Article by George Yancey
INTRODUCTION
Research indicates that political progressives have lower levels of mental well-being than political conservatives (Bixter 2015; Butz et al. 2017; Jetten et al. 2013; Napier and Jost 2008; Onraet et al. 2013; Schlenker et al. 2012; Stavrova and Luhmann 2016). Why this is the case has been debated. One possibility is that individuals with lower levels of well-being are more likely to be drawn toward politically progressive perspectives (Vargas Salfate et al. 2022). Perhaps due to their lower level of well-being, they desire a progressive form of government that will support them. It has been argued that progressives are more prone to ailments such as depression and anxiety because they have more problems accepting inequities within our society (Napier and Jost 2008). It is also possible that political conservatives are happier since they live in societies more supportive of their political outlook (Stavrova and Luhmann 2016). There may be elements in political conservatism that act as a protective force against lower well-being (Bixter 2015; Schlenker et al. 2012). The comparative ease conservatives have in finding social groups can also factor into their higher well-being (Jetten et al. 2013).
However, there may be some aspects of political progressiveness that lead to lower levels of mental well-being. An important clue to this mystery is connected to a sudden worsening of the well-being of political progressives in 2012 (Gimbrone et al. 2022). Since this time, the gap between the well-being of political progressives and political conservatives notably widened. According to Gimbrone et al. (2022), the change in average depressive effect for female 12th-grade liberals increased from 1.92 in 2010 to 2.65 in 2018. This change of 0.73 is more than three-quarters of a standard deviation. Male 12-grade liberals saw their average depressive effect increase from 1.98 to 2.49, an increase of 0.51. On the other hand, female 12th-grade conservatives saw an increase in their average depressive effect from 1.75 to 2.2, an increase of 0.45, while male 12th-grade conservatives experienced an increase in average depressive effect from 1.75 to 2.17 or an increase of 0.42. The 12-grade liberals start at a higher degree of depression which accelerates at a faster rate than for 12-grade conservatives. Similar results are found in measurements of self-esteem, self-derogation, and loneliness.
While political conservatives still fare better than political progressives, in recent years there has been a worsening in well-being of political conservatives as well as political progressives. Whatever mechanisms explaining the differences between the two political factions is likely connected to the event surrounding that point in time and must explain why political conservatives have recently suffered a lesser, but real, downturn in well-being. One potential event has been called “The Great Awokening” (Fischer 2018; Yglesias 2019) which is an increase in progressive activism, particularly around issues of identity politics. While identity politics has been a feature in progressive political activism for some time (Hobsbawm 1996; Muir 2007; Walters 2018), with the election of President Trump, there has also been a higher acceptance of identity politics among political conservatives in the past few years (Jardina 2019; Sides et al. 2017). Theories of “white grievance” (Benson 2022; Hooker 2017; Smith 2020) suggest one way in which conservatives may use identity politics to promote their political interest. Thus, acceptance of identity politics may account for both the increasing gap in well-being between political progressives and conservatives around 2012 as well as the recent decrease in well-being among conservatives.
Identity politics can take the form of concerns about gender, sexuality, and racial minorities. While it has been argued that identity politics may create a lower level of well-being for political progressives (Lukianoff and Haidt 2019), there is no empirical evidence investigating this possibility. This article endeavors to test the possibility that concerns on issues shaped by identity politics may be related to the lower well-being of political progressives.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND WELL-BEING
As previously noted, there is a solid foundation of literature indicating a degree of well-being advantage for political conservatives relative to political progressives. The measured advantage may be slight (Butz et al. 2017; Onraet et al. 2013), but the consistency of the findings makes it difficult to dismiss the reality of this political difference. While there is agreement about the higher level of well-being of political conservatives, the source of its existence is unclear. One possibility is that conservatives more easily justify inequalities between social groups which may reduce interpersonal stress (Napier and Jost 2008). It has also been theorized that conservatives are more likely to belong to supportive groups that buttress their well-being (Jetten et al. 2013). Higher religiosity among conservatives may also play a role in their greater well-being (Bixter 2015; Schlenker et al. 2012). The higher well-being of conservatives may be due to living in cultures supportive of their political ideology (Stavrova and Luhmann 2016). It is plausible that characteristics common among conservatives such as a greater sense of personal agency and a positive outlook contribute to their happiness (Schlenker et al. 2012). However, it is also possible that conservatism itself does not impact well-being but those who are happy have a tendency to become conservatives (Vargas Salfate et al. 2022).
Evidence indicates that over the past decade, even more discrepancy between the mental health of conservatives and progressives has developed among adolescents (Gimbrone et al. 2022). Explanations of the political effects on well-being accounting for why the gap between the two groups has recently increased can provide insight into the relationship between political ideology and well-being. Since the pattern of increasing differences between conservatives and progressives began in 2012, this gap cannot be attributed to the election of President Trump and it is difficult to identify a specific social or political event tied to the actions of conservatives. The key to explaining the political effect on well-being may be tied to attributes connected to political progressiveness rather than political conservatives. However, while attention has been paid to why conservatives have higher levels of well-being relatively little attention has been used to examine why progressives may have comparatively low levels of well-being. Social events impacting political progressives may explain the emergence of the recent gap in well-being between young conservatives and progressives. While previous scholarship has focused on the concern progressives have for societal well-being (Cooper 2023; Eisler 2017; Seaford 2018), there is little work, outside of Napier and Jost (2008), exploring the possibility that a politically progressive ideology may act to lower an individual's well-being.
One of the attempts to address the potential problems of well-being among political progressives can be seen in a recent book by Lukianoff and Haidt (2019). They argue that young students have adopted certain ideals from their progressive beliefs that make them more psychologically fragile. The problematic beliefs may promote a lack of internal agency, emotionalism, and dichotomous thinking among those who engage in progressive activism. Previous research indicates poorer health outcomes for individuals with low levels of internal locus of control (April et al. 2012; Klonowicz 2001; Li et al. 2015; Pu et al. 2017) tend to engage in emotional reasoning (Ellis and Dryden 2007; Gangemi et al. 2021; Paredes-Mealla et al. 2022; Rector et al. 2011) and overuse dichotomous thinking (Egan et al. 2007; Kawabata et al. 2021; Lester et al. 2011; Nakama and Oshio 2013). The answer to the political impact on well-being is partially answered if progressive political beliefs promote a loss of a sense of internal control, emotionalism, and dichotomous thinking. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that what they call “common enemy identity politics”2 is an important source of the lack of agency, emotionalism, and dichotomous thinking among progressive activists. If identity politics is tied to elements within a progressive belief system that lowers well-being, then individuals who adopt the ideas behind identity politics should suffer from lower levels of well-being. It is vital to define and explore the place of identity politics among political progressives.
