Why Do LIberal Reforms Hurt the Poor?

 Is this true?

Liberals propose and enact more laws, regulations, and programs than conservatives?  

The poorer the citizen the more difficulty they have in knowing, understanding, complying, and taking advantage of the laws, regulations, and programs.

The richer the citizen the more able they are to manipulate laws and regulations to their advantage and to exploit programs in ways not intended by the authors.

The Ending of Government Mental Institutions

 Some discussion on twitter about the ending of government mental institutions, the deinstitutonalization movement.  Apparently some believe that President Reagan was responsible, only to be corrected that his actions were as CA governor. 

 I remember the State Hospital in Binghamton, NY, not from personal experience but as a reference point in discussions when growing up.  According to the website I linked to it dated to mid-19th century, was noted for its architecture, and treated alcoholism as a disease. 

I also remember my sister had a paperback of The Snake Pit, the novel on which the award winning film was based (1948).  I think I tried reading it when young; likely one of the books I never finished.

Anyhow, for me the reform movement started in the 40's, with the Snake Pit, then One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962 novel)  followed by the documentary Titicut Follies (1967). 

It seems to have been a case where liberal good intentions and fond hopes for drugs in place of institution were misplaced. Will it be 100 years before we get another effort for reform?

How Did the Academy Become Liberal

 IIRC in my young the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association were generally quite conservative, perhaps with an exception for the ABA on civil rights (though ChatGpt says it was criticized for being too conservative).

At my college the most liberal professor was Douglas Dowd, an economist.  

My question: the right today claims that colleges are dominated by liberals/the left.  The right says that today liberals essentially veto the hiring of almost all conservatives in almost all fields, perhaps less so in engineering. Assuming that's right, how did we get to this point?  Certainly liberals didn't dominate the academy in in the 1950s and 60s, so what happened?

My guess is that it's the result of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.Some protests split the professors, certainly they did at my alma mater--my advisor moved to Yale,  But I think after the protests died down the academy found itself pretty much united in supporting civil rights for blacks, rights for women, and open to the other cultural movments--notably Hispanics and gays. 

Our Limited Vision

Marginal Revolution pointed to this Ezra Klein piece on housing for the homeless in LA. Interesting, encapsulated for me in this quote from one of the mayoral candidates.:

Funders don’t want to give you general operating costs. They want you to solve their pet issue. What I always wanted was money for general operating costs.”

She's talking about her experience as an NGO exec, but the problem is universal. Every problem which Klein identifies, and there are so many neither he nor his readers will come away optimistic, is the result of proponents having tunnel vision, pushing a good idea into law or the courts without reckoning for the effects.  

Liberals criticize capitalism for ignoring exogenous effects of the market economy.  We also need to recognize that our good ideas will also have exogenous effects.

Changing Views of Right and Left--Personal

Twitter activity on how left and right have changed, as here:

The thing about @NateSilver538’s argument here is that a Musk-owned Twitter would subsequently attract conservatives who have leaned way way WAY to the right, thereby refuting Musk’s original inductive generalization. pic.twitter.com/nhuJMnDF41

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 28, 2022

I don't know about the national picture.  I do know I've always considered myself on the moderate left and my views have changed sometimes:

• In the 1950's liberals were still supporting public power, the path marked out by the New Deal in the TVA and Bonneville power. That's no longer the case.
• In the 1950's/60's liberals thought that ending legal  segregation and establishing things like civilian review boards would be sufficient.  No longer the case.
• In the 1970s I was called for a month's jury duty in DC.  For one case I was successful in getting off on the basis I couldn't be impartial in a marijuana possession case.  Despite that, I've never been high on legalizing pot, though by now I'm a reluctant supporter.
• Liberals used to have no opinions on legalized gambling; now I guess they support it but it's not a top issue and I still dislike it. 
• Back in the 1950's/60's liberals supported decolonization and were hot for foreign aid. 
• In the 1990's many liberals supported the "Washington consensus" on global free trade.  I still do, but that seems to put me in the minority.

To be continued, maybe.

Religion and Liberalism

 Saw a tweet saying that mainstream Protestantism had been replaced by liberalism. Looked at another way mainstream Protestantism has always been evolving into liberalism.  Back in the 1960's "God is dead" was a fad, but the liberal World Council of Churches has, in my limited view and knowledge, focused on a common denominator of "justice, peace, and the protection of creation". 

You can trace American individualism back to Luther and Calvin--with various offshoots over the years going in the liberal direction, until finally the offshoots have overtaken the original Protestant thrust. 

Douthat in the Times

 Ross Douthat had an op-ed which interested me. He argued both conservatives and liberals have divisions, basically along two dimensions: trust in people and trust in expertise.  

Conservatives have over their history distrusted democracy, the mob. That continues today in attempts to limit voting. What's newish is conservative dislike of experts, of science.  Education used to be a conservative force but now both science and education are associated with change.

Liberals have a history of expanding the right to vote, which continues. But since the Progressive era they've developed a belief in educated elites, particularly science and social science.

The tensions on both sides make for instability. 

(The above is what I took from the essay without going back to doublecheck my summary.)

Douthat's analysis works for me as a liberal. I don't agree with some liberal positions, but I maintain my faith in science.

The Democratic Debates Start

Reps. Spanberger and AOC seem engaged in an early debate over the course of Democratic politics.  Spanberger said Dems should deep-six talk of "socialism" and "defund police", blaming that for the defeats of some Democratic representatives who gained office in 2018, and the failure to take new seats.

AOC has a twitter thread countering that position, arguing that some new progressives won (my comment--I think they won safe seats by winning the Democratic primaries) and that many candidates were lousy in their digital campaigns.

I suspect both are right.  It's a big country, but politics is often local.  So positions which are popular in one place, like NYC and its suburbs, and not in another area, like southern Virginia, or southern Florida. Appeals which work with one voting bloc may well turn off another bloc. [Updated: and people are complicated and react differently to different stimuli.]

Hopefully the different parts of the party can mostly reconcile under (probable) President Biden's leadership.  His task will be quite difficult: he's likely to be considered a one-termer, and therefore have less clout than otherwise.  I'm reminded of 1976 and President Carter's job--he too had liberals on his left, still smarting over the failure of their dreams in 1972,  and led by a Kennedy.  That didn't work out well for him.