Socially Liberal but Economically Conservative

Hmm... I had a post all planned out and I guess it took me too long to write it, because it looks like someone else got there first.

Allie T Jones, who I will have to add to my RSS feeds, recently wrote about American Atheists and CPAC: Like a Horse and Carriage.

That'll teach me to procrastinate. Hopefully I can come up with some insightful commentary to go beyond this, but for now...

Economic inequality cannot be separated from social injustice and discrimination. In the real world, the here and now that we all live in, economic inequality falls first and hardest on people who are socially maligned. They are the first victims of any downturn and the last victors in any upswing.

In the hypothetical world where Libertarians construct their economic models, this might not be the case. Not at first. But there's an interesting thing about economic inequality, it tends to perpetuate itself. As long as there is some mechanism for inheritance, economic inequality will persist and worsen.

Even if all people were laid equal and all wealth spread evenly, conservative economics will result in concentration of wealth. If this happened randomly, then the new wealthy classes might look very different from those we have today. But wealthy classes would develop, and would protect their own interests, and would bequeath unearned wealth to the next generation.

It is only progressive economics that holds back this inevitable concentration. Progressive taxation. Spending that tax on public goods: roads, schools, hospitals, all manner of things that the wealthy could perhaps buy for themselves but the rest would simply have to live without.

Where this model in undermined, where taxation falls only upon the poor, where infrastructure is neglected, this is where you find the social injustice that American Atheist is so willing to denounce.