subtitle:

"How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream"

That's the new book by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.

I'd heard about this book in passing at various blogs but never really looked much further. However, more detail fell on my lap(top) via Google Reader this morning with a post by Tyler Cowen .

Apparently, the authors invited Cowen to a book party at a DC area Borders but he did not go....preferring instead to stay home and read the book on his sofa with a bowl of cherries at his side. Ah...summer break for the academics. :)

A sampling of their favored policies from Cowen's posting:

1. Family-friendly tax reform.

2. Sprawl is OK or at least it could be with rational traffic management policies.

3. Government reinsurance for catastrophic health care expenses, plus they consider the Brad DeLong health care plan.

4. Abolition of the payroll tax for many lower-income earners.

5. Allocate money to public schools on a student-weighted basis, as is done in San Francisco.

6. Reallocate funding toward lower-tier state universities and away from flagship schools.

7. Don't expect old-style unions to come back.

Apparently, the broad vision is that the GOP must find clear ways to be more friendly and attractive to the "non-rich"....whatever that means. Looking at things as a whole and the effects of policies, I'm starting to believe that "rich" is any household earning above $70K per year...which isn't really that much...but I digress.

As Cowen kinda states later, appearances, perceptions and stereo-types of the parties actually play a larger role in what policies the parties inadvertently push than most would think.

Says Cowen in summary:

Personally I don't see any reason to tie all of this to the Republican Party but I agree with most of their proposals. There's a great deal of common sense here and it stands as one best general policy books in a long time.

I agree with Cowen on that first point. And I don't see any reason either. I own a business that employs people that, by the very nature of the work, are lower hourly income earners. They must put in a lot of hours (more than 40) to make a good income. The one reality that I see every pay day is how a myriad of taxes and bad laws end up pricing up goods and taxing some of my employees to the brink of neediness and the possible need for public assistance of some kind.

My GF, a liberal Democrat, has gotten a new perspective on all this over the past couple of years...Seeing what I go through with taxes and such and also seeing what my employees go through through no fault of mine. She sees how much they lose out on through taxes and bad labor laws and how cynical and underhhanded it all can make some of my employees....even towards ME! Luckily, there are very few of those...usually only one at any given time out of 16-20.

Whereas at one time, she would, almost vexed, defend politicians whom I scowled at when they talked about anti-poverty "programs" and help for "the poor", she now agrees with me on how ineffectual and cruel it all is. She now sees how all this spending on programs doesn't help them at all and evens hurts them with more taxes and how much better off they'd be without these programs sucking precious dollars from them. She also knows that my unemployment insurance account has swelled to over $85,000 paid and that I'll never need to use even a tiny fraction of it and that'll I'll never be able to recover it. Oh, I could go on. I showed her laws in an NFIB pamphlet that were defeated at State and Federal levels and she just shakes her head in disgust at the zaniness of these bills....nevermind my reaction. ;)

Concludes Cowen:

The deep question is why something like this hasn't already happened. You'll find the superficial "Republicans are just pro-corporate crooks" answer from bloggers like Kathy G. Another possibility is that Republicans don't get much electoral credit for pro-poor initiatives (just as many voters simply won't believe that "Democrats can be tough"). The more competitive political messaging becomes, the more this constraint binds and so the policies of upward redistribution are more likely to be enacted by Republicans in the resulting political equilibrium. If the authors are to get their way somehow this dynamic must be reversed.

Indeed. Strange how that works. Personally, as a man without a party, I look forward to either party being a party I can stand behind. I generally don't "perceive" either party as being that helpful to the poor or working class. The Dems just make it a little easier to be poor while making it a little harder to NOT be poor....though at least on a STATE level, Republicans can be counted on to block dumb ideas from Democrats that would make life harder on me and my employees in one way or another. But that's it. Sadly, they don't come UP with good ideas that really help either. Federally, it's much of the same except that added dimension of foreign policy comes into play making the GOP incompatible with my views.

I look forward to either party co-opting some truly good ideas for the economy that truly help the poor. Problem is, to truly help the poor, by extension, ends up meaning you have to accidentally help everyone....that means NO income taxes up to near the median national income...for starters. It means unilateral free trade, it means staying out of, as much as possible, markets in terms letting prices be as accurate as possible...meaning CHEAPER.

This is just a start. But I'm not holding my breath.