The Price of Reform

I thought there were plenty of congenial ideas in David Brook's latest stab at formulating a reformist conservative agenda, but I wonder a bit about his math. Brooks writes that "Income taxes are not going to be coming down, but they need to stay where they are."

Things being what they are in the modern conservative movement, Brooks might as well admit that he worships a shrine of Karl Marx as offer this oblique criticism of the Supply Side Gospel. After all, if lower tax rates bring more revenue, why not cut cut cut forever? Meanwhile, what Brooks is offering is inadequate to the scale of his agenda. He wants:

• "A new working class tax credit applied against the payroll tax"
• "a larger child tax credit"
• "increases in the Earned Income Tax Credit"
• "nurse-home visits for children in chaotic homes"
• "Preschool should be radically expanded"
• "copy the models — like KIPP Academies — that actually work"

This is all fine, but it would cost a lot of money. Brooks sort of elides this with the observation that "per-pupil expenditures [. . .] are not sufficient to produce superb information-economy workers" which is true. But it's also true that KIPP teachers "typically earn 15 to 20 percent more in salary than traditional public school teachers." These reform proposals are good idea, but they're not an alternative to the traditional liberal notion that if you want better outcomes for kids you're going to have to spend more money on kids. But higher taxes are off the table. So where does that leave us? You'd need to pare entitlements pretty severely just to stop the costs from rising. Are we cutting the defense budget instead of continuing on the path of large annual increases? I don't want to dismiss the possibility out of hand; I'd certainly favor something like that. But does Brooks?

Comments

I think Brooks would probably respond that he can find the money for higher teacher salaries by reforming the education bureaucracy to make it less costly. I have no idea whether that would plausible, but I do know that there's a lot of conservative outrage over how little public money actually gets into classrooms.

Posted by southpaw | February 17, 2008 10:05 AM

Just cut spending! Sit down with everyone and say "Cut the bullshit!"

You libs just don't get it.

In the meantime, just keep borrowing trillions from China.

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | February 17, 2008 10:20 AM

I have nothing better to do this Sunday than read you, Matt. Otherwise it's either (a) write an essay on Byron, or (b) confront and grasp the giant pearl of loneliness inside the clamshell of my soul.

Posted by M | February 17, 2008 10:41 AM

Somebody's sounding pretty Byronic himself this morning.

Are we cutting the defense budget instead of continuing on the path of large annual increases? I don't want to dismiss the possibility out of hand; I'd certainly favor something like that. But does Brooks?

Brooks probably does agree with you, Matt. But he can't say so, or he'll lose the "conservative pundit" stamp on his press pass. We all have to live within limits.

Posted by Ted | February 17, 2008 10:47 AM

Yet more evidence that Brooks's sophistry does not go down well with my morning coffee. Let's see, the "real problem" is not that jobs are being shipped overseas but that Americans can't cut it in the tech industry. Right, if you say so, David.

Brooks then boldly tackles what the achievement gap, although he does not identify it as such, by co-opting Obama's early childhood intervention and education proposals for "fresh-start conservatism". I have been around the block with conservatives many times on this issue, and the bottom line is, they don't want to pay for solutions and they never offer alternatives.

Reading Brooks just makes me feel cheap and dirty.

Posted by Lucy | February 17, 2008 11:10 AM

Has Brooks abandoned the National Grrreatness "All War All The Time" school of international relations? If not, don't look for saving money out of the Defense Department.

Posted by MattF | February 17, 2008 11:37 AM

Matt, why do you even bother to engage these guys? As everyone knows, there really is no such thing as a conservative intellectual.

Posted by Random Dude | February 17, 2008 11:39 AM

Thanks! I just applied for a position at the local KIPP school -- didn't even know it existed, or, for that matter, know what it would have been had I known. I suppose I should thank Brooks, but I don't read Brooks: I sort of lost interest in him when I realized that much of his "data" is anecdotal when it isn't outright made up.

(Just as an aside, my wife and I were discussing Byron last night. We got to it through the ghost-story-contest-with-Mary-Shelley-chestnut. I believe the last time I talked about Byron was back when I was forced to endure a class on the guy in 1983, so it's weird for me to read that this morning.)

