TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
PART 1—KAZIN’S QUESTION: Michael Kazin is a professor at Georgetown—but today, we won’t hold that against him. In Sunday’s New York Times, Kazin wrote an essay which asked a very good question:
“Whatever Happened to the American Left?”
This, the headline on Kazin’s piece, represents the basic question he posed all through his piece. For the record, his question is a bit of a lover’s question. Kazin defines himself as a man of the left.
Kazin has just published “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation,” a history of the American left. But as he started Sunday’s essay, he wondered about “the relative silence” of the left today. At the end of this, his opening passage, the professor asked his basic question in a second way:
KAZIN (9/25/11): Sometimes, attention should be paid to the absence of news. America's economic miseries continue, with unemployment still high and home sales stagnant or dropping. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and their fellow citizens is wider than it has been since the 1920s.
And yet, except for the demonstrations and energetic recall campaigns that roiled Wisconsin this year, unionists and other stern critics of corporate power and government cutbacks have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession.
Instead, the Tea Party rebellion—led by veteran conservative activists and bankrolled by billionaires—has compelled politicians from both parties to slash federal spending and defeat proposals to tax the rich and hold financiers accountable for their misdeeds. Partly as a consequence, Barack Obama's tenure is starting to look less like the second coming of F.D.R. and more like a re-run of Jimmy Carter—although last week the president did sound a bit Rooseveltian when he proposed that millionaires should ''pay their fair share in taxes, or we're going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare.''
How do we account for the relative silence of the left?
According to Kazin, the left has “failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession.” How do we explain that relative silence, he asked.
Has the left really been silent—even relatively silent—about the nation’s ongoing economic miseries? Some folk may reject this basic claim as a scurrilous slander. For ourselves, we think Kazin is asking an important question—a question liberals and progressives should be asking themselves much more often, in a much more disciplined way. Beyond that, we think he paints an accurate picture of the modern political discourse—a discourse in which most of the energy, and most of the skillful messaging, can be found on the right.
In truth, Kazin can be a bit annoying when he describes this sad state of affairs. Have the forces of the right taken control of the discourse? We would say that this claim is accurate. But here’s the way Kazin describes their efforts over the past thirty-plus years, a period in which the right has taken the energy away from the left:
KAZIN: In the late 1970s, the grass-roots right was personified by a feisty, cigar-chomping businessman-activist named Howard Jarvis. Having toiled for conservative causes since Herbert Hoover's campaign in 1932, Jarvis had run for office on several occasions in the past, but, like Henry George, he had never been elected. Blocked at the ballot box, he became an anti-tax organizer, working on the belief that the best way to fight big government was ''not to give them the money in the first place.''
In 1978 he spearheaded the Proposition 13 campaign in California to roll back property taxes and make it exceedingly hard to raise them again. That fall, Proposition 13 won almost two-thirds of the vote, and conservatives have been vigorously echoing its anti-tax argument ever since. Just as the left was once able to pin the nation's troubles on heartless big businessmen, the right honed a straightforward critique of a big government that took Americans' money and gave them little or nothing useful in return.
[…]
Like the left in the early 20th century, conservatives built an impressive set of institutions to develop and disseminate their ideas. Their think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos have trained, educated and financed two generations of writers and organizers. Conservative Christian colleges, both Protestant and Catholic, provide students with a more coherent worldview than do the more prestigious schools led by liberals. More recently, conservatives marshaled media outlets like Fox News and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to their cause.
The Tea Party is thus just the latest version of a movement that has been evolving for over half a century, longer than any comparable effort on the liberal or radical left. Conservatives have rarely celebrated a landslide win on the scale of Proposition 13, but their argument about the evils of big government has, by and large, carried the day.
Our questions: Is Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio program really part of “an impressive set of institutions?” Has Limbaugh’s talk radio program mainly served to “disseminate ideas?” How about the conservative think tanks which have churned endless sets of talking-points designed to disinform the voters? One example out of millions: When these think-tanks convinced the public that the Social Security trust find was just “an accounting fiction,” were they really constructing “arguments” and “ideas”—a “straightforward critique?” Or would it be more accurate to say that they were engaged in disinformation?
