America Ascendant

by Stanley B Greenberg

  EDUCATION

  The evidence is conclusive. Completing a four-year college degree has an immense positive impact on the prospect of remaining employed, wages and benefits, lifetime earnings, and much more. Consider hourly wages, the most basic material measure. In 2013, a graduate with a four-year college degree made 98 percent more an hour than someone without a degree—and the gap in favor of more education has been growing. The gap was 89 percent five years ago, 85 percent ten years earlier, and 64 percent at the outset of the 1980s, when the median income began to stagnate. In short, four-year-college graduates now earn twice as much as those without a degree, and that advantage is certain to grow.52

  David Leonhardt, “Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say,” New York Times, May 27, 2014. New York Times analysis of Economic Policy Institute data. Labels reflect group’s highest level of education. “Graduates of 4-year college,” for instance, exclude people with graduate degrees.

  We know that education has continual material consequences. In June 2014, the United States reached a milestone when the country finally returned to the employment level it had before the financial crisis and the Great Recession. The unemployment rate fell that month to 3.2 percent among graduates with at least a four-year college degree and to 5.5 percent among those with some college education; by contrast, in that same month, it moved up to 6.5 percent for high school graduates and to 9.1 percent for those who never graduated from high school.53

  Getting a four-year degree profoundly improves prospects for social mobility. If you are a child born to a household in the lowest quintile of income earners, completing four years of college gives you a 26 percent chance of ultimately ending up in the top 40 percent of income earners and a 54 percent chance of making it into the middle quintile. But if you do not complete a four-year degree, you have a 50 percent chance of never getting out of the bottom quintile. Breaking out requires a four-year degree, nothing less.54

  Among blacks, unemployment remains higher than for whites at every level of education—and that remains part of the unfinished business of the country. Yet the unemployment rate for blacks with a four-year degree or more is only 5.7 percent—about half that for blacks with some college or a high school degree and a fourth of the unemployment rate for those who did not finish high school. A four-year college education just matters.55

  So if we are to begin to address any of the great challenges and opportunities before America, we must dramatically improve our approach to education—expand early education, enhance student learning, allocate more resources and talent to poorer communities, broaden college preparation, and make education affordable.

  As we saw in chapter 6, America’s ascendant groups embrace the value of a college education. Majorities of racial minorities, women, and city dwellers agree that a bachelor’s degree is essential for success. Like everyone else, they worry about the obstacles to obtaining a degree, including whether they can afford it, but they believe it will pay off for them personally and will improve the economy because it raises the number of well-trained workers.

  Republicans stand apart from the rest of the American scene on this issue and are most likely to believe that a four-year college degree is not essential to economic security and mobility: a remarkable 55 percent majority believe it is not necessary for success in America, and only 40 percent say that it is necessary. The gap between Republican perceptions of the advantages of graduating from college and the economic reality may be as wide as the gap between them and climate scientists on the effects of human activity on climate change.56

  The Republican Party is a low-tax party that believes cutting taxes is the principal route to a strong economy, economic opportunity, and mobility. That is reflected almost literally in the Next America Poll reported by Ron Brownstein in the National Journal. He asked people which policies will do more “to improve the economy in your community”—“spending more money on education, including K through 12 schools and public colleges and universities” or “cutting taxes for individuals and businesses.” Republicans back cutting taxes by a landslide margin, 55 to 38 percent, with very similar results in the rural areas and among white working-class men.57

  They are very isolated. Three-quarters of Democrats and half of independents choose education spending over tax cuts. So do landslide majorities in the urban and suburban areas, two-thirds of racial minorities, and 60 percent of women and young people. The Republican embrace of tax cuts over all else is tone-deaf.

  The Republican posture, however, is all too real. Republican governors of the GOP-controlled states competed with each other to reduce education spending. Between 2008 and 2014, fourteen states cut per-pupil spending on education by more than 10 percent. All but one of those was controlled by Republicans. California cut education by so much because Republicans in the legislature blocked all tax increases, including those meant to fund education. Governor Jindal sought to cut state funding for the state’s universities by 40 percent and Scott Walker sought to cut it by 13 percent—a full $300 million over two years. Hardly in awe or respectful of the state’s elite research university, the governor pushed for the college system to better “meet the state’s work-force needs.” He was in a race with other GOP heartland governors, Fareed Zakaria writes, who had more disdain for a “liberal education.”58

  If you want to know whether Republicans bring the same approach to the budget and economy nationally, look at the latest Paul Ryan budget for 2015, “The Path to Prosperity.” It represents what Republicans would do if they could: cut $5.7 trillion in taxes for the wealthy and corporations and balance the budget over the next ten years. It raised no new taxes and closed no tax loopholes. It cut spending by $5.1 trillion, guided by Republican priorities. It slashed discretionary domestic spending by 24 percent over the coming decade, though it centered its cuts on investments in education, training, infrastructure, and science and technology research—the keys to sustained growth and global competitiveness. They took their biggest budget ax to education and training programs, which were cut by 47 percent. And while college costs were skyrocketing, the Ryan budget eliminated the mandatory funding for Pell grants and froze the maximum award for the next decade.59

  All but twelve Republicans in the House voted for these priorities when they passed the Ryan budget in the spring of 2014. And incidentally, the twelve dissenting Republicans thought the Ryan budget was too timid in cutting federal spending.

