Are We Better Off? You Betcha!

Pundits have begun asking Democrats how they will answer the Gipper question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Dean Baker’s response is perfect: Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, “is the house in better shape than when you got here?”

A serious reporter, Baker notes, would ask the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they had enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. The analogy is obvious: serious reporters would ask whether the stimulus was large enough, whether it was properly designed and implemented, and whether  other measures might have been taken that weren’t.

Baker’s analogy is on point. But even if we persist in asking the question, I think the only honest answer is yes. We are better off–although we certainly aren’t well off. As a Facebook friend noted the other day, you are definitely better-off if you live in Kokomo, or in any other city  where the local economy depends on the continued vitality of the auto industry.

People are also better off if they have retirement accounts;  recent financial reports confirm that these accounts have more than recovered from the huge hit they took in 2008–they’ve not only made up the lost ground, but surpassed previous levels. Job creation has been agonizingly slow, but slow beats hell out of the month-after-month huge losses that characterized 2008. We still have young men and women in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, but far fewer than were there fighting ill-conceived wars when Obama took office–and those who are still there are coming home.

As Joe Biden likes to say, Osama bin Ladin is dead and the American automobile industry isn’t.

So let’s be honest. We are all better off, in a multitude of ways, now that the administration has stopped the hemorrhaging and begun the slow process of recovery.

But if we are being honest, we also have to admit that better isn’t good. Unemployment remains unacceptably high; the economy is not only growing too slowly, globalization means that it is vulnerable as never before to missteps in Europe and elsewhere. There are thorny questions about what to do about Iran and Syria. The planet is heating more quickly than even the most pessimistic science had projected. And Washington seems incapable of engaging in a rational discussion of these and other pressing national issues.

The pundits ought to be asking both candidates and their campaigns for the specifics. (In the case of the Romney campaign, especially, those specifics have been all but invisible.)

What, exactly, do you propose to do about [fill in the blank]? Don’t give us gauzy, dismissive promises (“I’ll create 12 million jobs; I’ll repeal ‘Obamacare'” “I’ll save Medicare”). Tell us precisely how you propose to get from where we are–which is demonstrably better than where we were, but still not good–to where we need to be. If you are promising to defund Planned Parenthood, tell us where the low-income women who depend upon it for breast screenings will be able to get those services. If you are promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act, tell us which of its provisions, if any, you will spare–and how, in its absence, you will slow the growth in medical costs that have been strangling our economy. If you are promising to protect Israel from Iran, tell us how many young men and women you are willing to put at risk to do that, and why you prefer a military incursion to diplomatic efforts. If you propose to balance the budget by closing loopholes, tell us precisely which “loopholes” you are targeting.

Most important of all, do tell us how your proposals are any different from the decisions that set the house on fire in the first place.

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The Guy in the Chair

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart is a penetrating observer of today’s politics, and the other night–while delivering a very funny review of Clint Eastwood’s “dialogue” with an empty chair at the Republican convention–he delivered one of those “Aha” moments.

Stewart noted that he’d had trouble getting his head around many of the accusations Republicans leveled at Obama, but that now he understood: there are TWO Barack Obamas, one of whom only Republicans can see!  It’s the invisible guy they keep talking about!

There’s more than a little truth to that, and it is unfortunate for a lot of reasons.

I’m not the only person who has been mystified by charges that a moderate Democrat implementing a healthcare program devised by Republicans is somehow a “socialist,” or that a President who has presided over the slowest growth in government spending since Eisenhower is engaged in ruinous and unrestrained spending. I’ve been stunned by accusations that a man who entered the national consciousness with an “only in America” speech at the 2004 Democratic convention is routinely accused of “hating America.”

Stewart is right, of course, as he usually is: the Barack Obama who is the target of these accusations isn’t the Obama who actually occupies the White House. It’s the Barack Obama of fevered–and let us be honest here, essentially racist–imaginations.

There are two major problems with the nature of these attacks. The obvious one is that the Romney campaign’s willingness to “go there,” to engage in dog whistles and worse, exacerbates an ugly divide that America has tried hard to erase. It is analogous to picking at the scab on a still-unhealed wound. If the strategy wins–if, in the wake of the election, Romney is perceived to have benefitted from it–racial tensions will make it even harder to rebuild a politics of reason.

The other problem with the Republicans’ fixation on an imaginary Obama is that it has foreclosed debate on the actual policies of the actual Obama. This President–like all of his predecessors–has implemented, or failed to implement, a wide variety of policies that deserve to be critically examined. Like most citizens, I agree with some and disagree with others. Elections are intended to provide citizens with discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of policy positions held by the candidates, as well as giving voters a sense of the character of those who are asking for our votes.

That discussion–that reasoned critique of this Administration’s performance and priorities–has been virtually absent from this campaign.   It has been drowned out by hyperbole and outright fabrication.

The campaign against the real Barack Obama has been obscured by the one directed at the invented version sitting in the empty chair.

