As the next election season rolls around the public doesn’t seem inspired, it seems like a good time to ask if an American politician today can be as popular as politicians in the old days. Perhaps the practice of borrowing explicitly via bonds or secretly via unfunded pension guarantees meant that older politicians have a stature that will never be matched. Let’s consider FDR and Social Security. He got credit for promising a comfortable old age to every American, a promise that was just as pleasant then as it is now. Yet the pain of taxation for Social Security was just 2 percent in the 1930s (1 percent each for employee and employee) whereas today it is over 12 percent (source). FDR was thus able to achieve far more than any present-day president. Similarly, the enormous expansion of government in the 1960s made JFK and Lyndon Johnson heroes to Big Government enthusiasts. Some adults at the time that Medicare and Medicaid were introduced could remember the days when the federal government’s total revenue was half that of U.S. Steel’s or smaller than the revenue of the railroads. Necessarily, such a government couldn’t have been doing too much for folks. The new Medicare program cost just 0.70 percent of a worker’s pay (compared to nearly 3 percent today).
Similarly at the state level, governments were delivering abundant services with employees whose total compensation included a huge component (defined benefit pension sometimes exceeding 100 percent of working salary and starting as young as 41 or 50) that would be paid for in the future. Voters and taxpayers thus literally got more than they paid for.
The U.S. lacked infrastructure in the 1930s. Politicians from the 1930s through the 1970s were able to deliver public works projects that delivered useful capital items, such as the Interstate highway system, and generated a huge number of jobs. At the same time, these could be funded with bonds that would be paid back in the future. A politician today can’t build the first highway linking two major cities or the first hydroelectric dam on a promising river; most everything that should be built in the U.S. has been built. Increased mechanization means that even if a new highway were to be built, fewer workers would be employed than in previous decades.
So if a politician seems to have less stature than FDR or Lyndon Johnson, for example, it may simply be that it is because the modern politician is forced to charge taxes on present-day voters that are paying for the very things that made FDR or Johnson great.
Phil,
I agree that most of the infrastructure basics have been built, however, when you write that “most everything that should be built in the U.S. has been built.” little red flags start flying in my mind.
It reminds me of the alleged statement from the patent office 100+ years ago that the patent office should be closed because everything that could be invented has been. source
It seems to me that there is great opportunity for the country to invest in
* a more efficient electrical infrastructure
* …better delivery mechanisms with smart feedback
* …better batteries with higher energy density for electric cars
* faster internet availability everywhere
* carbon sequestration (pulling it out of the atmosphere with artificial photosynthesis)
* High speed rail ??? Though this seems like a boondogle…
On top of the deferred compensation for pensions, I see a lot of evidence that other expenses are being deferred as well, most notably maintenance of the existing infrastructure. So it’s not clear to me that there is really money left over / available for all these “investments” …at least, not without further debt.
I haven’t read as much on FDR, and he definitely got too much credit for ending the depression. But LBJ was a master politician, one of the best ever. One of the top five or ten senators in the history of the Senate, for sure. He could have got a bill passed renaming Texas “Gay Paradise.” His reputation is based on JFK’s legacy, but really he should be remembered along with Sam Rayburn as one of the greatest Congressmen ever.
Scott: “better batteries” aren’t infrastructure (something useful that we can build for the whole society to use); that’s a scientific breakthrough that may or may not happen and that, after it does, can be purchased just as efficiently by individuals as by government. As far as electrical infrastructure goes, we have an adequate one for our current level of population, industry, and wealth. I am using electricity right now, in fact, and am not worried about the power failing. As the population grows maybe we’ll need more/better, but the gains to re-wiring the U.S. for electricity aren’t going to be anything like the returns were from wiring the U.S. initially (or that we might get by wiring up places Africa or India that currently don’t have adequate electricity).
High speed rail? I doubt that it makes sense as an investment. If it did, a private company would be doing it from Boston to DC. “Infrastructure” does not mean “stuff that generates a negative return on investment but the government does anyway”. Well, maybe it does. But it should mean “stuff that doesn’t make sense for private investors because of network effects or freeloading, but that generates a positive return on investment for society overall”.
An interesting infrastructure challenge is going to be maintaining legacy systems. Definition of “legacy system” is something that works & people depend on… whether 10 minutes old or 30 years old.
Mainframe became a dirty word in the late 1980s. They’re still here.
Client-server was going to replace mainframes… and didn’t & is legacy now.
Then the Internet supplanted client-server.
Now we’re staring at:
(1) retirement of the mainframe generation plus a lot of client-server people too.
(2) Cloud is now the answer to all problems.
(3) Mobile is going to attract the bright young Turks AND put huge demands on the legacy Internet, Client-server and mainframes.
Replacing these layers & layers & layers isn’t an option.
It’s going to be interesting.
The politicians seem more than willing to give it their all in an effort to spend & curry favor. It’s a good argument for a balanced budget amendment.
I think the problem has more to do with the campaign finance system than taxes or infrastructure. Campaigns in the 1930s (or even the 1960s) were nowhere near as expensive as they are today. Politicians then had to spend their time appealing to voters (which too often included buying votes). Politicians today have to spend their time raising ever more money, and appealing to special interest donors who expect return on their investments. They’ve found it’s easier to sell votes than to buy them.
