ASSERTION, INSINUATION, AND CHEAP SHOTS.

It's long been so easy for the self-styled progressives to push their preferences on others by being nasty.  Of late, the Militant Normals have decided to fight back in kind.

Is there a more annoying collection of people who never learned how not to be stupid about being supposedly smart than the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media?  You'd think after Barack Obama became a laughingstock over "bitter clingers" and his anointed successor Hillary "Elphaba" Clinton talked herself out of the Oval with that "basket of deplorables" they'd learn.

But no.  Recently Katie Couric (why is she still relevant?) went on Bill Maher's show and went right on with the scolding.  "'The socio-economic disparities are a lot and class resentment is a lot and anti-intellectualism and elitism is what is driving many of these anti-establishment [people] — which are Trump voters — so, I think that is a huge problem that we have to address,' Couric explained to Maher, referring to the MAGA movement that got its name from the ex-president’s campaign slogan."  Yes, peddle your technocratic delusions in a less condescending way, that's a winner for you.  "I mean globalization and the transition from an industrial to a technological society — I don’t know if you’ve ever been jealous of someone else or resentful — it is such a corroding and bitter, almost bile feeling."

I wrote that in the spring of 2024, before Dementia Joe face-planted in the debate and the Militant Normals finally tired of being polite.  Recently a review article from fifty years ago, in Commentary, when that journal was evolving in a conservative way, featuring Thomas Sowell engaging Ken Galbraith's Money, came to my attention, and in it one sees that Professor Sowell was onto the progressive con-job long ago.

For about 200 of the 312 pages of this book, Galbraith meanders through a selective history of money in the Western world. It is hard to see where the tour is going, but the scenery is nice and the guide calls our attention to various points of interest. Then suddenly there is what Galbraith calls “The Coming of J. M. Keynes,” and the grand design of the book falls into place. Throughout history the story of money has been the story of knaves and fools, but now the Truth has been seen.

What is the Keynesian truth for which all the earlier monetary history of the world was only a preamble? According to Galbraith, Keynesian theory and history both demonstrate that controlling the money supply does not control aggregate demand, and therefore cannot restore full employment after a depression. The Keynesian reason is that when the money supply is increased in an effort to spur demand, fearful individuals and institutions may choose to hold the additional money during the depression. Therefore direct government spending is necessary to get the money into circulation and restore full employment. Nowhere does Galbraith reveal that this sophomore Keynesianism has been under attack—and generally retreating—over the past thirty years. The reader gets no pros and cons. Instead, he is conned by a pro.

Robert Lucas's "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money" and the rational expectations modelling associated with Thomas Sargent and Neil Wallace with assorted other Minnesota math jocks getting in on the fun were getting a lot of attention in the workshop circuits and in imitative dissertations.  "Sophomore Keynesianism," though, we still have with us, as it was a concept Dementia Joe might still have been capable of grasping.

Professor Sowell, though, was coming to an understanding of the Vision of the Anointed, in which the smug and condescending style of Professor Galbraith was part of the schtick.

As in all the Galbraith books of the past quarter of a century, it is not supply and demand that determine prices but something called “power.” This “power” can be as specific as needed for purposes of illustration, and as nebulous as required to escape confrontation with facts to the contrary. For example, Galbraith makes a dichotomy between “the corporate and the competitive sectors” of the economy. In the non-competitive “corporate” sectors prices are set or “administered” above their competitive levels through “power,” in defiance of supply and demand, and this is “pervasive in the American economy.” His evidence? It is “not seriously subject to debate.” Certainly Galbraith does not seriously debate it—or anything else. But if we stop and think of huge corporations like Sears, Montgomery Ward, and other retail chains, we realize that they are hardly administering prices above the competitive levels, and in fact they are more typically shaving a few cents off here and there as a result of the economies of large-scale operations and the principle that a large volume produces more profits than high mark-ups.

But if we stop and think, Galbraith’s whole game will be over. The name of that game is power to the Galbraiths of the world, to direct our lives in the way that he helped direct the price controls of World War II which he now pronounces “highly effective.” The only unifying thread running through Galbraith’s Keynesianism, market-”power” assertions, and “affluent-society” wastefulness theories is that we would all be better off to abdicate our tastes and preferences—and the market mechanisms through which they are expressed—in favor of the higher values and superior wisdom of the beautiful people, like Galbraith. From this perspective, it is only consistent that he does not bother to present serious evidence that would allow us to judge for ourselves.

Why should he present serious evidence? The Anointed are Better People who Care More.  That's all that matters.  And submission to the policy preferences of Our Progressive Betters?  We had several years of the corona tyranny to see how that turned out.  The one thing that scholars have codified in the intervening decades is an understanding of "power."  Put simply, if I have the ability to compel you to do something that maybe you'd rather not do, I have power over you.  Perhaps I have a gun pointed at you.  Perhaps I have compromising photographs of you with little boys.  Perhaps I'm invoking my authority as a Harvard professor.  Perhaps I am offering you money.  And thus, even voluntary exchanges might have an element of compulsion to them.