When Kevin Drum writes this:
The reality is that, in a way that’s invisible to most Americans, the economy has gotten fantastically out of kilter over the past quarter century. Bill Clinton did a little bit to get it heading back in the right direction, but he didn’t do enough and he didn’t have much time to do it. Eight years out of the past 26 was too little to make a serious dent.
it makes me think “What’s happened over the last 25 years?” First off, Democrats have had control of the House of Representatives for about half of that period; Republicans for the other half, so it’s obviously a bipartisan problem. What are the big events of the last 25 years?
China has entered the world economy and is exporting manufactured goods enormously. We’ve got a much higher number of immigrants and higher immigration rate than we did 25 years ago. The PATCO strike. Marginal tax rates are lower. GDP is much higher. Inflation is much lower. Interest rates are much lower. The percentage of GDP spent on the military is about the same as it was 25 years ago. The percentage of GDP spent on Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlement-type programs is significantly higher.  Healthcare accounts for a significantly higher proportion of total GDP; manufacturing much less.
There’s the Internet and the possibility of offshore outsourcing various different service-type jobs i.e. help desk, accounts payable, other backoffice functions.
What in the world does he mean? I mean in terms of specific policies. Should we:
- put import tariffs into place?
- limit immigration?
- increase the strength of public employees’ unions (the median income of public employees is significantly higher already than the median income of American workers, generally)?
- raise marginal tax rates?
- reduce Social Security, Medicare, etc. spending?
- restrict the Internet?
- ban offshore outsourcing?
Are there other developments of the last 25 years that I’ve misssed that are relevant? What does he mean?
You are starting with the assumption that Drum’s assertion about the economy is correct. A couple of years ago, I noted that Kevin Drum is an obviously intelligent guy, and also very opinionated and prone to go with pre-formed opinions without examining them. He has a tell: you can generally trust him, at least to the point of being able to argue against his positions and get a serious debate (though not from his commenters) if he’s quoting statistics; if he’s just making assertions, he’s spouting pre-formed opinion that is not going to change in the presence of evidence. In the case where he’s making assertions, it’s religious, not rational, statements that he is making.
I still stand by that.
“What does he mean?”
Kevin means things are bad because his party is not in power. 70 % of what he complains about would be quite tolerable if Gore or Kerry were in office.
And Kevin is, as Jeff pointed out, intelligent and reasonable. Many of his commenters are simply fools and bile-parroting trolls. A shame because Drum once had one of the more interesting comment sections in the blogosphere back in the Calpundit days.
No, Jeff. I’m just assuming he thinks he has a basis for what he’s saying.
Mark, I don’t even bother going into his comments section.
This post is just an exercise in logic: if there is, in fact, a reasonable basis for Kevin’s point one should be able to relate the events of the last 25 years and the policies that have gone along with them to the problem he’s pointing out. If, on the other hand as Jeff points out, Kevin’s point is an article of faith, it need have no reasonable basis.
As it stands the post is a “how ’bout dem Cubs?” post. Hence my question: what does he mean?
I have no idea what he’s talking about. Clinton was a bigger free trader than Bush, he oversaw a massive stock market bubble, in some sense he was more laissez faire than even Reagan, because Reagan was getting into the economy and reforming it.
The only thing he can be talking about, if he’s talking about policy, is Clinton’s tax hike which he might be saying led to the surplus. But that would be totally ignoring the Republicans hand in that, especially the battle that brought about the government shutdown and the welfare reform. And if he thinks the tax cut and budget cuts were a good idea, then Bush I has to be equal if not surpassing of Clinton, because he raised taxes specifically to cut the deficit, while Clinton did not cut the deficit until the Republicans showed up and fought him over every nickel.