A Chart that Should Encourage Progressives

The site Progressive Fix recently featured a post called “A Chart that Should Keep Progressives up at Night” which the author uses to argue that progressives need to shift their agenda to the right.

Why are we assuming the future will resemble the present or past?

This is the chart that the author uses.  I don’t disagree with the facts, and I think his main interpretation is largely right:

Progressives, in short, are going to be caught between a rock and a hard place: we will either have to find a way to convince the electorate to go along with massive tax hikes, with all of the electoral risk that entails, or we will have to come up with a plan to make equally massive cuts to entitlements that are likely to also be unpopular and that may do significant harm if not thought through carefully.

What I disagree with is how quickly the author dismisses the possibility of raising taxes.  His basic premise seems to be that Reagan cut taxes (which is only partly true) so we can never raise taxes again, and since we can’t raise taxes we must cut social programs in ways acceptable to the larger Progressive agenda.  This fatalism is wrong.

A tax rate which collects around 40% of GDP is a lot closer to the OECD average than our current levels.  It would put us in line with current Continental levels; that may not be one’s political ideal, but it is by all means economically feasible.  And the author’s conclusion is downright Thatcheresque:

But let there be no doubt — the long-term prospects for significantly expanded progressive government are dim, and in fact, a retrenchment in coming decades is inevitable. President Clinton was wrong — the Era of Big Government is not over. But it will be soon. As progressives we must lead the process of winding it down in a responsible and fair way.

That of course assumes that we starve the beast, but there is no logical reason why that must come to pass.  Similar to the argument that a lot of pro-choicers make, surrendering the point on the issue to try to contain it -  the idea that by talking nice about the pro-life stance, one can somehow win the overall political battle – is a self-defeating political strategy.  We must increase the size of our government or risk surrendering our claims to being a civil society.