The Speech Mitt Romney Should Give But Won’t

By On July 18, 2012 · 34 Comments · In Current Events, Economics, Liberty

My fellow Americans,

I have been the target of numerous charges by my opponent in recent weeks.  Rather than repeat them, I will simply say this:

I will not apologize for my legitimately earned wealth.  I will not apologize for finding legal ways to reduce the burden from the wealth-destroying, job-killing, innovation-reducing, and poverty-creating monstrosity called the US tax code.

I will not apologize for working for a company that made numerous other companies more efficient and, in doing so, freed capital and labor to more productive uses that have enriched this nation.  Would my opponent prefer that we stagnate in the jobs and lower standard of living of a generation ago?

I will not apologize for working for a company that provided jobs in poorer parts of the world for people who desperately need better opportunities.  Would my opponent prefer that they continue in poverty and starvation?

Whether or not you think my job history is relevant to my qualifications for president, know this:  the events of the last few weeks have reinforced my determination to defend wealth earned legitimately through the mutually-beneficial exchanges of a genuinely free market and to condemn wealth made through cronyism, corporatism, and political connections.

When my opponent reveals so glaringly his inability to understand the source of the wealth that has, in only 200 years, raised humanity from the muck and mire of thousands of years of poverty, disease, and death, we all now know what the stakes are in the next few months.  I therefore pledge that if I am elected my number one priority will be to reduce the size and scope of government and free the American people to provide for each other through the market and keep the wealth they have thereby legitimately earned.   That is the path not just to recovering from the recession that decades of government intervention has produced, but to the long run prosperity of all Americans, especially the least well-off among us

My opponent is right in saying no one does it alone.  He is wrong in thinking that is a condemnation of free markets and legitimately accumulated wealth.  Markets are the most extensive and profound process of human cooperation we have ever discovered.  The way to ensure that such cooperation continues peacefully and with mutual benefit is to allow people to try (and fail!) through the market to provide what others want and to keep the wealth they thereby earn, and to face the consequences of failure.  Free markets are human cooperation;  government redistribution is not cooperation, it is coercion.  The justification for the wealth earned in the market is not that people do it alone.  It is instead that allowing people to become wealthy by selling what others want to buy is the best way to ensure peaceful social cooperation and to improve the lives of the least well off.

You can vote for the reactionary forces of economic stagnation, and thereby continue to condemn millions to their current unemployment and poverty, by re-electing the man who has presided over the continued decline in the US economy, or you can vote for the progressive, liberating, and enriching forces of the freed market.  You can vote for those who would condemn the wealth that enriches us all and who prefer the wealth that comes from political connections and cronyism, or you can vote for those who understand that in a real market, the wealthy become so by providing for others.

My opponent has staked out his position and I am now staking out mine.  The choice has never been more clear, or more stark.

***

NOTE:  I am normally hesitant to engage with electoral politics, so I do this with much trepidation.  And let me be clear:  I am a conscientious abstainer and none of the above is an endorsement of Mitt Romney, who I find generally loathsome.  But boy, wouldn’t it be nice to hear someone who has been subject to the attacks he’s seen in recent weeks respond this way?

 
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Rod-Engelsman/822499328 Rod Engelsman

    He can’t give a speech like that for the same reason he refuses to release his tax returns.

  • 3cantuna

    It would not matter even if he did give this Reagan-esque speech. The results of a Romney presidency would be the same: murderous corrupt empire building abroad and corporatist government bureaucratic exploitation at home. In fact, I bet Bain Capital doesn’t nearly measure-up to the speech’s free market standard. ‘Gonna google that later.

    • 3cantuna

      Well, here is some irony. Reagan’s own OMB director, David Stockman, undermines the golden Bain Romney narrative. Stockman points out, among other examples, that Bain made 22x their initial investment in Italian Yellow Pages in just three years. How could this have been possible without a cozy relationship with the uber corrupt Silvio Berlusconi?
      There is more. Here is an interview by Dylan Ratigan of Stockman where he lays it out: http://lewrockwell.com/orig11/stockman9.1.1.html

  • spike

    “Legitimately earned wealth”… aye, there’s the rub. Leave aside the pure theft that has characterized much of the corporate welfare state these last 30 years, there’s the issue of our hereditary plutocracy that Romney exemplifies. In a society in which social and economic mobility is at an all-time low, I’m not surprised that Americans cast a jaundiced eye on wealth these days, a view that the Obama campaign is only too eager to exploit.

