The terms, “fair” and “fairness” are defined by conservatives and Republicans on the one 
hand, and liberals and Democrats on the other hand so differently that the distance between the two definitions is interplanetary. The disparity between the two definitions and the policies provoked by them is far from esoteric; the nation’s immigration policies, establishment of state and federal budgets, treatment of the indigent, management of welfare programs, use of taxes, racial relations, healthcare delivery, and the extent of public services are all held hostage by the gridlock engendered by the entrenched conviction that one side or the other holds the only true definition of what is fair.
For the record: the definition “fair” put forth by Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (Fully Revised and Updated) is lengthy but pertinent to this discussion:
-“free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice; honest, just, impartial, unprejudiced, straight-forward, providing equitable opportunity—a fair decision, a fair judge.
-legitimately sought, pursued, done, given; proper under the rules—a fair fight,
-moderately large, ample—a fair income.
-neither excellent or poor; moderately or tolerably good—fair health.
-marked by favoring conditions, likely, promising—a fair way to succeed.
-in a fair manner, disinterested, impartial, unbiased, treating all sides with the same equity and
justice with no intent or desire to favor or fault one side over the other, avoiding a selfish advantage for one side or the other—to play fair, a fair compromise.
-the policy and practice of choosing people for employment, housing, distribution or withhold-
ing of benefit, or determination of judgment based on objective evidence, capabilities, compliance with a set standard and not on the basis of race, creed, religion, color, national origin, ethnicity, [included by CD–gender, age, or sexual orientation].
In practice, right wing or conservative factions tend to favor the dictionary definition and a laissez faire government; and left wing or liberal factions tend to favor portions of the definition that favor the poor and the disenfranchised over the affluent who have benefitted by their compliance with the requirements of the system. Fairness for the left then becomes an advocacy for people without a voice, those lacking education, access to occupations requiring education and a knowledge of the way the system works, and includes those who have run afoul of the mores, policies, and laws that purport to be equitable. In short, fairness requires a leg-up, extra help, cutting some slack—affirmative action. It follows that the left favors Keynesian economic policies with governmental intervention and activism to achieve a socioeconomic leveling and redress for past wrongs. Consider the efforts by the United States to right the wrongs of American slavery and racial prejudice, and the South African policies aimed at correcting the manifest evils of the former policy of Apartheid.
In both countries, special corrective measures included economic privileges not previously available to racial minorities such as employment preference, skills development, assisted ownership, management, socioeconomic development, and preferential procurement. In short, governmental, private industry, housing authorities, and educational institutional policies purposefully provided disproportionate advantage for blacks or other specified disadvantaged groups including Hispanics and women.
Keynesian economic policies emanate from the argument that private sector—laissez faire capitalistic market driven–decisions all too often lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector—government–in particular, liberal and generous monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle. This leads to lowered interest rates, generous lending policies, assistance by governments in housing, food and health care, educational access, raising of the minimum wage, and the provision of infrastructure and other governmental occupations. Keynesian economics which operate in most European nations and in the United States under Democrat administrations, advocate a mixed economy—a more-or-less predominantly private sector, but with an ongoing role for government intervention, especially during recession periods. This left/liberal/Keynesian approach economic problems and the plight of the poor and disenfranchised, the unemployed or underemployed, and the un- or under educated as a systemic issue wanting the intercession of society as a whole, charitable organizations, and government to cure the ills and to set a new course for the disadvantaged—with class-based preferences. This usually includes the proviso that the help will be temporary; but, the lessons of history are that little changes in society; and the need and the generosity persists almost perpetually.
There is a glaring and obvious error inculcate in the practice of race, or other class-based preferential treatment. The definition, by its very nature, is exclusive. For example, most elite universities, intent on being politically correct, have fought long battles of attrition to keep affirmative action in place and robust. There is little interest in such institutions of higher education to diversify their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, poor white students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class “white ethnics,” social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after rearing children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. For most such aspiring students, the costs are prohibitive; and, in the end, they just give up before ever being given the opportunity to try.
Although all highly competitive colleges and universities deny that, in substance, they have racial quotas–either minimum quotas or ceiling quotas–the huge boosts they give to the lower-achieving black and Hispanic applicants, and the admissions penalties they extract from their higher-achieving Asian applicants, clearly suggest otherwise. The University of California system, especially at U.C. Berkeley, would be very pre-dominantly Asian if an objectively fair and equitable admissions system were to be allowed to proceed without intervention.
The view from the right/conservative perspective is quite different. The fiscal costs of affirmative action, ever expanding retirement pension costs, provision of subsidized health care and housing, lengthy pregnancy leave and unemployment insurance policies, increase in the minimum wages, spending from public coffers for infrastructural improvements for the purpose of improving the economy, and allowing the principle and interest on the national debt to increase without control is borne on the backs of the beleaguered and decreasing middle-class and is leading on a direct pathway to fiscal collapse and bankruptcy of the United States as seems imminent in Europe. Entitlements must stop or at least be brought under a strong control by the government or the collapse will be inevitable. The United States can no longer provide the inflated retirement benefits for elected and appointed officials and workers without economic ruin being visited on our children and grandchildren. It is only “fair” that our nation arrive at an equitable benefit/burden for everyone.
