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Goodbye and Good luck, David Brooks

His musings about personal morality have been thoughtful; his views about public morality and our political economy, far less so.

Robert Reich Feb 16

Friends,

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who personifies the oxymoron “conservative thinker” better than anyone I know, has announced he’s leaving his perch there. This deserves a mention because his punditry has been influential among neocons and neoliberals.

I’ve found Brooks’s musings over the past few years about personal morality and character provocative and thoughtful.

But when he has ventured into politics and economics, as he used to do quite regularly, Brooks has displayed such profound ignorance that I’ve often felt compelled to correct the record lest his illogic permanently pollute public debate.

Such has been the case with his columns arguing that we should focus on the “interrelated social problems of the poor” rather than on economic inequality, and that the two are fundamentally distinct.

Rubbish.

When the gains from growth go to the top — as they’ve increasingly been doing over the last 40 years — the middle class loses the purchasing power necessary to keep the economy moving forward. Hence the sputtering stagflation we’ve endured for decades.

Few jobs and slow growth hit the poor especially hard, because they’re the first to be fired, last to be hired, and most likely to bear the brunt of stagnant wages and declining benefits.

In addition, when the middle class is stressed, it becomes less generous to those in need. The “interrelated social problems” of the poor presumably require public resources. But a financially insecure middle class doesn’t feel it can afford to pay more taxes (and the super-rich have had the political power to reduce their tax rates).

America’s shrinking middle class has also hobbled the upward mobility of America’s poor, who now face a more daunting challenge because the income ladder is far longer than it used to be, and its middle rungs have disappeared.

Brooks has argued that we shouldn’t be talking about unequal political power, because such utterances cause “divisiveness” that make it harder to reach political consensus over what to do for the poor.

Rubbish. Unequal political power hasn’t fuel divisiveness; divisiveness has been fueled by unequal political power.

Decades before Trump, the super-wealthy began spending vast sums on public relations, think tanks, and political campaigns, all of which vilified liberals — beginning with the Koch brothers and culminating with Elon Musk.

Simultaneously, an ever-angrier working class — justifiably angry that the game was rigged against them — was increasingly susceptible to right-wing demagogues who channeled their anger into nativist bigotry, culminating in Trump.

Bitter divisiveness is the endgame of widening inequality — its most noxious and nefarious consequence, and the most fundamental threat to our democracy.

This all predated Trump, although Trump both benefited from it and has aggravated it.

For four decades, big money has engulfed Washington and many state capitals — increasingly drowning out the voices of average Americans, filling the campaign coffers of candidates who’ll do its bidding, financing attacks on organized labor on immigrants and on trans people, Black people, and Latinos, and bankrolling a vast empire of right-wing hacks, pundits, and politicians.

That David Brooks, among the most thoughtful of all conservative pundits, has not seen or acknowledged this — despite his commendable interest in personal moral development and character — is a sign of how far even the moderate right has moved away from the reality most Americans live in every day.

I wish Brooks well in his new pursuits. Whatever they are, I hope he begins to probe the important relationships between widening economic inequality and the crisis of personal morality he has readily and accurately acknowledged. I believe they are closely intertwined.