Why is there no liberal party?

At the Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Erica Grieder suspects that "the biggest untapped constituency is people who are fiscally conservative and socially moderate or liberal." Grieder links to a post by former Cato research fellow Will Wilkinson where he explains why he is not a libertarian:

Here are some not-standardly-libertarian things I believe: Non-coercion fails to capture all, maybe even most, of what it means to be free. Taxation is often necessary and legitimate. The modern nation-state has been, on the whole, good for humanity. (See Steven Pinker’s new book.) Democracy is about as good as it gets. The institutions of modern capitalism are contingent arrangements that cannot be justified by an appeal to the value of liberty construed as non-interference. The specification of the legal rights that structure real-world markets have profound distributive consequences, and those are far from irrelevant to the justification of those rights. I could go on.

Wilkinson now identifies as a liberal. He writes: "I am interested in what it means to be free, and the role of freedom in flourishing or meaningful or valuable lives."

In the US, no major political party or movement stands for this kind of liberalism. The same is true in Australia. According to Greg Barns: "The Liberal Party, in the Howard and Abbott incarnation, is a socially conservative force which also believes that the state should play a paternalist role in steering the economic direction of the nation." Oddly, the most enthusiastic supporter of "the the role of freedom in flourishing or meaningful or valuable lives" seems to be the Australian Treasury.

This entry was posted in Political theory, Politics - international, Politics - national. Bookmark the permalink.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

201 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Ken Parish
Ken Parish
12 years ago

I raised this idea about six months ago and was almost universally derided as utopian or worse. But maybe I didn’t make it crystal clear enough that what I had in mind was indeed a party which was “fiscally conservative and socially moderate or liberal”. I still find it difficult to believe that there isn’t a large enough group in Australian society to constitute such a party. I would certainly join it and give of my time and energy if I believed it was genuinely principled and not just a vehicle for some disgruntled politician’s thwarted ambitions. OTOH I could not as a matter of principle commit to either of the two major parties in their current form nor the Greens.

Ken Parish
Admin
12 years ago

Not sure. I’d say Liberal Democrats except that name in Australia has been hijacked (grossly misleadingly) by the extreme libertarians. I think the name would emerge once interested people began seriously discussing and coalescing around the concept.

Leinad
12 years ago

Didn’t we have one until fairly recently before it sort of exploded, partly due to fissures between its classical liberal and left-liberal wings?

Ken Parish
Admin
12 years ago

Leinad

The Australian Democrats were essentially at inception wet liberal dissidents (rump of Liberal Movement) + Australia Party (Barton, Siddons etc) + Don Chipp. AFAIK they were always socially liberal but never embraced economic neo-liberalism. They gradually lurched to the left over subsequent years, particularly after Meg Lees’ GST deal. By contrast few of the economic neo-liberals in the Liberal Party (e.g. Costello) could be said to be socially liberal in any consistent way.

We need to be careful with terms here. At least in my observation, the neo-liberalism of the 1980s was mostly economically oriented and not much interested in the social, broad human rights aspects of classical liberalism. What I take Greider and Will Wilkinson to be talking about is a revival of classical liberalism in the full sense i.e. economically conservative (but rejecting the extreme minimal state/taxation position of libertarians, and accepting that a reasonable, carefully targetted social welfare system is part of liberal principles – as did liberals like JS Mill and even more recent figures like Hayek) and also socially liberal/progressive with emphasis on human rights.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

I seem to have a simular view to you Ken. But I would say that some things which may seem absurd at the moment are not actually absurd because like the boiling frog experiment the changes are slow. If I said it would be good to cut taxes by 33% relating to GDP you might put me into the camp of extreme minimal taxation position. So I am now 38 and in my lifetime taxes have increased by around 50% as a percentage of GDP. Was it so bad in 1973? http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1156/PDF/01_Brief_History.pdf On top of this there have been many efficiency gains due to technology and economies of scale, so taxes should have reduced to achieve the same outcome. The reason for some of the problems are politicians like to fix problems that do not exist such as the Federal government getting involved in hospitals. Australia’s PBS scheme is very good because it does cost benefit analasys and does not buy expensive drugs. This could be seen as socialist but if people in the US could see how it works here and believe it could be replicated in the US they might change there mind. I have a Thai friend who is a pharmacyst and they buy drugs not on our scheme which is probably in one way or another as a result of lobying and kickbacks and the same can probably said for the US. If Australia is in the top few countries in the world for life expectancy the holistic view of health says we are almost perfect in a world sense. So extra costs will be born and the more likely outcome is the hospital system getting worse because now can put a federal state blame game with nobody responsible. Do Australian’s think we should live forever? My personal view is everything must be a case by case basis and I do think that the libertarian philosophy is good so long as logic is still used. It is true that some libertarians are fundamentalist and any fundamentalistism will lead to bad outcomes no matter what group they come from. Go Ron Paul 2012.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

just to be clear about tax increase from about 20% of GDP to 30% of GDP being a 50% increase

kelly liddle
12 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwxBj5OfeGM&feature=related here is an interesting view on the subject.