  • spike

    Zack Beauchamp
    ‏@zackbeauchamp

    The fact that libertarians think Republicans stand for these things is why they lack real influence.

    • Tyler

      No one thinks he stands for these things. This is obviously what Steve wishes Romney believes. The “But Wont” part of the title points out that Romney will never say this partly because he does not believe these things and partly because he is much too cautious to take a strong stand and defend himself with vigor.

      • Steven Horwitz

        What Tyler said.

      • http://twitter.com/gshevlin gshevlin

        Romney’s entire career has been founded and developed on opaqueness. His decision to destroy electronic records when he ceased to be a Governor, his unwillingness to talk about his time at the head of Bain Capital (and when he stopped leading Bain Capital) and his decision to refuse to release tax returns are part of a consistent pattern of behavior. Quite simply, he thinks that transparency is for the birds. I can’t determine what Mitt Romney believes because he never reveals anything. He reminds me of the car dealer from “Fargo”, a two-dimensional cypher. I hope nobody holds their breath waiting for him to give a defense of his tax avoidance tactics.

  • Aeon Skoble

    Good speech. If he actually says this, I will not only vote for him but will also wear Romney t-shirts.

  • http://EasyOpinions.blogspot.com/ Andrew_M_Garland

    Even if Romney is bad, he has to be better than the entirely made-up Obama who has never organized anything profitable.

    Even if a challenger is no better than the incumbent (or even a bit worse), it must be better to unelect the incumbent, if only to shake up the power arrangements of the government.

    That is why I enthusiastically support Romney, and why I will support someone better immediatly after his election.

    EasyOpinions.blogspot.com

  • Hume22

    Steve, I’m actually glad that he didn’t say these things (and hope that he never does), mainly because everyone will know (or justifiably believe) that he is full of sh*t and insincere. An unfortunate trend in pop politics (or so I am here claiming) is the conflation of insincere spokesman and the ideas they trumpet. The average subject tends to believe not only that the politician is corrupt, but also that the message and underlying ideas he asserts are themselves bankrupt as well. This is, of course, fallacious thinking. But that does not mean it does not happen.

  • Gordon Barnes

    I am a philosopher who just discovered this blog a few weeks ago. I thought of it as an attempt to defend some variety of libertarianism with good evidence and arguments. So when I read this, I am completely at a loss. This is just chock full of empirical claims that are unsupported by any empirical evidence, and every other kind of question-begging imaginable. I guess the idea is that this is supposed to be an imagined political speech, and so we should expect the low standards of evidence and argument that we usually get from such speeches, but I really don’t understand the point of such an exercise. So, for what it’s worth, let me adumbrate what one of my smarter undergraduate students would say about such a speech.

    One of the main points of disagreement between the left and the right is the question of whether all wealth that is acquired through a relatively unrestricted free market is “legitimately acquired.” So to assert, without any argument whatsoever, that Romney’s wealth is acquired legitimately, is to beg the question, and that is unhelpful.

    Here is a false dichotomy: either we must allow people to replace American jobs with jobs in third-world countries (at whatever wage levels are determined by market forces in those countries) or we must leave those people to starve and die. This is a false dichotomy because there are infinitely many alternatives to these two policies. So this is just a fallacy.

    Whenever you claim that the free market has done X or Y, you are making a causal claim, and causal claims require empirical evidence, at least if they are to be anything more than unsupported opinions. Take, for example, the growth in the standard of living over the last century. Is that due to the workings of the free market? That’s one hypothesis. But here’s another hypothesis. The last century, in the United States alone, has seen the advent and growth of a multitude of social programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC (and then TANF), the GI Bill, federally subsidized student loans, and on and on and on. If you want to argue that the free market alone is responsible for all of the growth in our standard of living, then by all means do just that — ARGUE for it. But to merely assert it, without any empirical evidence or argument of any kind, is a real waste of everyone’s time. Or, at any rate, it is for those of us who are not already singing in the choir.