The spiraling cost of campaigns selects for politicians who are successful at convincing donors that they’ll put donors first and provide the best return on investment. The country always comes second, and the ordinary voters who don’t send large checks or employ lobbyists are ignored (at best) or screwed (at worst). Even if they had time to listen to voters who don’t bear large checks, they wouldn’t need to. Campaigns cost millions of dollars because the approach now is to brainwash groups of voters with targeted advertising that appeals to the directly to limbic system. Voters no longer have the intelligence or patience to discuss anything substantive. Rush, Glen, and Fox News will give them whatever easily-digested slogans and sound bites they need to know. And that’s what defines an “informed” voter today.
In a “government of the donors, for the donors, by the donors,” there’s no room for integrity or “stature.” Any politician who had either would never be able to raise enough money to even get on the primary ballot. You won’t get FDRs or TRs under the current system. The best it can produce are the likes of Dubya, Slick Willie, Waffle Kerry, Maverick McCain, and Pseudo-Barry. The increasing numbers of people who avoid voting may well have the right idea. I can’t remember the last time I voted without first putting a clothespin over my nose.
What a shame that the Great Experiment begun by our well-intentioned Founding Fathers has ended with such a disappointing fizzle.
Ted, well said.
In terms of future infrastructure, here are some possibilities that would appropriate for the govrnment rather than private to tackle, due to long term ROI and universal benefit:
Nation-wide high speed Internet, including satellites, much like the military has already built and enjoys. Like GPS, this may be a matter of opening up and improving an existing non-public system.
Harmonization of health care bill processing to avoid the current enormous overheads.
Resetting the Green debate as a matter of individual health, and national security (less dependency on foreign oil). On a local scale, bring back the Victory Garden.
Bring some fundamental improvements to public education.
These are all problems that provide good leadership, policy and regulatory opportunities. Alas, i’m a cynic like Ted and am not hopeful we’ll see these real changes.
David: All good ideas, but I don’t think that they have the potential political benefit that was available to earlier politicians. Going from “no school” to “a school” is much more dramatic than an improvement that goes on inside the school. I’ve been a tireless advocate for a universal wireless Internet, free for low-bandwidth uses (e.g., trickling traffic data to cars), but the idea doesn’t seem to excite many others and certainly not in the way that damming the Colorado River or building a highway from Los Angeles to San Diego did.
You may not worry about power failing, but I do. I live in NYC and apart from the 2003 blackout, that seemed to affect everyone from Florida to the Great Lakes, we get some sort of black out every other year thanks to some combination of old infrastructure and Con-Ed malfeasance. Subways stopped working, office towers have gone on back up generators and old folks died from lack of ac. I’ve had 3 hr trips from Uptown to midtown via bus + walking (when the bus crawled to 0.5 mi/hr by Central Park) during the last black out a couple years ago. Now I moved to Queens and am doubly worried since it’s in a special ring of hell of its own when it comes to electricity. Last time a couple hundred thousand residents were without electricity for days before anyone knew or Con-Ed even mentioned a problem.
There’s tons to do to improve US energy starting with efficiency, we’re nowhere near other developed countries in that. Whether a politician can be as popular as earlier ones is not so clear to me for all the reasons you mention many of our goals are not as sexy. Though I suspect it wasn’t obvious to everyone in San Francisco why they needed a highway to Teaneck, New Jersey when they were building the interstate: after all you could fly and you could take a steamer through Panama.
Finally, most people back then saw only a few politicians, usually once a day at dinner, they were not peeking at Drudge every 15 minutes, etc. That might have helped keeping them popular.
I’m not sure we need any political leadership at this point to continue to make progress at using less oil. Nissan can’t ramp up production fast enough to meet the demand for $32k Leafs for at least the next year or two, and I’m baffled that Mitsubishi thinks that there’s value in undercutting Nissan’s price when in the short term they could probably just compete on how fast they can get $32k cars into the hands of drivers after an order is placed.
(The more interesting question is whether we can get to the point where wind farms with large battery arrays can be cheaper than coal or natural gas. The automakers driving up volumes on battery production may help, but I’m not sure they’ll help enough.)
For those who want to focus on the stability of energy prices, there is also the question of whether OPEC will at some point become scared that any instability they allow in oil prices will lead to more demand for battery cars that will stop using their oil.
Android’s continued advance may bring low bandwidth wireless Internet to the masses over the next few years. IIRC, Virgin Mobile is already offering a $150 Android phone with $25/month service that includes some data and some voice. A large fraction of the American population is willing to pay that kind of money for telecommunications.
Joel: The Virgin $25/month deal does not enable the same applications that a universal free wireless network would, e.g., nearly all products coming with a built-in Internet connection. Americans can afford to pay $25/month for a phone, but how many can afford to pay $25/month for each car, appliance, etc.
The only politician that will be popular in the future will be a limited-term dictator who promises to rule absolutely for e.g. 1 year term, no further terms allowed. He will force reductions on all segments of government and finance. Historical support for this: Solon.
Was Solon actually popular? He’s well regarded by historians (ancient and modern) for bring badly-needed order to Athens during a particularly chaotic period. But did that make him popular with the populace? There seems to be a lack of documentary evidence to suggest that the Athenian citizenry embraced him enthusiastically at the time.
Ted, considering that Solon cut back on the rich people’s ability to charge high interest rates to the multitude of poorer people, it would be reasonable to assume a high level of popularity – there were many more people who took out loans than there were rich guys at the top making those loans. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon#Moral_reform for a quick overview.