NATURE OF IDENTITY POLITICS
There has been, since the second half of the twentieth century, a renewed emphasis on identity politics within progressive politics. Kauffman (2001) defines identity politics as “the belief that identity itself—its elaboration, expression, or affirmation—is and should be a fundamental focus of political work;” Modern identity politics is often conceptualized as a moral imperative to fight oppression against a given social outgroup (Hawley 2022). A focus on social identities as the focus of political work can aid in mobilization of racial and sexuality minority groups (Bernstein 2005; Brettschneider et al. 2017; Miller 2021; Walters 2018). Those facing oppression due to a given identity often reinforce their loyalty to that social group as they seek to obtain respect for the very identity that encourages rejection from the dominant group (Kruks 2001). Movement toward adherence to a politically progressive group can be fueled by loyalty to one's social group if identification with that social group is linked to a larger politically progressive effort to shape society. Majority group members without a social identity rooted in their dominant status may still reinforce the norms and values found within an identity politics framework and experience the psychological consequences tied to the promotion of an identity politics mindset.
Linkage of identity politics to a progressive ideology is not guaranteed. Early progressive ideology in the United States was often empowered by a Marxian or Neo-Marxian philosophy that focused on issues of division between the classes. This type of progressive perspective sought to endorse a universalizing principle inclusive of individuals from all groups (Hobsbawm 1996). However, over time within the left, universalizing expectations made room for expressions of different oppressed social groups (Hobsbawm 1996). Promotion of shared identities helps to bring easy to generalize components of a group and allows individuals to have attachments to their group, which can be used to link loyalties of the identity group to loyalties of the larger left (Muir 2007). Moreover, the focus on the oppressed within identity politics allows members of the group to define themselves in opposition to the dominant group (Heyes 2020).
There is a unifying common belief in the value of the experiences of marginalized racial and ethnic groups to unite the distinct identity groups within the left (Heyes 2020). Such an emphasis on experiences as a form of social knowledge may be troublesome on the left since it could challenge intersectionality as a method by homogenizing the experiences of the oppressed (Heyes 2020). However, lived experiences have been valuable in promoting the interest of marginalized groups using counternarratives (Blaisdell 2021; Hunn et al. 2006; Ledwith 2017). Utilizing experiences as a mechanism to promote progressive political goals is a valuable tool identity politics provides for a progressive agenda (Walters 2018). Through techniques such as counternarratives, the centering of minority group identities can be used to legitimate political efforts that support general progressive goals. Even with the tension of an overarching progressive set of values and desire for distinct social identities, identity politics is a powerful supportive tool for buttressing a progressive political agenda.
Promotion of identity politics may lead to the potentially problematic psychological tendencies noted in the previous section. A focus on external institutional forces that one cannot immediately alleviate may lead to a lower external locus of control. Techniques such as counternarratives, as well as a critique of rationality among some critical theorists (Baszile 2015; Blessett et al. 2016), can theoretically provide a pathway to emotional reasoning. Finally, the focus on centering political legitimation on identity can lead to rejecting outgroups that threaten the identity of minority groups (Heyes 2020; Huddy 2001), and to dichotomous thinking about social groups. If these, or other types of cognitive deficiencies, are exacerbated by participation in identity politics, then identity politics may be an important mechanism by which progressive political ideology can lead to lower levels of well-being. In contrast, a class-based progressive cognitive focus may focus less on the group identity, generating less of a need to rely on emotional narratives and dichotomous thinking, and may be less likely to be detrimental to the well-being of a political progressive. Since there is reason to believe that recently political progressives have shifted from a more class-based progressive framework to a framework rooted more in identity politics, it is plausible that identity politics may explain the recent increase well-being gap between conservatives and progressives.
IS THERE A GREAT AWOKENING EFFECT?
Recent social forces may have increased adherence to identity politics. For reasons that are not clear around 2010, cultural institutions dramatically increased the attention paid to issues connected to oppression of marginalized groups. In the media, there has been since 2010 a striking increase in the use of words connected to prejudice (i.e., racism, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia) (Rozado et al. 2023). After 2011 there was a powerful increase in terms denoting prejudice in academic abstracts (Rozado 2022). This academic and media attention may have had a powerful impact on the social attitudes of Americans. According to Pew Research Center (2017), as late as 2014, a majority of Americans did not believe that the country needed to make changes for racial equality. However, by 2017 nearly three out of five Americans believed that changes were necessary. Regardless of whether this heightened public attention to racism, sexism, and homophobia is tied to the increased focus in cultural institutions such as the media or academia, tolerance of Americans for social prejudice against oppressed groups has recently significantly declined. This decrease in tolerance of prejudice against marginalized groups coupled with increased sympathy for the experiences of those in marginalized groups creates a social atmosphere where there is increased support for the concerns connected to identity politics.
Some (Fischer 2018; Reed 2020; Yglesias 2019) have called this recent attention to issues of oppression a “Great Awokening.” This is a reference to the historical events of the great awakenings in the 1730s–1770s, 1790s–1840s, and 1890s–1930s. Those great awakenings resulted in a change in many fundamental attitudes and values within American society. Likewise, the so-called “Great Awokening” has impacted the social values of the larger American society, although of a different nature than those expected from religious revivals. These values are likely to be reinforced by various types of informal and formal methods of sanctions. Individuals not directly impacted by attention given by academics and the media to the prejudice faced by marginalized groups may still feel pressure to adopt attitudes that reflect the priorities provided by identity politics due to pressure from their social peers. In such a social atmosphere, proponents of identity politics are likely to increase.
While a desire to confront prejudice against marginalized groups has increased in all social groups, it has increased more dramatically among political progressives. The Pew Research Center poll (2017) indicated that between 2009 and 2017 the percentage of Republicans and those who lean toward Republicans who stated that the country needs to make changes for racial equality increased from 30% to 36%. However, among Democrats and those who lean toward Democrats, the percentage increased over the same period from 57% to 81%. There is not only a more dramatic increase within the Democratic population but the percentage who desire social change for racial justice is so high that concern for racial change is almost synonymous with being a Democrat. Similarly, concern for the rights of LGBTQ individuals has been firmly implanted within the social values of political progressives. According to the 2020 American National Election Studies, 69.4% of individuals who identify as slightly liberal, liberal, or extremely liberal indicate that gays face a lot of discrimination in comparison to 25.4% of individuals who identify as slightly conservative, conservative, or extremely conservative. Given that identity politics in the United States was rooted in progressive activism, it is not surprising that social attitudes buttressing the political interest of the proponents of identity politics would impact political progressives more than political conservatives.
CAN IDENTITY POLITICS IMPACT WELL-BEING?
