July 19, 2010
Mae West claimed that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.” And for some good things, it is. Things like health, happiness and yes, even money. For other things though it is problematical.
Environmental progress for instance. Or racial and gender progress for another. Here I think folks on the leading edge of racial, gender and environmental issues today are often their own worst enemies in demanding “too much of a good thing.”
Martin Luther King and all the “freedom-riders” deserve enormous credit for the major advances in civil rights for all in the 1960s and 1970s. Feminist leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries deserve enormous credit for demanding and getting equal opportunity for women in education, in business, in sports, in politics and indeed in all areas of modern life. And certainly early environmental leaders deserve enormous credit for leading the way to clean up our soil, water and air in the 20th century.
Today however some racial, environmental and feminist activists, as well as guilt-ridden politicians and supporters, seem to me to be often harming progress in race, gender and environmental issues. How so?
Take race and gender first. There is no question that there are gaps in achievement between definable groups in pretty much any and all fields of human endeavor. Jews are over represented in Nobel Prizes and in many other scientific, artistic and intellectual achievements. Blacks are over represented in professional sports like basketball, football, boxing and track and field. Women are over represented in literary fiction writing, health-care, teaching, social work and other helping professions.
So what?
We have made significant and steady progress in the western world by bringing a good measure of equal opportunity to all people in all of these fields. When we start demanding not only equal opportunity but equal results we are on shaky grounds. Garrison Keillor in his mythical Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon said that “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” If only it could be so in the real world. Here the truth is that demands for equal results often backfire, reduce opportunities for all and sometimes even harm the very people they are meant to help.
For instance. In our zeal to make amends and assure equality in the Great Society days of the 1960s we passed hundreds of civil rights, environmental, social welfare and affirmative action laws that were designed to help minorities, women, the poor, the elderly, the environment and answer any and all needs of society that it was thought were not being met by private enterprises. Government bureaucracies ballooned to administer expensive new programs in unemployment, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, help for the disabled, public broadcasting, Head Start, urban mass transportation, war on poverty, environmental protection, consumer protection, etc., etc. Many of these programs were championed by a Democratic President and Congress and were later expanded by Republican administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. I was a strong supporter of this Great Society. Today I realize that the results have been a mixed bag. Some of the Great Society programs have proved to have lasting benefits. Others have not. And some have been harmful.
For instance: unwed mothers got generous help in raising their children so long as they did not have a husband. Minimum wage laws sought to make sure that all workers got a living wage. An unintended result was that African-American and other minority and poorly educated and unskilled males were cut out of the mainstream economic world. It was difficult if not impossible for most of these young men to get a job at the entry level in many industries. (Illegal immigrants were often the beneficiaries. That is another story.)
One result of these well-intentioned Great Society programs was the breakdown of the African-American family (as well as many lower-income white families). As the African-American economist Thomas Sowell pointed out, “the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”
Another unintended result was a huge increase in African-Americans males (as well as low-income white males) in prison. In 1950 we had a population of around 125 million people and a prison population of around 250,000. By 2000 the U.S population had doubled but the prison population has jumped 8 times to over 2 million! In 1950 65% of the U.S. prison population was white, 35% was black. By 2000 that was reversed and today 65% of prisoners are black, 35% white. Why are so many lower class males, black and white, into drugs and crime today? The most plausible answer is–we have made it nearly impossible for males with below average abilities and education to get a job and support a family. Sadly, it turns out that too much of a good thing was not so good.
Environmental advocates of the 1960s (like their civil rights cousins) can take deserved credit for their leadership in vastly improving the quality of the air, water and soil in my lifetime. As I pointed out in a previous blog, Pittsburgh in the 1940s was pretty dismal. Today Pittsburgh and just about all cities in the U.S. are much much cleaner and healthier for living creatures of all kinds, including Homo sapiens.
Today though, it seems to me that some of the environmental crusaders have gone off the deep end by promoting anti-growth policies that will end up degrading, not improving our environment. For example: demonizing energy companies, tearing down dams, restricting new developments, discouraging mining, opposing genetic engineering, trashing nuclear power, getting moratoriums on oil drilling, demanding ever more stringent regulations in order to weed out the last microgram of pollution, making corporations and profit-making dirty words, making “green” lifestyles into a new religion and in general opposing growth. These anti-growth policies will cut back on national and international wealth all right, but they will do precious little for the world’s environment.
Wealthy countries are healthier countries, with less pollution, more freedom and far more potential to innovate. The proven way to create wealth is to rely heavily on the magic of the free-market, not on the heavy hand of the government. If you want to see what government funded “innovation” is like, go to Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, many countries in Africa or countries in Eastern Europe before the Berlin wall came down. I have been to quite a few of these countries and the results I saw were not pretty.
The moral is that while government regulations and government welfare are sometimes necessary and desirable, as with so many things, too much of a good thing is not wonderful. To effectively solve most environmental and fairness problems you also need solid innovative work by free profit-seeking citizens and companies. You need wealth and innovation. You need win-win economics, not zero-sum stagnation. (Incidentally, the 1960s were also noted for large pro-growth tax-cuts by Kennedy and Johnson which did lead to vigorous economic growth as similar policies did in the Reagan pro-growth tax-cutting days. I leave it to readers to assess the situation today.)
Too much of a good thing is wonderful. Sometimes. But sometimes not.
Readers may disagree. Let me hear from you.
Bill Stonebarger, Owner/President Hawkhill
P.S. My usual commercial plug. Go to www.hawkhill.com for many new DVD programs that can help make your 2010/2011 school year a positive example of “too much of a good thing is wonderful.”