Time and Time Again We See Progressive Laws

In the wake of a tempestuous national election, information technology is very clear to most observers that the U.S. body politic is in a state of some disarray. Our politics seem more than polarized than at any time in the by century or earlier, with many voters and political leaders (including Donald Trump and his supporters) refusing to fifty-fifty acknowledge the apparent election of Joe Biden to the presidency. Acrimony not simply over the COVID-19 pandemic but over economic and racial inequality have led many thousands of protestors into the streets in contempo months and to occasional clashes betwixt activists of the left and the (sometimes armed) right. Though the widespread fear of civil unrest after the elections has and so far proven unfounded, risks remain.

Just has America been at that place earlier, and come through it fine? At other points of U.S. history, have the conflicts associated with inequality and polarization not only been resolved, merely resulted in more cohesion and widely shared prosperity?

This is the thesis of a new book called The Upswing by Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett. They present prove that our electric current levels of economic and political polarization are non greatly different than they were in the 1890s, at the summit of the "Gilded Age."

Simply the Gilded Age was soon followed past the beginning of the Progressive Era, which many historians acquaintance with the ascendancy of Teddy Roosevelt to the presidency in 1901 (after President William McKinley was assassinated). This era of relatively egalitarian economic and political reform connected through the presidencies of William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson until the 1920s. And, with the coming of the Nifty Depression and the New Bargain in the 1930s, also every bit the civil rights legislation and War on Poverty in the 1960s, the egalitarian migrate in American politics continued.

Will history repeat itself? In other words, is another Progressive Era coming now?

The thesis of The Upswing

The statement put forward by Putnam and Garrett goes well beyond the historical observations in a higher place and builds on them in a number of of import means.

Beginning, they argue that the Gilded Historic period and our current era are similar amidst several dimensions – economic, political, social, and cultural. Putnam and Garrett present evidence that, like at present, the U.S. of the Gilded Historic period was characterized past dramatic increases in economical inequality, political polarization, a low level of social and communitarian cohesion, and a civilization that celebrated the nearly unfettered rights of the individual to whatever economic and political gains they could attain. Celebrations of the great wealth of the industrialists of the fourth dimension and a growing acceptance of "Social Darwinism" equally a governing philosophy were widespread.

Merely, second, Putnam and Garrett argue that much of this began to change with the beginning of the Progressive Era after 1900. For nearly seventy years, they bear witness an increment in economic equality (oftentimes referred to by economic historians equally "The Bully Compression"), political reforms that increased democratic participation, a rise in public participation in social institutions (including civic associations and trade unions) and a culture that became more than communitarian and less individualistic.

The mechanisms through which these changes occurred were varied. Rise economic equality was generated past the establishment of universal loftier school educational activity, the rising of trade union membership, financial market place reforms (including the cosmos of the Federal Reserve arrangement), and progressive taxes and public spending. Political reforms included the direct elections of U.Due south. senators and expanding suffrage for women and later African Americans. They too show a rise in bipartisan action in Congress and in political consensus in polling data. Social institutions in which participation rose included a range of civic organizations and merchandise unions. And cultural shifts reflecting a growing emphasis on family and customs during that time are found in everything from polling data to text analyses of journalism and other publications. The growth of equal rights for both women and African Americans (equally well as other minorities) are separately and similarly documented, with evidence that both groups made important strides over the entire 20^th century earlier the more dramatic changes of the 1960s.

Third, Putnam and Garrett show that, starting in the 1970s, these trends began to contrary themselves. They certificate rising economical inequality, rising political partisanship and polarization, declining participation in civic institutions and a general rise in emphasis on individual rights rather than social responsibility. They annotation at best some flattening and fifty-fifty reversal of economic progress for minorities (peculiarly African Americans), particularly associated with mass incarceration; such reversals are much less true for women, though their progress in labor force activity (and in obtaining crucial support for child care and paid family leave) take stalled.

Indeed, they show that the current era bears remarkable resemblance to the Gilded Age on all four dimensions. They characterize the pattern on all four dimensions of the past 120 years as reflecting an "I-we-I" cycle, and their evidence is compelling.

Of grade, the near important implication of this analysis is that the U.S. might well be on the cusp of another "upswing" in egalitarian economical policy, political consensus, communitarian activity and emphasis on the commonage adept. Putnam and Garrett highlight the forces that they believe drove the beginning of the Progressive Era (as well the ascendancy of Teddy Roosevelt to the White Firm), including the work of "muckraking" journalists (similar Ida Wells) and crusades by social reformers like Frances Perkins (who became Secretarial assistant of Labor in the New Deal era) and Jane Addams (of the "settlement house" movement for immigrants).

