Posted earlier today at
Economists for Dean
David Brooks in his op ed piece in the New York Times on Tuesday argues that compared to Europe, America has greater vitality due to its immigration policy. He then goes on to argue that many indicators have really improved in America in recent decades and that in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we ought to give thanks for that.
Rather than stick to this simple point in a nonpartisan way he insists on making points that are thinly disguised ways of rewriting history to blur all distinctions between the parties as if to wave away the fundamental differences in how the parties have viewed social policy.
As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980's as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation.
The drop in crime rates over the past decade is nothing short of a miracle. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates rose in the early 1970's and 1980's, then leveled off and now are dropping. Child poverty rates have declined since the welfare reform of the mid-1990's. The black poverty rate dropped "to the lowest rate ever recorded," according to a 2002 study by the National Urban League. The barren South Bronx neighborhood that Ronald Reagan visited in 1980 to illustrate urban blight is now a thriving area, with, inevitably, a Starbucks.
The U.S. economy has enjoyed two long booms in the past two decades, interrupted by two shallow recessions, and perhaps now we're at the start of a third boom. More nations have become democratic in the past two decades than at any other time in history.
In his forthcoming book, "The Progress Paradox," Gregg Easterbrook piles on the happy tidings. The air is cleaner. The water is cleaner and we are using less of it. Our homes have doubled in size in a generation and home ownership rates are at an all-time high. There are now fewer highway deaths in the U.S. than in 1970, even though the number of miles driven has shot up by 75 percent.
Obviously, huge problems remain. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests that despite all the ugliness of our politics, this is a well-governed nation. The trends of the past two decades stand as howling refutation of those antipolitical cynics who have become more scathing about government even as the results of our policies have been impressive. The evidence also rebukes those gloomy liberals who for two decades have been predicting that the center-right governance of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush would lead to disaster.
I'm sorry, with respect to these trends the 1990s expansion under Clinton was fundamentally different than the 1980s expansion under the Reagan-Bush governments. None of these gains have been made under the "right" part of our "center-right" government. While I certainly don't think Presidents should get all the credit or all the blame I thought I'd make a few charts and let them speak for themselves:
1. Crime data from the (Dept of Justice, National Crime Victimization Survey)
2. Home Ownership (Census)
3. Poverty (Census)