The Right Wing Theory of Reverse Causality

Today on Public Radio's Marketplace (here), Robert Reich commented on the causal logic underlying explanations being offered by the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. Since we are dealing with causal logic, we can use causal diagrams to clarify the points being made by the Republican Right Wing. Reich's commentary can be summarized using the causal diagram above (click to enlarge).

All the Republican candidates are afraid of government dependency. They see the Obama Administration as creating a "European Style" welfare state in which government dependency and powerful unions have created our current economic problems. Reich argues that the Republican argument has the direction of causality running precisely in the wrong direction.

In the second causal diagram above, the Subprime Mortgage Crisis not only created massive unemployment that pushed families to apply for Federal benefits such as Food Stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) but also created downward mobility driving middle class and working class families into the underclass, further creating families in need. At the same time, globalization has insured that any new jobs created as the economy expands will be low wage jobs, further creating families in need. These low wage jobs are non-union which creates a positive feedback loop where unions that might have fought for higher wages are becoming less able to fight for workers.

In other words, if you just reverse the arrows in the top causal diagram above (the Republican causal model), you get an accurate causal view of the current situation. The Subprime Mortgage Crisis created by the very right-wing business groups who support the Republican party led to the Entitlement Society rather than the Obama Administration who inherited the mess from the Bush administration.

Also tonight on the PBS News Hour, Margaret Warner did a piece explaining why the German economy, a European Style Entitlement society, is outperforming the U.S. on a range of measures to include how well the labor force is treated. I'll comment on that video when it becomes available.

Reich's commentary on Market Place begs the question of whether the Republican presidential candidates believe the causal direction of their arguments or have simply adopted reverse causation as the explanation for every problem. In Mitt Romney's case, I'm not really sure that he believes anything he says (although you can study his political positions here). In Newt Gingrich's case, I'm not sure sometimes he knows what he is saying (again you can read for yourself here). For Ron Paul, his views pre-date the Obama Administration and he might see a broader conspiracy trying to create the Entitlement Society (read an interesting article about his world view here). Rick Santorum is probably the only candidate that believes what he is saying, but he is a lawyer.

Before the semester started on my first teaching job, the dean of Letters and Sciences met with me and said that the biggest problem she had was teaching students how to "...distinguish facts from their opinions". Looking at the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, they provide striking evidence that our education system has failed to teach students the difference between fact and opinion, let alone how to make an accurate causal argument. On the other hand, a psychiatrist might argue that people who can't make accurate causal arguments are simply delusional.