Archive for September 1st, 2014

305. Proof Of The Pudding

A year ago the government shut down because of Republican demands for deep cuts to social programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Though Republicans blithely ran up the highest deficits in history during the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations, since then they’ve undergone a philosophical reversal. Their fervor for reducing the deficit reached a fever pitch last fall when they held the government hostage in an unsuccessful attempt to get their way.

But it isn’t just in America where deficit reduction has become a cornerstone of the political Right. Several countries in Europe – most notably Greece – have run up large deficits. And conservatives in Europe have demanded draconian cuts to social programs in order to cut these deficits.

Progressive economists warned that this would increase the danger of another recession. But in Europe, unlike in Washington, conservatives carried the day, and riot-inducing cuts were imposed.

So how has that been working? Now, after imposing austerity on certain member nations, the entire Eurozone economy is at a standstill and its three largest economies – Germany, France, and Italy – are all contracting. Europe is on the verge of deflation, a condition that can be as bad as too much inflation. As The New York Times recently observed, instead of demanding deficit reduction, European governments should be “increasing spending to kick-start their economies.”

In addition to demanding deficit reductions, conservatives also advocate cutting unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, maintaining that the only reason these people don’t have jobs is because they’d rather live on unemployment. Republicans in the state of North Carolina have taken up this cause with a passion and last February cut off benefits to 170,000 people.

And how has this worked? The unemployment rate has dropped, but mostly because a significant number of people have given up looking for a job. Unemployment benefits require recipients to actively look for work. Once this incentive was removed North Carolina saw its workforce – those either working or seeking work – drop much more than its unemployment rate did. Cutting deficits in Europe and cutting unemployment benefits in North Carolina have both done much more economic harm than good.

But when it comes to doing economic harm, it’s hard to beat Kansas. In 2012 Kansas’ Republican governor, Sam Brownback, championed tax cuts of 24% on top earners in conjunction with a host of other dramatic revenue cuts. “Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” Brownback wrote in an op-ed that July. But instead of reviving the economy it’s done just the opposite. In April Moody’s Investment Services downgraded Kansas’ bond rating in response to a $93 million revenue shortfall. The Leavenworth Times observed that “the ‘great experiment’ is falling flat. In five years’ time, the (revenue) loss is predicted to rise to 16 percent. Kansas, in effect, will self-impose its own economic depression.”

Political parties love to debate what is and isn’t sound economic policy, but it’s a lot easier to say a certain set of economic policies will result in growth than it is to prove it. Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, though, are doing a great job of proving that their ideas don’t work. This would all be very instructive if anyone was actually paying attention. The “proof of the pudding,” is, after all, in the eating. But ideas are much tastier than facts, and one fears that no matter how much harm they end up causing, conservatives will continue to push policies that are already damaging millions of lives.

304. Blame It On The Beatniks

I think I would have made a pretty good beatnik. I feel beat – as in tired – most of the time. But there was more to this 1950s subculture than feeling worn out from staying up too late. Beatniks were big into jazz, a musical style I love.

The beatniks were the counter culture of their times, and cast a jaundiced eye on the social and artistic norms of the day. They were “hip” while the rest of society was “square.” Beatniks gathered in coffee houses to play bongo drums and recite poetry while everyone else was watching Donna Reed and Leave It To Beaver.

Though they denied culpability, the beatniks were widely credited with inspiring the hippies of the 1960s. The name “hippies” is based on the word “hip” and like the beatniks, the hippies rejected the mainstream values of society’s “squares.”

Mainstream society, on the other hand, saw beatniks — and especially hippies — as undisciplined radicals who were threatening everything from the Protestant work ethic to sexual conventions.   In many ways, though, the divide was between conformists and non-conformists, and when the Vietnam War began taking the lives of more and more young Americans, the buds of non-conformity burst into full blossom.

Indeed, it was the “flower children” – the hippies — who proclaimed that Americans should “make love, not war.” And while their influence on ending the Vietnam War has been greatly exaggerated, they did succeed in fundamentally altering the fabric of American society (though not to the degree they hoped).

While most hippies evolved into yuppies, embracing capitalism with the same passion with which they had once opposed it, the societal rifts the hippies created echo to this day. In fact, historian Rick Perlstein attributes today’s seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the Left and the Right to President Richard Nixon’s exploitation of the societal unrest that characterized the 60s.

Nixon proclaimed himself the champion of the “Silent Majority,” positioning himself as the protector of middle class values against the onslaught of rebellious youth. Nixon’s amorality, which came fully to light with the Watergate scandal, allowed him to pit one group against another without any qualms, and the cracks dividing us widened as a result.

Perlstein explores that era through a series of three books, Before The Storm, Nixonland, and most recently, The Invisible Bridge. On one side of society stood those who considered it their patriotic duty to, in Perlstein’s words, “question authority, unsettle ossified norms, and expose dissembling leaders.” On the other side were those who believed in “America the innocent.” And where Nixon left off in engaging this second group, Ronald Reagan took over. Reagan’s message of American exceptionalism appealed to voters “beat” by years of disruption and malaise. His election, though, began this nation’s decades-long slide towards Tea Party radicalism.

Reagan is remembered as “the Great Communicator” for a reason. He offered an optimistic national narrative that Americans could rally around. Unfortunately, Reagan’s folksy vignettes obscured his anti-union, anti-tax and anti-regulation agenda. Most Americans, Perlstein maintains, didn’t understand that voting for him was voting against blue collar workers in favor of corporations and the very rich.

It’s ironic that both the beatniks and the hippies, who rebelled against conservative morality and materialism, laid the ground work for our current Gilded Age. But in forcing America’s political pendulum too far to the Left, they unwittingly insured it would one day swing just as far to the Right.