While there are many measures of well-being, the data I have access to allows me to measure self-assessed levels of depression, anxiety, and sense of control. While there are different manifestations of identity politics, social groups arguably most relevant are those based on racial identity and sexuality. If identity politics explains the propensity of political progressives to have lower levels of well-being, then it is not sufficient for measures of identity politics to be related to lower levels of well-being. Such measures should also at least partially, and perhaps completely, mediate the relationship of political ideology to well-being. This leads to the key hypothesis of the article. This hypothesis is that for each measure of well-being—depression, anxiety, and control—concern tied to fighting for the rights of racial and sexual minorities will at least partially mediate the impact of political ideology on well-being after application of relevant demographic and social controls. If these identity political variables completely mediate general political ideology/well-being measure, then I will have strong confidence in the power of those political ideology variables to explain the political differences in well-being. A corollary to that hypothesis is that identity politics measures are negatively related to the three indicators of well-being.
In contrast to identity politics, it is plausible that individuals adopt a politically progressive ideology due to broader class-based concerns. Concerns about the government creating a more equitable society with more generous allocations to the public may escape tendencies toward emotional reasoning and dichotomous thinking that may be present in an identity politics mindset. If identity politics is the major driver of lower levels of well-being for political progressives, then attitudes connected to a concern that the government supplies more resources to the lower or working classes should not explain the relationship of political ideology to well-being. This leads to a second hypothesis that for each measure of well-being—depression, anxiety, and control—concerns tied to fighting for increased public sector resources will not mediate the relationship between political orientation and well-being after application of relevant demographic and social controls. A corollary to that hypothesis is that class-based political measures are not negatively related to the three indicators of well-being
INDIA IPPON DESU
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Sunday, October 01, 2023
The Objectivist Ethics - Ayn Rand
To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?
“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.
I quote from Galt’s speech: “There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.”
To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.
Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex—from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man—are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism’s life.1
An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly. What standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival.
No choice is open to an organism in this issue: that which is required for its survival is determined by its nature, by the kind of entity it is. Many variations, many forms of adaptation to its background are possible to an organism, including the possibility of existing for a while in a crippled, disabled or diseased condition, but the fundamental alternative of its existence remains the same: if an organism fails in the basic functions required by its nature—if an amoeba’s protoplasm stops assimilating food, or if a man’s heart stops beating—the organism dies. In a fundamental sense, stillness is the antithesis of life. Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action. The goal of that action, the ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment, is the organism’s life.
An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”
In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.”
Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.
The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life.
The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man—and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness—serves as an automatic guardian of the organism’s life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body, which requires action to correct it. The best illustration of this can be seen in the rare, freak cases of children who are born without the capacity to experience physical pain; such children do not survive for long; they have no means of discovering what can injure them, no warning signals, and thus a minor cut can develop into a deadly infection, or a major illness can remain undetected until it is too late to fight it.
Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival.
The simpler organisms, such as plants, can survive by means of their automatic physical functions. The higher organisms, such as animals and man, cannot: their needs are more complex and the range of their actions is wider. The physical functions of their bodies can perform automatically only the task of using fuel, but cannot obtain that fuel. To obtain it, the higher organisms need the faculty of consciousness. A plant can obtain its food from the soil in which it grows. An animal has to hunt for it. Man has to produce it.
A plant has no choice of action; the goals it pursues are automatic and innate, determined by its nature. Nourishment, water, sunlight are the values its nature has set it to seek. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. There are alternatives in the conditions it encounters in its physical background—such as heat or frost, drought or flood—and there are certain actions which it is able to perform to combat adverse conditions, such as the ability of some plants to grow and crawl from under a rock to reach the sunlight. But whatever the conditions, there is no alternative in a plant’s function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.
The range of actions required for the survival of the higher organisms is wider: it is proportionate to the range of their consciousness. The lower of the conscious species possess only the faculty of sensation, which is sufficient to direct their actions and provide for their needs. A sensation is produced by the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world; it lasts for the duration of the immediate moment, as long as the stimulus lasts and no longer. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. An organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain mechanism of its body, that is: by an automatic knowledge and an automatic code of values. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. Within the range of action possible to it, it acts automatically to further its life and cannot act for its own destruction.
The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of perception. A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by percepts. Its actions are not single, discrete responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the perceptual reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further. It is able to learn certain skills to deal with specific situations, such as hunting or hiding, which the parents of the higher animals teach their young. But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation. And an animal has no choice in the standard of value directing its actions: its senses provide it with an automatic code of values, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil, what benefits or endangers its life. An animal has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In situations for which its knowledge is inadequate, it perishes—as, for instance, an animal that stands paralyzed on the track of a railroad in the path of a speeding train. But so long as it lives, an animal acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice: it cannot suspend its own consciousness—it cannot choose not to perceive—it cannot evade its own perceptions—it cannot ignore its own good, it cannot decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.
Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions—but his consciousness will not function automatically. Man, the highest living species on this earth—the being whose consciousness has a limitless capacity for gaining knowledge—man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of remaining conscious at all. Man’s particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional.
Just as the automatic values directing the functions of a plant’s body are sufficient for its survival, but are not sufficient for an animal’s—so the automatic values provided by the sensory-perceptual mechanism of its consciousness are sufficient to guide an animal, but are not sufficient for man. Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge. But conceptual knowledge cannot be acquired automatically.
A “concept” is a mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes, which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a specific definition. Every word of man’s language, with the exception of proper names, denotes a concept, an abstraction that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a specific kind. It is by organizing his perceptual material into concepts, and his concepts into wider and still wider concepts that man is able to grasp and retain, to identify and integrate an unlimited amount of knowledge, a knowledge extending beyond the immediate perceptions of any given, immediate moment. Man’s sense organs function automatically; man’s brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts—the process of abstraction and of concept-formation—is not automatic.
The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as “chair,” “table,” “hot,” “cold,” and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.
Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.
When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious.
Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.
Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival. For man, the basic means of survival is reason. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as “hunger”), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available—but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no “instincts” will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge—and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it.
But man’s responsibility goes still further: a process of thought is not automatic nor “instinctive” nor involuntary—nor infallible. Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results. He has to discover how to tell what is true or false and how to correct his own errors; he has to discover how to validate his concepts, his conclusions, his knowledge; he has to discover the rules of thought, the laws of logic, to direct his thinking. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of the efficacy of his mental effort.
Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it. The potential is a superlative machine: his consciousness; but it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver; he has to discover how to use it and he has to keep it in constant action. The material is the whole of the universe, with no limits set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve. But everything he needs or desires has to be learned, discovered and produced by him—by his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind.
A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil. Yet he needs that knowledge in order to live. He is not exempt from the laws of reality, he is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. He cannot achieve his survival by arbitrary means nor by random motions nor by blind urges nor by chance nor by whim. That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.
I quote from Galt’s speech: “There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.”
To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.
Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex—from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man—are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism’s life.1
An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly. What standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival.
No choice is open to an organism in this issue: that which is required for its survival is determined by its nature, by the kind of entity it is. Many variations, many forms of adaptation to its background are possible to an organism, including the possibility of existing for a while in a crippled, disabled or diseased condition, but the fundamental alternative of its existence remains the same: if an organism fails in the basic functions required by its nature—if an amoeba’s protoplasm stops assimilating food, or if a man’s heart stops beating—the organism dies. In a fundamental sense, stillness is the antithesis of life. Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action. The goal of that action, the ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment, is the organism’s life.
An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.
Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”
In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.”
Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step of the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.
The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is. He has no choice about it, and he has no choice about the standard that determines what will make him experience the physical sensation of pleasure or of pain. What is that standard? His life.
The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man—and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness—serves as an automatic guardian of the organism’s life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body, which requires action to correct it. The best illustration of this can be seen in the rare, freak cases of children who are born without the capacity to experience physical pain; such children do not survive for long; they have no means of discovering what can injure them, no warning signals, and thus a minor cut can develop into a deadly infection, or a major illness can remain undetected until it is too late to fight it.
Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival.
The simpler organisms, such as plants, can survive by means of their automatic physical functions. The higher organisms, such as animals and man, cannot: their needs are more complex and the range of their actions is wider. The physical functions of their bodies can perform automatically only the task of using fuel, but cannot obtain that fuel. To obtain it, the higher organisms need the faculty of consciousness. A plant can obtain its food from the soil in which it grows. An animal has to hunt for it. Man has to produce it.
A plant has no choice of action; the goals it pursues are automatic and innate, determined by its nature. Nourishment, water, sunlight are the values its nature has set it to seek. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. There are alternatives in the conditions it encounters in its physical background—such as heat or frost, drought or flood—and there are certain actions which it is able to perform to combat adverse conditions, such as the ability of some plants to grow and crawl from under a rock to reach the sunlight. But whatever the conditions, there is no alternative in a plant’s function: it acts automatically to further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.
The range of actions required for the survival of the higher organisms is wider: it is proportionate to the range of their consciousness. The lower of the conscious species possess only the faculty of sensation, which is sufficient to direct their actions and provide for their needs. A sensation is produced by the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world; it lasts for the duration of the immediate moment, as long as the stimulus lasts and no longer. Sensations are an automatic response, an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. An organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain mechanism of its body, that is: by an automatic knowledge and an automatic code of values. Its life is the standard of value directing its actions. Within the range of action possible to it, it acts automatically to further its life and cannot act for its own destruction.
The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of perception. A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by percepts. Its actions are not single, discrete responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the perceptual reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further. It is able to learn certain skills to deal with specific situations, such as hunting or hiding, which the parents of the higher animals teach their young. But an animal has no choice in the knowledge and the skills that it acquires; it can only repeat them generation after generation. And an animal has no choice in the standard of value directing its actions: its senses provide it with an automatic code of values, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil, what benefits or endangers its life. An animal has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In situations for which its knowledge is inadequate, it perishes—as, for instance, an animal that stands paralyzed on the track of a railroad in the path of a speeding train. But so long as it lives, an animal acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and no power of choice: it cannot suspend its own consciousness—it cannot choose not to perceive—it cannot evade its own perceptions—it cannot ignore its own good, it cannot decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.
Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions—but his consciousness will not function automatically. Man, the highest living species on this earth—the being whose consciousness has a limitless capacity for gaining knowledge—man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of remaining conscious at all. Man’s particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional.
Just as the automatic values directing the functions of a plant’s body are sufficient for its survival, but are not sufficient for an animal’s—so the automatic values provided by the sensory-perceptual mechanism of its consciousness are sufficient to guide an animal, but are not sufficient for man. Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge. But conceptual knowledge cannot be acquired automatically.
A “concept” is a mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes, which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a specific definition. Every word of man’s language, with the exception of proper names, denotes a concept, an abstraction that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a specific kind. It is by organizing his perceptual material into concepts, and his concepts into wider and still wider concepts that man is able to grasp and retain, to identify and integrate an unlimited amount of knowledge, a knowledge extending beyond the immediate perceptions of any given, immediate moment. Man’s sense organs function automatically; man’s brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts—the process of abstraction and of concept-formation—is not automatic.
The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as “chair,” “table,” “hot,” “cold,” and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.
Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.
When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious.
Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.
Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival. For man, the basic means of survival is reason. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as “hunger”), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available—but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no “instincts” will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge—and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it.
But man’s responsibility goes still further: a process of thought is not automatic nor “instinctive” nor involuntary—nor infallible. Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results. He has to discover how to tell what is true or false and how to correct his own errors; he has to discover how to validate his concepts, his conclusions, his knowledge; he has to discover the rules of thought, the laws of logic, to direct his thinking. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of the efficacy of his mental effort.
Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it. The potential is a superlative machine: his consciousness; but it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver; he has to discover how to use it and he has to keep it in constant action. The material is the whole of the universe, with no limits set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve. But everything he needs or desires has to be learned, discovered and produced by him—by his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind.
A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil. Yet he needs that knowledge in order to live. He is not exempt from the laws of reality, he is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. He cannot achieve his survival by arbitrary means nor by random motions nor by blind urges nor by chance nor by whim. That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
UK :Permanently High taxes
Joshua Nevett for BBC
Political reporter
Tax levels in the UK are at their highest since records began 70 years ago - and are unlikely to come down, a leading think tank says.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) forecasts taxes will amount to about 37% of national income by the next general election, due in 2024.
The IFS report - on the eve of the Conservative conference - has reignited calls for tax cuts from Tory MPs.
The government says taming price rises is its priority.
Next year, the government will collect upwards of £100bn more in tax compared to pre-2019 levels, the IFS says.
This is not a direct consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, when government spending surged to keep the economy afloat, the think tank argues.
Instead, it reflects decisions to increase government spending, the UK's ageing population and pressures on the health service.
Tax cuts 'virtually impossible' now, says Jeremy Hunt
In recent years, the government has announced a series of tax-raising measures, including an increase in corporation tax from 19% to 25%, and the levy on profits made by energy companies.
IFS director Paul Johnson said: "Over this parliament, it looks like taxes will rise by about 4% of national income, that's round about £100bn."
He added the UK tax take is still about the average for rich countries and below the rest of Europe.
"If you look into the future, we are going to be spending more on pensions and health and so on as the population ages," Mr Johnson said.
"In my view, this is almost certainly a permanent increase in taxes."
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt - who will set out his economic plans in his Autumn Statement in November - said last week that tax cuts were "virtually impossible" at present.
A Treasury spokesperson said the "most effective tax cut we can deliver" is to "drive down inflation".
