It’s nice to read that the head of a left-of-center Washington think tank “recommends that his fellow liberals and progressives become more attuned to the virtues of free markets.”
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research shares that notion in the book The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, according to a Barron’s review from Zachary Caceres.
Despite the fact that Baker seems to be on to the right idea, Caceres finds much to criticize within the book.
Baker is right to indict crony-capitalist interventions in the U.S. economy. He notes the close ties between America’s largest banks and the Federal Reserve which, by providing a liquidity backstop, works to the benefit of financiers. Whether or not he’s right that conservatives largely support the crony-capitalist system, he ignores the fact that free-market radicals actively oppose it.
Worse still, Baker indulges brazen double standards: While business is the unjust beneficiary of government favors, he argues that unionized workers are hampered by bans on “secondary strikes,” in which one union strikes in solidarity with another. But unions also benefit from cronyism in the form of pro-union laws. It’s hard to believe that Baker’s unwillingness to recognize this as another case of government favoritism is an honest mistake, and it undermines our confidence in his perspective.
Perhaps Baker believes that government support of unions is only natural, based on the view that workers would be the hapless victims of their employers without union protection. If so, then further reading in free-market economics would disabuse him of this misconception.
One short book that might help Baker: Tom Palmer’s The Morality of Capitalism.
