Against Maximalism
Over the last decade a fairly broad consensus has emerged on the center-left-to-left political spectrum that to some degree, America needs a more active, interventionist government on economic matters. A number of policy ideas – such as greater government involvement in healthcare, general expansion of the welfare state, direct intervention on climate change, the rich paying higher tax rates – are completely uncontroversial concepts in the left of center discourse. It’s telling that every single major Democratic candidate ran to the left of Barack Obama’s administration, both in rhetoric and policy. This shift has even impacted right-leaning politics – witness the GOP embrace of industrial policy or the populist right’s flirtation with the ‘welfare chauvinism’ commonly seen in Europe.
Many of these ideas are sound, and there’s a spirited and healthy debate (mostly in the Democratic Party) about how best to implement these changes. Expand Obamacare, create a public option, or go for Medicare for all? Expand the EITC, raise the minimum wage, or implement a UBI? Use regulations to change polluting behavior, or tax carbon emissions? And yet while these debates take place, there’s one particular approach to policy that threatens to deliver both bad policy and bad politics.
The maximalist style of policy is best exemplified by the DSA and the Bernie Sanders campaign. For these leftist groups, the best policy is always the policy with the least amount of market-orientation and the most state action. Whether it’s more taxation, more spending, or more regulation, more is always better. The only way that a policy can be misguided is if it could possibly include more government but doesn’t. Sanders has taken maximalist positions on a dizzying number of issues – college education, healthcare, housing, a job guarantee, corporate regulation, taxation, climate change, and more. He believes that the solution to essentially every problem in America is a massive federal spending program. Somewhat remarkably for a man who’s been in politics for decades, it’s hard to find any instance of him ever saying that an economic regulation or a spending program went too far.
And Sanders isn’t alone. Elizabeth Warren has taken virtually the same path, promising gigantic federal spending programs across dozens of areas (with a higher degree of technocratic competence and slightly more realism and nuance as her main selling points). DSA-aligned congresspersons like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez promote climate change plans that are heavy on maximalist government intervention far outside the scope of climate change. Similarly, Sanders’ Green New Deal plan features price floors for farmers, federal job guarantees, and a vast array of new spending programs both related to and completely unrelated to climate change. But Sanders’ plan is curiously silent on the idea of a carbon tax and is outright hostile towards nuclear and carbon capture technology.
This maximalist attitude towards policy is a mistake. The straightforward truth is that there are times when more government action in the economy is appropriate, and there are times when it isn’t. There are times when the government should step forward, and times when it should step back. The world is complex, and complexity defies simple or universal solutions. And it’s not just bad policy, but dangerous politics as well. Maximalists on the left often use a rhetorical trick arguing that because some particular expansion of the government is thought to be good, more must be better (in all situations). Worse, any opposition to a large program is met with a level of vitriol that is almost religious in tone – Shill! Rat! Neoliberal! Coward! It’s why Pete Buttigieg – who has run his campaign well to the left of Obama – is derided as a right-wing corporate stooge by online mobs of Bernie Sanders fans. This approach to politics is poisonous. By its nature it alienates rather than unifies. It makes enemies where there should be allies. It’s polarizing in an era where we can’t afford more polarization. Advocating for a less-than maximalist approach to government programs isn’t a sign of cowardice, greed, or enthrallment to shadowy neoliberal powers. It’s just the common-sense recognition that good policy is complex, and no single solution works for every problem.
In a tragicomic twist of history, today’s maximalist left is making the same mistake that neoliberals made decades ago. In the same way that today’s Democratic party is unified behind some form of state expansion, the political parties of the 70s, 80s and 90s were often unified behind the idea of making government smaller – through deregulation, tax cuts and spending cuts. Bill Clinton famously declared that ‘the era of Big Government is over’. And in that era, neoliberals filled with deregulatory and small-government energy sometimes over-reached and threw out the good with the bad. Deregulating the airlines? Great idea. Moving top tax rates down from 90%? Entirely reasonable. Beer deregulation? Led directly to the craft beer explosion. But welfare reform? A mixed-to-negative impact, to be kind. The laissez-faire attitude towards big banks which was carried into the 2000s? At minimum partially responsible for the housing crisis and Great Recession.
This approach to politics is poisonous. By its nature it alienates rather than unifies. It makes enemies where there should be allies.
The neoliberal impulse towards deregulation and reform had key policy victories that enriched the nation, but it also overreached at times due to overzealous advocates and a lack of nuance. Maximalists today are making the exact same mistake. They’re taking a reasonable political impulse, and fanatically dedicating themselves towards applying the purest version of that impulse in every single situation. It came back to bite the 1990s neoliberals, and it’ll come back to bite the maximalists. Having the same solution to every single problem isn’t admirable purity, it’s dangerous hubris.
This is not to debate the policy details of any given proposal, to universally resist increases in government action, or to try to go back to the 1990s. I’m a self-described Clintonite neoliberal and even I don’t want to go back to the 1990s. I think the left of center coalition is correct that more government action is needed in many areas. But we need to be careful about overreaching, and careful not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We should reject shallow maximalism, and insist on a nuanced approach to policy making that is capable of recognizing its own limits.