But supporters of former Prime Minister Liz Truss and other Tory MPs have renewed their calls for tax cuts to promote economic growth.
Ms Truss told the BBC: "This unprecedentedly high tax burden is one of the reasons that the British economy is stagnating."
Another Conservative MP, John Redwood, said there were "affordable tax cuts to be had", including raising the VAT threshold for businesses and slashing duties on fuel.
Labour has ruled out unfunded tax cuts - or spending commitments - if it wins power at next year's general election.
Commenting on the IFS report, leader Sir Keir Starmer said: "There's a driving reason why we've got the highest taxes pretty well on record and that's because of the dismal failure of this government on growth."
The Liberal Democrats said the Conservatives had "crashed the economy" under Ms Truss and are "making the public pay the price".
In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Mr Sunak said he thought halving inflation by the end of this year was the "most important" of the five pledges he made in January.
Inflation - the rate at which prices are rising - was 10.7% in the three-month period between October and December 2022, which means the government aims to reduce inflation to 5.3%.
In August the inflation rate was 6.7%.
"Inflation is falling, there's light at the end of the tunnel, but we need to stick to the plan," Mr Sunak said
Political reporter
Tax levels in the UK are at their highest since records began 70 years ago - and are unlikely to come down, a leading think tank says.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) forecasts taxes will amount to about 37% of national income by the next general election, due in 2024.
The IFS report - on the eve of the Conservative conference - has reignited calls for tax cuts from Tory MPs.
The government says taming price rises is its priority.
Next year, the government will collect upwards of £100bn more in tax compared to pre-2019 levels, the IFS says.
This is not a direct consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, when government spending surged to keep the economy afloat, the think tank argues.
Instead, it reflects decisions to increase government spending, the UK's ageing population and pressures on the health service.
Tax cuts 'virtually impossible' now, says Jeremy Hunt
In recent years, the government has announced a series of tax-raising measures, including an increase in corporation tax from 19% to 25%, and the levy on profits made by energy companies.
IFS director Paul Johnson said: "Over this parliament, it looks like taxes will rise by about 4% of national income, that's round about £100bn."
He added the UK tax take is still about the average for rich countries and below the rest of Europe.
"If you look into the future, we are going to be spending more on pensions and health and so on as the population ages," Mr Johnson said.
"In my view, this is almost certainly a permanent increase in taxes."
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt - who will set out his economic plans in his Autumn Statement in November - said last week that tax cuts were "virtually impossible" at present.
A Treasury spokesperson said the "most effective tax cut we can deliver" is to "drive down inflation".
But supporters of former Prime Minister Liz Truss and other Tory MPs have renewed their calls for tax cuts to promote economic growth.
Ms Truss told the BBC: "This unprecedentedly high tax burden is one of the reasons that the British economy is stagnating."
Another Conservative MP, John Redwood, said there were "affordable tax cuts to be had", including raising the VAT threshold for businesses and slashing duties on fuel.
Labour has ruled out unfunded tax cuts - or spending commitments - if it wins power at next year's general election.
Commenting on the IFS report, leader Sir Keir Starmer said: "There's a driving reason why we've got the highest taxes pretty well on record and that's because of the dismal failure of this government on growth."
The Liberal Democrats said the Conservatives had "crashed the economy" under Ms Truss and are "making the public pay the price".
In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Mr Sunak said he thought halving inflation by the end of this year was the "most important" of the five pledges he made in January.
Inflation - the rate at which prices are rising - was 10.7% in the three-month period between October and December 2022, which means the government aims to reduce inflation to 5.3%.
In August the inflation rate was 6.7%.
"Inflation is falling, there's light at the end of the tunnel, but we need to stick to the plan," Mr Sunak said
Germany : Supply side reforms
Germany’s economy has seen no real GDP growth since 2019.
Rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war, Germany is facing three key structural supply-side limitations:
A switch from Russian natural gas to liquid natural gas from overseas increases energy prices.
An accelerating demographic transition will see the working population plummet by 7 million workers by 2035.
Bureaucratic government structures and long approval processes slow down an economy that needs more flexibility.
Across the political spectrum, these limitations hinder policymakers’ priorities.
As a consequence, Germany’s center-left coalition increasingly advocates for supply-side reforms.
This mirrors the rise of American “supply-side liberalism,” i.e., a center-left movement that advocates for the targeted reduction of government regulation with the goal of boosting growth rates and incomes.
This results in the following government actions:
Several legislative acts, cutting approval times for new railroads and renewable power plants.
An easing of environmental review requirements for infrastructure projects.
An immigration reform mirroring the Canadian model, with more controlled refugee migration and a meritocratic, fine-tuneable points-based skilled immigration scheme.
It is to be decided if these and future policies will be ambitious enough, as several of Germany’s ideological features could stand in the way:
Immigration-skeptical views could hold down skilled immigration levels
Environmentalist policies could slow down sectors that are economically important but not essential for the clean energy transition.
Persisting demands for rent controls or electricity subsidies could slow the efficient build-out of housing or energy infrastructure.
If these impulses are kept in check, though, Germany might embrace the kind of economic reform that could boost long-term growth, accelerate innovation, and increase wages across income levels.
Introduction
Germany’s national mood has turned negative. All political parties agree that the economy is in trouble: real earnings are falling, rates of construction are down, and heavy industry is offshoring energy-intensive production. In the aggregate, the country has seen no economic growth since 2019. For comparison, American readers of this post have become markedly wealthier over the same period, with real GDP rising from $19.2 to $20.3 trillion. Germany flatlined at $4 trillion.
To change this, policymakers need to tackle three key challenges: high energy prices, a shortage of skilled labor, and bureaucratic hurdles. All of these are supply-side limitations, i.e., the economy is not as productive as it could be due to costly energy, scarce labor, and a slow-moving regulatory state. Unlike the 2008 recession, stoking consumer demand is not advisable and would be actively harmful, with inflation standing at 6.1%.
Following German economic discourse over the past few months, we observed that more and more government actors do realize the need for supply-side reform. In a recently published ten-point dossier, the governing coalition (made up of the center-left SPD, the environmentalist Greens, and the economically liberal FDP) lays out their policies to improve Germany’s productivity: reducing lengthy approval procedures, increasing skilled immigration, reducing bureaucracy, and accelerating the build-out of the country’s renewable energy supplies. Olaf Schulz summarizes the vibe of this policy push like so:
“Only together will we shake off the mildew of bureaucracy, risk aversion, and despondency that has settled over our country for years and decades. This blight paralyzes our economy and causes frustration among the people in the country who just want Germany to function properly.”
