November 27, 2006
Populism, New Jersey Style Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 05:15 PM EST A quick note about “populism” in New Jersey. I’ve been a New Yorker for several years now, but I spent the first 18 years of my life in the Garden State. I also worked on several statewide and congressional campaigns before abandoning politics for academia. So it’s a part of the world I know somewhat well. John Steele Gordon is correct in identifying New Jersey’s arcane system of local government as the prime contributor to the state’s astronomically high property taxes. To New Jersey’s nonsensically decentralized school system one might add its municipal fire and police departments, which eat up enormous sums of tax dollars in the form of salaries, pensions, and benefits, as well as the time-honored custom by which every municipality, however small, engages the services of a municipal engineer and solicitor. Where I differ with Mr. Gordon is where I assign the credit or blame for this excessively expensive operating procedure. Mr. Gordon cites New Jersey as an example of government inefficiency and explains that a true populist is one who “believe[s] that economic decisions should be made, in so far as possible, by the free market (the common people in their millions buying and selling).” The trouble with this statement is that New Jersey’s electorate is stubbornly—one might say adamantly—wedded to decentralization. Local school districts and police departments are sacred cows in Garden State politics, somewhat akin to social security on the federal level. Politicians are free to inveigh against the evils of high property taxes, but they cannot and will not question the efficacy of local control. If they do, the voters punish them. If the metaphor of the free market carries over to electoral politics, then it only goes to show that the invisible hand, no matter where it wields its influence, is not invariably the most rational actor available. Just as New Jersey voters would save a lot of money by turning the organization of municipal services over to an elite management consultant, the American economy stands to gain extra efficiency from the interference of third-party institutions like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve Board. Populism is an attractive creed, but it isn’t necessarily the most rational. Just ask the “progressives.” Or do we not want to get bogged down in the definition of even more nettlesome historical terms?
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