Class warfare wrapped in flag (By PAUL KRUGMAN)

[norml]

COMMENTARY
Class warfare wrapped in flag

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Columnist



In case you haven’t noticed, modern American politics is marked by vicious partisanship, with the great bulk of the viciousness coming from the right. It’s clear that the Republican plan for the 2006 election is, once again, to question Democrats’ patriotism.

But do Republican leaders truly believe that they are serious about fighting terrorism, while Democrats aren’t? When the speaker of the House declares that “we in this Congress must show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United Flight 93,” is that really the way he sees himself? (Dennis Hastert, Man of Steel!) Of course not.

So what’s our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. That’s the lesson of a new book, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches, by Nolan McCarty of Princeton University; Keith Poole of the University of California-San Diego; and Howard Rosenthal of New York University.

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What the book shows, using a sophisticated analysis of congressional votes and other data, is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand. Politics during the Gilded Age, an era of huge income gaps, was a nasty business — as nasty as it is today. The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, corresponded to the high tide of America’s middle class. That high tide began receding in the late 1970s, as middle-class incomes grew slowly at best while incomes at the top soared; and as income gaps widened, a deep partisan divide re-emerged.

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Before the 1940s, the Republican Party relied financially on the support of a wealthy elite, and most Republican politicians firmly defended that elite’s privileges. But the rich became a lot poorer during and after World War II, while the middle class prospered. And many Republicans adapted to the new situation, accepting the legitimacy and desirability of institutions that helped limit economic inequality, such as a strongly progressive tax system. (The top rate during the Eisenhower years was 91 percent.)


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http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/14981892.htm

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1. Thank you! Someone finally puts it into words. Republicans condemn "class

warfare," yet almost everything they do is class warfare (for their class.)

[pnorman]

2. "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches,"

Here's the Amazon.com description:

The idea of America as politically polarized--that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states--has become a cliché. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization in recent decades has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes--most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal examine the relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces, characterizing it as a dance of give and take and back and forth causality.

Using NOMINATE (a quantitative procedure that, like interest group ratings, scores politicians on the basis of their roll call voting records) to measure polarization in Congress and public opinion, census data and Federal Election Commission finance records to measure polarization among the public, the authors find that polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and rose together dramatically from 1977 on; they trace a parallel rise in immigration beginning in the 1970s. They show that Republicans have moved right, away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. Immigration, meanwhile, has facilitated the move to the right: non-citizens, a larger share of the population and disproportionately poor, cannot vote; thus there is less political pressure from the bottom for redistribution than there is from the top against it. In "the choreography of American politics" inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.

It's priced a little high, so I'll wait till it comes out in paperback, but it looks to be a worthwhile read.

pnorman
On edit: I just checked, and saw that the book was from MIT Press. It probably won't ever come out in pasperback. (Sigh!). Well, $27 isn't all that high for a book that's likely to be referred to frequently.

[redqueen]

3. I know what book I'll be reading next!

And it's what everyone on my list over 16 is getting for a christmas/birthday present, too!

[Dudley_DUright]

4. I would be interested in what PK considers crucial elements

of a new New Deal.

And the center won’t return until we have a new New Deal and rebuild our middle class.

I would think that single payer universal health-care would have to be one component.