When Ayn Rand Met Sally

Who is John Galt? - I'm sorry, I meant Sally Albright.

For those who don't know, she was a former Republican consultant whose main claim to fame is slandering Bernie Sanders (using bots). She is also one of many Twitter personalities who exemplifies centrist efforts to conflate fighting poverty with white supremacy. "Divide and conquer” is a favorite conservative strategy and this is an obvious effort to split the left. Moreover, the wealthy are getting wary: They really want to knock the topic of economic inequality off the table - to discredit it as irrelevant.

Many centrists are willing to incinerate their credibility to achieve this ignoble goal.

Last year, Zack Beauchamp argued that European social programs enabled racism - so don't spoil the poor with ponies of any sort. Apparently, those "dark Satanic mills" in days of yore were actually enlightened redoubts of tolerance: They kept the proles too busy for bigotry. Who knew?

Beauchamp's argument combined divide and conquer with another conservative favorite – their claim that social programs invariably have negative side effects or even backfire entirely. Conservatives love claiming that welfare causes poverty or that affirmative action causes racism.

And there are plenty of centrist pundits available to legitimize such gibberish. "Progressive" sweatshop apologist Nicholas Kristof agrees with conservatives that our pathetically threadbare safety net can "entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency." With progressives like these who needs conservatives?

But while such centrists often spin the counter factual as counter intuitive (and therefore "fascinating"), Sally Albright presents the obviously false as manifest fact. So, any new social programs that would definitely benefit minorities most of all are strangely painted as racist assaults on those populations. 

Back in January, Albright claimed that free college was racist. "Does 'free college' specifically benefit women and minorities? Does it benefit anyone who isn't already going to college and just doesn't want to pay? Reinforcing the status quo is racist."

Yes, you read that right: Free college is the new Jim Crow. At least when advocated by Bernie Sanders.

Leaving aside the point that shooting down free college seems more like reinforcing the status quo, metastasizing college costs are a massive drag on minority admissions. Total average costs have grown 1,120% in 30 years. Obviously, populations that white supremacy has historically worked to keep poor(1) are going to find this barrier even more difficult than whites do. As The Boston Globe reported:

[I]nstead of bridging the racial equity gap by opening the prospect of well-paying jobs, getting a degree can actually widen the gulf in wealth between black and white adults. African-American students who started college in 2003-04 typically owed 113 percent of their student loan 12 years later, according to the most recent data from the US Department of Education analyzed by the Center for American Progress. By contrast, white borrowers had paid down their debt and owed only 65 percent of the original amount, and Hispanic borrowers had knocked down their debt to 83 percent of the initial loan. 

Many aren't "already going" because they cannot afford to. And those who do go are sometimes worse off.

Albright insists that tuition is not an issue, but other costs such as housing and childcare are. While covering housing would be welcome, most poor students already try to save money by living with their parents. That is why Barack Obama's 2015 free community college proposal did not cover housing either.(2) Admittedly, living at home is not always an option for everyone, but free tuition would obviously be a huge boon for the poor who can. Childcare is indeed another barrier that we should tackle, but it has not risen as rapidly as tuition has - although it has risen.(3) Nobody is saying free college will make higher education totally cost-free, but it would clearly help immensely - and help minorities especially.

It's ludicrous to dispute this. We already know that minority enrollment drops when tuition climbs. A 2015 study found that "Even with financial aid, several years of staggering tuition increases at four-year public colleges and universities have caused shifts in the racial diversity of schools across the country." Yet Albright actually thinks "Free college just makes it free for people who are going anyway and don't want to pay." Inexplicably, she believes universal programs are somehow exclusionary and only benefit the privileged.(4) Her tenacious belief is impervious to both data and poignant personal testimonies. 

Instead, she doubled-down on the claim again and again. She said she doesn't want to subsidize "sorority girls at the University of Texas." That's superficially understandable, but it misses the big picture. Making programs universal reinforce them against conservative efforts to de-fund or repeal them. That's in part why Social Security remains a sacred cow while welfare was vulnerable. Remember Margret Thatcher was unable to get rid of the United Kingdom's actual national healthcare system in part because it is universal. It is harder to attack something that benefits everyone - as everyone in politics should already know.