We are excited about this new tone, especially as it resembles Derek Thompson’s “abundance agenda.” Known to people who are steeped in US economic discourse, this set of center-left ideas aims to increase material abundance, against which extensive environmental reviews or lengthy approval processes for infrastructure need to take a backseat. The goal of this is to enable all social classes to get more access to the goods and services they want and need. Less abstractly, families should be able to enjoy good public and private transport, affordable housing, and inexpensive energy.
Aiming to boost a stagnant economy, Germany’s center-left government now also begins to scrutinize a set of regulatory policies that they themselves traditionally support. While doing so, they face opposition from politicians in their own parties who continue to advocate for policies like electricity price caps and rent controls. These hold-outs, in particular, need to be persuaded that the status quo or short-term price controls demand-side measures cannot solve Germany’s shortages in energy, labor, and housing. Rather, the country’s structural challenges require extensive supply-side reform.
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Energy: There’s not enough of it Cheap energy makes an economy competitive, as the price of gas, oil, and electricity directly impacts the price of most goods. Germany never reached the low energy costs that the US enjoys. But by opting for Russian natural gas instead of liquified natural gas (LNG) from overseas, Germany pushed prices low enough to power a productive export-oriented industrial sector. Germany’s bet on amicable trade relations with Russia has now turned bad, as Putin’s war and the subsequent end of gas exports led to a record spike in natural gas prices in 2022.
Source: FT The government’s immediate response has been encouraging. As gas prices spiked, it showed a rare capacity to build fast: Bypassing burdensome approval processes, LNG terminals were constructed within 200 days. In plans to build further terminals on the island of Rügen, the federal government is tackling local NIMBY opposition head-on. The German government termed this new-found ability to build fast “Deutschlandgeschwindigkeit” (German speed), a meme we approve of.
Still, as seen in the chart above, gas prices are higher than before and are expected to stay at higher levels for years. And even though gas power plants make up only 14% of Germany’s electricity mix, they are needed to close the gaps of intermittent renewable energy production. As a result, the increased marginal cost of operating gas power plants pushes up the average cost of electricity, which will push electricity prices to above pre-2019 levels for years to come.
US prices: Statista, Statista, German prices: BDEW It’s not a novel idea that high energy prices could be lowered by increasing electricity production, and to its credit, the current government is attempting to do so with renewables. The Greens, in particular, are accepting that building more energy infrastructure may require moderating longstanding environmentalist ideals. As the build-out of renewables is hampered by slow-moving approval processes and NIMBYism, the Green-led economics ministry has given the construction of renewables “overriding public interest,” bypassing local opposition and concerns about biodiversity. On top of that, environmental impact review requirements are dropped for most renewable energy projects. This prioritization is producing results: renewables now regularly account for 30-50% of overall energy production.
However, the government acts less like an economist when thinking about nuclear power. As the Greens stuck to long-held anti-nuclear attitudes, the final three nuclear power plants were shut down this spring.
1 Neckarwestheim 2, a reliable source of clean nuclear energy.
The resulting price hike would normally get the energy-intensive industry to push for compensatory electricity production. Instead, some politicians in the SPD and the Greens are considering to subsidize their electricity demand. Supported by a still-strong corporatist amalgam of large industrial company associations and industrial labor unions, such subsidies might help a couple of companies, but they stand in the way of structural economic reform: Energy subsidies will lower firms’ incentive to develop energy-efficient processes while stifling the potential of cleaner and more innovative companies to outcompete them.
Instead, the large funds required for such subsidies (~€4b/y) could support promising programs to create markets and power plants for hydrogen or top up existing R&D funds for fusion and deep geothermal energy.
Labor: A workforce in decline An economy not only needs cheap energy; it also needs a strong and educated workforce. Long-term labor supply can be increased by boosting birth rates or immigration. Germany doesn’t look so good on either count: The bulk of Germany’s baby boomers are about to retire, and skilled immigration is low. With continued below-replacement birth rates and no policy intervention, the German Institute for Employment Research predicts a drop in the working population of 7.2 million people by 2035, from 47.3 million workers to around 40.2 million. More than 40% of German companies already report that shortages of skilled labor are hindering greater production.
Germany thus needs more skilled immigration. Upping immigration rates presents an all-around win: migrants enjoy far higher wages and better living conditions than at home, and Germany and the world will see higher growth rates as migrants can be more productive in Germany. The country has the potential to ramp up immigration: within Europe, it is migrants’ favored destination, though this is less true for high-skilled migrants, where Germany ranks somewhere in the middle compared to other OECD countries. Changing German culture to be more welcoming to foreigners is hard. But immigration reform is a straightforward next step.
Here, the government comes closest to a clear pro-growth vision. Doing something that the US political class has been unable to achieve, the coalition chose the Canadian approach to immigration: Increasing control of irregular migration while introducing a new points-based, skilled immigration system. This might allow the government to escape debates between two narrow positions: open borders vs. closed borders. Instead, if the government wants to follow the green line in the chart below, it can use this new technocratic system to slowly ramp up immigration to the required levels of 400k a year.
Vowing to build on this reform, the government plans to further reduce the bureaucratic load faced by immigrants. Similar efforts to reduce bureaucratic burden are starting across other parts of government, as close to everyone recognizes that the government apparatus needs to become more nimble.
Bureaucracy: Price controls and fax machines
The consequences of Germany’s bureaucracy and intermittent use of price controls are most obvious when looking at the country’s persistent housing shortage. In Berlin alone, rents have tripled over the past 18 years. When you buy into the Housing Theory of Everything, you will already know the many harms that a lack of housing causes, including decreasing disposable income, limiting economic mobility, reducing the production of new ideas, and disincentivizing family formation.
Vowing to build more, the coalition isn’t on track to achieve its goals, building only 295,300 out of 400,000 planned housing units in 2022. Rising interest rates partly explain this. But the government adds to the construction sector's slow-down by limiting construction subsidies to projects that follow ever-more strict energy efficiency standards. On top of that, the discourse still hasn’t moved on from discussions of rent control, as the SPD’s parliamentary faction recently demanded national price caps. This would only limit future housing supply, a bad outcome if we want more immigrants in areas with strong economic activity.
Though faster than two years ago, the build-out of infrastructure is still fairly slow, as wind farms take an average of four to five years to get licensed, and the construction of a vital long-range transmission line between South and North Germany was delayed by years. The slow, paper-based style of governing that leads to such slow-downs isn’t anyone’s goal. But with companies enjoying stable business and little demand for transformation, government agencies faced little pressure to modernize, leaving incoming policymakers with technologically outdated governing structures.
All of this leads to a similar political situation to the one that gave rise to American supply-side liberalism. As bureaucratic structures are stunting everyone’s priorities, whether climate change mitigation or more private investment, political factions beyond the economically liberal favor both modernizing the government apparatus and getting rid of burdensome regulation. If we only look at the names of major German legislative acts, we see that this frustration has its effect: Half of them are called “[Something] Acceleration Act,” from the Approval Acceleration Act over the LNG Acceleration Act to the Procurement Acceleration Act.