Kazin is quite polite in his description of this conservative world—the conservative world which has emerged since the days of Howard Jarvis. He doesn’t mention the mountains of garbage which have emerged from those “think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos”—mountains of garbage which have often disinformed the public. On the other hand, not everything from the right has been garbage during this period—and we think Kazin’s basic picture is basically accurate. Starting at some point in the 1960s or 1970s, the conservative world began to build a very successful message machine which has in fact largely “carried the day.” These institutions have been “impressive” in their raw political power. And in the face of this message machine, the left has been rather inept.
Whatever happened to the left? In the fact of this “impressive” onslaught, the left has largely failed.
This basic portrait isn’t new, but progressives need to discuss it more often. Whatever happened to the left? Why has the left been so inept in the political wars of the past forty years? Why does so much of the energy and messaging success lie with the heirs to Howard Jarvis?
What accounts for our relative silence?
In his essay and in this recent interview, we think Kazin is asking good questions. Sadly, major figures of the left are constantly giving us partial answers. Just this week, some of Kazin’s fellow professors are giving us our latest look at some of the ways the left keeps failing. Alas! There is rarely a dearth of damn-fool conduct emerging from folk who represent the left in the eyes of the larger world. The modern left loves to fail, in the dumbest ways possible.
Why has the left been so inept? We think that’s a very good question. Sadly, there are many good answers. We’ll be frisking Kazin’s question in this series all week.
Tomorrow: History takes a long time
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MISSING MOVEMENT WATCH! As the left slept!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
PART 2—HISTORY TAKES A LONG TIME: “Whatever happened to the American left?”
Michael Kazin may be a history professor, but he asked this very good question in Sunday’s New York Times. For the record, Kazin is a man of the left. But in his essay, he painted an unflattering portrait of the left’s role in the current American debate.
Despite the ongoing economic meltdown, the left has “failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession,” Kazin wrote. The tea party right is much more dominant in the current debate, he judged. Then, he asked his question again:
“How do we account for the relative silence of the left?”
We think that’s a very good question. Today, let’s check the professor’s overview of the way we got into this mess.
What accounts for the “relative silence” of the left? In effect, Kazin says this: History takes a very long time—and so does building a movement! The left built a movement a long time ago. But in the past four decades, the work of movement-building has mainly been done on the right.
At one time, the balance was different. In this passage, Kazin states his basic premise—and he recalls the time when the left invested decades in movement-building:
KAZIN (9/25/11): How do we account for the relative silence of the left? Perhaps what really matters about a movement's strength is the years of building that came before it. In the 1930s, the growth of unions and the popularity of demands to share the wealth and establish ''industrial democracy'' were not simply responses to the economic debacle. In fact, unions bloomed only in the middle of the decade, when a modest recovery was under way. The liberal triumph of the 1930s was in fact rooted in decades of eloquent oratory and patient organizing by a variety of reformers and radicals against the evils of “monopoly” and “big money.”
The groundwork for that liberal triumph had been laid over the course of decades, extending back into the nineteenth century. In this passage, Kazin takes us through the basic history. We’ll let you scan the whole chunk:
KAZIN: The seeds of the 1930s left were planted back in the Gilded Age by figures like the journalist Henry George. In 1886, George, the author of a best-selling book that condemned land speculation, ran for mayor of New York City as the nominee of the new Union Labor Party. He attracted a huge following with speeches indicting the officeholders of the Tammany Hall machine for engorging themselves on bribes and special privileges while ''we have hordes of citizens living in want and in vice born of want, existing under conditions that would appall a heathen.''
George also brought his audiences a message of hope: ''We are building a movement for the abolition of industrial slavery, and what we do on this side of the water will send its impulse across the land and over the sea, and give courage to all men to think and act.'' Running against candidates from both major parties and the opposition of nearly every local employer and church, George would probably have been elected, if the 28-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican who finished third, had not split the anti-Tammany vote.
Despite George's defeat, the pro-labor, anti-corporate movement that coalesced around him and others kept growing. As the turn of the century neared, wage earners mounted huge strikes for union recognition on the nation's railroads and inside its coal mines and textile mills. In the 1890s, a mostly rural insurgency spawned the People's Party, also known as the Populists, which quickly won control of several states and elected 22 congressmen. The party soon expired, but not before the Democrats, under William Jennings Bryan, had adopted important parts of its platform—the progressive income tax, a flexible currency and support for labor organizing.