    On last thought, by the way. According to recent studies, the poor in several countries in western Europe are better off than the poor in the United States. For example, the bottom 36% of the people in Norway are better off than the bottom 36% of the people in the United States. The bottom 20% of the people in Belgium are better off than the bottom 20% of the people in the United States. The bottom 15% of the people in Germany are better off than the bottom 15% of the people in the United States. And the bottom 12% of the people in Sweden and the Netherlands are better off than the bottom 12% of the people in the United States. As is well known, all of these countries tax and spend a much larger percentage of their GDP than we do in the United States. I won’t claim that this is the cause of the better standard of living for the poor in those countries, since I realize that such claims require good empirical evidence, and I don’t make claims like that without having the evidence. But these facts do constitute an apparent counterexample to your (apparent) claim that unrestricted free markets always make people better off. When it comes to the poor in the United States, where we have more unrestricted free markets than they do in the corresponding countries in Europe, it looks like that just isn’t so.

    For the data I cited above see the article in the Christian Science Monitor, which is linked below. One of the researchers who has done the original work in this area teaches at Syracuse, so if you doubt the data, you could certainly contact him.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p17s02-cogn.html

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bear-Nichols/9626357 Bear Nichols

      Good points, but a few problems. The social programs were only instituted well after major wealth explosions. So, you’d have to explain those wealth explosions without the help of the rise of the social state. Concerning your point about the European counterexamples, I’d have to ask if they’re really counterexamples. It seems they have similar programs to the US and similar debt problems. The only difference seems to be in rhetoric. The question is is this really a dichotomy at all? Better off is a questionable term anyway. Why 36%, then 20%, then 15%, then 12%? Why not a consistent number? What about social mobility? Perhaps they’re better there, too, but wouldn’t that be important?

      • liberty

        ”
        Why 36%, then 20%, then 15%, then 12%? Why not a consistent number?” – because the point was to show *what percent* in each country of the poorest is actually better off than that same group in the US. So, the question goes: what percent of each country at the bottom of the income scale are doing better than the same in the US? You could then do this for other countries as well.

        I would say that the poor in many countries *are* better off than in the US – back in 2005, using 1989-1996 data, I was seeing the same using the Luxembourg Income Study data which is cross-countries comparable data that includes welfare and social programs income, including some of the in-kind benefits. However, it is hard to track all these in-kind benefits by their true value to the household. So, I’d guess that most data underestimates how much better off the poor in these other countries actually are.

        As for mobility – I’d guess that absolute mobility is still higher in the US, simply because the labor market is freer and it is generally easier to rise up and earn a high wage there. (I’m from the US but living in London now). However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
        (1) If one needs to attend university or otherwise invest in order to rise up, university is expensive and Americans end up in a lot of debt, so that their disposable income is not actually so much higher in the end. It might even be lower, if health insurance and other factors are considered.
        (2) There is a lot of help for the poor to go to university, start a business, get job training, etc. as well as health care, housing, child care, etc. in these countries. Therefore getting out of poverty at least, if not also rising to a decent middle-class level, is probably easier in these countries.

        • Joeschmo

          Regardless, both arguments ignore relative competence and productivity… er… everyone is a victim… or something…

          • Gordon Barnes

            Thanks for that.

    • Gabriel

      The USA has 300 million people and covers one of the largest spans of territory of any country in the world. If Norway were an American state, it would be the 10th largest state economy. Comparing apples to oranges.

      Secondly, why should we automatically conclude that the maldistribution of wealth be a product of the market and not the government? The American federal government is notoriously disfunctional, and both state and federal government dole out cash at a rate of millions of dollars an hour to projects that do nothing but help the rich (see Medicare) or politically connected (see stimulus programmes, public pensions, military spending).