Mr Denmore
Mr Denmore
12 years ago

I’ve been banging on for years about the untapped constituency that are economic and social liberals. We used to have a government that satisfied those needs – Bob Hawke’s first cabinet.

Perhaps the reason we don’t have one now – with both Gillard and Abbott being social conservatives and Abbott being less economically liberal than Labor – is that the program for economic liberalism is perceived as largely complete.

The electoral disaster that was Howard’s one final push towardna US-style dog-eat-dog labour Market with ‘Work Choices’ saw to that.

Now economic ‘debate’ – such as it is – consists of the two major party groupings desperately trying to differentiate one from the other. But the truth is they have nothing to say. The consensus on macro-economics overlooks the fact that the real work has to done on the micro side, but neither party really wants to go there. So we have this nonsensical ‘debt-deficit’ debate and beat-ups over service delivery.

Meanwhile on social policy,both sides seek to outbid each other on the right to appease the perceived prejudices of an imagined outer-suburban lumpen proletariat/petit bourgeoisie. Very depressing.

Marks
Marks
12 years ago

Kelly,

I follow your argument, but health as an example is not a good one to use.

Health costs have gone up without doubt, but so have outcomes. Your chances of surviving most cancers, heart attack, stroke etc are much better. So, maybe people might think that increased health expenditure is worthwhile without affecting the liberal political question being asked in this thread. That is, you can see the movement in relative change in health as % of GDP as being outcomes driven rathern than right/left/centre idealogically driven. Defence might similarly fall in this category – would a defence force equipped as per 1973 be able to do whatever it is we want of it today?

However, I do see the point of the slow boiling frog. Maybe the terms should be thought of as all relative. Perhaps, ‘conservatives’, and ‘hard right’ (without trying to get into the definition of those) relative to ‘liberals’ have changed as well. So, if we can get the relativities correct, maybe we have a step in the correct direction.

Tel
Tel
12 years ago

The word “Liberal” has been used and abused to the point of becoming worn out and meaningless. All the mainstream parties in Australia are central planning parties.

When was the last time anyone heard a candidate get asked a question: “What are you going to do about my … ?” and give the answer, “It isn’t actually my job to fix your … ?”

Until we have candidates willing to accept that there should be limits on government power, we ratchet towards central planning with no turning back. Even John Howard increased the size and power of government. For example, Work Choices was not really a free market option since it included rules that actively prevented employers from negotiating with unions. Work Choices was very blatant union busting pretending to be free market, however in a real free market people are also free to make unions (except that these free market unions would have no political privileges, unlike our present day unions).

Tel
Tel
12 years ago

Kelly, a mere one hundred years ago we had no income tax at all. Then we had the promise “Oh it will be temporary but we absolutely need this for the war you understand.”

Then after the war they broke the promise… hardly surprising.

How quickly people adapt to the new normal and pretend the past never happened. A dirty broken promise of one generation becomes the unquestionable foundation of righteousness in the next generation.

Sancho
Sancho
12 years ago

Where do the views of the Australian Democrats as a party, and Malcolm Turnbull as an individual, fit within the constellation of philosophies in Wilkinson’s article and the comments?

Sancho
Sancho
12 years ago

Dashed that out without spotting Ken’s comment on the Aus Dems.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

Mark
Defence is a good example of how a government can stuff it up. Why on earth are we buying the F-35 for more than double of the cost of a russian produced plane su-30mk that has a much better range suitable for Australia and we could buy 2 times as many and still save money. http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf-analysis-2002.html So our only possible enemy has a better plane for any combat that we might encounter.

I suppose better examples of waste are the breeding bonus (baby bonus) and home vendors subsidy (first home owners grant).

My main point about the hospital system is that it is not broken so why try to break it by federalising the function.

The feds are trying to take over all functions of government down to the local areas how about the flood tax? So in Brisbane some areas were built where there is known flood risk and in many cases could just build a high set house so it is not a major problem, which is either the councils fault or the home owner took the risk. So Thanks for the money NSW people lol we can continue to be stupid and you will give us your money. This of course also applies to different local authorities behaving differently also.