During the early 20th century, a broader progressive coalition, including immigrant workers, middle-class urban reformers, muckraking journalists and Social Gospelers established a new common sense about the need for a government that would rein in corporate power and establish a limited welfare state. The unbridled free market and the ethic of individualism, they argued, had left too many Americans at the mercy of what Theodore Roosevelt called ''malefactors of great wealth.'' As Jane Addams put it, ''the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.''
Amid the boom years of the 1920s, conservatives rebutted this wisdom and won control of the federal government. ''The chief business of the American people is business,'' intoned President Calvin Coolidge. But their triumph was brief, both ideologically and electorally. When Franklin D. Roosevelt swept into the White House in 1932, most Americans were already primed to accept the economic and moral argument progressives had been making since the heyday of Henry George.
Roosevelt didn’t take office waving a wand which magically changed his nation’s thinking. The understandings which helped him proceed were decades in the making. “After years of preparation, welfare-state liberalism had finally become a mainstream faith,” Kazin writes. In this passage, he again describes the building-blocks which help a president prosper:
KAZIN: After years of preparation, welfare-state liberalism had finally become a mainstream faith. In 1939, John L. Lewis, the pugnacious labor leader, declared, "The millions of organized workers banded together in the C.I.O. are the main driving force of the progressive movement of workers, farmers, professional and small business people and of all other liberal elements in the community." With such forces on his side, the politically adept F.D.R. became a great president.
We’d dump the term “welfare state” ourselves. But decades of effort had created the understandings which helped FDR prosper.
Things changed after that, Kazin says. In this passage, he describes a basic change in political energy—a transfer of energy on certain issues from the left to the right:
KAZIN (continuing directly): But the meaning of liberalism gradually changed. The quarter century of growth and low unemployment that followed World War II understandably muted appeals for class justice on the left. Liberals focused on rights for minority groups and women more than addressing continuing inequalities of wealth. Meanwhile, conservatives began to build their own movement based on a loathing of “creeping socialism” and a growing perception that the federal government was oblivious or hostile to the interests and values of middle-class whites.
As liberals turned toward issues of racial and gender justice, conservatives began to develop a movement whose messaging dealt with economic issues. At this point, Kazin describes the rise of the current conservative world, starting with Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13 in 1979. In Kazin’s account, the right has spent the past thirty-plus years building the type of movement the left long ago:
KAZIN: Like the left in the early 20th century, conservatives built an impressive set of institutions to develop and disseminate their ideas. Their think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos have trained, educated and financed two generations of writers and organizers. Conservative Christian colleges, both Protestant and Catholic, provide students with a more coherent worldview than do the more prestigious schools led by liberals. More recently, conservatives marshaled media outlets like Fox News and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to their cause.
As we noted yesterday, Kazin’s description of that “impressive set of institutions” is extremely polite. But in his view, the right has laid the groundwork for current economic fights over the course of four decades.
There is nothing especially new about this basic analysis. You can read a similar account of the past four decades in Paul Krugman’s book, The Conscience of a Liberal. But Kazin stresses a very important point—like history itself, movement-building take a long time. When it comes to current issues, the “relative silence” of the left has been a long time in the making.
As Kazin notes, the left was doing some very good things during the period under review. Parts of the left were deeply involved in issues of racial and gender justice; major victories were achieved in those areas. But what should the left be doing today to get itself back in the current game, in which voters are asked to consider basic issues of economic justice?
Kazin has some thoughts about that—thoughts he expressed in Sunday’s essay and in this recent interview. Tomorrow, we’ll look at what he has said—though once again, we will suggest that he has been a bit too polite.
Forty years of intellectual struggle preceded President Roosevelt. Decades of slumber and self-indulgence preceded his current successor. That self-indulgence continues apace. In truth, we liberals just aren’t very smart—and lord, how we love to lose!
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
PART 3—KAZIN’S STRANGE SUGGESTION: “How do we account for the relative silence of the left?”