Posted by Kelly | February 17, 2008 11:53 AM

Matthew Yglesias and David Brooks have something in common: both completely ignore the most obvious explanation for the differences in American educational outcomes and workforce quality between a century ago and today. A century ago, most American immigrants were from Europe. Today, most (legal and illegal) are from the third world, predominantly Indian campesinos from rural Mexico and points south. The socioeconomic progress of the past several generations of these immigrants suggests that they don't have the same human capital as the Ellis Island-era immigrants from Europe.

Unless public schools had some magical instruction methods a hundred years ago, the most likely explanation for their superior performance then was that they were starting with better students. Indeed, the same correlation can be seen today. Public schools with mostly white and Northeast Asian student populations consistently outperform those with predominantly black and campesino students.

Posted by Juan | February 17, 2008 11:53 AM

Who is this David Brooks, and why should we care what he has to say?

Posted by Peter | February 17, 2008 11:54 AM

OK, I was in a rush above, so please strike the extra "what", and I should have tempered my assertion that conservatives "never" offer alternatives. Still, the conservative response to the achievement gap usually amounts to Brooks's hand-wringing that "If all American families looked like the intact middle-class ones, we wouldn’t have nationally low education outcomes." (Plus, what an bad sentence from a writer privileged with prime real estate in the newspaper of record.)

In Brooks World the hemorrhage of blue-collar jobs that "populists of the left and the right...imagine" is related to the chaos and educational deficits of lower-class families is simply immaterial.

He then drops nuggets like "As Edward Prescott has shown, higher taxes mean less work, and less work means less worker development." What, then, does Brooks make of the 1990s?

Posted by Lucy | February 17, 2008 11:57 AM

"nurse-home visits for children in chaotic homes"

Brooks's plan is short on specifics. Did he mean children in all homes of chaotic alignment, or just human ones? I can't believe that extending any welfare benefits to, say, bugbears and succubi is a plan likely to find favor with the present-day GOP.

Posted by James Gary | February 17, 2008 12:06 PM

Who is this Peter @ 11:54 AM, and why should I care if he doesn't know who I am?

Posted by David Brooks | February 17, 2008 12:07 PM

Yes, I think "southpaw" is right. The figures I've seen regarding the fraction of public-school spending on administration/bureaucracy and such are totally astonishing.

...You'd think it was America's health care system or something...

Posted by RKU | February 17, 2008 12:10 PM

"He then drops nuggets like "As Edward Prescott has shown, higher taxes mean less work, and less work means less worker development. What, then, does Brooks make of the 1990s?"

The most important tax rate to the entrepreneurs who drove the '90's boom was the capital gains tax: they stood to gain far more from their equity stakes in their companies than they did from their (often relatively modest) salaries. In the '90's, the top income tax rate went up, but the capital gains tax went down, from 28% to 20% (it's now 15% and Obama wants to raise it back to 28%).

Posted by Juan | February 17, 2008 12:17 PM

What's the per-pupil cost of KIPP schools? Maybe Matt's girlfriend can let us know. If it's less than typical public schools, that would suggest that KIPP schools are able to pay their teachers more because they spend less on administration.

Posted by Fred | February 17, 2008 12:21 PM

Tax credits against payroll taxes, and larger Child and EI tax credits, shouldn't be seen as "expensive". They are tax cuts of the most needed kind. There are decent offsets available.

On the education reforms, we should start by eliminating the Department of Education and devoting its entire appropriation to ideas like Brooks'.

If we're prepared to undertake a real reordering of priorities in broad areas like education and health care, significantly lower expenditures are a reasonable expectation.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 17, 2008 12:21 PM

Robert Powell,

The payroll tax is the only federal tax 40% of Americans pay, and for the bottom 20%, it's already completely offset by the EITC. How much more progressive do you think our federal tax system should be?

Posted by Fred | February 17, 2008 12:28 PM

Fred,

The payroll tax stops at ca. $97,000. Wages earned above that are not subject to payroll tax. How much more regressive do you think our federal tax system should be?

Posted by Joel | February 17, 2008 12:43 PM

Joel,

Actually, the Medicare portion of the payroll tax is uncapped (even so, this tax covers less than half of Medicare costs). The Social Security portion is capped because the benefits are capped: a retiree who made $100k per year gets the same Social Security payments as one who made $300k per year. Social Security benefits are also highly progressive. According to the CBO,

"For people in the bottom fifth of
the earnings distribution, the ratio of benefits to taxes is almost three times as high as it is for those in the top fifth."

