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The history of America since 1980
Brad DeLong spells it out:
- The end of the Cold War
- Other winner-take-all factors that have, in combination with education, pushed American income polarization back to Gilded Age levels.
- The failure of American taxpayers to support their state and local governments in expanding funding for public education--and the impact of reduced public education effort in sharpening the distinction between rich and poor.
- The computer revolution in productivity growth.
- The rise of China (and soon, we hope, India) as industrial powers.
- The extraordinary social liberalization of America--if you had told any Republican in 1980 that 2008 would see (a) a Negro with an Arabic-Swahili name beating a veteran fighter pilot in the presidential polls and (b) gay marriage as the big cultural issue of the day, said Republican would have blown several gaskets. And if you had said that this would have been the result of an "Age of Reagan" said Republican would have melted down completely.
I'm mostly on board (and read the broader post) but, in addition to mentioning Latinos, I'll suggest two revisions. First, on #3 I doubt if the stagnation of American lower education is the result of insufficient dollars. It is notoriously difficult to find a convincing link between educational expenditures and educational quality and I don't think that is econometric problems. On #6 I never saw most of the Reagan Republicans as especially prudish or socially conservative; that was just a lie told to one of the interest groups attending the party. Revolution in the Head -- which is oddly enough a social history of the Beatles -- is especially good on the connection between 1960s morals and the Reagan Revolution.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 30, 2008 at 09:04 PM in History | Permalink
Comments
"real Per Pupil Expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools has increased from $6051 in 1985-86 to $9295 in 2005-2006, a 53.61% increase"
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/04/and-you-thought-gas-prices-were-high.html
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at Jun 30, 2008 9:08:09 PM
Re: public education --
It's been mentioned before, but people seem to keep forgetting that D.C. has one of the worst education systems in the country, but spends a whopping $24k+ PER HEAD. See this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402921.html
Public education is failing because of bossy teachers unions, education bureaucrats and lack of true choice.
re: America's new Gilded Age --
Just because some people have become hyper-rich does not make the rest of us poorer. The top tax bracket pays the majority of American taxes, so in fact they are funding the country's public services. Surely this "polarization" has been accompanied by wealth creation?
The only reason everyone is running around freaking out is because of the housing crisis, which reasonable people could see was coming a MILE AWAY. A lot of people were irresponsible, taking out big risky mortgages (or offering them), and now look what has happened. Foreclosures galore and lots of leftist rhetoric about the collapse of capitalism. If we want solutions, we should look instead at why the system failed, about why lenders didn't care if the money they threw around went to risky candidates or not. Where is the accountability?
Agreed about Reagan Republicans. Didn't every poll indicate that they were having the most sex? The ones I've partied with could bring it, believe me.
Posted by: Tim at Jun 30, 2008 10:06:30 PM
I tend to only take umbrage with #3. From the Census of Governments, between 1990 and 2006 state and local government expenditures on education grew from $324.6 billion to $728 billion in current dollars, or from $499.9 billion to $728 billion in constant dollars - a 45.6% real increase.
What has happened to real compensation for "average" workers over that time?
Posted by: wintercow20 at Jun 30, 2008 10:45:21 PM
DeLong omits, since it wouldn't suit his preconceived ideological agenda, the most important characteristic of America over the past 28 years: dramatically lower levels of taxation, public sector spending and regulation than the rest of the industrial world, combined (not by chance) with dramatically higher rates of economic growth. Together with the collapse of the Soviet Union--which left/liberals sitting in the dustbin of history like to refer to as "the end of the Cold War," as if the war just ended without anyone's winning--this economic growth has resulted in the world's being dominated by a single hyperpower.
But don't try to have a discussion with Prof. DeLong--like most professors, he'll delete your comments and give you an "F" if you argue with him.
Posted by: y81 at Jun 30, 2008 10:51:00 PM
Delong writes:
Yet Reagan's conservative achievements were remarkably limited:
* A tilting of the tax code to redistribute income to the rich
Can someone explain how you "redistribute income" to the people who EARNED it in the first place? I guess Brad Delong actually thinks that your earned income really belongs to the government, and they are doing you a favor by letting you keep some of it.