Looking at rapidly approved wind farms
Doubling down on sustainable, long-term growth
Further reform is already supported by large parts of the coalition, the major conservative opposition party CDU, and leading economists. A key determinant of future reforms’ success will hinge on the coalition embracing this support. Chancellor Scholz has recently done so with a proposed “Pact for Germany,” offering to work with state-level government and the opposition to boost growth, accelerate planning, and attract more skilled workers. But, as some in the coalition are doing now, they could get side-tracked by contentious debates on electricity subsidies for heavy industry or price controls on housing.
If the government instead doubles down on supply-side reform, the long-term benefits could be large. Yes, Germany is already a rich country. But by becoming more prosperous still, individuals can stay healthier, have better jobs, travel further, and have more leisure time. Government can do more, too, as it will have more funding to strengthen the welfare state and invest in research & development. Finally, by getting more room to breathe, businesses can use their industrial finesse to build the kind of clean industrial technologies the world needs.
Many within the current coalition understand this. To support them, pointing to the past and current shortcomings of German economic policymaking can provide valuable insights. But it’s also worth acknowledging that Germany has, in important areas, stopped messing around and is picking policies that follow the tenets of supply-side liberalism. By moving forward with these and further reforms, Germany can get out of its economic malaise and lead Europe toward a cleaner and wealthier future.
1 Reactivating nuclear power plants is fairly unlikely, given that energy companies have been planning shutdowns for a decade, with demolitions now slowly underway. Consequently, even a shift in political power, such as the Greens losing influence in two years, won’t make it possible to turn them back on. There is still stuff to argue for here, though. For instance, Germany obstructs amendments to EU rules, which currently hinder France from investing more in its nuclear power plant fleet.
A guest post by Dominik Hermle
Medical Student. Interested in politics, progress & the politics of progress.
Rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war, Germany is facing three key structural supply-side limitations:
A switch from Russian natural gas to liquid natural gas from overseas increases energy prices.
An accelerating demographic transition will see the working population plummet by 7 million workers by 2035.
Bureaucratic government structures and long approval processes slow down an economy that needs more flexibility.
Across the political spectrum, these limitations hinder policymakers’ priorities.
As a consequence, Germany’s center-left coalition increasingly advocates for supply-side reforms.
This mirrors the rise of American “supply-side liberalism,” i.e., a center-left movement that advocates for the targeted reduction of government regulation with the goal of boosting growth rates and incomes.
This results in the following government actions:
Several legislative acts, cutting approval times for new railroads and renewable power plants.
An easing of environmental review requirements for infrastructure projects.
An immigration reform mirroring the Canadian model, with more controlled refugee migration and a meritocratic, fine-tuneable points-based skilled immigration scheme.
It is to be decided if these and future policies will be ambitious enough, as several of Germany’s ideological features could stand in the way:
Immigration-skeptical views could hold down skilled immigration levels
Environmentalist policies could slow down sectors that are economically important but not essential for the clean energy transition.
Persisting demands for rent controls or electricity subsidies could slow the efficient build-out of housing or energy infrastructure.
If these impulses are kept in check, though, Germany might embrace the kind of economic reform that could boost long-term growth, accelerate innovation, and increase wages across income levels.
Introduction
Germany’s national mood has turned negative. All political parties agree that the economy is in trouble: real earnings are falling, rates of construction are down, and heavy industry is offshoring energy-intensive production. In the aggregate, the country has seen no economic growth since 2019. For comparison, American readers of this post have become markedly wealthier over the same period, with real GDP rising from $19.2 to $20.3 trillion. Germany flatlined at $4 trillion.
To change this, policymakers need to tackle three key challenges: high energy prices, a shortage of skilled labor, and bureaucratic hurdles. All of these are supply-side limitations, i.e., the economy is not as productive as it could be due to costly energy, scarce labor, and a slow-moving regulatory state. Unlike the 2008 recession, stoking consumer demand is not advisable and would be actively harmful, with inflation standing at 6.1%.
Following German economic discourse over the past few months, we observed that more and more government actors do realize the need for supply-side reform. In a recently published ten-point dossier, the governing coalition (made up of the center-left SPD, the environmentalist Greens, and the economically liberal FDP) lays out their policies to improve Germany’s productivity: reducing lengthy approval procedures, increasing skilled immigration, reducing bureaucracy, and accelerating the build-out of the country’s renewable energy supplies. Olaf Schulz summarizes the vibe of this policy push like so:
“Only together will we shake off the mildew of bureaucracy, risk aversion, and despondency that has settled over our country for years and decades. This blight paralyzes our economy and causes frustration among the people in the country who just want Germany to function properly.”
We are excited about this new tone, especially as it resembles Derek Thompson’s “abundance agenda.” Known to people who are steeped in US economic discourse, this set of center-left ideas aims to increase material abundance, against which extensive environmental reviews or lengthy approval processes for infrastructure need to take a backseat. The goal of this is to enable all social classes to get more access to the goods and services they want and need. Less abstractly, families should be able to enjoy good public and private transport, affordable housing, and inexpensive energy.
Aiming to boost a stagnant economy, Germany’s center-left government now also begins to scrutinize a set of regulatory policies that they themselves traditionally support. While doing so, they face opposition from politicians in their own parties who continue to advocate for policies like electricity price caps and rent controls. These hold-outs, in particular, need to be persuaded that the status quo or short-term price controls demand-side measures cannot solve Germany’s shortages in energy, labor, and housing. Rather, the country’s structural challenges require extensive supply-side reform.
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Energy: There’s not enough of it Cheap energy makes an economy competitive, as the price of gas, oil, and electricity directly impacts the price of most goods. Germany never reached the low energy costs that the US enjoys. But by opting for Russian natural gas instead of liquified natural gas (LNG) from overseas, Germany pushed prices low enough to power a productive export-oriented industrial sector. Germany’s bet on amicable trade relations with Russia has now turned bad, as Putin’s war and the subsequent end of gas exports led to a record spike in natural gas prices in 2022.
Source: FT The government’s immediate response has been encouraging. As gas prices spiked, it showed a rare capacity to build fast: Bypassing burdensome approval processes, LNG terminals were constructed within 200 days. In plans to build further terminals on the island of Rügen, the federal government is tackling local NIMBY opposition head-on. The German government termed this new-found ability to build fast “Deutschlandgeschwindigkeit” (German speed), a meme we approve of.
Still, as seen in the chart above, gas prices are higher than before and are expected to stay at higher levels for years. And even though gas power plants make up only 14% of Germany’s electricity mix, they are needed to close the gaps of intermittent renewable energy production. As a result, the increased marginal cost of operating gas power plants pushes up the average cost of electricity, which will push electricity prices to above pre-2019 levels for years to come.
