Poor Bernie Sanders has fallen victim to the hack gap. – Kevin Drum

A decade ago, Mark Kleiman noted a basic advantage of the right, which Matthew Yglesias dubbed, ‘the hack gap.’ Yglesias:

Just like Mark, “I don’t really wish that we behaved like our wingnut opponents, but their capacity to work up and sustain outrage has to be counted among their structural advantages.”

In brief (generalizing beyond the examples Kleiman and Yglesias discuss): rightwing proposals and theories, even those only tenuously – if at all – linked to facts, are reliably repeated by Fox News Channel, talk radio, and other outlets in the conservative media bubble and readily embraced by conservative foundation reps, policy analysts, and legislators. The goal is less to advance understanding or actual policy, than to repudiate opponents on the left – regarded as enemies of conservatism – who serve as foils to rev up the Republican base at election time.

In contrast, among mainstream liberals, there is a commitment to reality-based analysis and advocacy. Truth and accuracy are highly valued. Why? Because liberals are committed to crafting legislative and administrative solutions to real-world problems. The ideas advanced must be empirically well-grounded or there is no point to implementing them.

The failure of Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Healthcare Act in 2017 is illustrative of the dynamic on the right: there was no Republican member of the House or the Senate with a deep understanding of the ACA and the healthcare market, of pragmatic conservative alternatives, and of the trade-offs and costs involved in making changes. No one, in other words, who had anything resembling a replacement on hand – even after many years of election promises to repeal and replace. That practical focus was nowhere on the Republican agenda.

On the liberal side, the dynamics are different. When Democrats passed the ACA in 2010 they did so to solve a genuine problem in plain sight – millions of Americans without access to affordable healthcare; the Democratic majority passed the ACA to reduce the number of people without health insurance. Among the practical goals were improving people’s health – especially among people living in poverty, with preexisting conditions, and lacking employer-based insurance – in measurable ways, and ensuring that catastrophic illness would not result in bankruptcy and financial ruin for families.

Demagoguery may help win elections; it is not a reliable route to sound public policy. Hacks are useful for rousing up the Republican base, but not for fixing problems among folks who work for a living.

Stop BEZOS

This past week, Senator Bernie Sanders (and Representative Ro Khanna) proposed the Stop BEZOS Act (Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act), a title suggestive of a simple, enticing meme, replete with moral outrage and demonization – ingredients unhesitatingly embraced daily by Fox News. The idea itself is equally beguiling: the legislation would require large companies to pay back, dollar for dollar, the cost of public benefits (such as, food stamps, Medicaid, rental subsidies, and school lunch aid) that support their low-wage employees.

“At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the 3 wealthiest people in America own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent and when 52 percent of all new income goes to the top one percent, the American people are tired of subsidizing multi-billionaires who own some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America,” Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders cited a report by the nonprofit New Food Economy suggesting that a third of Amazon employees in Arizona — and thousands in other states — rely on food stamps.

Since analysts on the left are more highly committed to getting the details right, than scoring points against conservatives, Sanders’ proposal was met with  a chorus of objections.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – the preeminent liberal research shop focused on how public policy affects poverty and inequality – while praising the act as well intentioned, offered a devastating critique: “It seeks to induce large firms to raise the wages they pay, which is an important goal after decades of stagnant or falling wages for millions of hard-working Americans. But the legislation likely won’t meet that goal, and it would have a series of adverse unintended consequences. Moreover, we have better ways to induce or require firms like Amazon and Walmart to raise their wages and bear more of the costs of core government functions, including basic nutrition assistance and health coverage for struggling families.”

The problems included creating perverse incentives to hire fewer low-income and disabled workers; promoting corporate lobbying to reduce assistance programs; requiring complicated and expensive administrative procedures; and failing to do what it sets out to do – to raise wages and living standards.

Other analysts on the left, while praising Sanders’ intentions, added another criticism: that by stigmatizing people receiving benefits, it was antithetical to sustaining a healthy social safety net.

Ryan Cooper: “Now, I understand what Sanders is driving at. Amazon workers are underpaid. And it is important to note that Amazon has been directly subsidized …

But the way to wage class war on Jeff Bezos is with broad taxes, unions, and regulations, not schemes to punish him for his employees being on public programs.”

Jared Bernstein: ‘”My concern is that there is already a political movement afoot to vilify public benefits and even though I know for a fact that the main sponsors of this bill — Sanders and Ro Khanna — don’t feel that way, I worry that this idea unintentionally provides the hard right with another argument,” Bernstein told Business Insider.’

Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and  Mike Konczal at the Roosevelt Institute also offered critical perspectives on the proposal.

Michael Hiltzik takes exception to the criticism as misguided.

So, should we take Sanders seriously, but not literally? Well, something like that. Hiltzik again:

The truth is that proposals like Sanders and Khanna’s serve a very clear purpose in our political system. They’re not designed to end up as the law of the land, but as prompts for debate.

Matt Yglesias argues that Sanders, whose 2016 policy proposals on Medicare-for-all, free college, and a $15 minimum wage have been widely embraced by Democrats in this cycle, intends to separate himself from the pack. So, while other Democrats would be unhappy to see their proposals dismissed as unworkable, “Sanders almost certainly won’t care, and part of the core of his appeal is a sense that this is the correct and appropriate way to think about politics.”

September 7, 2018 update – Jared Bernstein tips his hat to Senator Sanders: “When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), scourge of the top tenth of the top 1%, and Bezos, denizen of that privileged niche, are exchanging loving tweets, attention must be paid. Sanders, along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), has long called out Amazon for its labor practices, and they recently introduced a bill, subtly entitled the Stop BEZOS Act. While I share their goal of pushing for higher pay for low-wage workers, I thought their bill, which charged companies for the public benefits its workers received, was misguided in that it would vilify legitimate benefit receipt and lead firms to discriminate against hires they thought might draw such benefits. But I have no question that their pressure was instrumental in driving this change.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.