In Sunday's New York Times, Michael Kazin weirdly asked that plainly ridiculous question. Despite the nation’s economic woes, despite the vast rise in inequality, we on the left “have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession,” Kazin improbably said.
Why would Kazin say such things about us, the good pure brilliant smart decent folk of the American left? We’re not sure, but he kept it up all through his lengthy essay. As he continued, he even seemed to say that folk on the right have been kicking our perfect pure butts in the nation’s messaging wars:
“Instead, the Tea Party rebellion…has compelled politicians from both parties to slash federal spending and defeat proposals to tax the rich and hold financiers accountable for their misdeeds,” the professor continued—weirdly suggesting that we on the left might need to improve our game!
According to Kazin, most of the juice has been on the right as the nation tries to deal with its economic miseries. Hence his plainly ridiculous question: “How do we account for the relative silence of the left?”
Kazin attempts to answer that question in his essay. Yesterday, we reviewed one major part of his answer (click here). But sure enough! Due to the fact that Kazin is white, his insidious electoral racism was sure to emerge in the course of his effort! And sure enough! As he neared the end of Sunday’s piece, he began to pretend that those on the left may have done some things imperfectly. As he started this part of his piece, his obvious electoral racism plainly began to emerge:
KAZIN (9/25/11): If activists on the left want to alter this reality, they will have to figure out how to redefine the old ideal of economic justice for the age of the Internet and relentless geographic mobility. During the last election, many hoped that the organizing around Barack Obama's presidential campaign would do just that. Yet, since taking office, Mr. Obama has only rarely made an effort to move the public conversation in that direction.
The left has to “figure out how to redefine the old ideal of economic justice,” but Obama “has only rarely made an effort to move the public conversation in that direction!” Plainly, Kazin would never say such a thing about a sitting white president!
OK, we’ve had some fun. For now, let’s put the snark to the side. For those who care to consider the possibility that we on the left might step up our game, Kazin makes some fleeting suggestions at the end of his essay. We think those suggestions are well worth discussing, although his remarks are brief.
How have progressives won in the past? In the past, progressives have “seldom bet their future on politicians,” Kazin says. Instead, progressives have “fashioned their own institutions,” which have driven the discourse along.
In this, Kazin makes an excellent point. Liberals and progressives can’t expect a politician, even a sitting president, to create miraculous new understandings among the American people. Whether it’s President Clinton or President Obama, a president marches to political war with the economic understandings the public already has. In Kazin’s view, the left has tended to drop the ball in this area over the past forty years. During that period, liberals have “focused on rights for minority groups and women more than addressing continuing inequalities of wealth,” he says. There have been large successes in these areas. (Just look how well Herman Cain is doing!) But the right has tended to fill the vacuum concerning the way the economy works.
What explains our relative silence in that area? What have we on the left perhaps been doing in a slightly imperfect fashion?
We know, we know! In a highly tribalized culture, it’s against the rules to ask such questions—to suggest that one’s own tribe may have failed in some manner. Within our burgeoning pseudo-liberal political world, our multimillionaire cable leaders encourage us to mock The Other. Every night, we’re trained to laugh at how stupid Those People are. (You know? The ones who are kicking our asses?) We must never note the sheer stupidity on vivid display within our own tribe. Criticizing one's own tribe is a break with every known rule!
But as he finished Sunday’s essay, Kazin made a strange suggestion. He suggested that we on the left should take a good look at ourselves!
For our money, this part of his essay could have been expanded—and Kazin did expand on these ideas in a recent interview. But here are the brief suggestions with which he ended Sunday’s piece. We’ll highlight two of his statements:
KAZIN: [T]he left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions—unions, women's groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press—in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans.
Today, such institutions are either absent or reeling. With unions embattled and on the decline, working people of all races lack a sturdy vehicle to articulate and fight for the vision of a more egalitarian society. Liberal universities, Web sites and non-governmental organizations cater mostly to a professional middle class and are more skillful at promoting social causes like legalizing same-sex marriage and protecting the environment than demanding millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.
A reconnection with ordinary Americans is vital not just to defeating conservatives in 2012 and in elections to come. Without it, the left will remain unable to state clearly and passionately what a better country would look like and what it will take to get there. To paraphrase the labor martyr Joe Hill, the left should stop mourning its recent past and start organizing to change the future.