      If the USA were Norway, then the American poor would probably be richer. But it’s not, and saying that it’s because the government doesn’t spend enough money or tax the rich enough is disingenuous. All the countries that you cited have less progressive tax systems than the USA does, and therefore tax a greater % of their population, for example. They also have better ways of doling out the cash (though they are not perfect, and my generation is getting fucked any which way) to those who need it.

      This debate is meaningless, anyway. By the time I am 65 (I am 22) the public support that you rage on so much about will be gone, because you wasted the money by blindly supporting government spending.

      I’m a libertarian, but I support social programmes if that means spending the money in a way that benefits the poorest in society. The American government, and in a lesser extent most European governments don’t do that. They waste the money, and I’m going to have to pay it. I’d rather not to, because there will be poor people in 30 and 40 years time that will need some help, and none will be available.

      • Gordon Barnes

        Your point about the difference in size between the US and those European countries is well taken. But notice this. Taken collectively, the bottom 12% of the people in Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark are better off than the bottom 12% in the US. And it is also true that all of these countries tax and spend a much larger percentage of their GDP. Now, If I were a thoughtful libertarian, that would bother me. I would want some good explanation of this correlation that “explained it away.” And what would that explanation be? I think that’s a good question. Oh, and by the way, recent data seems to show that there is greater social mobility in most of those countries than in the US as well. If you need it, I can provide links to the sources.

        Much of the rest of what you say here, if true, constitutes and argument for different social programs, rather than no social programs at all. I have no quarrel with that.

        • Glen Raphael

          Why do you believe spending *as a percentage of GDP” is the relevant metric? If one of our industries is suddenly extra-successful and GDP rises, one would expect we’d have *less* need to subsidize the poor as a result, not more. So if you want a counternarrative that “explains it away”, how about we leave out that “percentage of GDP” nonsense and try something like this:

          “On the margins relative to current world levels, additional government spending on the poor is counter-productive – it makes the recipients on net worse off. The US taxes and spends much *more* on social programs than any of those other countries do (as measured in dollars per capita, NOT as a percentage of GDP), so our poor are worse off than they would be if the US taxed and spent less than it does now.”

          Similarly, the US has higher corporate taxes than most of those countries, so maybe our poor would be better off if we just lowered that. Or if we made our tax system less “progressive” to better resemble those countries.

          I’m not saying any of these are GOOD arguments, just that they seem at least as plausible as your argument in the other direction.

    • TracyW

      interesting definition of legitimate you’ve got there. When I look up legitimate in the dictionary, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/legitimate, I see the meanings of ” Being in compliance with the law” and “Being in accordance with established or accepted patterns and standards” Since Romney is running for US president, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that if his wealth was acquired without being in compliance with the law, we will hear about it.
      It does remain a possibility that he’s broken some laws but no one will manage to dig that up during a campaign, but then that’s true of *any* presidential candidate, or indeed anyone. And I don’t know how you expect Romney, or Obama, to *prove* that he acquired his wealth entirely legitimately. Can you yourself prove that you earned all your money legitimately? Isn’t this is a case where the burden of proof should be put on the accuser?

      • TracyW

        Whenever you claim that the free market has done X or Y, you are making a causal claim, and causal claims require empirical evidence, at least if they are to be anything more than unsupported opinion. … But to merely assert it, without any empirical evidence or argument of any kind, is a real waste of everyone’s time.

        This is a rather pathetic complaint. I think it’s safe for Horwitz to assume some basic level of knowledge of economic history amongst his readers. Do you expect your students to provide support for every statement they make about evolution, or gravity?
        You yourself refer us to the Christian Science Monitor, but don’t provide us with any empirical evidence, or argument of any kind, that the Christian Science Monitor is a reliable source of information. How do we know that the Christian Science Monitor isn’t a satire magazine like The Onion?
        Why are you holding Horowitz to standards that you’re not sticking to yourself?

