Let’s stipulate that:
A. The border wall is stupid.
B. The border wall would cost about $5 billion.
According to Democratic congressional leadership, these reasons suffice to withhold funding for the border wall.
This is a radical new stance for the congressional leadership, which last year rejected the Trump administration’s bid to cut roughly $300 million a year from the budgets of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Assuming a 3% interest rate, that’s a present value of about $10 billion — enough to fund two border walls. (Take that, you pesky Canadians!).
One could argue that a border wall is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of xenophobia. One could equally well argue that a National Endowment for the Arts is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of government overreach and the politicization of everything.
Refusing to fund the wall is a good thing. Agreeing to defund the National Endowments would have been roughly twice as good a thing — and a whole lot easier, since the president was already on board. And there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that would be at least an order of magnitude better. (I’m looking at you, Department of Commerce!).
It’s a strange business, drawing a line in the sand over a waste of $5 billion less than a year after you’ve successfully fought the president’s initiative to prevent the waste of $10 billion, and when you routinely blink at much larger sums. It’s almost enough to make one suspect that, rhetoric aside, this is not a fight about principles.
I am not totally familiar with the Democrat stance on arts and humanities endowment, but is it not possible that they do not think it is stupid?
“One could equally well argue that a National Endowment for the Arts is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of government overreach and the politicization of everything.”
Yes, but do Democrats so argue? One can argue almost anything, and many argue that military spending is just such a thing, and that would save enough for 100 border walls, so why pick on Arts and Humanities?
Perhaps it is a case not of “one could argue” but “I argue”?
A paper about the border barrier I linked to in the “hypothetical Questions” post is worth a look if anyone missed it.
https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/18-037.pdf
However, on your broader point, when is any political debate at this level about principles? It is about politics as well.
How many billions would a sale of the national parks, forests and other public lands bring?
Now’s a great time to sell, considering that the toilets and dumpsters are full, nobody’s working there anymore, and they never attracted our taxpaying Blacks, Hispanic and Native Americans anyway.
Well calling it a “waste” of $10 billion assumes the value of the art produced under NEA grants is $0.
So perhaps you want to use the market system to determine the value of the art, and then $10 billion minus the market value is the amount “wasted”. But that assumes that the market system is the best way to determine the value. A lot of art that is considered priceless today was produced by government funding in centuries past, so it’s not as if the ROI for such projects is always terrible.
Some of the full value of NEA-funded artwork may even be realized in the present day, but in the form of positive externalities, which means it might not happen without government funding. NEA grants fund projects like outdoor murals, which probably increase home values by making the neighborhood feel like a nice place to live. But if the private owner of the wall won’t reap the benefit of those externalities, the free market by itself won’t get the mural painted.
Steve, you say “One could argue that a border wall is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of xenophobia. One could equally well argue that a National Endowment for the Arts is not only stupid but a grotesque symbol of government overreach and the politicization of everything.” The difference is that Democrats believe that Trump’s wall is a grotesque symbol of xenophobia, whereas they don’t see the National Endowment for the Arts as a grotesque symbol for anything.
You’re basically saying “Democrats are opposing one thing I consider bad, yet they support other things I consider bad. So they’re hypocrites.” But that’s not hypocrisy at all.
Keshav: It was not my intention to argue that the Democrats are hypocrites. It was my intention to suggest that their priorities are misplaced.
I think the motivation of the Democrats is that they can’t be seen caving into Trump as their very first action as the majority party in Congress.
It would be extremely embarrassing for Pelosi et al if Trump can get his wall from the Democrats when he couldn’t get it from the Republicans for two years.
I get the impression that Pelosi and Schumer do not care about the $5B, or the effectiveness of a wall. Their only real concern here is defeating Trump in 2020.
If Congress funds the wall, then Trump can brag that he kept his campaign promise. Otherwise, he will be mocked as a failure. The Democrats shut down the govt in order to try to gain political advantage over Trump.
#7. “The Democrats shut down the govt in order to try to gain political advantage over Trump.”
I mentioned a post some time ago relating an Obama shutdown with Coase – pointing out there is a symmetry. Either side could capitulate and re-open the Govt. Coase suggested that fault was not the right way to look at it.
In the Obama case, Democrats viewed it as an intransigent Republican house forcing a shutdown for political reasons. Republicans viewed it as defending their right to approve legislation, or something similar.
Now we have a Republican (in name anyway)in the White house and the positions are viewed exactly opposite by both sides.
There are several differences. One difference we have now is one side totally owned the shutdown this time and said “I will take the mantle,I will be the one to shut it down — I’m not going to blame you for it.”
Another clear difference is that the earlier shut down was in part an effort to de-fund something that had already been legislation for 3 years. There is no legislation for the border wall and asking for funding is breaking a campaign promise.
No, in both cases it seems that it is mostly Republicans responsible for the shut down. Fellow republicans claimed the 2013 shut down was largely advanced by Ted Cruz.
Amusing aside.
Looking for that old post I cam across this snippet
“Treating voters as ignorant is one thing; treating them as stupid is quite another. You rely on ignorance when you cite “facts” that are hard for people to check — as, for example, when the President presents himself as sympathetic to immigrants and hopes you don’t know about the record number of deportations on his watch. You rely on stupidity when you blithely contradict yourself, hoping nobody will notice. The latter seems far more cynical.
I’m sure both candidates have been guilty of treating voters as both ignorant and stupid, and I called attention to several instances (on both sides) in my commentary on Debates One, Two and Three. But it does seem to me that it’s the President who is banking most heavily on voter stupidity.”