Posted by: JBJB at Jun 30, 2008 10:52:50 PM
I would add the rise of finance, starting with the launch of Eurodollar futures on the CME in 1976(?). It's made it much more difficult for fiscal planners in government to do much direct damage, leaving only indirect effects.
DeLong is dead wrong in thinking that Reagan slowed the computer revolution in productivity growth by his deficits. The blocking factor in the early 80s wasn't a lack of finance but a lack of skills. Computers just aren't all that valuable without large-scale low-effort connectivity, and the technology for that simply didn't exist until the late 80s. It wasn't lack of investment that blocked it (the DoD poured in money like it was water) but rather a large number of basic technological and coordination hurdles that needed to be overcome. One can reasonably imagine a governance regime that sped up the computer revolution by up to 18 months or so (at a stretch), but more than that seems highly unlikely. One could equally well imagine one that slowed it down by years, as arguably happened in much of Europe.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 30, 2008 10:58:25 PM
# 3: Who would want to pour money into that sinkhole? Wintercow's numbers amount to a less than 3 ppa real growth rate, so the interest groups kept up their fair share. Burn down; start over. Pity, DeLong knows this, or should know it.
Posted by: Frank at Jun 30, 2008 11:39:59 PM
I'd guess a lot of Republican's will blow several gaskets because 9/11 isn't on that list, or in fact because it's not the only thing on the list.
Posted by: mtc at Jul 1, 2008 12:13:25 AM
DeLong's casual use of the word "Negro" is simply nasty because it serves no conceivable purpose except to try to create the false impression that conservatives were still using this word as late as 1980. (For the younger generation: it went out of use in the late 1960s).
DeLong's broken-record "Carthago delenda est" shtick ("Impeach absolutely everybody and their little dog Toto, too, now") hardly does him credit either. For that matter, "Grasping Reality with Both Hands" sounds just a wee bit pretentious and self-important.
In any case, talk of blown gaskets and meltdowns is greatly exaggerated. Time was, divorce was a scandal and a divorced man could not hope to be elected dogcatcher, but the first divorced president in American history was none other than Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Who knows? Perhaps the first gay president fifty years from now will be a conservative Republican too.
Posted by: at Jul 1, 2008 12:19:05 AM
Incidentally, McCain was a bomber pilot, not a fighter pilot.
Posted by: gek at Jul 1, 2008 12:27:51 AM
A drivers education teacher in my district makes $148,000 per year. What do you mean taxpayers don't support education? The unions are stealing us blind.
Posted by: jorod at Jul 1, 2008 1:10:14 AM
People who talk up or down about Reagan's tax cuts miss the point completely. The major tax reform lowered taxes substantially and cut out nearly all of the tax loopholes, credits, incentives, etc. The result was a net gain in efficiency as rich people and corporations stopped paying accountants to engage in tax-dodge shenanigans. Everyone paid roughly the same as they did before, just with lower transaction costs.
For good or ill, calling it simply "lower taxes" is an egregious misrepresentation.
Posted by: jb at Jul 1, 2008 2:22:29 AM
Having been a Republican in 1980, I think what would have surprised Republicans more is not that a black man is running for President in 2008, but that he's running as a Democrat, not a Republican. It's like a movie star running as a Democrat. A bigger surprise in 1980 to any admirer or Margaret Thatcher would be that no woman has been nominated for the Presidency in the 29 years since Thatcher was elected Prime Minister.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jul 1, 2008 2:47:30 AM
On #6, it's pretty clear Delong mentions "conservative Republicans," not "Reagan Republicans." Obviously, Reagan had broad support outside of social conservative circles: otherwise he never would have been elected by the margin he won by.
Opinion polls do certainly reflect that support for decriminalization of sodomy, support for same-sex marriage and general acceptance of gays in American life have increased over the past 28 years. Racial attitudes have probably softened as well, although I would never trust opinion polls to deliver accurate results. Everybody of voting age in 1980 would have been alive when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was still being debated in Congress. I don't think any magical transformation happened in those 16 years.
Moreover, it is within my memory that the Simpsons and Married with Children were two of the most provocative shows on television and were considered too racy for primetime by some conservatives. Now, they are shown in syndication during day-time hours with no complaints from anyone. The country really has become much more socially liberal.