        • Gordon Barnes

          Claims about the effects of free markets in history are widely contested. This is not a matter of common knowledge, but disputed claims. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that free markets have been causally necessary for improving the human condition in the past, it does not follow that they are causally necessary for human well being in the present or the future. These are all contested claims. If you don’t realize this, then you need to get out more often, intellectually speaking.

          As for the evidence reported in the Christian Science Monitor, it is the product of research that appears to have been done properly. (I am referring to a series of papers by Timothy Smeeding, now at the University of Wisconsin.) But if you have some reason to doubt it’s credibility, then by all means let me know.

          • TracyW

            Claims about the effects of free markets in history are widely contested. This is not a matter of common knowledge, but disputed claims.

            Now you are implying a false dichotomy. Something can both be a matter of common knowlege and a matter of disputed claims. The most famous example is evolution, the evidence supporting evolution is widely available, and yet people still dispute it.

            This is a classic tactic of creationists. The proof of evolution is overwhelming, their claims have been dismissed again and again, but they keep making stupid arguments, and then argue that because there’s a controversory, evolution isn’t proved and people should teach the controversy. Global warming denalists are another. And I reckon you probably look down on them.

            If you don’t realize this, then you need to get out more often, intellectually speaking.

            And if you really think that a claim being contested by itself implies that there’s something wrong about it, you need to get on the internet some more.

            Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that free markets have been causally necessary for improving the human condition in the past, it does not follow that they are causally necessary for human well being in the present or the future.

            Yep, you’ve identified the induction problem. This may surprise you, but I have managed to get out enough to hear about David Hume. It does not merely apply just to free markets, it applies to all scientific theories. For all I know, gravity will be switched off tomorrow. But in real life, we do rely on induction, even Hume noticed we do it all the day. I bet you buy food, on the basis that in the past you have found it causally necessary for eliminating hunger, even though it does not necessarily follow that in the future food will still do that.

            As for the Christain Scientist, you have mistaken my point. You were criticising Horwitz for not proving his claims in this imagined speech. But you yourself made a number of statements you’ve not proved, nor supported by empirical evidence. By the standards you applied to Horwitz, you should be proving to me that the Christian Science Monitor is a reliable paper. Instead, you have asked me to disprove it. So why is it okay for you to make claims that draw on common knowledge like this without supporting them, and not Horwitz?

      • Gordon Barnes

        When we elect representatives in a democracy, we are in the process of deciding what the law should be. That is exactly what is at issue. Those who object to Romney’s activities are objecting that his activities are objectionable from the point of view of justice. An analogy will illustrate the point. Imagine an American abolitionist who objects to a candidate in 1850 for obeying the Fugitive Slave Law, and returning a slave to his owner. Now suppose that a defender of the candidate says “Well, obviously the candidate’s action was legitimate, since it is in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Law.” This defender of the candidate has missed the point of the objection. The critic is saying that the candidates action violates the law AS IT SHOULD BE, not the law as it is. And as I noted above, elections in a democracy are all about what the law should be, not what it already is. Here is one more way to see the point. When you say that Romney’s wealth was “legitimately acquired,” you could mean either one of the following: (1) that it was acquired in accordance with current law, or (2) that it was acquired in a way that is just, or in accordance with the law as it should be. If you mean (1), then you are stating a fact, but one that is irrelevant to the objection of critics, since they are saying that his wealth is illegitimate in sense (2). And if you mean (2), then you need an argument for that.

        • TracyW

          When we elect representatives in a democracy, we are in the process of deciding what the law should be.

          Yes, should be. But when the representatives change the law, that doesn’t make every action taken under the old law illegitimate. For example, when my mother was a teacher in NZ in the 1970s, the law was changed to require every high school teacher to have attended a teachers’ training college. Was my mother an illegitimate teacher because she taught before that law change?

          As for the rest of your arguments, nope, the burden of proof is on the one asserting the illegitimacy of a law.
          This is because it’s impossible to prove that any law is legitimate (unless there’s been some major revolution in philosophy in the last ten years that’s passed me by). I’ve never heard of a legal theory of government that every rational person must agree to, in the same sense that every rational person must agree with a mathematical proof. Social contract theory, natural rights, divine rights of kings, etc, they’re all arguments based on assumptions that can themselves be disputed, and often are. And moving on a stage, what right did the men who voted for the US constitution that Romney and Obama are operating under have to bind future generations (and non-voting people at the time like women and slaves) to that set of laws and procedures? One can make arguments for and against the US constitution, but again there’s no absolute proof.