We have not had a national budget in four+ years. The national debt exceeds $16.5T and is ever growing. It will not be long before we cannot even pay the interest on our debts. Then we will fail, and the world’s economies will fail with us. The poor, the entitled, and the subsidized will no longer have benefactors; there will be no money for such generosity when the moment of crisis finally arrives. We must have a sensible budget matching revenues and costs—including paying off the principle on our debt. We must cut costs everywhere—an equal sacrifice policy. By some—at present, apparently miraculous—change, we must increase tax revenues. Crete is proposing taxing even the savings of its people. We have not come to that point, but tax rates will have to increase, and previously beloved loopholes and deductions, such as mortgage interest costs, will have to be done away with. The answer to more income, of course, is for the nation’s unemployment rate to come down to its natural low level of 3-5%. How that is to take place escapes the imaginations of even the best and the brightest economists and industrial job makers. Taxing only the rich, however enticing that seems to be for the populists, will not even come close to bringing in enough needed revenue. We must have an increasingly robust middle class to do that.
The left and the right in the body-politic and within the state and federal governments recognize the need for more and certainly for better jobs. How that is to be accomplished is the question of questions during this continuing Great Recession. The left takes note of the 7.9% level of unemployment in our nearly 160 million strong workforce. It is likely considerably higher since many people have given up entirely and are swelling the unemployment and welfare rolls. Some 14-15% (nearly 23 million) of our citizens are underemployed—in temporary, seasonal, or marginal low-paying occupations–and therefore are unable to contribute the needed tax revenue. The situation is worse in Europe and Asia; so, they will not be rushing to help the U.S. anytime soon. There needs to be an increase in demand for products and services; so, employers—who have an excess of money, but not a promising way to hire people and to make them productive at providing those goods and services—can begin the process of healing our fiscal ills. Absent that change, we are left with the need to continue increasing pension and unemployment benefits.
Since the private sector cannot provide the jobs, the only solution is to provide public sector jobs. Even the most rabid Keynesian proponents do not believe that swelling the ranks of government–which is already bloated–is the answer. The solution can be summarized in one word: “infrastructure”. We certainly need the improvements. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given a rank of D+ and even “dangerous” to our national infrastructure—the power grid, water purification and treatment, unsafe and inadequate schools, and the telecommunications networks, to name only a few. Governmental intervention to restore those vital needs would provide many thousands of jobs, increase the tax revenue, and fulfill the predictions of John Maynard Keynes in due course. Instead of a continuing downward spiral, we would see a turn-around and an upward continuum in the strength of our economy. It makes no sense to pay disheartened people to look for work when jobs are nonexistent. That public money would be better spent on training and retraining our workforce to land jobs that are productive and even crucial to the nation’s long-term economic health. We currently suffer a debilitating malaise, and the increase in jobs would have a positive trickle-up benefit.
The right side of the state and federal political aisles look at the problem through a different prism and, as a result, propose a fundamentally different solution. Government is incapable of innovation—the ties to old ways and old solutions are too strong. The market place—private sector—will pull us out of our present doldrums as it has always done, if government will just get out of the way. It is inevitable that new needs will lead to new creative jobs and vice versa. Granted, new ideas, more often than not, result in the loss of old jobs and create anxiety in the unprepared—the proposed solutions are temporarily disruptive and decentralizing. It is incumbent on a private/government interaction to provide the necessary training, and the money being wasted on governmental subsidies and entitlements should be turned towards that end. There will be plant closures and layoffs, but capital will flow towards new and better products and services and will provide ever better jobs. The history of the United States is replete with examples. Small companies will capitalize on elements of production that large corporations cannot embrace in time to be effective—small personal computers, enabled by the invention of the microprocessor, created a revolution as they evolved out of the age of the super-computers which could only be manned by a few super experts. Originally, DuPont specialized in making gun powder, but over 150 years of applying science to the understanding of its materials, new products with new uses (Dacron and nylon, to name two) disrupted the company’s focus, and led it into a myriad of productive branches, for example. It is true that such innovation sometimes fails. It is an American right to try and to fail, but entrepreneurs have been keeping at their projects and will do so ad infinitum if given free rein. Governmental rules, regulations, policies, political correctness, and pandering to interest groups such as the environmentalists hampers and often seriously impedes the needed progress. That must be corrected, or we will fall all the way into the black hole where we are presently headed. We need to support small business, start-ups, innovators, and worry a great deal less about the status quo. Governmental support of noncompetitive companies and union dominated industries must stop and let capitalism and the American way of proven success proceed with freedom to make dreams come true—especially that dream of saving the United States of America from governmentally created ruination. The concept of saving jobs should certainly include saving the jobs of the future.
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Carl Douglass – Author
Carl Douglass Books
www.carldouglass.com
“Neurosurgeon Turned Author Writes With Gripping Realism”
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I strongly recommend that the reader buy and read in their entireties two books by Dr.s Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman, and Jason Hwang, M.D., “The Innovators Dilemma” and “The Innovator’s Prescription”.