Posted by Fred | February 17, 2008 12:59 PM

Note that the school year is longer at many NY charter schools than at regular public schools. The higher teacher salary there is not necessarily a higher RATE of pay. Not sure about Kipp in other areas.

Posted by bemused | February 17, 2008 1:04 PM

The figures I've seen regarding the fraction of public-school spending on administration/bureaucracy and such are totally astonishing.

Yes, I hear this mantra all the time even in our low administrative-cost school district.

On the other hand, the underfunded federal mandate No Child Left Behind is indeed responsible for driving up costs, in addition to demoralizing teachers and failing in its objectives. Yes I have come to agree with those who believe NCLB is a shell game designed to discredit public education, consistent with the Bush administration's broader assault on the federal government.

Posted by Lucy | February 17, 2008 1:10 PM

"Yes I have come to agree with those who believe NCLB is a shell game designed to discredit public education..."

This is an example of Bush Derangement Syndrome. The NCLB was co-authored by Ted Kennedy, for heaven's sake. He is the one who gutted Bush's original choice proposal (to allow students in failing schools the option of going to another public school or a voucher to go elsewhere; Kennedy made sure that the choice provision was limited to public schools).

Posted by Fred | February 17, 2008 1:21 PM

Thank you, I'm aware of Ted Kennedy's role in crafting NCLB. Indeed the rhetoric and objectives surrounding NCLB are attractive to liberals, so no big surprise that this albatross is a bipartisan production.

You might consider the damage inflicted by Bush lackeys on federal agencies such as Justice, FEMA, EPA, and NASA before sniffing at my alleged BDS.

Posted by Lucy | February 17, 2008 1:32 PM

It would be unfair to ignore Juan's response above. I pass the buck to Daniel Gross.

A capital gains tax of higher than 15 percent, in Prescott's view, would be horrible for the economy....Prescott overlooks a basic fact about taxation on investment: a huge chunk of capital gains are already taxed at a rate much higher than 15 percent, and significantly higher than 20 percent....If investors were wealth-seeking machines that were highly influenced by differential taxation rates -- as Prescott argues -- then you would think that the opening of this differential would have a huge impact on investing and trading behavior....Of course, precisely the opposite has happened in the two years since the tax regime on capital gains changed. Trading volume on the exchanges has increased.

Posted by Lucy | February 17, 2008 2:16 PM

Brooks morphed into Andrew Sullivan in that column. The formula goes like this: Lay out policies you happen to like, which have varying levels of connection to conservatism. Then declare that this is what conservatives *must do*, to save their soul, to have any hope of winning elections, etc..

George Will's grumpiness is a better fit with concervatism than Brook's relatively sunny centrism. Will realizes that Americans (along with just about any other democratic population) is liberal on government spending and taxing the rich. So Will favors institutions which moderately frustrate this impulse, while putting up with the angrier, vulgar side of conservatism because it keeps popular liberalism in check.

Brooks on the other hand apparently thinks that conservatism needs to move to the center to win elections. The problem is that if they do that, all their ideological and partisan energy disappears into thin air. No payroll tax-cutting plan will ever get a significant group of conservatives behind it unless it also cuts taxes on the rich, gives a subsidy to a corporation, or something similar. "Popular capitalism" still has to be capitalist, at least in the way the right understands it. That understanding basically means deregulation along with the glorification of the entrepreneur, the CEO, and the property holder. Concepts like "Human capital", "worker security", and even "innovation"--if it's somehow spurred by the government--are not really parts of it.

Nurse-home visits? Do conservatives still get to call us "nanny-state liberals" after they implement this bit of reform? Or are they going to admit that neo-conservative welfare reform is about regulating the poor as much as it is depriving them of their former entitlements?

Besides the fact this resembles American conservatism only vaguely, it also contains campaign-killing ideas like "spending less of the federal budget on seniors and more on young families". He just throws it out there as if it's nothing. At that point it's no longer "if I were a campaign advisor", but "if I were king and didn't have to worry about millions of angry seniors voting against social security benefit cuts."

Posted by Colatina | February 17, 2008 2:20 PM

There are three main ways I can see paying for his programs(Keep in mind, our deficit is enormous, we need to do a lot to be budget neutral).

1) Carbon taxation, either by Cap and Trade though auctioning, or by a Carbon tax. I've seen estimates that this would raise around 400 billion dollars a year. And unlike income taxes, Carbon taxation generates no dead weight loss. This would most likely be enough to close the deficit, and maybe provide for some of this programs

2)Deep spending cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. Considering fixed resources, can anyone give me a serious reason why money should go to prolonging the life of a senior citizen by 3 months instead of funding a voucher for inner city children? I vaguely remember that Brooke's said as much in his article.