          Now open-ended disputes are all good and proper in their place. But when it comes to making decisions about practical matters, we have to start at some later point a lot of the time (we don’t always have to, but a lot of the time we do). And that includes assuming the basic legitimacy of existing institutions, until proven otherwise. In the case you cite of the abolitionists, they took the burden of proof on themselves about slavery being wrong, and made some bloody impressive arguments in this line, ones that convinced the majority of people without a financial interest in slavery.
          The left has not managed to do this about free markets or property rights despite centuries of trying.

          Placing the burden of proof on Romney to show that his wealth was earned legitimately (or Horwitz to show it for him) is like placing the burden of proof on Obama to show that he’s a natural born citizen and totally satisfy the birthers. It’s just not practical. Consider the birthers – they demand Obama release his birth certificate, he eventually does – so they demand he release is “long-form birth certificate”, he eventually does – but the birthers are still there. They just keep switching their grounds. Same with any other dispute about legitimacy, no matter what evidence or argument Horwitz or Romney provides about legitimacy, the left can just keep switching their grounds.

          That’s why the burden of proof is on those claiming something is illegitimate.

    • whataboutbob

      Dear Philosopher Barnes,

      Your post, and whatever “analysis” it might be liberally credited with containing, is predicated upon a common fallacy. Your key error is failing to either recognize or understand that much of the value in economic theory is derived from conclusions reached after assuming rational behavior. To predicate economic theory on assumptions of anything but rational behavior, and to promote public policy on the basis of these assumptions, is to effectively promote irrational thought and behavior.
      I suspect you are revving up for some sort of myopic rebuttal, consisting entirely of nonsensical drivel that accomplishes nothing, or almost nothing, but exposing your failure to actually think about the preceding paragraph. This is unfortunate because I have neither the time nor the patience to do your research or thinking for you. However, you seem like a pretty intelligent, albeit misguided, man or woman. I think you can figure this out if you put your mind to it. Just don’t get so wrapped up in feigning critical thought by allowing the sort of sophism that you displayed in your post to manifest itself once again. Tootles.

      • Gordon Barnes

        I have no idea how any of this is relevant to any of the objections that I made to the post.

        • TracyW

          I agree with you on that.

  • Pingback: Romney should defend the morality of capitalism … here’s an example « Knowledge Problem

  • Al Bundy

    Speaking of electoral politics, do you/BHL have anything to say on Gary Johnson? I enjoyed your post on Ron Paul from last year.

  • Derek Bowman

    Do BHLs think that wealth accumulated under current markets, distorted as they are by a vast network of unjust state intervention, typically counts as “legitimately earned”?

    Relatedly, do BHLs think that, in such a distorted market, venture capital success is nonetheless a good proxy for whether companies have been made “more efficient” or labor and capital more “productive,” in ways we should care about?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1091737052 Chad Horne

    I think it’s absolutely adorable that you think the difference between Romney and Obama is a difference in kind rather than a difference in degree. It’s not a clash between socialism and libertarianism. It’s an argument between two liberals who disagree about the appropriate size and scope of the safety net. To pretend otherwise is stupid.

  • ThaomasH

    No, he should not include
    in his speech that Obama thinks “that [saying no one does it alone] is a
    condemnation of free markets and legitimately accumulated wealth;” that
    would be a lie.” He should rather specify which policies of Obama’s that he disagrees with and why.

  • Robert

    A good speech that I would love to hear Romney make. I would just
    suggest substituting “enrichment” for “wealth” in these two places, since cronyism, corporatism and political connections don’t produce or create wealth:

    “…and to condemn wealth made through cronyism, corporatism, and political connections.”

    “…and who prefer the wealth that comes from political connections and cronyism…”