Posted by: Ricardo at Jul 1, 2008 2:50:18 AM
if you had told any Republican in 1980 that 2008 would see (a) a Negro with an Arabic-Swahili name beating a veteran fighter pilot in the presidential polls... said Republican would have blown several gaskets.
According to the General Social Survey there was no significant difference between the number of Republicans and the number of Democrats who said they would vote for a black president circa 1980. Since most people answered the question that way the poll soon stopped asking it.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Jul 1, 2008 3:13:33 AM
Missing from DeLong's list, as you report it: HUGE increase in undocumented immigrants, who will work for very low wages. Consequences: collapse in the day labor market / auto body shop labor market / meatcutter market for citizens coming out of the dreadful schools, so no road into prosperity for them. This has exacerbated the effects of a lot of the low-skill factory jobs going abroad.
Posted by: dave.s. at Jul 1, 2008 5:51:46 AM
In 1980 Obama was a "mulatto", not a Negro. He is after all half white. At least in New Hampshire in 1980 Reagan Republicans probably would have said "mulatto", and probably meant it as a compliment.
Posted by: Vanya at Jul 1, 2008 6:56:20 AM
Anyone who thinks state-wide averages of per-pupil expenditure represent salient facts in this debate needs to go back to school and learn about statistics and cost of living differences.
Posted by: Jim at Jul 1, 2008 8:33:36 AM
On #6, I think Robert Byrd is much more upset than your average Reagan republican. People like to stereotype Republicans and Democrats without thinking about the history of the two parties.
Posted by: Charlie at Jul 1, 2008 8:37:32 AM
Response to number 2:
I think that schooling in the USA is better than it has ever been, even most government bureaucracies improve (or get less bad) over time (although slowly). I think that schooling in the USA is about as good as anywhere in the world. That is not to say that schooling in the USA is good IMO it is not very good.
Schools do not so much educate as the grade people.
I do not think the tests that show Americans doing poorly do not test anything important.
The evidence says that you cannot make people smarter and that if knowledge leaks out. In other words you can heroically raise children’s scores on these silly tests at some point but he will revert in few years.
It seems to me that people all nations fall for the same silly un-scientific falsehoods at similar rates. They are all easy to manipulate due to lack of broad knowledge of science, economics, finance and accounting, history. And I believe that the basic principles of science, economics, finance and accounting, history are simple enough for people with 90 IQs to understand but we do not teach them in schools. But if in schools you focused on drilling these basic principles into people it would be more difficult to grade people (separate the capable from the un-capable).
Perhaps we should judge education (rather that schooling) by the average income/ standard of living of the people in a nation (with an exception perhaps for the petroleum wealthy).
So IMO we should spend less on schooling not more. It is the current cure all that will surely fail.
Posted by: Floccina at Jul 1, 2008 9:46:42 AM
Sorry in teh above post that should have been in responc to 2 and 3
Posted by: Floccina at Jul 1, 2008 9:50:38 AM
Hmmm...if the big social changes that DeLong sees since 1980 have happened under mostly Republican administrations, then it seems there's little need to elect Democratic presidents to advance socially liberal causes....
As for money in education -- government spending has gone way up. BUT the cost of a public university education is much higher now than in 1980. Not so much because government funding hasn't kept pace with inflation but because university costs have so far outstripped it. As is the case with healthcare. Is Baumol's cost disease the big story since 1980?
Posted by: Slocum at Jul 1, 2008 10:10:18 AM
Just love economists who make assertions (like #3) without consulting the facts.
Since WWI, inflation adjusted spending on public K-12 education in the U.S. has grown in 2002 dollars from $1,214 per student to $4,479 by 1972 and $8,745 in 2002. According to a 2002 study by the OECD of the spending of its member nations on public education, the typical European country spends on average about 65 percent of what we spend per pupil on k-12 education. Ditto for Japan.
Posted by: SteveM at Jul 1, 2008 10:43:28 AM
Opps. that's supposed to be inflation adjusted spending since WWII...
Posted by: SteveM at Jul 1, 2008 10:44:40 AM
Opps. that's supposed to be inflation adjusted spending since WWII...
Posted by: SteveM at Jul 1, 2008 10:45:16 AM
