Sometimes a free issue of a magazine passes through the mail slot and it’s actually worth reading. That was the case when I was comped an issue of In These Times. I’m now a subscriber. One of its writers – Moe Tkacik – contributed an article on the necessity of dropping the antitrust hammer. It was music to my ears. An unpublished compliment was sent to her.
Moe Tkacik, “Restoring Antitrust in Each Other,” In These Times, January 2021, 12-3 (https://inthesetimes.com/article/amazon-gig-workers-labor-rights-antitrust-laws-break-up-uber).
Moe Tkacik hits the nail on the head. An accelerationism that tolerates further corporate consolidation as the path to nationalization both underestimates corporate power and undervalues the misery inflicted on workers in the meantime. Aggressive pursuit of antitrust can help blaze the trail for more unionizing, creation of worker cooperatives, and eventual restoration of the means of production to the commons.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch often prints syndicated columns by Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. I began to read some of his political opinions after the election from a commitment to peruse more right-leaning commentary to see how the election of Donald of Queens was being processed in those circles. His editorials seemed consistently dubious factually. When, in a single piece, he misleadingly asserted both that His Loathsomeness was making great strides with the Black electorate and that economic growth was substantially higher than under the Obama administration, a response was warranted. I took a dive into the data, my suspicions regarding Mr. Hanson’s factual claims were confirmed, and a letter was sent. The Richmond Times-Dispatch didn’t print the bit, but that didn’t alter a conviction I had formed. Mr. Hanson’s apparently willful, calculated distortions merited a rebuttal.
Victor Davis Hanson, “Trump Reaches Out for Black Voters,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19 October 2018, A11; “Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the African American Vote in 2020?” The Providence Journal, 20 October 2018 (www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20181020/my-turn-victor-davis-hanson-could-trump-win-20-percent-of-african-american-vote-in-2020). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The Providence Journal.
Victor Davis Hanson engages in statistical sleight of hand to buttress his claim of burgeoning African-American support for President Trump.
An approval rating of 20% among African Americans in “some” unnamed polls provides grist for Hanson’s mill. He presumably relies on an August NAACP survey placing Trump’s rating at 21%; however, he neglects contemporaneous polls with lower figures (Gallup, Reuters, and YouGov/Economist, all 13%; Quinnipiac, 9%).[1] He ignores 3% approval and 93% disapproval found by Washington Post-ABC News [2] and does not trouble himself with the NAACP poll’s 79% disapproval.[3] Sober reading of the evidence places African-American support for Democrats somewhere between 85 and 90%, a range Hanson identifies as “usual.” His phenomenon is illusory.
Hanson’s assessment of the economic conditions undergirding his notional surge in African-American affection for Trump is likewise problematic. He cites a decline in African-American youth unemployment to 19.3% – a welcome development – but chooses for his comparative benchmark the highest figure from President Obama’s tenure, 48.9% in 2010, its Great Recession zenith, while forgetting that it fell as low as 23.2% (November 2015). A rate surpassing this Obama-era low has occurred nine times under Trump and was 29% this past April [4]. Hanson also plays fast and loose with measures of the nation’s overall economic performance when he places growth at “nearly 4 percent per year.”[5] Two facts emerge: Economic indices can fluctuate widely across short periods and Trump’s main economic accomplishment has been his inability to derail economic improvement that began years before his election.
One must ponder the reasons for Hanson’s unscholarly reading of evidence. Is he enlisted in Trump’s post-truth cadres? Is he endeavoring to manufacture a self-fulfilling prophecy through statistical obfuscation? If the GOP believes its prospects with the African-American electorate are sunny, then why the efforts, especially in Georgia [6], to suppress votes?
[1] Ramsey Touchberry, “Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Among Black Americans Is Actually Too Good To Be True,” Newsweek 17 August 2018 (www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-black-americans-1078598 [accessed 19 October 2018]).
[2] Washington Post-ABC News Poll, Aug. 26-29, 2018, published 4 September 2018 (https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-aug-26-29-2018/2324/ [accessed 21 October 2018]).
[3] Paul Bedard, “Blacks’ Approval of Trump Reaches a High of 21% and NAACP Charges ‘Racism,’” The Washington Examiner, 7 August 2018 (www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/blacks-approval-of-trump-reaches-a-high-of-21-and-naacp-charges-racism [accessed 19 October 2018]).
[4] The rate under Trump was 24.8, 24.6, 28.7, and 26.5%, February-May 2017; 25.5%, November 2017; and 24.3, 27.2, and 2.78%, January-March 2018. “Unemployment Rate: 16 to 19 Years, Black or African American, Percent Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted,” Federal Reserve Economic Data, Economic Research Division, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000018 [accessed 19 October 2018]).
[5] GDP did rise 4.2% in the second quarter but was 2.8, 2.3, and 2.2 percent in the preceding three. Hanson’s math is fuzzy. By his reasoning, Obama could have trumpeted similar growth in 2014 from second and third quarter rates of 5.1 and 4.9% despite bookending figures of -1.0 and 1.9%. Bureau of Economic Analysis New Release, “Gross Domestic Product: Second Quarter 2018 (Third Estimate); Corporate Profit: Second Quarter 2018 (Revised Estimate,” 27 September 2018, p. 7 (www.bea.gov/system/files/2018-09/gdp2q18_3rd_3.pdf [accessed 19 October 2018]). “Quarterly Growth of the Real GDP in the United States from 2011 to 2018,” Statista (www.statista.com/statistics/188185/percent-chance-from-preceding-period-in-real-gdp-in-the-us/ [accessed 21 October 2018]).