3) Defense cuts. We could lower defense spending to 2001 levels without any real cost to our security, but doing this will most likely fail to even close the deficit, let alone allow new spending.

But don't be so harsh. How do any major democrats plan to pay for their programs? Repealing the Bush tax cuts and lowering defense and homeland security spending(which most of them do not want to do), will not even be enough to raise us out of deficit spending.

Even if we repeal the Bush tax cuts on the rich(as Obama and Clinton propose), eliminate all Homeland Security spending, and lower the military budget to Clintonian levels(inflation adjusted 2001 levels), we will only cut 325.9 billion dollars from the budget, leaving an 80 billion dollar deficit.

How would you raise the remaining 80 billion, let alone paying for further programs?

Posted by David Shor | February 17, 2008 2:40 PM

This new trend of conservative "intellectuals" tripping over one another in order to pretend that they care about "the little people" is a complete joke. Frum, Brooks, Douthat - who's next, Newt Gingrich? The GOP loses one election big-time and looks likely to get slaughtered again in November and all of a sudden it goes populist, is that the idea?

Who exactly is going to buy this crap? These folks don't give a damn about anyone outside of their class and income group. Their proposals aren't meant to be taken seriously by GOP pols - it's just a list of possible con jobs that might sway enough of the electorate to save the party. For the past 40 years the GOP has been all about the lubeless reaming of most of America. That hasn't changed.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | February 17, 2008 2:53 PM

"It would be unfair to ignore Juan's response above. I pass the buck to Daniel Gross."

Daniel Gross is referring to short-term capital gains (for investments held less than a year) that are taxed at income tax rates. Since this relates to traders and speculators, and not entrepreneurs (who in nearly all cases, hold shares in their companies for over a year before selling them) it is irrelevant to my point above and does not refute it.

Posted by Juan | February 17, 2008 3:15 PM

Brooks comment about KIPP is extremely naive. As a Teach for America alum who was placed in Houston (where KIPP began) I can say that KIPP works because it is an alternative. Knowing a number of KIPP teachers, I know they are paid much more than regular, but more importantly, are nearly all young and unmarried. These teachers are willing too basically devote their lives to KIPP (even social lives are pretty much KIPP-centric). While this is admirable, it is not a realistic model for the general teaching population. Moreover, although KIPP students are chosen by random lottery, it is generally those students with involved, active parents who end up in the schools. These are the students who could still thrive in low-income public schools -- I've taught them. It is the rest of students, the unmotivated mass with no parental involvement and no future prospects that KIPP is able to avoid. And if by some chance these students slip into KIPP, they can be removed, a luxury public schools do not have. This issues make it essentially impossible to make the KIPP model a standard for public education.

Posted by Jake | February 17, 2008 4:14 PM

Jake,

Even if KIPP were expanded so it was available to 10% of public school students nationwide, it would be worth it. Better a talented tenth get educated than none.

Posted by Fred | February 17, 2008 4:25 PM

I thought the larger significance of Mr. Brooks' column was that it seems that he's given up on the basic framework of conservativism, and has accepted the basic concepts of liberalism/progressivism.

Consider the statements he makes:
1. In order for America to make economic progress, it will require massive state intervention into the labor market (in terms of skill), and an expansion of public resources for education.
2. In order to create a healthier society, government will have to increase socioeconomic equality through government transfers.
3. In the realm of education, health care, human development, and families, the answer to our problems is "positive government."

This is not conservatism. At most, you could call this culturally conservative and technically behaviorist progressivism, in that Brooks is still calling for traditional families, national service, charterizing public schools, but that when it comes down to it, he's forsaken the invisible hand of the market.

Posted by StevenAttewell | February 17, 2008 4:42 PM

StevenAttewell,

This is the consequence of changing demographics. When America was mostly comprised of Northern European protestants, with strong family and mutual support traditions, limited government was fine. Limited government still worked with the influx of Southern and Eastern European Catholics and Jews through Ellis Island. Heck, it was even starting to work for blacks until Democratic welfare policies of the 1960's destroyed the black family. But now the Mexicans, mulattoes, mestizos, and blacks in our underclass don't have strong families or traditions of mutual assistance, so they require activist government.