Marks
Marks
12 years ago

Kelly,

Waste is ubiquitous. I am not sure that there is a greater proportion of waste now or thirty years ago – for example, the F111 program went over cost by a heap. The point I was making is that it is difficult to compare inputs without correcting for different outputs. ie would our 1973 diggers, armed and trained as they were, be able to conduct the work that today’s diggers are?

The connection with the original blog post (and yours) is that if there is a ‘cooking frog’ effect, then the meaning of liberal obviously has changed as you suggest – in terms of how much state expenditure is appropriate. If, however, we are just seeing more expensive costs for better outcomes, then I am not so sure.

Let me put it another way with the health system example. Let’s say we quantify health outcomes like cancer survivability, and then cut our health budget to reduce healthcare so that present day outcomes are no better than they were in 1973, would we have a higher proportion of GDP spent on health than we did then? If so, then we have become more inefficient (and wasteful as your response to me says). If not, then we really are comparing two different things which we need to correct for before we can decide whether or not we are looking at a cooking frog.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

Marks
With health it may or may not cost more to get the current outcomes but that doesn’t mean the federal government should become involved this will be wastefull with more beauraucracy, 2 levels instead of one. The willingness of the government to give handouts is also creating inefficiency. Why take money off people and then give it back? Both parties are guilty of this and it is spreading through industry and households. It must be more efficient just to not take the money off the people in the first place and let the market take care of things like agriculture. What is the point of giving money to farmers with floods and droughts. This is what farming is about and yes it is tuff if your area is susceptable. All the handouts will do is increase the cost of land making it harder for new entrants. Governments often deliberately waste money to buy votes this is an unfortunate result of democracy and seems to get worse as the wealth gets larger. So the question is how to stop governments continuously getting larger because without this there will never be sustainable government.

Think of all the extra or expansion of federal departments which used to be state or not exist health (hospitals), education (schools), aging (nursing homes), climate change, early childhood. Outcomes may be improving but it is not a cause and effect relationship with more beauraucrats. If your arguement is that it is better for the Federal government to take care of a particular department then it should be dumped by all states not just duplication.

So there is nowhere to find a true fiscal conservative.

conrad
conrad
12 years ago

Kelly, most of your examples are tiny things, some of which I agree are just bribes (such as the two you mentioned in #15). However, it’s worthwhile having a look at where the money is actually spent. Most of the categories there are fairly self explanatory (excluding “General Government Services”, which I assume is just a big conglomeration of assorted things — no doubt some of which could be chopped). So, basically, if you want to reduce government expediture significantly, you need to work out how to chop social security and health expenses, both of which are going to be rather difficult given an ever aging and more unhealthy population. Even if you could think of more efficient ways to run these, and say got a 1-2% one-off benefit, it would hardly make a dint in the budget, and I doubt it would even make up for the natural increase that seems inevitable in these two categories. So how do we cut these? Health seems almost impossible to me, and I doubt too many people are going to vote to have nastier means testing for pensions, which would be one way to reduce social security.

Also, I would have thought that the reason Australia buys planes from the US is obvious, and it has very little to do with how good they are, much like the submarines we have (notice how no one actually seems to care too much about the fact that they don’t work and they don’t actually have enough crew for them?), so I doubt there’s too much point in arguing about them as if we needed them for something like fighting.

Yobbo
12 years ago

I’d say Liberal Democrats except that name in Australia has been hijacked (grossly misleadingly) by the extreme libertarians.

The LDP has very mildly libertarian policies Ken. Very much like similar parties in the region such as ACT NZ. Perhaps the extreme libertarians are just in your head?

Yobbo
12 years ago

By the way Don, the things Will Wilkinson writes in his post are things that many libertarians believe. He is still a libertarian as most people understand the term, and his post is basically just an attempt to distance himself from the controversy surrounding Ron Paul.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

Yobbo
When was the LDP website last updated?

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

Yobbo@20:

So what core beliefs would someone have to renege upon to no longer be a libertarian?

(I’d add the disclaimer, ‘in your view’, but I hope it’s both given and trivial that your view will be the one that you express, and that furthermore your definitions will have at least some general relevance.)

Yobbo
12 years ago

Dan as far as I am concerned if someone is fiscally conservative and socially liberal then they are a libertarian. Obviously there are varying degrees as to how far someone takes that.

Obviously then you have to ask what makes someone fiscally conservative and makes them socially liberal? But it’s safe to say that a lot of people who consider themselves “fiscally conservative” really aren’t.

Most libertarians for example would agree that income tax rates in developed countries are too high – some might think that the ideal rate is 0%, but then there’s many libertarians who think 25% or 30% would be fine also. The Australian LDP for example promotes a flat tax of around 30% for Australia. The NZ ACT party states on their website that they think a personal income tax rate of 25% is ideal.

