The Ubiquitous Rhetorical Tactic That Stifles Thought and Debate, and How to Fight It
A common way to obscure the obvious implications of economic policy, whether it's economic policy as an abstract entity, a specific US economic policy, or the economic policy of a specific institution like a university, is to treat the policy as if it is operating in a vacuum and to ignore the framework or background in which the policy is operating.
There was an excellent Gin and Tacos post a few days ago that I think illustrates this important rhetorical trick. The post was nominally about media coverage of the recent State of the Union address and the proposed policy responses to globalization and outsourcing. Ed hits David Gergen's analysis (we need more and better math and science education!) with a big lead pipe, pointing out that it misses the point entirely. Because workers in other nations are willing to do jobs cheaper, "we could start churning out Stephen Hawking-caliber minds by the hundreds" and jobs would still be lost at the same rate.
More importantly to my point, this state of affairs didn't just occur. It's the result of decades of deliberate choices involving dozens of parts of economic policy including trade incentives, taxes, and legal regulatory rules. Gergen's refusal to acknowledge the central problem, that a framework was deliberately set that created the problems discussed, allows him to focus on irrelevancies and present them as answers.
I'm seeing this tactic everywhere. And it's nearly always used in the same way.
For an abstract academic example, consider Bernard Harcourt's book Illusions of Free Markets, which I've summarized previously [http://noompa.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/the-free-market-subject-to-us-code-subsections-a-zzz-appendices-included/]. The central point is that what are usually referred to as "free markets" are in fact highly regulated creations, no less regulated than markets we usually regard as highly regulated or even planned. As a result, because the regulatory framework is obscured by rhetoric, discussion never focuses on the distributional consequences of that framework. Sound familiar?
For a more concrete example that doesn't focus on economic policy per se, look at this recent Forbes.com article lamenting and trying to explain the rapid rise in college tuition. Every. Single. Reason. given in this five page article for the precipitous rise in tuition has to do with student loan policy, and no mention is given of the broader background in which the policy operates: a landscape of slashed budgets for state schools and the adoption of corporate managerial tactics by many private and public schools. Not surprisingly, the solutions for the problem given in the article lie in just revamping the loan policy, which would make some difference on the margins but would not prevent the continued gutting of school budgets by state governments, nor the outlandish rise in administration positions and salaries which drive up operating costs. Sound familiar?
Fortunately, there's an easy way to determine if this tactic is being used, and if so, to figure out how to defeat it. Ask yourself, is the broader framework or background of this policy being discussed? If not, how does considering that change the argument? Given the state of economic analysis in the US, it seems like this counter-tactic has to be employed fairly frequently.
There was an excellent Gin and Tacos post a few days ago that I think illustrates this important rhetorical trick. The post was nominally about media coverage of the recent State of the Union address and the proposed policy responses to globalization and outsourcing. Ed hits David Gergen's analysis (we need more and better math and science education!) with a big lead pipe, pointing out that it misses the point entirely. Because workers in other nations are willing to do jobs cheaper, "we could start churning out Stephen Hawking-caliber minds by the hundreds" and jobs would still be lost at the same rate.
More importantly to my point, this state of affairs didn't just occur. It's the result of decades of deliberate choices involving dozens of parts of economic policy including trade incentives, taxes, and legal regulatory rules. Gergen's refusal to acknowledge the central problem, that a framework was deliberately set that created the problems discussed, allows him to focus on irrelevancies and present them as answers.
I'm seeing this tactic everywhere. And it's nearly always used in the same way.
For an abstract academic example, consider Bernard Harcourt's book Illusions of Free Markets, which I've summarized previously [http://noompa.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/the-free-market-subject-to-us-code-subsections-a-zzz-appendices-included/]. The central point is that what are usually referred to as "free markets" are in fact highly regulated creations, no less regulated than markets we usually regard as highly regulated or even planned. As a result, because the regulatory framework is obscured by rhetoric, discussion never focuses on the distributional consequences of that framework. Sound familiar?
For a more concrete example that doesn't focus on economic policy per se, look at this recent Forbes.com article lamenting and trying to explain the rapid rise in college tuition. Every. Single. Reason. given in this five page article for the precipitous rise in tuition has to do with student loan policy, and no mention is given of the broader background in which the policy operates: a landscape of slashed budgets for state schools and the adoption of corporate managerial tactics by many private and public schools. Not surprisingly, the solutions for the problem given in the article lie in just revamping the loan policy, which would make some difference on the margins but would not prevent the continued gutting of school budgets by state governments, nor the outlandish rise in administration positions and salaries which drive up operating costs. Sound familiar?
Fortunately, there's an easy way to determine if this tactic is being used, and if so, to figure out how to defeat it. Ask yourself, is the broader framework or background of this policy being discussed? If not, how does considering that change the argument? Given the state of economic analysis in the US, it seems like this counter-tactic has to be employed fairly frequently.
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