Say what? Current liberal institutions “cater mostly to a professional middle class?” And we on the left need to fashion “a reconnection with ordinary Americans?”
Impossible! Aren’t they the very people we very much like to mock?
What is Kazin talking about? And why is he saying these things about Us? For our money, Kazin has more to say on these topics. Luckily, he said some of those things right here, in a recent interview conducted for Salon.
Tomorrow, we’ll examine some of the ways we on the left—brace yourselves!—may be failing to move the ball. Warning! In his interview, Kazin discusses possible errors being made by us on the left!
We know—the notion is strange on its face! Where do they find the very strange folk who are willing to make such claims?
Tomorrow: Possible errors
Posted by bob somerby on Thursday, September 29, 2011
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THE ABSENCE OF THE PROFESSORS! Disinformation never sleeps!
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
PART 4—NO WAY OUT: If you’re an American voter, it’s amazingly easy to get disinformed about Social Security.
The disinformation campaign has been under way for thirty years—and the campaign continues. Just consider the column by an economics professor in today's Baltimore Sun.
The professor in question is Peter Morici, one of the carnival barker-style professors who get big play on cable news—even on network news programs. Morici is from the University of Maryland; this makes him geographically convenient to cable bookers. And he sports a trademarked, bow-tie conservative look—the look that pre-announces a cable guest as a pseudo-conservative fraud.
When cable guests wear uniforms, viewers can watch the ensuing debates with the sound turned off!
Beyond that, Morici is skilled with his disinformation. This is the way his op-ed column starts in this morning’s Baltimore Sun. We’ll use the headline from our hard-copy paper:
MORICI (9/22/11): Yes, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme
When established in 1935, Social Security made its first payments to Americans age 65. These first recipients never contributed and were paid from contributions made by younger Americans. Those Americans and successive generations believed their contributions were investments, and that they would be paid at retirement by the earnings on those investments.
In fact, those younger Americans were paid by the contributions of successive generations of "investors," as the federal government spent their money to help finance operating deficits. With the ratio of retirees to contributors rising, the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money by 2036, if not sooner.
Such a scheme could only continue if the working-age population grew more rapidly than the number of retirees, but it hasn't because Americans live longer and the birth rate has declined.
President Barack Obama's claims notwithstanding, Social Security is now a growing burden on federal finances, as the difference between the trust fund's income and what it pays out grows each year. As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be drastically curtailed or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.
Either Social Security fails, or the United States fails.
Let’s be fair. As noted, Morici is a full professor at a major university. For that reason, it’s possible he’s so goddamned dumb that he wrote this piece in good faith.
It’s possible, but we’d call it unlikely. Morici’s piece extends a disinformation campaign which has run for more than three decades. And sure enough! Through this morning’s column, Maryland voters will get disinformed again.
Will other professors speak up in protest? If the thought even enters your head, you must live on the far planet Zarkon. Except for hustlers like Morici and the occasional outlier like Paul Krugman, American professors sold you out a very long time ago.
The professors keep their big traps shut. They’re too busy screwing their graduate students or composing their latest thoughts on Jane Austen’s use of the colon. Other professors will not voice a challenge. That said, consider the standard disinformation Morici has spewed on the land:
“With the ratio of retirees to contributors rising, the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money by 2036, if not sooner.”
Based on current projections, that is an accurate statement. But such truncated presentations have been a key part of this scam over the past thirty years. After the trust fund runs out of money, Social Security will of course continue to function—but voters don’t understand that fact. Truncated sound-bites of this type are intended to keep the public confused on this point, building the sense of alarm.
“As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be drastically curtailed or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.”
It all depends on what the meaning of what “drastically” and “massive” are! Presumably, Morici has heard of numbers, a fairly well-known recent invention. In this matter, numbers can be used to flesh out this highly alarming statement. In fact, if we make no changes at all to the current system, Social Security will continue to pay perhaps 80 percent of promised benefits after the trust fund runs out. It would have been easy for Morici to include a number like that in his column. But how strange—he never does! The tyranny of disinformation requires its hacks to make imprecise, frightening claims.