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Music for World-Class Cities

When I was in City Hall back in the late 1970s, the goal was to make Indianapolis a “world class” city. That wasn’t just the rhetoric used by the Mayor and his administration–it was echoed by the City Committee (now long defunct) and by the Lilly Endowment, which facilitated the goal with generous grants.

The decision to make Indianapolis into an amateur sports capital wasn’t made because city leaders loved sports, although many surely did. It was based on a hard-headed analysis of where we might have a comparative advantage. The goal was city-building, and sports were a means to that end.

That was then, and now is now. There is no longer a City Committee, and the Endowment–while still generous and immensely important to Indianapolis– no longer partners with elected officials to improve Indianapolis as it did then. Our current Mayor is not a visionary (to put it kindly). Making matters worse, Indianapolis has lost many of the corporate headquarters and locally-owned banks from which we used to draw private-sector civic leadership.

Now, we are in danger of seeing the Indianapolis Symphony–a symphony befitting a world-class city, a symphony of which we have been justifiably proud–become a part-time (read “second-class”) enterprise.

The Symphony is facing significant financial problems.  It will obviously be important to determine the cause of those problems–poor portfolio management? Unfavorable labor contract? Other? I certainly haven’t a clue, and few outside the Board and musicians themselves are likely to have even a reasonable hypothesis.

But I do know one thing: in addition to being a beloved part of our city’s cultural scene and a point of pride, the symphony is important to our local economy.

Nationally, nonprofit arts organizations generate $135 billion in economic activity annually, supporting 4.1 million jobs and generating $22.3 billion in government revenue. Investment in the arts supports jobs, generates tax revenues, promotes tourism, and advances our increasingly creativity-based economy. The typical arts attendee spends $24.60 per person, per event, not including the cost of admission, on items such as meals, parking, and babysitters. Attendees who live outside the county in which the arts event takes place spend twice as much as their local counterparts.

A symphony season has far more impact on the local economy than football. Early in my academic career, I worked on a paper with an expert in the economic impact of sports. Such impact as exists is by virtue of intangibles–the value of raising the profile of the city with the team, that sort of thing. There was no direct dollar benefit. Despite that lack of immediate economic impact, we pump large amounts of public money into privately-owned sports teams and venues.

To the best of my knowledge, no public money flows to the symphony and a mere pittance is distributed among other arts organizations in the city. The arts have clearly not been a priority.

I am not suggesting that long-term public funding is the answer to the symphony’s current problems. Obviously, figuring out what happened, correcting missteps as possible, and developing a plan for future sustainability is critical, but that process takes time. If Indianapolis weren’t so starved for revenue, some sort of “bridge” loan or grant to keep the symphony going during that time would make a lot of sense, because keeping something important is easier and less costly than trying to rebuild it once it is gone.

Indianapolis used to understand that world-class cities require constant attention and inspired leadership. These days we don’t seem to have either.

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The Color of Change

In his most recent column, Neil Pierce reports on the results of a study done by McKinsey, the global consulting firm. The study predicts a continuation and acceleration of the move from rural areas to cities. It is not an exaggeration to say McKinsey sees ongoing  urbanization of the planet.

The upshot?

“Globally, cities are economic dynamos. They typically attract skilled workers and productive activity that triples per capita income over rural areas. With the opportunities that cities bring them, 1 billion people are likely to enter the global “consuming class,” virtually all in developing world metropolises, by 2025. Their activity and buying demands will have a cumulative upward impact of roughly $20 trillion a year on the world’s economy.

On top of that, the cities where the new urbanites live will likely be obliged to double their annual investments in buildings, roadways, water systems, ports and public buildings from today’s $10 trillion a year to $20 trillion a year by 2025. Businesses will have immense new opportunities; it’s reasonable to expect “a powerful and welcome boost to global economic growth.”

So far, so good. But as Pierce notes, all is not paradise. There are substantial challenges lurking beneath the surface good news: where will government agencies get the capital necessary to build the roads and sewers and other infrastructure that will be required? What about the impact on an already stressed environment?

Pierce does not address the social effects of urbanization, but those effects may be the most consequential. There is substantial scholarship suggesting that people who live in more densely populated cities tend to hold different political and social beliefs than their country cousins. Almost by necessity, city dwellers are more tolerant of difference, more supportive of funding for government services (it’s a lot harder to do without such “amenities” as garbage collection and police protection once you’ve left the farm.) There’s a reason that cities show up as islands of blue even in the reddest of states on those ubiquitous political maps.

Not long after the 2004 Presidential election, the Seattle alternative paper The Stranger ran an article titled “The Urban Archipelago,” and subtitled “It’s the Cities, Stupid.”   It’s still worth reading in its entirety–a passionate manifesto about citizenship and cities and the politics of urban America. The essay began by analyzing the 2004 election results and making a convincing case that–as the authors put it–the Democratic party is the party of urban America.

The essay is long and angry, and very partisan, but much of it rings true. I particularly like this section, which outlines “urban values.”