It is interesting that the president in question then was Obama.
We have a third option now. If ignorance is hoping you get away with it due to complication, stupidity is if you hope you get away with it by hoping nobody will notice it, what is it if you don’t care whether you get away with it or not?
To what extent does exposure to “humanities” cause people over the long run to be more open to global trade and immigration though?
Perhaps a positive externality to this sort of exposure is more openness to other cultures, which could actually make everyone richer in the long run. Depending on the magnitude it may be well worth the cost to society, although I realize I don’t know the answer to the magnitude question.
But if one opposes a wall due to, say, libertarian concerns over free flow in labor (and other) markets, then it may also not be so odd to try to get people in general not to be so xenophobic which arguably exposure to humanities could lessen.
Consider this Steven: many times when I’ve tried to explain the economic benefits of trade or of immigration to certain people in my life, in was obviously blatant xenophobia holding them back. None of them had been hurt by immigration or trade and in fact were doing fine economically. No science was going to change their mind. It was tribal. Maybe different kinds of exposure could help in this regard?
Bennett 3 — do you find it likely that government funding can produce art of great value in a modern democracy (even the “good ones”)?
@Harold There is a very simple way to see who is responsible for the shutdown. In any given shutdown fight, one side supports passing a clean continuing resolution (CR), and one side opposes it. The side that opposes it is the one responsible for the shutdown.
In 2013, Democrats supported passing a clean CR, and Republicans opposed it. So we can say Republicans shut down the government over Obamacare. In January 2018, Republicans supported passing a clean CR, and Democrats opposed it. So we can say Democrats shut down the government over DACA. And now, Democrats support passing a clean CR, and Republicans are opposing it. So we can say Republicans shut down the government over the Wall.
Josh H – I don’t understand what you mean by “libertarian concerns” over the free flow of just about anything
Keshav – except I don’t think either side typically views CRs as a long-term solution…I believe in the recent past presidents have even threatened not to accept “another stopgap solution”
Iceman #12: Libertarians tend to be strongly in favor of free flow of people, ideas, and goods. They don’t tend to like arbitrary rules/borders restricting mutually exclusive behavior between people.
in #14 above, I of course meant to say “mutually beneficial behavior.”
@iceman 10 — As in the example I mentioned, I think the government can produce art with positive externalities (e.g. a public mural) that might not be produced by the private sector because there isn’t enough incentive. If you get more value than you spend, it doesn’t matter if it’s “great” or not.
As for whether the government can fund art which in future centuries will be considered “great” — I think, sure. Some works of art will be considered “great” eventually, and I think the as-yet-undetermined future great works of art that are lying around now, are probably randomly distributed among the publicly and privately funded works of art.
#11 Keshav-thank you for a simple answer (once I had looked up clean CR). It does sound very reasonable, but does not seem to satisfy everybody for some reason.
e.g. from a 2013 blog “On the October 2nd edition of Fox News Channel’s Special Report, columnist Charles Krauthammer decried the Democrats’ disingenuous insistence on a “clean CR,” implying that such an approach is actually a ratification of failure.”
“It was not my intention to argue that the Democrats are hypocrites. It was my intention to suggest that their priorities are misplaced.”
Yet your final line somewhat contradicts this:
“It’s almost enough to make one suspect that, rhetoric aside, this is not a fight about principles.”
If you were pointing out that Democrats have misplaced priorities (i.e. principles), that makes no sense.
Josh H – yeah sorry I quickly misread your initial comment as suggesting libertarians were xenophobic which makes no sense as you point out. I’ll try to sharpen my comprehension skills
Bennett – I’m sure it’s possible to get some “modestly-positive-externality” public art (although measuring the benefit side is obviously tough).
But IMO the deck is seriously stacked against any of this becoming of great significance (your term was “priceless”). In a modern democracy the forces of PC taint / neuter the process from the start (of which any artist at least since Mapplethorpe should be well aware). And of course the less ‘liberal’ the state the more this turns into an outright assault on anything lacking propaganda value. Not to be hyperbolic but to me government involvement is antithetical to the integrity of the artistic process. I could imagine the dynamic was different in the days of kingly patronage.
” I could imagine the dynamic was different in the days of kingly patronage.”
In what way?
Given that the Democrats had neither a majority in the Senate nor in the House, wouldn’t it be more correct to say that a part of the GOP (the “Freedom Caucus”, IIRC) shut down the government?
@Advo The issue is that Republicans did not (and still do not) have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Republicans were able to pass a clean CR in the House, but without Democratic votes they couldn’t pass it in the Senate. Once Mitch McConnell promised to allow votes on DACA legislation on the Senate floor, Democrats provided the requisite votes in the Senate, which led to the CR passing and the shutdown ending. (FYI McConnell followed through on his promise but the DACA votes were unsuccessful, and then shortly thereafter Democrats decided not to do another shutdown to get DACA.)
I think government funding actually debases art. That’s because taxation is a coercive process, and art is supposed to be a noble pursuit of free expression. That requires voluntariness in execution and funding. Governments cannot provide that, except by setting the conditions in which private actors can voluntarily cooperate to create and receive art.
@Keshav,
you are correct. I find that I have a serious knowledge deficit in regard to government shutdowns, mostly, I suppose, because I find them so INANE.
But …. we did not stipulate that the National Endowment for the Humanities is “stupid.”
We are back to old fashioned cost benefit analysis. People differ about the benefits that will flow from a Wall/NEH.