States stronger. They have reservations about drug legalization. There’s more, but you get the idea.
Conservatives are comfortable with the idea that government doesn’t exist to referee contests between economic classes. They argue that despite the essential nature of individual liberty, the nation is about more than just that, and part of our problem is that we have become fixated on the preservation of individual liberties to the exclusion of the other goals and responsibilities of the government.
The preamble of our Constitution makes clear the various responsibilities of government. Our government was created to “form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity …”
That’s a pretty impressive list of chores. You will note that securing liberty is just one of the six tasks set out for the new government.
This brings us back to the committee’s argument that the middle class is doing just fine because it has a few more dollars in the bank. Apparently, the middle class does not agree. Pick your survey: From 65% to 75% of Americans think the nation is heading down the wrong track.
Why would they think anything else? They live in a nation without a southern border, in neighborhoods that feel unsafe, with schools that fail to educate their children, and their underperforming governments take 40% of the nation’s wealth.
To make that extra $20,000 a year, many families have to have two or more jobs.
Drugs — legal and illegal — decimate their communities. Their sons and daughters are sent off to fight wars of dubious provenance that no one intends to win. Too many of their children and grandchildren are raised by single parents. Their churches are emptying at an alarming rate.
An argument that says, essentially, “Hey, you have a few more bucks in your pockets, so be happy” seems unlikely to assuage these concerns.
Some of the responsibility for all of this can be laid at the feet of both political parties, which have given us more of the same for the last two generations. One side of the coin thinks that all the problems can be solved by tax cuts; the other side believes all can be solved by more government spending.
It is no wonder that former President Donald Trump’s presence is durable. He is one of the few Americans of any party to even take an interest in the pathologies that threaten to overwhelm us.
It is also no wonder that national conservatism — whose statement of principles I was proud to sign — resonates with so many who realize that our current zero-sum, economically obsessed politics are in no way able to address the current moment.
• Michael McKenna is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs.
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