Sorry for the blog silence over the weekend, we’re back now.
Paul Krugman has a devastating column this morning on Reaganism. The failure of Reaganomics is so blatant and obvious that it’s somewhat shocking a New York Times columnist must even point it out. Still, this country continues to be inexplicably captivated by the “government = bad” mantra.
Despite flat lining wages for the middle class, despite economic growth concentrated for a select wealthy few and despite the biggest financial disaster in almost a hundred years Americans still bristle at the idea of federal programs and interventions (but don’t touch their Medicare!). Indeed, Reagan’s often distorted quote “government is not the solution, government is the problem” has become the rallying cry for the modern right.
Krugman blames in part Obama for the country’s continued love affair with Reaganism. That’s unfair. While Obama did praise Reagan at a few points during the primary, he hardly spoke well of his specific economic policies. Obama merely stated the obvious – Reagan’s tenure in Washington fundamentally changed many of our perceptions of government. That’s not to say it was a good thing, but it does acknowledge the reality that conservatism was the dominating political force in America from the 1970’s until 2006.
The only cure for Reaganism is broad economic growth that lifts all Americans. We need a return to the post World War II economic expansion that created the modern middle class. That will require a sustained federal investment on par with the New Deal. Until then, many Americans will continue to dwell in the fantasy that unless it involves bombing third world countries and trampling on Constitutional rights to fight terrorists, government intervention is always bad.
The post world war ii economic expansion was a result of the new deal? Maybe every other industrialized nation in the world being decimated had something to do with the post war boom here in the US and not the new deal.
I don’t see how vastly increasing the national debt or the tax burden on businesses and the electorate or both is going to put this country and the middle class in position for vast economic expansion. If anything, huge increases in federal spending will only speed us off the cliff faster.
The rest of the world is catching up and the advantages the US has aren’t as numorous. The real way to bring in an era of economic expansion in this country would be to live within our means, strengthen the weakening dollar, and make this an attractive country for business again.
I work as a data analyst so I know that if you torture a dataset long enough, you can get it confess to anything. This is what Krugman does with this column. He neglects to mention hugely important factors in America’s economic history when evaluating the comparative successes and failures of Reagan, Clinton, and Bush. He claims that the middle class did better under Clinton and Reagan without acknowledging the proliferation of the computer industry and the Internet. (Ever ask yourself who was president when most of those companies were started?) He also neglects to even entertain the possibility that policies enacted under Reagan might not have made their full impact until the Clinton administration was under way. He notes that Bush was the first president in generations under whom Americans’ income failed to rise significantly without mentioning the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.
How can you lend this guy so much credence? Krugman has descended into a partisan hack on the level of Maureen Dowd.
Finally, the massive government spending and intervention in free enterprise that the New Deal represented prolonged the Great Depression rather than reversing it. This isn’t an argument that can be made fully in the comments section of a blog, but the data on American economic performance under FDR’s administration is compelling and well worth reviewing.