A key issue that differentiates libertarians from conservatives is their view on illicit drugs. You won’t find many people who claim to be libertarian who think that marijuana should be illegal, for example. Many of them would prefer to legalise most forms of recreational drugs.

People like Ken tend to think that all Libertarians want to institute some kind of social darwinism with no public health insurance and no social security. That isn’t true at all. Most would be happy with an overall reduction in the size of government beauracracy and spending. I know quite a few libertarians and can’t remember meeting one who was unhappy with Australia’s health system for example. The LDP as policy recommends a negative income tax which an effective guaranteed minimum income of $10,000 per year for all Australians.

Yobbo
12 years ago

which means*

Yobbo
12 years ago

“So, basically, if you want to reduce government expediture significantly, you need to work out how to chop social security and health expenses, both of which are going to be rather difficult given an ever aging and more unhealthy population.”

Not necessarily true Conrad, because the cost of social security doesn’t just include the actual payments, but the cost of maintaining the humongous government beauracracy that deals with it. You could quite a lot of that budget by making the process simpler.

For example, with the LDP’s 30/30 negative income tax, you would not need a department of social security at all. You would just receive payments based on your tax returns.

Yobbo
12 years ago

Well Don, I think what you are talking about is a problem with labels in general, not just the label libertarian in particular.

What does Britney Spears have in common with John Howard? Not a lot you wouldn’t think. But they both consider themselves conservatives.

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

Well, yes, and their gift for selling cheap fantasies to the public.

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

Re: your comment at 23 – this must put you in a strange space with regard to the Australian political mainstream. The conservatives aren’t really fiscally conservative, and the parties with the most libertarian drug policies are definitely not.

Yobbo
12 years ago

You’re right Dan. I think this was the point Don was making in the original post.

Unlike Ken though, I’m perfectly happy with Australia’s already existing, fiscally conservative, socially liberal party: The Liberal Democratic Party.

Yobbo
12 years ago

Greg Barns seems blissfully unaware of them though, despite mentioning their NZ equivalent ACT. The major problem of the LDP at the moment is that nobody really knows who they are.

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

Yes, sort of, although I don’t think Don anticipated that you would identify the degree of overlap that you do between libertarians and liberals. For instance, most self-described libertarians I know do not accept that taxes are legitimate, ever; that they are are always coercive/theft (presupposing that whatever people earn is precisely what they deserve, but that another debate).

Isn’t there an overlap between the Shooters and the LDP? Because te former don’t seem at all socially liberal to me.

wilful
wilful
12 years ago

>Most libertarians for example would agree that income tax rates in developed countries are too high – some might think that the ideal rate is 0%, but then there’s many libertarians who think 25% or 30% would be fine also. The Australian LDP for example promotes a flat tax of around 30% for Australia. The NZ ACT party states on their website that they think a personal income tax rate of 25% is ideal.

See where you let the cat out of the bag and lost me was when you casually inserted the word flat in relation to taxes. That’s where you go from fiscally conservative to loony glibertarian.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

Yobbo
I will make the question more direct. Has the LDP changed there official policy with regard to immigration? If my memory is correct they have.

With health and old age pensions it is actually easy to change the costs but in the democratic sense difficult (hand outs rule). With the compulsory super if you have around $250 000 stored up this will give you enough money on average to cover the old age pension. The problem is that it is not a requirement to spend your money wisely so you can blow it and go on the pension.

With healthcare the same applies especialy with elective medicine. If people were told it is an automatic 3 (maybe 5) year wait on the public system but you can pay $15 000 for a hip replacement and have it done now many would elect to pay rather than wait and complain.

Yobbo
12 years ago

There are some ex-shooters party members in the LDP, but that’s as far as the overlap goes. The LDP is affiliated with the Outdoor Recreation Party in NSW.

Yobbo
12 years ago

“See where you let the cat out of the bag and lost me was when you casually inserted the word flat in relation to taxes. That’s where you go from fiscally conservative to loony glibertarian.”

I don’t see what’s so loony about flat taxes. Many countries in the world (mostly the ex-soviet states in the EU) have flat taxes and have not degenerated into mad max-style anarchy.

Hong Kong tax rate caps out at 16% and it is effectively a flat tax because the top margin kicks in at around $20,000 AUD per annum.

Kelly: I am not sure if they have changed their official policy on immigration or not. I’m not involved with the LDP other than being a member.

conrad
conrad
12 years ago

Yobbo,

just saying you could fix the bureaucracy to save money is kind of like saying you can do magic. At present the DHS (medicare, social security, childcare…) runs on bit less less than 6 billion, and presumably some of that that are silly government programs they are obliged to run (e.g., work for the dole). So even if you got a 20% saving (which I wouldn’t complain about), it’s diddleys compared to the amount of money they are paying out. So the only way you can really save lots of money is to stop the payouts.