[6] Astead W. Herndon, “Accusations of Voter Suppression as Some in Georgia Begin to Cast Their Ballots,” The New York Times, 20 October 2018, A15 (www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/politics/georgia-voter-suppression.html [accessed 21 October 2018]).
The drawing of specious analogies seems to have been key to A. Barton Hinkle’s editorializing modus operandi. In this case, it operates on multiple levels. He first equated hard science with economic “science” and insinuated that the laws of each were immutable and irresistible. He then suggested that denial of climate change by the right parallels the left’s belief that a higher minimum wage would not eliminate jobs. After a look into the research on the consequences of minimum-wage hikes, a reply was sent to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, it was printed, and I was “correspondent of the day” again. Huzzah, huzzah.
A. Barton Hinkle, “Is It Time to Start Dismissing ‘Economics Deniers’?” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12 June 2017, A13 (https://richmond.com/opinion/editorial/a-barton-hinkle-column-is-it-time-to-start-dismissing-economics-deniers/article_c03ebb06-7321-5477-96df-2822a131b3ba.html).
“It’s Too Early to Draw Conclusions,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 20 June 2017, A10 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/cod-july-20-2017-its-too-early-to-draw-conclusions/article_2f9c5a97-0b2c-547e-98c5-bd054702cb5a.html).
Once President Ramp Waddler was comfortably installed in his sinecure, he and the congressional GOP revved up the legislative engine to implement its policy for all seasons, the measure that resolves every problem, addresses every issue, redresses every grievance, and virtually ensures the coming of the millennium, except that it has never once delivered on its promise when assessed empirically. It was time to cut some taxes. And, if it’s time to cut some taxes, it’s time to release the Laffer. Yes, voodoo economist – Poppy Bush’s characterization, not mine – Arthur Laffer hit the cable news bricks. The man is incorrigible. His imperviousness to contrary data, indeed to reality, amazes.
Peter Baker synopsized the Laffer saga well. My letter is largely anti-supply-side boilerplate; however, it does contain a small critique. Mr. Baker, had he more room to run, might have examined what was happening in states that were inflicting the Laffer orthodoxy on their citizens. He might also have looked at the states embracing the heretical path and raising taxes. The GOP loves the “fifty laboratories of the states,” except when it doesn’t, and this is one of those times.
Peter Baker, “A ’70s Economic Theory Comes to Life Once More,” The New York Times, 26 April 2017, A19 (www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/politics/white-house-economic-policy-arthur-laffer.html).
The evergreenness of Arthur Laffer’s supply-side theory is a marvel. Given more space, Peter Baker’s lucid assessment of supply-side economics as federal tax policy might have included a few words concerning its efficacy in the putative laboratories of the states.
Kansas’s shuttered classrooms, truncated school years, neglected infrastructure, exploding deficits, and flirtation with fiscal insolvency since Governor Sam Brownback – with Mr. Laffer as his guru – sharply reduced taxes in 2012 are well known. Perhaps more instructive is the counter-example of California’s robust economy since Governor Jerry Brown hiked taxes, also in 2012, an increase borne mainly by the wealthiest, those who routinely benefit most from Lafferian tax schemes.
And yet, despite no instance in which the theory has fulfilled its promise of fiscal neutrality – a balancing of lost tax revenues by economic growth and a broadened tax base – the idea persists. Perhaps it is evergreen like a weed.
Messrs. Trump, Ryan, and McConnell should remember that GOP control of the government grants them full ownership, for good or ill, of a Laffer-style tax giveaway.
The third installment of the David Brooks trilogy contains a truly epic distancing of movement conservatism from the world as it exists. In his editorial, Mr. Brooks offers a nearly perfect, indeed textbook, description of the corrosive impact of the neoliberal consensus on the country’s economic and social fabric. Somehow the cause of this socioeconomic carnage evaded his notice. He did not even, as a rhetorical ploy, mention neoliberalism or supply-side economics as a potential explanation so that he could dismiss it. He in fact offers no explanation aside, perhaps, from a vague, indefinable, hard-to-put-one’s-arms-around degradation of the spirit. Puh-leeze.
David Brooks, “This Century is Broken,” The New York Times, 21 February 2017, A23 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/opinion/this-century-is-broken.html).
David Brooks identifies the “bubble” imprisoning American elites and finds the wellspring of popular outrage in a cruelly unfair economy; however, he ultimately engages in victim-blaming. Thomas Piketty, Lewis Lapham, Robert Reich, et al., have better accounted for the country’s troubling socioeconomic plight and corrosive politics.
Longue durée analysis reveals that grave maldistribution of income historically undercuts social mobility because of the proclivity for a fortune to “age well,” for a wealthy family to maintain its position generationally not necessarily from superior business acumen but by dint of affluent birth.
Furthermore, a shifting conception of ideal entrepreneurial behavior has exacerbated America’s bend toward plutocracy. Once expected to balance the interests of shareholder, employee, and community, the businessman now favors the shareholder über alles, a formula for short-term thinking and callous expedience. The sad result is an economy generating stupendous wealth without prosperity while consigning the many to insecurity.
Rather than languid resignation to a Hobbesian future, Mr. Brooks might consider whether reshaping of socioeconomic regulation offers hope for a fairer, more inclusive economy despite the election of Mr. Trump, the self-aggrandizing plutocrat’s avatar, Lewis Lapham’s “prosperous fool and braggart moth.”