Thomas Palley is a well-credentialed liberal economist with a knack for explaining complicated policy ideas in plain English. His current blog post, Markets and the Common Good [
http://www.thomaspalley.com/...], discusses the essential differences between conservative and progressive economic philosophies.
In the last 30 years or so, conservatives have been able to establish an economic dogma that can sound very convincing until it is compared to the real world.
The conservative philosophical trick was to assert the existence of natural free markets and then claim an identity between markets and the interests of society. That trick worked well, but the fallacy of its assumptions is now showing up in the corruption in political markets and the gross inequities evident in markets more generally.
The Republican message machine has created a false dualism between free markets and the common good. Since free markets are natural and always better than the alternatives, we must resign ourselves to accepting the regrettable cruelties that attend them. It is a legitimate role of government to enforce the freedom of markets, but not to help citizens cope with the battering of a market-dominated world. Society serves markets.
What Palley does not want to see from Democrats is a Republican-lite approach. For example, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin advocates a strategy that
is being pressed by new Democrats who aim for a softer version of the current policy program, inaugurated by Ronald Reagan in 1980. According to this strategy, Democrats should use the current moment to occupy the economic policy nest created by Republicans and redecorate it. This would involve continuing with the themes of budget austerity, free trade, and deregulated markets that Republicans pioneered.
This is precisely what Kossacks and others no longer want to hear from so-called "centrist" Dems. What Democrats should do is pursue
the development of a philosophy in which markets serve society, rather than society serving markets ... Out of this statement and vision can then flow a new progressive policy agenda in which all elements are mutually reinforcing.
I really like the simple phrasing of the core concept. And what a concept it is--markets could serve society! Government policy could align market incentives with useful social goals! What the heck, let's try it.