 But if liberals and progressives want to reach out past our urban bases, it might be helpful to identify some essential convictions, thereby allowing us to perhaps compete on “values.”…

So how do we live and what are we for? Look around you, urbanite, at the multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities, and tribes that are smashed together in every urban center (yes, even Seattle): We’re for that. We’re for pluralism of thought, race, and identity. We’re for a freedom of religion that includes the freedom from religion–not as some crazy aberration, but as an equally valid approach to life. We are for the right to choose one’s own sexual and recreational behavior, to control one’s own body and what one puts inside it. We are for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The people who just elected George W. Bush to a second term are frankly against every single idea outlined above.

Unlike the people who flee from cities in search of a life free from disagreement and dark skin, we are for contentiousness, discourse, and the heightened understanding of life that grows from having to accommodate opposing viewpoints. We’re for opposition. And just to be clear: The non-urban argument, the red state position, isn’t oppositional, it’s negational–they are in active denial of the existence of other places, other people, other ideas. It’s reactionary utopianism, and it is a clear and present danger; urbanists should be upfront and unapologetic about our contempt for their politics and their negational values. Republicans have succeeded in making the word “liberal”–which literally means “free from bigotry… favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded”–into an epithet. Urbanists should proclaim their liberalism from the highest rooftop (we have higher rooftops than they do); it’s the only way we survive.

  Let’s see, what else are we for? How about education? Cities are beehives of intellectual energy; students and teachers are everywhere you look, studying, teaching, thinking. In Seattle, you can barely throw a rock without hitting a college. It’s time to start celebrating that…. In the city, people ask you what you’re reading. Outside the city, they ask you why you’re reading. You do the math–and you’ll have to, because non-urbanists can hardly even count their own children at this point. For too long now, we’ve caved to the non-urban wisdom that decries universities as bastions of elitism and snobbery. Guess what: That’s why we should embrace them. Outside of the city, elitism and snobbery are code words for literacy and complexity. And when the oil dries up, we’re not going to be turning to priests for answers–we’ll be calling the scientists. And speaking of science: SCIENCE! That’s another thing we’re for. And reason. And history. All those things that non-urbanists have replaced with their idiotic faith. We’re for those.

As part of our pro-reason platform, we’re for paying taxes–taxes, after all, support the urban infrastructure on which we all rely, and as such, are a necessary part of the social contract we sign every day. We are for density, and because we’re for density, we’re for programs that support it, like mass transit.”

Un-PC as the whole thing is–it would not be unfair to call it a “rant”–there is enormous truth in the essay’s descriptions of urban and rural values. Cities are certainly not Edens–density and diversity bring significant challenges, and plenty of city folks are bigots and worse.

That said, cities do more than drive economic growth. They incubate civilization.

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How Not to Solve Real Problems

In a column about the GOP Convention, E.J.Dionne referred to Chris Christie’s speech,which he dubbed “Rousing, if deceptive.”

Dionne noted Christie’s admiration for his dad. “After returning from Army service,” Christie recounted, “he worked at the Breyers Ice Cream plant in the 1950s. With that job and the GI Bill he put himself through Rutgers University at night to become the first in his family to earn a college degree.”

“Good for his dad. But Christie somehow slid over the fact that it was government — through the GI Bill and by financing New Jersey’s fine state university — that gave the elder Christie his chance to rise. Are we to “sacrifice” the next generation by cutting student loans and even arguing, as is becoming fashionable, that some Americans shouldn’t get the opportunity to go to college?”

This convention’s delusional theme–its insistence that successful people “do it themselves”–has been properly debunked by numerous people; for that matter, it’s self-evidently false to anyone who bothers to spend five minutes thinking about it. As a friend remarked, “Do these self-congratulatory types really believe that people in, say, Bangladesh, are less motivated and entrepreneurial human beings? Do they not understand that you can’t sell goods to other people if those others are impoverished? Do they just not notice their own ‘dependence’ on an educated workforce, public safety and functioning infrastructure–none of which would exist without the government?”

True enough, and evident to anyone who hasn’t totally succumbed to ideological BS or irrational hatred of government. But that shouldn’t be our biggest concern with this particular alternate reality.

The problem with this failure to understand our social interdependence and the extent of the role government plays in our lives is that this particular form of blindness prevents us from fixing things that are broken.

I teach college. A college education is a time-honored tool of social mobility (it certainly helped Chris Christie’s father). When that education is successful, it also opens intellectual doors for students who would not otherwise pass through them. A genuine education that goes beyond mere job training enriches lives and enables human progress.

But the cost of a college education is rapidly escalating; it is becoming increasingly unaffordable, leaving millions of students with massive debt that takes decades to pay off. This is a problem we need to address. But like so many other current problems, we aren’t addressing it, because our energies are being consumed by arguments over the nature of reality.

The problem of rapidly escalating college costs is not going to be solved by cutting the programs that help students pay those costs. As another friend of mine likes to say, “you can’t cure a disease unless you diagnose it properly.”

People who don’t understand the problems–or who see problems that don’t exist rather than the ones that do–can’t solve them. They are not the people who move America forward.