I’m not sure why Sally Albright is still clinging to this idea. As I noted before, even Hillary Clinton has abandoned the folly of this thinking in her campaign postmortem tome What Happened, admitting:

Democrats should reevaluate a lot of our assumptions about which policies are politically viable. These trends make universal programs even more appealing than we previously thought. I mean programs like Social Security and Medicare, which benefit every American, as opposed to Medicaid, food stamps, and other initiatives targeted to the poor. Targeted programs may be more efficient and progressive, and that’s why during the primaries I criticized Bernie’s “free college for all” plan as providing wasteful taxpayer-funded giveaways to rich kids. But it’s precisely because they don’t benefit everyone that targeted programs are so easily stigmatized and demagogued. ... Democrats should redouble our efforts to develop bold, creative ideas that offer broad-based benefits for the whole country.

Leaving aside Hillary Clinton's decisive participation in the assault on one particular program - thereby giving the term "targeted" a double meaning - this is where Ayn Rand meets Sally Albright.

A few years ago, it came to light that Ayn Rand had applied for Medicare benefits, i.e. Social Security, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. (Can you see where I am going with this?) Libertarian rationalizations were as absurd as anything Albright might write. I eviscerated them in my 2014 book.(5) But then I pointed out that, as fun as this exercise was, it ignored something infinitely more significant:

But more important than Ayn Rand’s obvious hypocrisy is the fact that she needed such programs. Without them, this wealthy, world-famous novelist could not pay her medical bills. Now, for a moment, forget everything this “moral philosopher” said about government programs. Ignore her rhetoric of “theft” and “parasites” and pretend she was a different celebrity, perhaps an apolitical one. Now, ask yourself something: If she could not afford medical treatment, how could most people? Such programs are unquestionably necessary. And if they were good for Ayn Rand, they are good for everybody else too. Beyond hypocrisy, her philosophy simply does not work. The fact that it did not even work for her, in her privileged position, should only show how totally broken it is.

If you are going to shoot down free college because rich kids can take advantage of it, you may as well say we should end Social Security and Medicare as well because Ayn Rand took advantage of those. One Albright defender reliably raised the conservative specter that some kids might waste that free education: "Plus lots of students ended up not finishing colleges, that means money down the drain. Free tuition sounds good but not workable, and unaffordable. It means higher property taxes, that will never pass!" 

Elsewhere in the thread, the dread prospect of people becoming philosophy majors was threatened. This is a serious risk to consider. We don't need any more Ayn Rands.(6)

Levity aside, I'm totally okay with the fact that Ayn Rand had collected benefits - not because I have copious compassion for those who have none for others - but because I am happy those programs existed for everyone. Likewise, I'm fine with rich kids getting free college because it will better ensure that it is there for poor kids who need it more - and will get more out of it. After all, the poor outnumber the rich.

Tolerating a few flush freeloaders seems like a reasonable operating cost - at least to reasonable people.


First Edit 06/25/18:

I've been in some pretty interesting Twitter threads since typing this. Because Social Security initially excluded blacks, one person argued against any new universal programs until we could be sure that would not happen again. I felt compelled to point out that it's not 1935 anymore. African Americans get Social Security. Indeed, blacks benefit from the program more than whites. As a NAACP fact sheet explained:

When looking at African Americans’ overall use of Social Security, a 2003 GAO study found that blacks receive a higher rate of return—receiving more in benefits than what is paid in payroll taxes—than whites, due to their heavier reliance on the full range of benefits offered by Social Security. (emphasis original)

[Edit to the Edit: since the NAACP link is now broken, here is the GAO study with first page summary.]

Incidentally, the legislation that created Social Security did not exclude African Americans by name. Instead, it excluded agricultural and domestic workers. This meant that white agricultural workers were denied and black factory workers were not. But of course blacks were disproportionately left out. These occupational exclusions were removed in the 1950s. Whether the original exclusions were racist in intent is in dispute, but nobody denies that they worsened the racial wealth gap just the same. However, using Social Security to argue against universal programs is lunacy because the fault was that the program was initially not universal. I have written more about blacks and the New Deal here.

The virulence of the insane "free college is racist/sexist" argument is strange. It is an article of faith - like the conservative claim that raising the minimum wage causes inflation. Student debt is unquestionably a greater burden for women and minorities and therefore they would benefit most from making it free.


Second Edit 08/03/18:

I just watched John F Kennedy's 1962 Medicare speech given in Madison Square Garden (text here). I recommend everyone do so as well. During the speech, JFK made many mentions of the orchestrated letter writing campaign against the Medicare bill and all the misinformed and garbled arguments these letters contained. But one bit seems especially relevant to this post:

And then finally, I had a letter last week saying, "You're going to take care of all the millionaires and they don't need it." I do not know how many millionaires we are talking about, but they won't mind contributing $12 a month to social security, and they may be among those who will apply for it when they go to the hospital. But what I will say is that the National Government, through the tax laws, already takes care of them, because over 65 they can deduct all their medical expenses.