Putnam and Garrett contend that at least some of these reformist instincts are at present condign visible once again, specially among Millennials and the youth of Generation Z. Just every bit moderates of the Progressive era were goaded into activity by the growing numbers of socialists and populists then, the activism of the "Blackness Lives Matter" and ecology movements (and fifty-fifty some sympathy of the young for socialism) might prod more than moderate progressives today to find common cause with them and build a broader motion.

The Upswing gets a lot right

Putnam and Garrett have generated a very impressive assay of wide trends in the U.Southward. over a period of 120 years. The fact that economic, political, social and cultural patterns are so similar over this fourth dimension menstruation is both new and very striking. Not every blueprint looks exactly the same – more than rapid improvements in racial or gender equality, for example, characterize some periods (like the 1940s and 1960s) while more than economic "compression" is observed in the 1930s. All progress does not end in 1970, though many shifts begin to occur during that decade (especially in response to the turmoil of the 1960s) and accelerate under the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Putnam and Garrett are commendably cautious in attributing causality to any particular cistron in generating the swings they find. They point out, for instance, that more egalitarian economic and social changes seem to precede political reform and bipartisanship. They are also careful in analyzing exactly what led to the great "upswing" of progressive activity after 1900 and in drawing parallels to our current time.

Only there are differences between then and now

In that location are, of course, limits to the commonality of the broad patterns we see. For case, the Great Depression was the goad for the New Deal legislation that established the right of workers to bargain collectively, the get-go federal wage and hours regulation, and social insurance programs like Social Security.

World War Two besides generated a somewhat unique flow of social cohesion and common purpose later on the U.Due south. was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and as the national interest in defeating the Axis nations was reinforced by the widely perceived moral necessity of doing and so. It is unclear that anything like to those unifying events will occur once more – nor do we want them to.

Interestingly, the social cohesion the U.Due south. experienced after the nine/11 attacks in 2001 didn't even last until the arrival of the election season in 2002, when President Bush and a number of Republicans attacked Autonomous rivals as beingness weak on national defense and on securing the country against potential terrorist threats. The launching of the Iraq War in 2003, and the subsequent insurgency that American troops faced there, generated a strongly partisan counterattack by Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Of course, the collapse of the housing and financial markets soon led to the Great Recession, and a number of other forces (similar the bailouts of banks, a flood Chinese imports that eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs, rising immigration and even having an African-American president) created a right-fly populist backlash and the Trump presidency. And somewhat similar political developments in Europe and even Asia signal that broad anger over merchandise, immigration, and rising diversity are not unique to the U.S.

Around the industrial world, information technology is hard to see much sign yet of an "upswing" in support of economic or political reforms that would be more egalitarian and communitarian in nature (notwithstanding the results of the 2020 election in the U.S., which produced few clear wins for Democrats and progressives outside of the presidency).

A few more reasons for caution

In addition, I detect some other differences between the showtime of the Progressive Era and the i in which we currently live in the U.S. that lead me to be a bit more cautious in my optimism most an imminent rebound in economical egalitarianism and political bipartisanship right now.

In particular, these factors are:

• The current wedge between the attitudes of working-class whites and progressives (who are mostly highly educated whites and minorities more broadly), particularly over race; and
• The federal financial crunch that grows with almost each passing year.

The realignment of American politics since the 1960s has been quite dramatic. Large groups of Democrats – especially the South, white ethnics and working-class whites – left the political party and its progressive politics to support Republicans, and virtually recently the nativism of Donald Trump. They were replaced equally Democrats by highly-educated white progressives and growing minority populations, nearly of whom are concentrated geographically in large metro areas and especially the coasts of the U.South.

Indeed, the political chasm between these groups has grown wider in the Trump era. At the same time, the smaller towns and rural areas that constitute the backbone of Trump support have disproportionate political power, equally lightly populated states have large numbers of U.South. senators and electoral votes. Within states, partisan gerrymandering since 2010 has reinforced this ability.

I see piffling sign that the "red" states will take any interest in relinquishing the disproportionate ability they wield, or in joining political or economic forces with those in "blue" states. A number of analyses in recent years signal enormous gulfs in the outlooks of those in "blue" and "red" regions, with little sign of their abatement.[1]

And much (though surely not all) of this realignment can be attributed to one contentious issue: the function of race in American life. Indeed, Putnam and Garrett devote an important affiliate of their book to the growing egalitarianism over race through the 1960s and the development of a growing white "backlash" in the tardily 1960s and beyond that fueled Republican and conservative political success. Today, nativist reactions to immigration reflect some of the same views.

