Government

Sunday's NYT has a great op-ed from the incomparable Sarah Vowell on how college aid provided by the federal government helped her succeed:

....

I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my elbows in ham instead of 40.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

Twenty years after my first financial aid package came through, I have paid off my college and graduate school loans and I have paid back the federal government in income taxes what it doled out to me in Pell Grants so many, many, many, many times over it’s a wonder I’m not a Republican.

But I would like to point out that my perfectly ordinary education, received in public schools and a land grant university, is not merely the foundation on which I make a living. My education made my life. In a sometimes ugly world, my schooling opened a trap door to a bottomless pit of beauty — to Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong and Frank Lloyd Wright, to the old movies and old masters that have been my constant companions in my unalienable pursuit of happiness.

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Among the things the mainstream media needs: less Broders and Brooks, more Vowells.

The New America Foundation has an interesting paper out on public opinion and the potential for a new social contract. It's quite comprehensive, has somewhat encouraging news about my generation's politics (we're more likely to want government to solve problems, but less likely to think we have special obligations as citizens) and is definitely worth a glance.

But its thinking on inequality is sloppy. It asserts that even though the public says it doesn't like inequality, they don't really care.

A belief that it is okay to be rich or at least that economic inequality is part of the normal order in America. Three-quarters of survey respondents believe that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and we have felt this way for years. Still, polls show very little support for government as a redistributor of income. While 45 percent say that they have trouble making ends meet, 60 percent say they are satisfied with their financial situation. Ironically, opposition to the inheritance tax comes largely from those who should expect to inherit nothing.

But is the public's lack of support for redistribution a good measure? For one, public confidence in public officials and government competence is at about historic lows. This hasn't always been the case- during the 1960s, for instance, almost three-fourths of the public trusted policymakers to do the right thing. But the last 25-30 years of conservative dominance both reflected and reinforced a deep suspicion of government. History shows it can be turned around, and maybe then there'd be more support for redistributing income.

And most Americans probably understand inequality differently than is assumed here. Some research shows that income inequality is seen as the result of declining job quality and educational opportunities. In accordance with this view, the public is more likely to support programs that are seen as redistributing opportunity instead of income. The public overwhelmingly supports strong government involvement in education, for instance.

Perhaps what the author really believes is that individualism is and will be the dominant American paradigm for some time to come. In the end, the paper recommends a contract that is "about what government can do to help Americans as individuals." But if Americans do care about inequality, and are disturbed by growing disparities between the rich and everyone else, then they may harbor communal values that progressives could activate. A social contract that begins by urging the public to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" should have better luck, particularly if my generation starting thinking a little more coherantly about its politics.

In a fascinating new paper, political scientist Amy Gangl examines whether Americans really believe government is "most fair and just when it runs like a business." Turns out it depends on how you frame the question. Gangl concludes:

... beliefs that government would be more effective if it were run like a business are somewhat malleable. When people are presented with some of the reasons that democratic government works slowly and deliberatively, they are more likely to evaluate political processes positively compared to when they are exposed to information that suggests that democratic processes should work more efficiently like a business.

The poli sci blog The Monkey Cage has a good summary of the paper:

... Gangl set out to determine how deeply ingrained these beliefs really are, and more specifically the extent to which they would prove to be malleable when the issue was presented in a frame highlighting non-efficiency-related considerations. In a survey of 400 adults, Gangl posed the following question to half of the respondents:

Politics in the U.S. often involves debates about important public issues that are carried out in a slow and messy manner. Some people think these are positive characteristics of a democratic government like ours that seeks to represent everyone’s interests. To what extent do you agree?

In contrast to this “pluralistic” framing, Gangl provided a “business” frame for the other half of the sample:

Politics in the U.S. often involves debates about important public issues that are carried out in a slow and messy manner. Some people think that our government should be run more like a successful business, making decisions in a more timely and efficient manner. To what extent do you agree?