Also, I must admit, I fail to see why the 30/30 system is any different administratively from any other system — you still have all the same problems (paying people, fraud, calculating payments etc…).

Peter Whiteford
Peter Whiteford
12 years ago

Yobbo: “For example, with the LDP’s 30/30 negative income tax, you would not need a department of social security at all. You would just receive payments based on your tax returns.”

Not everybody is in the tax system and the increase in the tax threshold later this year will take more people out. In fact, the people least likely to be in the tax system are those in the social security system.

It is also worth noting that out of a total welfare budget of close to $120 billion, all of Centrelink’s administrative costs add uo to around $3 billion.

For a more detailed discussion see
http://clubtroppo.lateraleconomics.com.au/2011/06/06/could-we-abolish-poverty-if-we-didnt-spend-so-much-on-public-servants/

While you say at 23 that the LDP would advocae a minimum income of $10,000, 30% of $30,000 is of course $9,000, or about 3/4 of the inadequate level of Newstart and less than half the age pension.

Yobbo
12 years ago

“Also, I must admit, I fail to see why the 30/30 system is any different administratively from any other system”

Like I said, you wouldn’t need a social security bureaucracy at all. The ATO already has the bureaucracy in place to process tax returns and send out payments as a result. They also have the investigative branch.

What you would no longer need is an arm of government that functions as a detective agency to see if people are looking for work or not. You would no longer need separate departments to deal with the aged, the young, jobseekers, the disabled and aboriginal people. Everyone would just get a payment based on their total reported income.

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

Yobbo – have the ORP considered rebranding themselves as the Bogan Party? That’s precisely what they are from what I can see and it’s a great marketing angle.

Yobbo
12 years ago

“While you say at 23 that the LDP would advocae a minimum income of $10,000, 30% of $30,000 is of course $9,000, or about 3/4 of the inadequate level of Newstart and less than half the age pension.”

Peter, the $30,000 figure is based on a proposal that was written nearly 10 years ago. It’s entirely possibly it could be raised, (and probably should given the increase in average wages in that time) it would still work the same way.

Yobbo
12 years ago

Dan, what does the word “Bogan” mean to you?

Peter Whiteford
Peter Whiteford
12 years ago

Yobbo, even 10 years ago, the arithmetic didn’t work.

The estimate that many studies of minimum income schemes for Australia come up with is that if you wanted to pay a Guaranteed minimum income of around the pension level you would need a basic tax rate of between 55% and 60%. The 2009 increases in pension rates will have pushed this up, although a negative income tax is cheaper than a GMI, but I would be surprised if you can come up with less than a 45% constant tax rate (but a $45,000 tax threshold would break the bank).

Yobbo
12 years ago

Peter I don’t think anyone is suggesting a guaranteed minimum income of around the Pension level. People with no other income would be marginally worse off under 30/30, but on the other hand they would be punished far less for taking on part-time work.

I would imagine that people who started work before the days of compulsory super would have their full pensions grandfathered in.

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

Yobbo@42: No doubt there’s a PhD in that: Constructions of the Bogan Archetype Amongst Urban Latte Sippers, or some such.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

Everyone except Yobbo

You are all boiling frogs. The concept that it is technically impossible to ever change from the current status quo which is a guarantee of a broke government in the future as tax and expenditures continue to increase at least based on Euorpean or US observation.

So lets look forward to a Greece/USA situation and then what me or Yobbo might propose will happen anyway because if it doesn’t then we will be what we call third world status.

desipis
12 years ago

Yobbo, and what of the people who aren’t able to work at all and can’t survive on less than the pension? If you’re going to have a one-size-fits-all social wage then you need to ensure it’s big enough for even the most needy and disadvantaged. Paying that much to everyone, regardless of need, is simply not going to be economically feasible. The only other option is to leave a certain portion of society, the most vulnerable and needy, to rot in economic misery.

I would imagine that people who started work before the days of compulsory super would have their full pensions grandfathered in.

And so the slide from simplistic ideal to bulging bureaucracy begins…

wilful
wilful
12 years ago

“is a guarantee of a broke government in the future”

bollocks.

Dan
Dan
12 years ago

wilful,

Quite so.

kelly liddle
12 years ago

wilful
So which example do you have that a country will not go broke by the current policies?

It is possible we won’t but that is only because at some stage cuts will be made which do not seem acceptable by the majority at the moment.