US prices: Statista, Statista, German prices: BDEW It’s not a novel idea that high energy prices could be lowered by increasing electricity production, and to its credit, the current government is attempting to do so with renewables. The Greens, in particular, are accepting that building more energy infrastructure may require moderating longstanding environmentalist ideals. As the build-out of renewables is hampered by slow-moving approval processes and NIMBYism, the Green-led economics ministry has given the construction of renewables “overriding public interest,” bypassing local opposition and concerns about biodiversity. On top of that, environmental impact review requirements are dropped for most renewable energy projects. This prioritization is producing results: renewables now regularly account for 30-50% of overall energy production.
However, the government acts less like an economist when thinking about nuclear power. As the Greens stuck to long-held anti-nuclear attitudes, the final three nuclear power plants were shut down this spring.
1 Neckarwestheim 2, a reliable source of clean nuclear energy.
The resulting price hike would normally get the energy-intensive industry to push for compensatory electricity production. Instead, some politicians in the SPD and the Greens are considering to subsidize their electricity demand. Supported by a still-strong corporatist amalgam of large industrial company associations and industrial labor unions, such subsidies might help a couple of companies, but they stand in the way of structural economic reform: Energy subsidies will lower firms’ incentive to develop energy-efficient processes while stifling the potential of cleaner and more innovative companies to outcompete them.
Instead, the large funds required for such subsidies (~€4b/y) could support promising programs to create markets and power plants for hydrogen or top up existing R&D funds for fusion and deep geothermal energy.
Labor: A workforce in decline An economy not only needs cheap energy; it also needs a strong and educated workforce. Long-term labor supply can be increased by boosting birth rates or immigration. Germany doesn’t look so good on either count: The bulk of Germany’s baby boomers are about to retire, and skilled immigration is low. With continued below-replacement birth rates and no policy intervention, the German Institute for Employment Research predicts a drop in the working population of 7.2 million people by 2035, from 47.3 million workers to around 40.2 million. More than 40% of German companies already report that shortages of skilled labor are hindering greater production.
Germany thus needs more skilled immigration. Upping immigration rates presents an all-around win: migrants enjoy far higher wages and better living conditions than at home, and Germany and the world will see higher growth rates as migrants can be more productive in Germany. The country has the potential to ramp up immigration: within Europe, it is migrants’ favored destination, though this is less true for high-skilled migrants, where Germany ranks somewhere in the middle compared to other OECD countries. Changing German culture to be more welcoming to foreigners is hard. But immigration reform is a straightforward next step.
Here, the government comes closest to a clear pro-growth vision. Doing something that the US political class has been unable to achieve, the coalition chose the Canadian approach to immigration: Increasing control of irregular migration while introducing a new points-based, skilled immigration system. This might allow the government to escape debates between two narrow positions: open borders vs. closed borders. Instead, if the government wants to follow the green line in the chart below, it can use this new technocratic system to slowly ramp up immigration to the required levels of 400k a year.
Vowing to build on this reform, the government plans to further reduce the bureaucratic load faced by immigrants. Similar efforts to reduce bureaucratic burden are starting across other parts of government, as close to everyone recognizes that the government apparatus needs to become more nimble.
Bureaucracy: Price controls and fax machines
The consequences of Germany’s bureaucracy and intermittent use of price controls are most obvious when looking at the country’s persistent housing shortage. In Berlin alone, rents have tripled over the past 18 years. When you buy into the Housing Theory of Everything, you will already know the many harms that a lack of housing causes, including decreasing disposable income, limiting economic mobility, reducing the production of new ideas, and disincentivizing family formation.
Vowing to build more, the coalition isn’t on track to achieve its goals, building only 295,300 out of 400,000 planned housing units in 2022. Rising interest rates partly explain this. But the government adds to the construction sector's slow-down by limiting construction subsidies to projects that follow ever-more strict energy efficiency standards. On top of that, the discourse still hasn’t moved on from discussions of rent control, as the SPD’s parliamentary faction recently demanded national price caps. This would only limit future housing supply, a bad outcome if we want more immigrants in areas with strong economic activity.
Though faster than two years ago, the build-out of infrastructure is still fairly slow, as wind farms take an average of four to five years to get licensed, and the construction of a vital long-range transmission line between South and North Germany was delayed by years. The slow, paper-based style of governing that leads to such slow-downs isn’t anyone’s goal. But with companies enjoying stable business and little demand for transformation, government agencies faced little pressure to modernize, leaving incoming policymakers with technologically outdated governing structures.
All of this leads to a similar political situation to the one that gave rise to American supply-side liberalism. As bureaucratic structures are stunting everyone’s priorities, whether climate change mitigation or more private investment, political factions beyond the economically liberal favor both modernizing the government apparatus and getting rid of burdensome regulation. If we only look at the names of major German legislative acts, we see that this frustration has its effect: Half of them are called “[Something] Acceleration Act,” from the Approval Acceleration Act over the LNG Acceleration Act to the Procurement Acceleration Act.
Looking at rapidly approved wind farms
Doubling down on sustainable, long-term growth
Further reform is already supported by large parts of the coalition, the major conservative opposition party CDU, and leading economists. A key determinant of future reforms’ success will hinge on the coalition embracing this support. Chancellor Scholz has recently done so with a proposed “Pact for Germany,” offering to work with state-level government and the opposition to boost growth, accelerate planning, and attract more skilled workers. But, as some in the coalition are doing now, they could get side-tracked by contentious debates on electricity subsidies for heavy industry or price controls on housing.
If the government instead doubles down on supply-side reform, the long-term benefits could be large. Yes, Germany is already a rich country. But by becoming more prosperous still, individuals can stay healthier, have better jobs, travel further, and have more leisure time. Government can do more, too, as it will have more funding to strengthen the welfare state and invest in research & development. Finally, by getting more room to breathe, businesses can use their industrial finesse to build the kind of clean industrial technologies the world needs.
Many within the current coalition understand this. To support them, pointing to the past and current shortcomings of German economic policymaking can provide valuable insights. But it’s also worth acknowledging that Germany has, in important areas, stopped messing around and is picking policies that follow the tenets of supply-side liberalism. By moving forward with these and further reforms, Germany can get out of its economic malaise and lead Europe toward a cleaner and wealthier future.
1 Reactivating nuclear power plants is fairly unlikely, given that energy companies have been planning shutdowns for a decade, with demolitions now slowly underway. Consequently, even a shift in political power, such as the Greens losing influence in two years, won’t make it possible to turn them back on. There is still stuff to argue for here, though. For instance, Germany obstructs amendments to EU rules, which currently hinder France from investing more in its nuclear power plant fleet.
A guest post by Dominik Hermle
Medical Student. Interested in politics, progress & the politics of progress.
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