The result? The “pluralistic” framing of the question increased respondents’ assessments of the fairness and timeliness of the lawmaking process by 14 and 18 percentage points, respectively. These results, Gangl concludes, “suggest that if political elites spent less time criticizing government and more time setting debates within the context of the institutional structure and demands of the lawmaking process, citizens might not be so critical of the political process.”

In a new working paper, economists Christina Romer and David Romer conclude that conservative attempts to "starve the beast" by cutting taxes may actually end up feeding it (or not really starving it at least) in the long run:

The starve the beast hypothesis – that is, the idea that tax cuts restrain government spending – is a central argument for tax reduction. Despite its importance, however, the hypothesis has been subject to few tests, and the tests that have been done are far from definitive.

This paper tests the starve the beast hypothesis by examining the behavior of government spending following tax changes motivated by long-run considerations. Because these tax changes are not motivated by factors that are likely to have an important direct effect on government spending, they are the most appropriate for testing the theory. The results provide no evidence of a starve the beast effect: following long-run tax cuts, government spending does not fall. Indeed, if anything, spending rises, providing some support for the alternative view of fiscal illusion or shared fiscal irresponsibility. These findings are highly robust. Detailed examination of the four largest postwar episodes of long-run tax cuts reinforces the statistical findings.

....

The fact that tax cuts do not lead to reductions in spending raises the question of how the government budget constraint is ultimately satisfied. We find that long-run tax cuts are offset by legislated tax increases and non-legislated increases in revenues over the next several years. Thus, it appears that in the wake of tax cuts, budget balance is restored mainly on the tax side rather than the spending side.

Romer and Romer don't deny that tax cuts can have a positive impact on economic growth in the short term, but they also don't find much support for supply-sider arguments that tax cuts more than pay for themselves through greater economic growth:

... In Romer and Romer (2007b), we find that a tax cut of one percent of GDP increases real output by approximately three percent over the next three years. Since revenues are a function of income, this growth undoubtedly raises revenues.

There is, however, an important caveat to this finding that tax cuts partially pay for themselves through more rapid growth: some of the output response is almost surely a transitory departure of output from normal, not a permanent change in the economy's normal level of output. The idea that a tax cut has a large, rapid impact on the flexible-price level of output is not particularly plausible. And as we describe in Romer and Romer (2007b), the behavior of inflation and unemployment following tax cuts is consistent with the view that the output effects are largely temporary. To the extent that this is the case, some of the rebound in revenues is also temporary. As a result, in the absence of further legislated changes, there may be some long-run budgetary shortfall in the wake of the tax cut.

All of which doesn't imply that progressives shouldn't continue to oppose reckless tax cuts, even if spending or future tax hikes ultimately restore the status quo, tax cuts still keep us from really moving forward. But it makes me feel a little bit better that all the hard work of Grover Norquist may ultimately come to nothing.

PS: In an impressive accompanying paper, Romer and Romer provide a narrative analysis of postwar tax changes that includes descriptions of the timing, motivation, revenue effects, permanance, and nature of each of them.

I haven't read Daniel Brook's The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America yet, but it's thesis, as summarized by Brook—“when it comes to the distribution of wealth, you’re freer when it’s flatter”—sounds good to me. Brook's focus on "educated, idealistic young people" who feel like they're confronted with a choice between "sell-out and saint" has raised some hackles on the TPMCafe Book Club, but this defense of Brook by Chris Hayes strikes me as being right on:

I think part of what's underlying some of Dana's objections as well as Scott's pointed critique is the sense that the in some deep sense The Trap is heaping a whole lot of attention on the injustices suffered by a group that is really doing quite well: the young, over-educated members of the elite who have dreams of saving the world, or writing a novel and still want the basics of bourgeois comfort. Do we really want a government that caters to their needs?

The answer is no, and I think Daniel would agree. But that's not what he book argues. What The Trap does is make an argument to this relatively well-off cohort that the rise of inequality and the winner-take-all society isn't just a problem for other people -- the urban poor, midwestern factory workers, non-unionized service workers -- but a problem for them as well. If the book were a magazine article in one of those service-y glossies you see at checkout counter the headline would be "What Social Democracy Can Do For You!"

