Dean Baker points out that when it comes to business, conservatives tend to be just as pro-regulation as liberals are:
Framing regulation debates in terms of more and less is not only inaccurate; it hugely biases the argument toward conservative positions by characterizing an extremely intrusive structure of, for example, patent and copyright rules, as the free market. In the realm of insurance and finance over the last two decades, calls for deregulation have been cover for rules tilted starkly toward corporate interests. And the recent change in bankruptcy law, hailed by conservatives, requires much greater government involvement in the economy.
False ideological claims have circumscribed the public debate over regulation and blinded us to the wide range of choices we can make. Without these claims, what would guide regulatory policy? What kinds of choices would we have?
Exactly right. Both liberals and conservatives favor more regulation, and both favor less regulation, so it doesn’t make sense to talk about conservative tendency toward deregulation. But the sorts of regulations favored by conservatives tend to benefit the wealthy and powerful, while regulations favored by liberals tend to benefit workers and consumers.
Amandagon points out that the “conservatives are against regulation” talking point is false but effective, because nobody likes being told what to do:
Of course, the lie works well enough. Most interactions with the hazily-defined group of things we call “regulations” are unpleasant, since you tend to become more aware of regulations when you cross some line and they’re enforced on you. No one likes to get a speeding ticket, and we all think we’re the exception who can easily drive as fast as we want without putting others in danger. Hostility to the mythical liberal “big government” that’s mysteriously larger in the imagination that conservative big government echoes especially nicely with people who feel that they can exert dominance over others in their own sphere and are paranoid that the federal government is going to restrain their power grabs.
Conservatives love to pretend that government has the same function in real life as it has in the game of Monopoly, and the media loves to parrot their rhetoric. In Monopoly, the government does two things: withdraws money from the economy and slows down the game. The government taxes players and forces them to make “improvements” on their property that don’t enhance the property in any way, and it arbitrarily sends players to jail. If that were really the way government worked in real life, then the Libertarians would be correct in asserting that the government that governs least governs best.
But in real life, government spending and regulation can be either helpful or harmful, and many government functions are necessary to maintain a high standard of living. And in real life, conservatives like business regulations as well as liberals do, as long as those regulations benefit elites who make up the real Republican base.
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While I’m on the subject of things that conservatives aren’t really against, let’s talk about taxes. This chart shows who the big taxers really are:
That’s government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, and you can see a sharp rise during the administrations of Reagan and of George the Smart, followed by a steep decline under Clinton, followed by an immediate jump under Dubya. We know that virtually all of the money spent will eventually have to come from taxes. And we know that conservatives’ tendency to borrow money means that there will also have to be interest paid, again with taxes. So even though conservatives have a tendency to pass the cost of government to the next generation, the fact is that their policies lead to higher taxes.
What conservatives actually favor is shifting the tax burden to the poor and middle class. That’s why they favor sales taxes over income taxes, and flat taxes over graduated taxes. They cut taxes on the wealthy, knowing that this means that in the future, the middle class will have to pay back more of the money that the government borrows today.
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I’ll debunk one last myth about conservatives. The media tells us that conservatives favor states’ rights. In reality, they favor states’ rights only when they agree with the laws that state lawmakers pass. But they want the federal government to step in when states legalize marijuana and assisted suicide, or when they pass strict fuel economy standards, or when they legalize reimportation of prescription drugs, or when they legalize gay marriage, or when they regulate firearms. Again, what they oppose is not an overly powerful central government. What they oppose is a government that protects the people from the powerful.
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Dean Baker’s analysis is generally good, but his protectionist ideology leads him to this ridiculous conclusion:
Doctors are well-paid because, unlike less politically connected workers, they enjoy protection from international competition. The same is true for lawyers and other highly paid professionals. The six-figure salaries depend less on skill and hard work than on being able to structure labor markets in ways that autoworkers, textile workers, and cab drivers cannot.
Really? Auto workers and textile workers would be making six figure salaries if it wasn’t for foreign trade and immigration? Doctors and lawyers don’t have special skills that set them apart from cab drivers? And how do we account for the large wage disparities between auto workers and cab drivers? And why do investment bankers and CEOs make so much money, despite international competition? In reality, there are a lot of factors that go into wage disparities that are more important than free trade and immigration, including unionization, skills, profitability, supply, and demand.
