american amnesia: how the war on government led us to forget what made america prosper
'American Amnesia,' past Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
AMERICAN AMNESIA
How the War on Government Led U.s.a. to Forget What Made America Prosper
Past Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
455 pp. Simon & Schuster. $28.
If Bernie Sanders were a book past 2 leading politics professors, it would be "American Amnesia." This is the story of how authorities helped brand America bang-up, how the enthusiasm for bashing authorities is behind its current malaise and how a return to constructive government is the answer the nation is looking for.
How America came to forget nearly the merits of good government, and the price at present being paid, is the meat of "American Amnesia," the third book by Jacob S. Hacker (Yale) and Paul Pierson (Berkeley), whom Bill Moyers calls the "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson of political scientific discipline." According to these academic detectives, America'southward amnesia is no blow. The country has been brainwashed past a powerful alliance of forces hostile to authorities: big business, peculiarly Wall Street, spending unparalleled lobbying dollars to advance its narrow self-interest; a new wealthy elite propagating wrongheaded Ayn Randian notions that free markets are e'er proficient and regime always bad; and a Republican Party using a strategy of attacking and weakening government every bit a mode to win more power for itself.
You don't demand to Feel the Bern to take this volume seriously. The unexpected popularity of both the senator from Vermont and Donald Trump in this twelvemonth's primaries arguably reflects their tapping into widespread anger toward the American institution. "American Amnesia" provides chapter and poetry on why the public has good reason to exist angry.
For the state'due south first 200 years, Americans combined salubrious skepticism near government with an acceptance of its necessity. Today conservatives, in item, accept "forgotten" that balanced view. Woodrow Wilson, No. one on Glenn Beck's listing of "Elevation ten Bastards of All Time" (above Hitler, Pontius Pilate, Political leader Pot), actually ushered in valuable improvements in regime. His innovations — the Federal Reserve and income tax, trustbusting the robber barons — paid off amply. By the 1950s, America was leading the world across a "Great Divide" separating centuries of "slow growth, poor wellness and bloodless technological progress" from "hitherto undreamed-of material comfort and seemingly limitless economical potential."
America has always had freewheeling entrepreneurial capitalists. Hacker and Pierson argue persuasively that the 20th-century change that enabled them to create boggling wealth for all was "effective governance" — reflected in such crucial foundations of a "mixed economic system" as improve physical infrastructure, wellness care and instruction for the masses, and generous funding for "blue skies research" that made possible everything from antibiotics to the Internet.
Equally recently as the 1950s, government was broadly appreciated by Americans. In his first State of the Union accost, the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower mentioned "government" almost forty times, almost ever positively. Such sentiments were even shared by business. The bosses of swell companies, like Kodak and General Motors, worked closely with government through the Committee for Economic Evolution to solve the country's most pressing problems. Yet by the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was memorably maxim the "about terrifying words" in the English language were "I'yard from the government, and I'g here to aid." As the public mood changed, the Democrats presently joined in, though without wholly embracing the Republican philosophy. In his get-go State of the Marriage, Beak Clinton mentioned government only around half as often equally Eisenhower, generally negatively.
Clinton felt he had to declare that "the era of large government is over" — even though it had already shrunk considerably: By 1989 there was only i federal authorities worker for every 110 Americans, compared with one for 78 in Eisenhower's day (and around 1 for 150 today). Now America is paying the price for beating up its government, Hacker and Pierson argue. It is sliding down international rankings of social progress that it used to top, in areas like public health and didactics. America ranks just 25th in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for the share of 3-twelvemonth-olds in early on childhood education, for example.
So why did America turn confronting government? With their previous book, "Winner-Have-All Politics," Hacker and Pierson won rave reviews for explaining why inequality has risen faster in America than in whatsoever other rich land and how a strategy started by bourgeois foundations and rich libertarians to limit and weaken authorities paid off spectacularly. This new book rehashes plenty of that analysis to give readers not amnesia simply déjà vu. It besides contains grim new bear witness, specially about the growing lobbying and legal influence of the Business Roundtable and United States Chamber of Commerce. Hacker and Pierson argue that "no private arrangement in the history of American politics has assembled anything comparable in scope or capacity to today'due south Chamber of Commerce."
Hacker and Pierson highlight iii main prongs of the Republican assault: "Denounce crony capitalism" while catering to narrow business concern interests; "Feed political dysfunction and win by railing confronting it"; and "Undermine the capacity of government to perform its vital functions" and at the same fourth dimension "decry a bungling and corrupt public sector."
Still, the authors are suffering their own amnesia about the troubled state of the economy and American business concern during the 1970s, which is when the public fell out of love with authorities. This gets but a few pages, with observations like "the decade was not the economic wasteland information technology is often remembered every bit today." Yet experiencing stagflation and other economic troubles for the kickoff time in the era of mass prosperity provided ample reason for Americans to question the prevailing mixed-economy orthodoxy and ask whether authorities was overreaching.
What'due south more than, for all that bashing, government has go the dominant American political narrative, and for all the Randian resource deployed by the Koch brothers and others, antigovernment forces have been unable to stop the current Democratic president from introducing a huge expansion of regime in wellness care, and then getting re-elected. The authors also bury near the stop their surprising belief that despite everything, as a society, "we really have never had it so good."
And so there is the excessive nostalgia for the heyday of merchandise unionism. While Hacker and Pierson admit the negative role played past teachers unions in blocking education reforms that might accept kept America higher in those international performance rankings, that fact gets barely one judgement. And as for Wall Street, they are too ane-sided the other way. Though Wall Street deserves much blame for the crash of 2008 and the subsequent Slap-up Recession, the fiscal sector is not all a giant rip-off. Many of its innovations over the past 50 years take been adopted effectually the world considering they can yield pregnant economic benefits.
Every bit for solutions, Hacker and Pierson say "at that place is no magic bullet." They offer several sensible suggestions — farther limit the use of filibusters in the Senate; found campaign finance reform; make it easier for people to vote; introduce regulatory reform to tackle today's robber barons in finance, energy and health care. Yet their large call is for a new, broad-based movement to restore America'southward love for constructive regime — the modern successor to the Progressives of a century ago.
Is this realistic? At that place are a few hopeful straws in the wind. The popularity of Bernie Sanders with younger voters hints at a generational modify in attitudes. Some enlightened business leaders — Pecker Gates, Howard Schultz, Marc Benioff — are emerging every bit a different sort of function models, on bug similar inequality, the treatment of veterans and gay rights. Perhaps the unexpected strength of Donald Trump will provide a wake-up call — if it isn't already too late — to the Republican establishment, reminding it that if all you always do is bash government, you lot risk creating a vacuum that may be filled by something you volition really want to forget.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/books/review/american-amnesia-by-jacob-s-hacker-and-paul-pierson.html
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