Third Edit 09/12/18:

This seemed pretty obvious to me at the time I wrote it so I forgot to emphasize the overtly conservative character of Albright's argument: If you can invoke a group of people who you think should not benefit from a program, then nobody gets to benefit from it. Trot out the exception to prevent the rule.

Oh yes, Sally Albright insists she favors targeted programs - which is a variant of Ronald Reagan's "truly needy" rhetoric. But as Hilary Clinton belatedly admitted above, such programs are vulnerable to assault - and I would add that they are also less likely to get enacted in the first place. 

Also, as I quipped in an earlier post, targeted programs often miss their targets. This is because every time there is a budget fight the qualifications become even stricter because centrists fetishize compromise and love deciding who is deserving just as much as conservatives do. As with abortion rights, conservatives will gradually whittle away what they cannot obliterate all at once.

This also has the nasty side effect of making more conservatives. If you are booted out of a program you need because you are no longer considered "poor enough to qualify," this is apt to make you resentful against those who still do qualify. Divide and conquer is a classic conservative tactic and it sums up much of what Albright does. 

Making qualifications ever stricter is also rationalized as "fiscal responsibility," which is ridiculous because anti-poverty programs are a minuscule portion of the budget and nothing in comparison to the waste in the Pentagon. Moreover - and more importantly - the administrative costs of determining who is and isn't worthy often proves to be a waste of money. Witness the sanctimonious folly of drug-testing welfare recipients as many states have done. Moral scolds promised it would save tax payers money - which made it political catnip for conservatives and centrists alike. Instead, it costed more.

Centrists like the intrusive, moralistic aspect of the "nanny state," just not the providing actual material aid aspect of it. But if a program is universal, the rationale for the nagging aspect vanishes along with the bureaucracy charged with enforcing it. The system becomes more friendly and cost efficient. 

It's really hard not to see centrism as a passive-aggressive species of conservatism that seeks to sabotage progressive programs before, during, and after their implementation. At every stage, they seem to alienate, complicate, and encumber. Their market-friendly tweaks are invariably user-hostile. This may be because conservatives constantly sabotage government to prove that government "does not work" and centrist cannot resist uncritically embracing conservative ideas to prove their bipartisan open-mindedness.

Whatever the explanation, the inept results are infuriatingly similar.

Fourth Edit 04/12/22:

It's almost four years later and everything's the same: Centrists are still making the exact same discredited arguments and subsequent studies have reconfirmed those I've already quoted.

Once again, cancelling all student would most benefit women and people of color. As this article from last January noted: "These findings echo decades of work from student debt researchers." Yup.

Likewise, as this op-ed (also from last January) noted, "Researchers at the Roosevelt Institute estimate that if federal loans were canceled completely, about 70% of the relief dollars would go to the poorest half of Americans, as measured by household assets."

Granted, free college and student debt cancellation are technically separate issues, but they are obviously interrelated ones. The topic is still free college - past or future - and who most benefits from it.

_____________

1) Historically, blacks have been white society's economic shock absorbers. Because they are "the last hired and the first fired" they suffer the worst when the economy sours. During the Great Depression, black unemployment was 2 to 3 times higher than white unemployment. And as Bernie Sanders had pointed out, African Americans lost half of their wealth during the financial crisis. And centrist Democrats like Tim Kaine are trying to make things worse by sponsoring a banking deregulation bill that victimizes blacks both directly and indirectly. The indirect aspect is more of the above. The direct aspect is that one of the bill's provisions would rollback "data-gathering requirements intended to prevent lending discrimination."

And well before the crash, studies showed that on average whites inherit seven times more wealth than blacks - that is, if they inherit anything at all. For Baby Boomers, the inheritance disparity is even greater than for previous generations. For every dollar a white Boomer inherits, a black Boomer only gets fourteen cents. Accordingly, the black retirement crisis is even more acute than the white one.