Posted by Juan | February 17, 2008 4:55 PM

This is the consequence of changing demographics. When America was mostly comprised of Northern European protestants, with strong family and mutual support traditions, limited government was fine.

Right, this explains why Northern European governments do not need to provide the elaborate social safety net that we have in this country.

Posted by fp | February 17, 2008 6:14 PM

This is the consequence of changing demographics. When America was mostly comprised of Northern European protestants, with strong family and mutual support traditions, limited government was fine.

Yes, this is a pretty obvious pattern.

After all, everyone knows that the Northern European countries---with the Nordic Protestant countries being an extreme case---have virtually no Welfare States at all, and follow a system of almost pure Randian Individualism.

Similarly, those parts of America most heavily settled by Germanics and Nordics---such as Minnesota and Wisconsin---have always been most hostile to Big Government and most strongly opposed to "socialism" in any fashion...

Posted by RKU | February 17, 2008 6:26 PM

"Right, this explains why Northern European governments do not need to provide the elaborate social safety net that we have in this country."

Considering that they got along well for hundreds of years without them, they didn't need to provide these in the last century. But thanks to their strong family structures and other cultural traditions, these generous welfare policies didn't wreck Scandinavian families, like they did black families here. As Steve Sailer wrote:

Moreover, America's relatively brief experiment with a generous welfare state was doomed by our African-American population. America tried to import the two fundamentals of the Swedish welfare state—high welfare payments and an end to social disapproval of illegitimacy—beginning about 1961. In parts of the U.S., such as heavily Scandinavian Minnesota, this worked reasonably well. But American voters were confronted with stunning speed with the realization that African-Americans responded differently than Swedes did to the new incentive structures. Welfare allowed much of African-American society to revert to African-style family structures. In Africa, men often expect to be provided for by their women. One group of African feminists recently estimated that women do four times as much work in Sub-Saharan Africa as men do. (See James Q. Wilson's recent book The Marriage Problem for the normally covered-up details on the relationship between African family structure and African-American problems.)

With paternal providers rendered obsolete, the black crime rate skyrocketed and urban whites fled to the suburbs, selling their homes cheaply at great damage to their life savings. As early as the 1966 Congressional elections, the voters were in revolt. Over time, voters had their officials throw a vast number of dangerous young men in prison and, in 1996, cut back on welfare for single mothers. Social conditions seem to have stabilized and even improved due to these illiberal measures as the crime rate has dropped sharply and the black illegitimacy rate inches downward.

Posted by Juan | February 17, 2008 6:27 PM

Juan,

As a historian, I have to tell you you're dead wrong. The age of limited government in America was marked by an economic order in which 3/4 of industrial workers were earning below-poverty wages.
In the 1960's, by contrast, poverty fell from 22% of the population to 12% of the population.

Moreover, rhetoric of "strong family and mutual support traditions" as a bar against the need for government support is historically inaccurate. Protestants of the late 19th century viewed Catholic immigrants as having weak family traditions based on their large numbers of children and inability to maintain family planning. The movement for worker's compensation, minimum wage and maximum hours laws, and social insurance began in this time precisely because it became clear that it was industrialism itself that was the problem, not the family.

The African-American family has been described in exactly the same terms of moral decline since the 1920s, but the actual living standards of African-Americans have improved dramatically in that period.

Ahistorical focuses on family values take their eye of the real issue - economic security. I highly suggest you read the book Poverty Knowledge by Alice O'Connor.

Posted by StevenAttewell | February 17, 2008 6:28 PM

You don't cut taxes forever, but you cut them until you're in the Laffer Curve sweet spot. That's been the typical Con argument for quite a while.

Posted by John | February 17, 2008 8:17 PM

@John: Right, but historical evidence about the failure of supply side voodoo-ism seems to indicate that we've always been on the left half of the Laffer Curve, and conservatives keep spouting this nonsense anyway for starve-the-beast reasons.

@James Gary: The specter of the welfare harpy queen as the target of GOP demagoguery is too horrifying to contemplate.

Posted by phensley | February 17, 2008 9:27 PM

Exact numbers have never been Bobo's specialty. Here's some examples.

From Philadelphia magazine:

As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home. "On my journeys to Franklin County, I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu -- steak au jus, 'slippery beef pot pie,' or whatever -- I always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's," he wrote. "I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I went through great vats of chipped beef and 'seafood delight' trying to drop $20. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough creamed corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it."