....

I remember reading a Desmond Tutu quote once (which a quick perusal of Google isn't turn up, so maybe I'm making this up) in which he talked about how apartheid was not only unjust and degrading for blacks, but corrosive in a deep sense to whites. Obviously, Daniel Brook is not Desmong Tutu and early 21st century America is not apartheid South Africa. But a similar point holds: the current distribution of income, wealth and power, as well as the enfeebled public sphere have a negative and corrosive effect not just on the poor and the working and middle classes, but even on the people who are the putative elite. Even the winners aren't winning.

As if having Max Baucus head a committee in the Senate wasn't bad enough, check out this new report from Newsweek:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

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But the decision by Lieberman, the new chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to back away from the committee's Katrina probe is already dismaying public-interest groups and others who hoped the Democratic victory in November would lead to more aggressive investigations of one of the White House’s most spectacular foul-ups.

Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.

From Majority Leader Hoyer's Office:

January 9 - 9/11 Commission (HR 1)
January 10 - Increase Minimum Wage (HR 2)
January 11 - Allow Stem Cell Research (HR 3)
January 12 – Medicare Negotiation (HR 4)
January 17 - Cut Interest Rates on Student Loans (HR 5)
January 18 - End Subsidies for Oil Companies (HR 6)

Just in time for the State of the Union on January 23.

When I first read the economic strategy paper of the Hamilton Project, this line, oddly enough, stuck out for me:

The Project will explore options to make the Postal Service more efficient while maintaining a firm commitment to universal service.

This initially struck me as one of the examples of how the bold vision-y rhetoric of the Hamilton Project (ie, the "American promise of advancement is in jeopardy", America must "promote broad-based economic growth") is somewhat, err, more expansive than their actual policy proposals (Hamilton will "explore options to make the Postal Service more efficient"). (N.B., for you e-generation types, the Postal Service isn't only a great band, it also provides universal mail service (of the non-digital variety)).

But the mention left me intrigued about what's going on with the Postal Service and whether it might actually have something to do with promoting broad-based economic growth and fulfilling the American promise of advancement.

Jonathan Cohn has an intriguing piece in the TNR on the Danish economic model.

Over the last decade, the Danes have turned the conventional wisdom on its head by boasting not only one of the world's most expansive welfare states, but also one of its most robust economies. Given the way average American workers' wages continue to stagnate even as their burden of risk—of losing a job, of losing medical insurance—continues to rise, it looks increasingly as though the conservative triumphalism has been misplaced: It may be that Europe has something to teach us after all. And Democrats, who have come back into power promising to address economic insecurity, should be sure to listen.

....

So what have the Danes figured out that conservative American pundits haven't? "High taxes don't hurt [by themselves]," says Harvard's Richard Freeman, a highly respected labor economist who has studied Europe extensively. "It depends on what you are getting for the money." Medical care is the most obvious example of this. Danes have lower infant-mortality rates than Americans and, statistically speaking, live just as long. You can't pin that completely on the medical system (a lot has to do with poverty, diet, and so on), but it certainly suggests Danish health care is no worse than the U.S. version. Yet we Americans pay far more for our system, because it's riddled with inefficiencies as insurance companies compete with one another to enroll healthy beneficiaries, rather than finance good care.

Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter and policy advisor, in Newsweek:

My low point with the Republican Party came in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In attempting to deliver benefits to victims, the administration found men and women who had never had a bank account; families entirely disconnected from the mainstream economy. A problem rooted in generations of governmentally enforced oppression—slavery and segregation—demanded an active response from government to encourage economic empowerment and social mobility.

Yet the response of many Republicans was to use the disaster as an excuse for cutting government spending, particularly the Medicare prescription-drug benefit for seniors. At a post-Katrina meeting with White House officials, one conservative think-tank sage urged: "The president needs to give up something he wants. Why not the AIDS program for Africa?"