2) Interestingly, when I mentioned this, Albright said she favored Obama's proposal. In retrospect, the dynamic put us on unexpected sides of another, related issue. Prestigious institutions don't really offer better educations: Their true value is networking and getting connections. So, while Obama's plan would boost minority enrollment, it would probably also mean fewer minorities getting into prestigious schools and thus the corridors of power. As the above 2015 study mentioned, minorities are already getting funneled into community colleges by rising tuition costs:

Not only do tuition increases discourage students and families from enrolling at more expensive “first choice” schools, shifts in campus diversity are more pronounced when there are more postsecondary competitors, such as community colleges, in the surrounding area. More precisely, as public four-year institutions grew more expensive, the likelihood that black and Hispanic students would choose to enroll elsewhere also increased

Both Barack and Michelle Obama went to Harvard. Making entry economically easier only at the community college level, would make their inspiring story even less likely to duplicate than Sanders’ plan would. I do not think we live in even a rough a meritocracy and I am against having a ruling class. Yet, ironically, my preferred plan would make it easier for minorities to enter it. So Sally can say I am a bad socialist and I can say Sally is a bad ally to people of color. Oh, wait. I can already say that.

3) Sally Albright was attacking Bernie Sanders’ free college plan, but Sanders has spoken of the importance of providing childcare on other occasions – and not limited to students. His platform called for universal childcare. No doubt Albright would characterize this as only paying for rich families' nannies.

Moreover, Sanders voters are more likely to support such legislation than Clinton voters. For example, they were far more supportive of paid family leave. The reason is centrists prefer programs that do not cost anything or inconvenience corporations. Actual progressives do not have these hang-ups.

Albright was insinuating that Sanders doesn't care about childcare because he didn't specifically mention it in his college plan. It's a tired tactic of Clinton cultists. For example, when Sanders unveiled his single payer "Medicare for All" plan, he neglected to specifically mention the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment. From that oversight, Clintonistas insinuated that he was anti-choice. Never mind that he has consistently voted to repeal the Hyde Amendment and has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood. But who needs to read voting records when you can let your fevered imagination run riot reading between the lines? 

4) I suspect Albright's strange take might be the result of some hilariously garbled misreading of Ta-Nehisi Coates. He did indeed argue that New Deal programs contributed to the postwar wealth gap between blacks and white - because blacks were excluded from them. Thus, they were not truly universal.

Should some special effort be made to close the gap? Of course! But that's not the same as saying that America's most vulnerable populations would not benefit the most from a universal program - let alone Albright's strange claim that they would not benefit at all.

Many Clintonites interpreted Coates' criticism of Sanders as an endorsement of Clinton. Quite the opposite. Coates was criticizing how very safe and lame even the "radical" wing of the Democratic Party was. As Coates explained, he singled-out Sanders for criticism because: 

Hillary Clinton has no interest in being labeled radical, left-wing, or even liberal. Thus announcing that Clinton doesn’t support reparations is akin to announcing that Ted Cruz doesn’t support a woman’s right to choose. The position is certainly wrong. But it is hardly a surprise, and doesn't run counter to the candidate’s chosen name. 

Coates has been consistently critical of Clinton and voted for Sanders in the primary. As Coates explained in his Democracy Now interview, "One can say Senator Sanders should have more explicit antiracist policy within his racial justice platform, not just more general stuff, and still cast a vote for Senator Sanders and still feel that Senator Sanders is the best option that we have in the race." Unfortunately, too few straw-grasping Clintonistas ever got the memo. 

5) You cannot deny Ayn Rand’s hypocrisy with any dignity. Every excuse looks ludicrous. Most focus on the fact that she paid into the system. But she was not just taking back what she had put in. First, she had not been paying-in her whole working life and she had very expensive lung cancer. Others subsidized her care. Indeed, this would be the case even if she had contributed throughout her working life because, of course employers contribute. Second, payment does not negate hypocrisy. Consider homophobic pastor Ted Haggard paying his gay gigolo for six years. Third, being forced to pay by the government doesn’t make any difference either. Our tax dollars subsidize the cattle and dairy industries, but that doesn’t mean a vegan can honestly chow-down on a cheese burger. Nor could a prohibitionist do shots of vodka after buying a ticket to an event that s/he later learned had an open bar. Fourth, Rand had called such social programs “theft.” Well, if it is, then she’s a thief too. Or if she is not a thief, then nobody else is either. Either she is guilty or no beneficiary is. The yardstick of hypocrisy is always: "Are you partaking in something you think should not be available to anyone?" And Ayn Rand's apologists of course ignore this.

6) Yes, Ayn Rand is such a ridiculous figure that merely mentioning her name is a valid punchline.