The Fault, Dear Brooks, Was in Your Star

How to write a David Brooks column: (1) read a book; (2) regurgitate the author's findings; (3) draw a conclusion that is completely inconsistent with the author's findings. This week, the title of Brooks' column is "Tom Joad Gave Up." Tom Joad is the protagonist in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the latter part of which is set in California.

Brooks read some stuff that told him California state government was a lean, clean, operating machine up through the administration of Gov. Pat Brown, after which it became dysfunctional. Brooks found this set of facts so compelling, he accepted it. The problem for Our Miss Brooks was that he could not bring himself to name the person responsible for the California disaster. Consequently, he blamed the fictional Tom Joad for "giving up" on California.

The Constant Weader fills in the blank:

Aren't you clever! You name the last "progressive" governor, Pat Brown, then you identify a "period" when California politics started to go south. But you never mention the movie star who destroyed the state's government. Bravo, you did one heck of a job of dancing around the unnamed anti-hero -- a fellow called Ronald Reagan who was governor from 1967 to 1975.

Reagan ran against, & beat, the admirable progressive Pat Brown (Jerry's dad) on a platform of "sending the welfare bums back to work" (very classy) & "cleaning up the mess at Berkeley" (where my messy husband was teaching at the time).

As governor, Reagan was so confrontational he sent in the California Highway Patrol to quell student demonstrations & the National Guard to literally occupy Berkeley. He also effectively declared war on the state university itself when he used J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to cook up charges of "ultra-liberalism" against professors, members of the Board of Regents & Clark Kerr, the chancellor at Berkeley & president of the UC system. Since Reagan was simultaneously hoping the Republicans would nominate him for the presidency, evidently he wanted to show them he would be a good war President.

As for his fiscal conservatism, Reagan raised California taxes more than any other governor of any U.S. state EVER. His budget was more than twice that of Pat Brown's. It was that tax increase that led to the backlash that produced Prop 13, which hobbled the state forevermore by severely limiting property tax revenues.

"Tom Joad gave up"? A fictional character had nothing to do with the end of good governance in California.

It was a real actor who was to blame -- Gov. Ronald Reagan. Funny you didn't mention him.

"Structural Unemployment" Is an Excuse for Inaction

Paul Krugman: the claim that current high levels of U.S. unemployment is "structural" is a fake excuse for not pursuing real solutions.* In this column, Krugman offers no solutions (though he does elsewhere), so ...

... The Constant Weader proposes a solution! --

The problem, then, is that demand is low. Americans aren't buying widgets & washing machines because they can't afford them, or think they can't afford them.

There are a couple of ways to increase demand.

Plan A is the George Bush way: tell everybody to go shopping. The trouble is, too many people took his advice (true, they were shopping till they dropped way before Bush suggested it). Americans ran up huge debts, often ballooning under the weight of absurd interest rates. Especially when the recession hit, they (1) either found themselves out of work or underemployed & really could not afford to pay off their debts, or (2) they still had jobs but realized they had better start paying off their usurious debts rather than buying a new car on credit. People who are fortunate enough to be in Category 2 are doing the right thing for their families by beginning to live within their means, even if they are constricting the economy.

So, let's go to Plan B. I call it redistributing the wealth. (And you may label me a socialist if you like.) If we want more money in circulation, let's tax the you-know-what out of the super-rich. That's the best way the government can increase demand: put the tax dollars of the rich to work employing the not-rich (that would be 97% of us).

High taxes for the rich aren't a "punishment" as Republicans &, last week, Ben Stein, complained. They're a privilege & an honor -- a badge of recognition that a taxpayer has done mighty well for himself. Congratulations are in order. Send the payers of high taxes fancy certificates. Send super-high payers engraved plaques. Let's spring for fancy silver loving cups for billionaires like Bill Gates & Warren Buffett. They deserve it for the great contributions they'll be making to the American economy.

Or, there's Plan C, advocated by Herbert Hoover & the Fed guy from Minnesota -- Kocherlakota. Plan C, of course, will bring on a full-blown 1930s-style depression, wherein we become officially a third-rate country, a hopeless debtor nation, unable to sustain our own people or to keep up with more robust economies.

The correct answer is "B."

If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.
-- Winston Churchill

* On the One Hand. Krugman presents evidence there are no major labor shortages anywhere in the U.S., & there are no "major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, [no] major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, [and no] major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers." ...

... On the Other Hand. Rana Foroohar of Newsweek says just the opposite. She says that "three fields — construction, manufacturing (particularly in the automotive sector), and finance — have been hit much harder than others." She says the housing crisis has also cost the labor force flexibility: "...with so many homeowners underwater on their mortgages, their ability to relocate has diminished."

Matt Lauer at NBC News interviews President Obama about the state of education in the U.S.:

     ... AP story here.