Taking Brooks's cue, I lunched at the Chambersburg Red Lobster and quickly realized that he could not have waded through much surf-and-turf at all. The "Steak and Lobster" combination with grilled center-cut New York strip is the most expensive thing on the menu. It costs $28.75. "Most of our checks are over $20," said Becka, my waitress. "There are a lot of ways to spend over $20."

Here's Bobo on presidential approval ratings:

SHIELDS: And George Bush was to be this pillar of integrity. He is now seen as morally and ethically inferior to Bill Clinton.

BROOKS: Yeah, but it's not irreversible. I mean, Clinton was much lower than Bush is now. Reagan was lower in Iran Contra.

SHIELDS: Not in the job ratings.

BROOKS: Well, they were in the 20s.

In fact, neither Clinton nor Reagan ever went below 35 percent approval in any national poll.

Posted by Exile on Ericsson St. | February 17, 2008 10:34 PM

According to the KIPP website, "Students and teachers are in school from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. on weekdays, for four hours on Saturdays, and for three to four weeks during the summer."

In other words, KIPP teachers are paid 10 to 15% more for perhaps 50% more work.

KIPP relies on what is effectively volunteer work from a small pool of young idealistic teachers who have no families of their own. It is not a scalable program unless teacher salaries can be raised considerably above the current rates.

Posted by Bloix | February 17, 2008 11:03 PM

As a historian, I have to tell you you're dead wrong. The age of limited government in America was marked by an economic order in which 3/4 of industrial workers were earning below-poverty wages.
In the 1960's, by contrast, poverty fell from 22% of the population to 12% of the population.

On the other hand, poverty was largely reduced because of the expanding economy and technology, not due to the welfare state.

The African-American family has been described in exactly the same terms of moral decline since the 1920s, but the actual living standards of African-Americans have improved dramatically in that period.

None of which changes the facts that black illegitimacy went from 20% or so to 67% over 30 years.

but the actual living standards of African-Americans have improved dramatically in that period.

Ahistorical focuses on family values take their eye of the real issue - economic security. I highly suggest you read the book Poverty Knowledge by Alice O'Connor.

Translation - who cares if 2/3 of blacks born today are bastards?

Well, I suppose you haven't noticed the huge crime wave of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Or the huge increase in the prison population that finally stopped it.

I am afraid suggests that the trends that reduced black poverty in the 1960s were not attributable to the Great Society, and that in the 70s, black poverty fell very little.

Moreover, census figures show that there has been a recent decline in black poverty dating to 1993-1995 after about 25 years of it hovering between 30 and 36%. This coincides with the GOP revolution in Congress. Although the actual famous welfare reform bill did not occur until 1996, one could see the growing trend toward welfare reform as occurring before and during the start of the drop (granted this is not proof that welfare reofrm reduced poverty, but it suggests that it did nto increase it).

In any case, the record is far from clear that generous welfare played any significant role in bringing blacks up from poverty and it is not unreasonable to suggest that it may have had the opposite effect.

Posted by Glaivester | February 18, 2008 12:19 AM

Anyone who thinks the War on Poverty was anything but a catastrophe for Black Americans should be forced to write "unintended consequences" a thousand times. If the KKK and the Nazi Party had designed a program for the destruction of the Black family, they couldn't have done a better job.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 18, 2008 3:19 AM

As a historian, I have to tell you you're dead wrong. The age of limited government in America was marked by an economic order in which 3/4 of industrial workers were earning below-poverty wages.
In the 1960's, by contrast, poverty fell from 22% of the population to 12% of the population.

On the other hand, poverty was largely reduced because of the expanding economy and technology, not due to the welfare state.
----------------------------------

Actually, that isn't the case. For example, from 1959-1963, the economy grew but poverty stayed at the level of 20-19%. From 1964-1968, we had economic growth plus poverty reduction, with the main difference being a change in social welfare policy.

The African-American family has been described in exactly the same terms of moral decline since the 1920s, but the actual living standards of African-Americans have improved dramatically in that period.

None of which changes the facts that black illegitimacy went from 20% or so to 67% over 30 years.

but the actual living standards of African-Americans have improved dramatically in that period.

Ahistorical focuses on family values take their eye of the real issue - economic security. I highly suggest you read the book Poverty Knowledge by Alice O'Connor.