Putnam and Garrett attribute the backfire to white resentments over the loss of their "privilege" and the weakening of their relative economical power and condition. They correctly note white anger over the urban upheavals of the 1960s (which the authors consider to have been an understandable explosion of black anger and frustration after centuries of domination by whites), besides as policies like Affirmative Action (which they consider necessary to commencement the legacies of white racism and ongoing systemic disadvantages facing African Americans – and with which I concord). In that location is no doubt a good deal of truth in these characterizations.

But I also experience that Putnam and Garrett somewhat misunderstand and mischaracterize the white backlash that began in the late 1960s. Whether we agree or not, the white ethnic and working-class voters who abased the Democratic party in the 1970s and across had a range of motivations. They were angry over big increases in vehement law-breaking, what they perceived every bit "reverse bigotry" in Affirmative Activeness, and a set of income transfer policies (especially Assist to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC) that reduced piece of work among low-income women. To characterize these white and (often working and centre-grade voters) only as sore losers of "white privilege" is non accurate in my view – especially in light of the devastation of white working-grade communities that has been documented past Case and Deaton (2019), among others.

In light of this view, can anyone rebuild a coalition of racial minorities, progressives, and at to the lowest degree some members of the white working and centre classes?  Perhaps. I might argue that the "wedge" problems of offense and welfare are diminishing in salience with time. Thankfully, violent crime has declined greatly in the past 25 years (though there have been signs of recent increases); AFDC was eliminated and replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) in the 1990s, which reduced work disincentives (as well every bit cash support for the poor more generally). While spending on antipoverty programs has risen recently in the form of Medicaid, nutrient stamps, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, these programs show lilliputian evidence of discouraging employment as did AFDC.

It is also possible that the U.S. Supreme Court, with its new bourgeois bulk of six justices, will eliminate Affirmative Activity in the coming years, at to the lowest degree as we accept known it. As a supporter of Affirmative Activity, I would non at all welcome this development; as Cornel West famously said, "race matters." Just a winding downwards of Affirmative Action might reduce white resentment along i more dimension. It could perchance atomic number 82 to admissions practices in universities that place more emphasis on shared economic disadvantage than racial disadvantage, which more working- and middle-class whites could support.

Indeed, the Biden campaign of 2020 tried to develop an agenda that appeals to working-form whites as well as racial minorities – one that acknowledges ongoing and troubling racial disparities in all walks of life, while also trying to address the economic stagnation and deterioration suffered by working and middle-class Americans while the rich grow ever wealthier.

Whether they tin can successfully exercise and then, and whether this is the beginning of a new period of progressive economic science and politics, remain to be seen. But the likely agree on the U.S. Senate by Republicans (unless Democrats can win both Georgia senate races in the upcoming runoff elections), and the closeness of the results betwixt Trump and Biden, suggest that conservatives will have fiddling incentive to do things differently anytime presently.

And at that place is one more than major hurdle that could also limit the development of a new progressive majority: the discouraging financial situation in which the federal government finds itself.

The ratio of public debt to GDP in the U.Due south. has risen dramatically in the past two decades as a outcome of both growing spending and regressive tax cuts. The fiscal stimulus in response to the Cracking Recession and the pandemic-driven economic shutdown in 2020 have contributed to the debt, every bit has the revenue enhancement cut of 2017 and its earlier incarnations. (I am vastly more sympathetic to the former than the latter.)

And the ongoing gaps between projected expenditures, especially on retirement programs, and our projected revenues continue to grow. The "no tax pledge" that approximately 90 percent of Republican Firm members and Senators take signed (under pressure from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist) renders it incommunicable to address these imbalances in the near future in a bipartisan mode.

Of course, it is not impossible to fund progressive priorities while reducing our long-term debt; my Brookings colleague William Gale (2019), among other economists, has recently outlined how to do and then. Given the damage created by both the electric current economical slowdown and the long-term trends hurting the U.S. working and middle classes, I fully share the view that our almost immediate top priority must be improving equity and restoring widely shared economic growth (in an environmentally sound manner), rather than fiscal retrenchment.

But the inherent conflicts between trying to enact another (and "greener") New Deal on the 1 paw and addressing our long-term debt on the other remain daunting, especially given the anti-tax straitjacket imposed on itself by one of our two major political parties. Indeed, information technology is impossible to generate newly progressive policies without major and lasting increases in tax revenues, hopefully achieved in a progressive manner. Only, rightly or wrongly, the Republican party shows nearly zero interest correct now in whatsoever such policy shifts.

Absent a major political upheaval, and a painful reckoning of the Republican political party with both its Trumpian (and earlier) nativism and its economic regressivity, it is difficult for me to fully share the optimism of Putnam and Garrett. Still, nosotros should attempt; and their new book is highly enlightening and gives united states at to the lowest degree some hope for the hereafter as well.

[1] See, for example, Frank (2004), Vance (2016), and Hochschild (2016).

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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/is-another-progressive-era-coming/

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