We’ll have more to say about that second quotation below. It will have an Yglesias tie-in—but for now, understand this:
Nowhere in this op-ed column does Morici attempt to quantify the alarming terms “drastically/massive.” (On that basis alone, the editor who accepted that column would be on his way out the door in a true journalistic culture.) In a similar vein, Morici fails to tell readers how easy it would be to eliminate that projected shortfall through minor tax increases.
Duh! Kevin Drum explained how easy it is in this September 12 blog post. You may not choose to make the adjustments Drum describes, but if you don’t understand the facts Drum cites, you don’t understand this topic. Presumably, Morici does understand the numbers involved here. True to his role in a long campaign, he just doesn’t want to tell the public about them.
As he continues, Morici decides that private accounts won’t work. His solution to the Ponzi problem is presented in this, the thrilling conclusion to his column. By now, Morici is basically lying—with the acquiescence of an editor at the Sun:
MORICI: In the end, the only way to make the system work is to ask Americans to work longer. If Governor Perry or Mitt Romney wants to fix the system, instead of arguing over terminology, they must address the retirement age. It simply must be raised to something close to 70, with no exceptions but for the truly disabled.
Americans won't like that, but it beats what President Obama is offering. Characteristic to his thinking on economics, he prefers to believe what his liberal ideology, not the facts, require—and incorrectly insists the system is solvent.
Social Security, by the findings of Mr. Obama's own Social Security Administration, is insolvent and hence is indeed a Ponzi scheme. Americans seeking dignity in retirement would be better served by hearing the truth.
Social Security isn't “solvent?” That’s another scary locution—and of course it all depends of what the meaning of “solvent” is! But surely, this professor understands that he’s basically lying when he says this: “The only way to make the system work is to ask Americans to work longer.”
In fairness, that is one of the ways to erase that future shortfall. But plainly, it isn’t the only way. This music man understands that fact. (Presumably, so does the editor.) He is just determined to keep that fact from Maryland voters.
Con men like Morici have been at this game for the past thirty years. Morici has made himself rather famous playing this game in the past few years, even as he has worked to make the nation’s voters dumber. Let’s return to that earlier question:
Should you expect to see pushback from any other professors? Should you expect to see letters from other professors in the Baltimore Sun’s letters column? Should you expect to see other professors denouncing Morici by name on TV?
Will you read a column by some other professor explaining the fact that a disinformation campaign has been running for the past thirty years? That progressives and tea party members alike have been disinformed by this scheme?
Of course you won’t see such actions! The nation’s professors walked away from their obligations as citizens many decades ago. Graduate students have to be screwed—and someone must use that villa in France! You will not see such pushback in the next few weeks. Nor will your mewling career liberal journalists name the names of the horrible people who are running this evil campaign.
To understand the culture within which this campaign has flourished, let’s recall a few things we have looked at this week:
In the late 1990s, the New York Times asked an eminent economics if he wanted to write a twice-weekly column. Luckily, this professor said yes. But in a fascinating profile, Larissa McFarquhar described the reaction from this professor’s colleagues.
Robin Wells is Paul Krugman’s wife. She too is an economist:
MCFARQUHAR (3/1/10): When the Times approached him about writing a column, he was torn. “His friends said, ‘This is a waste of your time,’ ” Wells says. “We economists thought that we were doing substantive work and the rest of the world was dross.” Krugman cared about his academic reputation more than anything else. If he started writing for a newspaper, would his colleagues think he’d become a pseudo-economist, a former economist, a vapid policy entrepreneur like Lester Thurow? Lester Thurow had become known in certain circles as Less Than Thorough. It was hard to imagine what mean nickname could be made out of Paul Krugman, but what if someone came up with one? Could he take it?
Luckily, Krugman took the job. But McFarquhar suggests that the nation’s professors think they’re above such work. Let’s be honest—most of these people couldn’t explain how Social Security works if they tried. (Is the left hand borrowing from the right? They wouldn’t know how to unpack that!) But these professors aren't inclined to try; they don’t accept their duty as citizens. They seem to think it’s a waste of their time to speak to the nation’s rubes.