Translation - who cares if 2/3 of blacks born today are bastards?
-------------------------

Precisely. The larger issue is: who gives a damn about your sexual/cultural hangups if people's material lives are getting better? Illegitimacy is not a curse, and can't possibly have the drastic effects that conservatives have been suggesting if illegitimacy can grow at a time when poverty was falling dramatically.

Well, I suppose you haven't noticed the huge crime wave of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Or the huge increase in the prison population that finally stopped it.

I am afraid suggests that the trends that reduced black poverty in the 1960s were not attributable to the Great Society, and that in the 70s, black poverty fell very little.

Moreover, census figures show that there has been a recent decline in black poverty dating to 1993-1995 after about 25 years of it hovering between 30 and 36%. This coincides with the GOP revolution in Congress. Although the actual famous welfare reform bill did not occur until 1996, one could see the growing trend toward welfare reform as occurring before and during the start of the drop (granted this is not proof that welfare reofrm reduced poverty, but it suggests that it did nto increase it).

In any case, the record is far from clear that generous welfare played any significant role in bringing blacks up from poverty and it is not unreasonable to suggest that it may have had the opposite effect.

------------------------------------------

A few problems here:

1. You don't think the fact that crime rates fell when the economy finally reached close to full employment in the 1990s might explain why crime rates dropped in the 90s and have increased since?

2. The data you quote misses a larger story. Yes, black poverty drops considerably from 1940 to 1960 if your starting point is 1940, when the economy was still in the process of recovering from a Great Depression. However, as Ira Katznelson points out in When Affirmative Action Was White, p. 12-15, both black poverty and relative inequality got worse between 1945-1960, in times of relative economic prosperity. Poverty and inequality declined in the 1960s, as even that data indicates, when there was economic prosperity plus a Great Society.

The 1970s, by contrast, saw a decline in Great Society programs under Nixon, Ford, and even to some extent Carter. That combined with the stagflation of the 1970s explains why little progress was made in this era.

Moreover, your argument is inconsistent when it comes to the 1990s. Why is it fair to suggest that poverty reductions are "not attributable" to the Great Society in the 1960s, while at the same time considering it "not unreasonable" that welfare reform contributed to poverty reductions in the 1990s?

Posted by StevenAttewell | February 18, 2008 8:36 PM

Moreover, your argument is inconsistent when it comes to the 1990s. Why is it fair to suggest that poverty reductions are "not attributable" to the Great Society in the 1960s, while at the same time considering it "not unreasonable" that welfare reform contributed to poverty reductions in the 1990s?

Well, based on my previous understanding of the data, the trends were already toward black poverty declining before the Great Society came along. I'll try to dig up more data prior to 1960 to be able to answer better.

The decrease in black poverty in the 1990s, however, happened after approximately 20 years of stable >30% poverty. It did not represent the continuation of a trend.

You don't think the fact that crime rates fell when the economy finally reached close to full employment in the 1990s might explain why crime rates dropped in the 90s and have increased since?

You don't think that the fact that we had so many young men in prison, not counted as unemployed, might have helped those full employment numbers, particularly for the black community? Oh, yeah, and the fact that so many of those unemployed young men killed each other by the time the 1990s rolled around?

Actually, that isn't the case. For example, from 1959-1963, the economy grew but poverty stayed at the level of 20-19%. From 1964-1968, we had economic growth plus poverty reduction, with the main difference being a change in social welfare policy.

I was thinking in terms of a longer time frame; we were talking about the era of limited government after the industrial age, which I would peg as being perhaps 1866-1917 (e.g. the period between the Civil War and US entry into WWI), vs. 1933 and after. I don't think that the era of 1946-1963 (WWII to the beginning of LBJ) could be thought of as "the era of limited government" in any real way.

Posted by Glaivester | February 18, 2008 11:20 PM

Trying to establish direct links between government programs and large, multi-faceted things like "poverty" and "crime" is a fraught business at best. In my view the high crime of the 60's and 70's much more directly relates to the fact that Boomers were in the high-crime years then, and there was a great deal of social unrest related to population mobility, the war in Vietnam, and the various social movements. Its decline mirrors the decline of these variables.

It would be silly to suggest that no one benefitted in any way from any of the Great Society programs. But it seems even more silly to suggest that programs which encourage youthful illegitimacy and the devaluation of working-class men as fathers, aren't terrifically destructive.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 19, 2008 5:11 AM