That's the best part. But the the rest is worth reading also for its indictment of "antigovernment conservatism." Here's Gerson's conclusion:

This is an interesting, albeit somewhat painful, exchange between Ted Kennedy and Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Note how Wallace plays the "welfare-reform" card, and judge for yourself if Kennedy successfully parries.

WALLACE: Let's talk about domestic policy. According to the nonpartisan National Journal, you had the most liberal voting record in the Senate...

KENNEDY: Oh, wow.

WALLACE: ... in 2005. And you're still called — I don't know if that's a compliment or not — the liberal lion of the Senate.

During your 44 years in office, Bill Clinton has said that the era of big government is over. Some of your fellow Democrats have gone along with cuts in social programs.

Over these last 20 years or so, have you changed your view at all about the role of government?

KENNEDY: Well, my view is that programs change but our values don't change. And that was really what was at the issue, wasn't it, at the last campaign. I was a candidate in the last campaign. What people were saying in Massachusetts and across the country, that they wanted a change, they wanted a change in Iraq policy, and they wanted a change in Washington, D.C.

Today's NYT magazine has an intriguing piece by ethicist Peter Singer on the obligations of the rich (and most everyone living in well-off nations) to donate to reduce poverty in developing nations. Here's a snippet of it that has application to domestic policy here as much as it does to anything else:

.... A few years ago, an African-American cabdriver taking me to the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington asked me if I worked at the bank. I told him I did not but was speaking at a conference on development and aid. He then assumed that I was an economist, but when I said no, my training was in philosophy, he asked me if I thought the U.S. should give foreign aid. When I answered affirmatively, he replied that the government shouldn’t tax people in order to give their money to others. That, he thought, was robbery. When I asked if he believed that the rich should voluntarily donate some of what they earn to the poor, he said that if someone had worked for his money, he wasn’t going to tell him what to do with it.

For several years now, the Heritage Foundation has released an annual "index of dependency"—perhaps more accurately labeled the "index of spending and investment by the public on things that the Heritage Foundation doesn't like for reasons of conservative ideology." The Index has mostly been ignored—a Google search reveals almost no mention of the index in the mainstream media, an op-ed by Heritage head Ed Feulner is one of the few exceptions—but it's still worth a look, in part because the index may be extremely useful in proving the opposite of what Heritage intends.

The index purports to provide "provides a way to assess the magnitude and implications of the change in the form of dependency within American society." To determine which programs to include in the measure, Heritage adopts a three-prong test that appears to be driven solely by their particular brand of conservative ideology—a program is included in the measure if it is: 1) federal; 2) "could foster dependency" according to Heritage; and 3) benefits individuals. This definition leads to a number of bizarre distinctions:

—Elementary and secondary education is excluded not because, as one might suppose, it has been a powerful force over the last century in reducing dependency, but merely it isn't primarily federally funded. (As Heritage explains, "state programs that could foster dependency" are excluded from the measure, but provides no particular justification for excluding them).

—Post-secondary education is included because it is a federal program. Little explanation is given of how education assistance actually "fosters dependence."

—Federal subsidies to private businesses are excluded, but rural and agricultural programs that go directly to farmers are included.

But, as Margy would say, don't celebrate yet!—they're just not calling it "hunger" any more.

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

To be fair, the decision appears to be based in part on a recommendation made by the National Academy of Science. As the WaPo explains:

The NYT reports that the City of Greenleaf, Idaho (pop. 862) is considering an amendment to the city's code that would "recommend[] that every head of household ... maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore ...."

Why only a "recommendation" and not a requirement? According to Steven Jett, who proposed the amendment, "We all hate government ... That's why I had backed off the 'required' wording early on .... The government does not want to step into your home and say: 'Where is it? What do you have?'"

Okay.

But that's not even my favorite part of the story. Government-hating Jett is a City Council member and the director of the Southwest Juvenile Detention Center, both of which appear to have something to do with government.