Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Frum's and Sullivan's factual premises are correct: Middle class incomes have stagnated or shrunk. Raising them is economic priority # 1. The right has no idea how to do so. But that just raises the next question: Why would anyone think the left can do better? Sullivan clearly thinks Obama can fix it [...]. But how? Sullivan runs education up the flag pole. [...] I, for one, decline to salute:
* Education was a Bush priority too. Does anybody think No Child Left Behind has made things better?
* The federal government has spent billions of dollars on education in recent decades. To what effect? Is there any evidence that the Department of Education has improved the state of education in this country?
* Obama refuses to take seriously the right's best ideas on education, especially vouchers and school choice.
* When has Obama taken on the teachers' unions on any major issue?
[...] the idea that the left can or will do any better is just silly.
As is the idea that, ultimately, it'll be the federal government that will deliver us from stagnant incomes.
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Jun '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
When the leadership of your nation is chock-full of redistributionists, why on Earth would you want to be on the higher end of middle-class? You'll be working hard for nothing. It's a good time to rein in your ambitions and coast. Call it the Obama effect.
May '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
To be fair, the Obama administration has actually been forthright in pursuing school reform and "taking on" the unions. RTTT may, in the end, have a bigger impact than NCLB.
May '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
The reason neither party, nor anyone in government, knows "how to raise middle class incomes", is that there is no answer. No one knows such a thing. There is no magic strategy that will make us all rich (despite what the late-night infomercials say).
I certainly don't know how to "raise middle-class incomes", but I have some ideas about how to raise my income. If my government will get out of my way I will put those ideas into action and bust my backside to make them work. I suspect that there are others who have similar ideas. Perhaps, given half a chance, we will get a trend going.
Politicians and economists talk like a farmer who resents all the attention given to the seeds. "This year", he says, ""I'll create the corn without them!" but alas it doesn't seem to be working.
Edited on Sep 8, 2010 at 10:26amJun '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
If the Black Community feels ignored by the President, as many say they have been, pushing back against the arrogant self-centered teachers unions is something that Obama can do to help himself on that front. Nobody hates rotten public schools more than the unfortunate folks who have no choice but to send their kids there. Pushing back against the teachers unions is popular with the center-right as well, so it's a two-fer. What are the unions going to do? Turn Republican?
Sep '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
Q: "Does anybody think No Child Left Behind has made things better?" A: I'm glad that there is now hard data on low performing schools. There are no surprises of course, but it is instructive to see with hard data how bad the situation is in inner city schools. And if you like, I'll make the argument that dealing with it is a federal isue.
Statement from post: "Obama refuses to take seriously the right's best ideas on education ---" Comment: Isn't there now beginning to be data on the efficacy of school choice, etc?
As to the problem with stagnant incomes, does it not trouble anyone that their (grand)children are not going to be as well off? I don't pretend to have a solution, but the increasing income divide is troubling.
May '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
I agree with some of the comments on Professor Bainbridge's post. It seems to me that median income may not be an accurate measure of prosperity. Neither my husband nor I received more than a 2-4% salary increase since the late 1990s yet our standard of living seemed to rise significantly. Well, at least it did until Recovery Spring 2009 when I was laid off. Of course, I am no Paul Krugman (:-{~, so I appreciate the need for quantifiable measure. Perhaps we need better metrics. Or better economists.
Jul '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
Patrick from Albuqurque - You hint at the basic issue here when you say " I don't pretend to have a solution". That makes you smarter than Frum and Sullivan combined. Thinking in terms of solutions is - ironically - the single biggest problem of modern political thought.
Middle Class incomes (echoing G.A., above) is not a problem to be solved. It is just a fact, be it good, bad or unclear. Government cannot "solve" for undesired states of income. The arrogance of pretending that it can is the central conceit of our political era. But it plays nicely with the paternalistic nature of statist government. "Help me Big Government, I'm stagnating!!!!"
What I really think drives folks like Sullivan is the burning certainty that he could be the solver of more or less everything, if only people (read:Obama) would pay attention to him.
May '10
Re: Beyond Shrinking Spending, Growing Incomes
This is the classic fallacy of confusing statistical categories with individual people. You can have a constant or even declining middle class median income even while every member of the middle class sees a pay increase! This is because the membership of the group "middle class" is always changing, with low income, entry-level employees entering the bracket and high-income, nearly retired employees either moving to a higher bracket or retiring from the workforce.
You can visualize it as everyone standing on a big conveyor belt at the airport. A liberal peers down at the belt from his luxury lounge and finds that entire conveyor belt apparatus is bolted to the floor, and files a complaint with management that the belt is broken and cannot possibly serve its purpose. In the meantime, hundreds of conservatives per hour are perfectly content to use the conveyor belt to speed them along to their gates.