When President Obama took office in
January 2009 the US was plunging downward into the worst recession
since World War II. By summer 2009, the US had begun a weak but real
recovery, which at last seems to be accelerating into an expansion that
more and more Americans can feel.
President
Obama gave the order that killed Osama bin Laden. He ended the war in
Iraq on acceptable terms. He is enforcing tightening sanctions against
Iran, inspiring hopes of a peaceful end to that country's nuclear
program.
Meanwhile,
his opponents in Congress have behaved about as badly and irresponsibly
as any opposition group since the congressional Democrats of the
mid-1970s forced the defeat of South Vietnam. And as for conservatives
in the country - well, I've posted my thoughts elsewhere on that particular plunge into paranoia and extremism.
Yet you don't have to believe the president a Marxist Muslim to
prefer a different direction for the country over the next four years.
Elections are about the future, not the past. President Obama got
important things right in his first time, but he's heading the wrong way
in his second: toward a future with a permanently larger state sector
and much more government control over private decision-making. The
United States needs to edge away from that future, and back toward a
more market-oriented trajectory.
I
don't want to see Obamacare repealed. I don't believe it will be, not
even if the Republicans retake the Senate, which I don't expect either.
Precisely since the universal healthcare law will remain in place, I
want to see it implemented by people who see cost control as the first
priority - who will grant maximum flexibility to the states - and who
will recognize how dangerous it is to finance Obamacare with taxes only
on the rich. A law of benefit to all should be paid for by all, for
otherwise beneficiaries lose all concern for costs.
I do want government out of the business of making investment
decisions. The way to meet the climate change challenge is by taxing
carbon emissions, not by government acting as venture capitalist to the
green-energy industry. Fiscal stimulus was necessary in 2009. It's not
an excuse for unending government subsidy to particular industries and
firms.
The country's most pressing economic problem IS the break-down of the
old middle-class economy. Wages are stagnating at the middle, class
lines are hardening, and more and more of the benefits of growth are
claimed by the very wealthiest. President Obama delivered his answer to
this problem in his important speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, a year ago:
more direct government employment (at higher wages), more government
contracting (to enforce higher wages), and more government aid to
college students (in hope that expanding the number of degree holders
will raise their average wage). Obama is following a path explored by the British Labor governments of 1997-2010, when the
majority
of the net new jobs created in northern and western England, Scotland,
and Wales were created in the public sector. That approach pushed
Britain into fiscal crisis, when the recession abruptly cut the flow of
funds from south-eastern England to pay everybody else's government
salary.
Nor do the president's ideas about
college education look any more sound. In the past, more subsidies for
college students invited colleges to raise tuition in tandem. Subsidies
invite more students to start college, but do not ensure that any more
finish: US college completion rates have not increased in 30 years.
Students who start college but do not finish actually seem to do worse in the job market than high-school graduates.
Because the president's economic ideas all involve more and costlier
government, his first post-election priority is fiscal: raise more
revenue from higher taxes. If the president has his way, the top
income-tax rate with surtaxes will jump past 40%, a rate not seen since
the middle 1980s. We don't need another round of income tax cuts, but if
new revenues are needed, they should be raised from taxes on
consumption and carbon, not work, saving, and investment.
Every election is a variation on the old vaudeville joke, "compared to what?"
Would Mitt Romney be an improvement over President Obama? I'd like to believe the David Brooks theory of
the Romney presidency: that Romney will pivot away from Tea Party
Republicanism as soon as he is elected. I don't see much evidence in
support of that theory, alas. George Romney, I'm told, liked to say, "As
you campaign, so shall you govern." Mitt Romney's campaign has been one
long appeasement of the most selfish and stupid elements of the
Republican coalition, and the instinct for appeasement will not
terminate with the counting of the votes next Tuesday.
But I also reject the Jonathan Chait theory that
Romney personally shares the beliefs of the selfish and stupid elements
of the coalition. Massachusetts Mitt - the Mitt who hurled himself into
the battle for universal health coverage within his state - also came
from someplace real. I believe they came from the place whence also came passages like this in Romney's book, No Apology, a book whose middle sections pretty obviously were written or dictated by the candidate himself.
Following
my election as governor of Massachusetts, and knowing that I now shared
responsibility for the education of hundreds of thousands of young
people, I studied the education literature to gain perspective. What I
found was a virtual quicksand of differing opinion in which it would be
easy to sink, but what was missing was an examination of data. Instead,
most writers sought to convince readers by appealing to their inherent
prejudices and by recounting anecdotes that supported their particular
policy preferences. … Anecdotes are illustrative, but data is compelling
– particularly if it is comprehensive and presented by an unbiased
source