COMM 337: 'Sound economic values,' ethics, Aristotle, Bentham and Kant

An interesting take on America's "economic values" by New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks. A former senior editor of the neo-conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard, Brooks' column is unpredictable, and it has managed to infuriate virtually all of his readers at one time or another.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

In Tuesday's Times, he discusses America's economic situation in terms that are decidedly moralistic - or ethical.

He sees the beginning of cultural "indulgence and decline" in developments from our low rate of savings wasteful executive compensation packages to "supersize" meals in fast food restaurants "offering gigantic portions that would have been considered socially unacceptable to an earlier generation."

Other sound bites: "[D]espite the country’s notorious materialism, there has always been a countervailing stream of sound economic values ... [but] Over the past few years, however, there clearly has been an erosion in the country’s financial values. ... [We are] oblivious to the large erosion of economic values happening under their feet."

Brooks mentions high levels of personal, corporate and government debt, and adds, "These may seem like dry numbers, mostly of concern to budget wonks. But these numbers are the outward sign of a values shift. If there is to be a correction, it will require a moral and cultural movement. [a] crusade for economic self-restraint ... moral revival."

In a nutshell, Brooks says:

The United States needs a revival of economic self-restraint to restore its financial values and make it a producer economy again, not a consumer economy.

And this:

If there is to be a movement to restore economic values, it will have to cut across the current taxonomies. Its goal will be to make the U.S. again a producer economy, not a consumer economy. It will champion a return to financial self-restraint, large and small.

It will have to take on what you might call the lobbyist ethos — the righteous conviction held by everybody from AARP to the agribusinesses that their groups are entitled to every possible appropriation, regardless of the larger public cost. It will have to take on the self-indulgent popular demand for low taxes and high spending.

A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes and spending cuts that are now deemed politically impossible. But this sort of moral revival is what the country actually needs.

Linked to Brooks' column are 387 reader comments. How do these comments compare to those in other reader forums, say for example those in the State Journal-Register? Are they civil? Do they argue with each other's comments? Do they go in for personal attack, or do they focus on the issues? Do they repeat ideological talking points? How does the tone of this comments board reconcile with President Obama's claim of a "coarsening of our political dialog?"

Other questions: Can economic issues even be discussed in terms of right and wrong? What standards ought to apply? Are there benchmarks that ought to be applied? If so, what are they? Do classic thinkers like Aristotle, Bentham or John Stuart Mill have anything to say to us in the 21st century? If so, what?