In 1996, this same professor betrayed a hint of this attitude. By his own account, Krugman was still “sleepwalking” at this point; he too wasn’t bothering himself with mere politics. Presumably, that explains why he wrote a bungled piece for the New York Times Sunday Book Review section, a piece he renounced three weeks later:
KRUGMAN (11/12/96): First of all, a mea culpa of my own. Ignore Galbraith's coyness: I was the economist who went overboard in supporting Pete Peterson's position on entitlements and demographics.
Demographics play a smaller role in Peterson's forecasts, and debatable projections of medical costs a larger one, than I realized when I recently reviewed his book for the New York Times. I broke my own rule that you should always check an argument both with a back-of-the-envelope calculation and by consulting with the real experts, no matter how plausible and reasonable its author sounds. Do as I say and normally do, not as I unfortunately did in this case.
Oof! Still sleepwalking at this point, Krugman behaved like those other professors. Writing on a major topic for a very influential publication, he didn’t bother checking Pete Peterson’s argument. Reason? Peterson sounded so good!
Today, Krugman is our most valuable player. Back then, in that blithe response, he described irresponsible conflict—the type of conduct one can expect from the bulk of the nation’s professors. He also explained how a disinformation campaign has proven to be so successful.
Let’s mention Dean Baker, who wrote a letter to the Times in 1996 challenging Krugman’s review. In 1999, Baker and Weisbrot wrote a very important book, Social Security: The Phony Crisis. Unfortunately, the book is too technical for general use—and no professor, think tank or liberal journal has ever created a simplified, voter-friendly version of this essential information.
The professors are too lofty for such work. You can explain the sloth of the liberal journals any way you like. That said, let’s return to our first report in this series—to Matt Yglesias’ murky attempt to explain how Social Security works. Thirty years into this endless scam, this is the best description of Social Security our beautiful minds can manage:
YGLESIAS (9/16/11): So to review, roughly speaking we have two kinds of people in America. We have people who are paying Social Security taxes and we have people who are receiving Social Security benefits. For the past several decades, the quantity of tax revenue coming in has exceeded the quantity of benefits being paid out. That is projected to flip around, creating the need to either redirect some additional financial stream into the Social Security system in order to repay the rest of the government’s debt to Social Security or else to reduce Social Security benefits or else to increase Social Security taxes.
The choice among these options is what the Social Security debate is about, if the Social Security debate is about funding Social Security.
That highlighted passage is clear as mud. But thirty years into this endless scam, it’s the best our beautiful minds can produce. Steve Benen made a point of saying how clear that bafflegab was!
The professors have failed you; the children can’t function. That’s the state of the liberal project thirty years into this scam. But people! On Monday, we said the first part of Yglesias’ explanation echoes one of the newer talking-points which are used in this campaign. We said this new point is hard to search for. But we said we’d get back to you on it by the end of the week.
Luckily, Morici folds that talking-point into his scam-heavy column. When Social Security revenues no longer equal the benefits being paid out, will that somehow create the need to “redirect some additional financial stream into the Social Security system in order to repay the rest of the government’s debt to Social Security?” That bafflegab echoed a new talking-point. Here we see a version of same, Professor Morici-style:
MORICI: President Barack Obama's claims notwithstanding, Social Security is now a growing burden on federal finances, as the difference between the trust fund's income and what it pays out grows each year. As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be drastically curtailed or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.
Morici is speaking about the years before the trust fund is exhausted. As he has been instructed to do, he says we will have to shut down other activities, on a massive basis, to make up for the annual shortfalls. (More conventional hustlers add a second option: Or we will have to raise taxes!) That statement is grossly misleading, of course; in the years before the trust fund expires, the shortfall will be covered by the Social Security trust fund. Money borrowed from the trustees will be repaid, just as we’ll repay the money we’ve borrowed from banks in China. Morici is simply creating more confusion about this process, just as it has been written.
In the bafflegab we’ve highlighted, Yglesias seemed tangled up in that talking-point too. Such is the work of the liberal world’s most beautiful minds as this campaign keeps advancing.
The professors don’t care; the careerists can’t function. What should liberals do about this?
We will have to leave that question for another time.
Back to Hacker: For other mordant thoughts about the priorities of the professors, we again recommend the Andrew Hacker/Claudia Dreifus book, Higher Education. The authors write from deep inside the academy they have betrayed.
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