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  “Climate change is already affecting the American people in far-reaching ways,” the 2014 National Climate Assessment concluded. It describes “extreme weather events with links to climate change” such as “prolonged periods of heat, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts,” which “have become more frequent and/or intense.” Sea levels are rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and 2012 was the hottest year on record in the United States. These changes are “disrupting people’s lives and damaging some sectors of our economy.” Using sixteen climate models to analyze different emissions scenarios, they say the conclusion is “unambiguous”: a half century of warming “has been driven primarily by human activity”—namely, “the burning of coal, oil, and gas and clearing of forests.”60

  It is fair to say that climate change has emerged as one of the principal contradictions of America’s and the globe’s economic progress.

  What was exceptional about the report’s release was the media coverage. Nearly all outlets described its conclusions about climate change’s causes and effects as uncontested and not an issue to be debated and kicked about by politicians and their aligned experts.61

  What was not exceptional was the clarity of Republican leaders’ silence about or rejection of those conclusions. We now know from chapter 6 how central is the refusal to acknowledge the human role in climate change to base Republicans and that a growing majority of Republicans oppose acting to address the growing crisis, including three-quarters of Tea Party Republicans.62

&
nbsp; Almost immediately after the release of the National Climate Assessment, the Republicans in the House, with just three Republican dissenters, and against the wishes of the Defense Department, barred it from using any funds to implement the recommendations of that report. And for good measure, the House Republicans also instructed the Defense Department to ignore any recommendations of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “This amendment,” the sponsor of the amendment explained, “will ensure we maximize our military might without diverting funds for a politically motivated agenda.”63

  Of the 107 Republican candidates who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, only one mentioned climate change on his Web site and acknowledged that humans are to blame. The others did not mention the issue, questioned whether it is happening, or opposed addressing it. It is hard to remember that most Republicans supported the Clean Air Act and other landmark environmental laws. That included conservative U.S. Senators such as James Buckley and Alfonse D’Amato, even Mitch McConnell, though today’s Senate Republicans have largely embraced the new orthodoxy.64

  And after their victory in 2014, they used their supposed mandate to roll back and prevent further action to address climate change. A few weeks after the election, the lame-duck Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that blocked funding for the UN Green Climate Fund (in addition to eliminating a provision of the Dodd-Frank bank reform disliked by Wall Street). And a few weeks into the 114th Congress, all but two Republican senators in the new Republican-controlled Senate voted to pass a bill that would limit President Obama’s ability to negotiate at the UN Climate Conference in Paris in 2015 and quash his historic agreement with China on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.65

  The Republican Party’s presidential candidates have also gotten in line. Senator Marco Rubio virtually announced his run for the presidency with an unnuanced denial of the role of human activity on global climate. He expressed contempt for the pack of scientists who are rushing the country to ill-considered government activism that would endanger the economy. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” the senator from Florida declared. That statement of faith got him back into the conservative mainstream after being dislodged when he voted for immigration reform in the Senate. The interviewer followed up and asked whether the report’s conclusion that Florida is facing more damaging hurricanes affected his response. The reporter might also have asked whether the increased competition for water and damage to agriculture in the South led him to reconsider. No. Rubio spoke of climate change as an ahistorical given: “Climate is always evolving and natural disasters have always existed.” And probably most important, government activism is ineffective and counterproductive: “I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate”—though they “will destroy our economy.”66

  The other 2016 hopefuls joined Rubio on the issue. Jeb Bush stayed in the Republican mix by denying the scientific consensus: “It is not unanimous among scientists that it is disproportionately manmade.” Scott Walker signed the “no climate tax” pledge, and Bobby Jindal declared that we “must put energy prices and energy independence ahead of zealous adherence to left-wing environmental theory.” Rand Paul declined to challenge the GOP status quo on climate change, dismissing scientists as the arbiters of what is happening: he is “not sure anybody exactly knows why” the Earth is warming. Paul Ryan used his authority as chairman of the House Budget Committee to try to remove the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2 emissions and accused climate scientists of playing “statistical tricks to distort their findings and intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change.”

  Rick Santorum has posed a more fundamental challenge to the elite consensus on climate change. He believes that the scientific realm for understanding the world should not be given a higher standing than others and that science has become a new orthodoxy: “The apostles of this pseudo-religion believe that America and its people are the source of the Earth’s temperature. I do not.”67

  So imagine the consternation when the Vatican released the encyclical letter of Pope Francis “On Care for Our Common Home” that chides humanity for the “harm we have inflicted” on this earth. After consulting with “scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups,” Francis affirms the “very solid scientific consensus” on the warming of the climate—a process that was bound to win over doubting Republicans. That he placed the blame specifically on “a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels” meant Republicans would find the backbone to oppose him. While Pope Francis did not mention the Koch brothers he urged action that will disrupt “the worldwide energy system” that is endangering the poor most of all.

  Jeb Bush responded quickly, embracing Catholic candidate John F. Kennedy’s formulation of the separation of church and state when Kennedy said famously he believed in an America “where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source.” Bush declared in a like vein, “I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” though the governor, who kept Terry Schiavo on life support, was not asked any follow-up questions. The devout Catholic Rick Santorum just attacked the pope: “The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science,” and “when we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”

  Each candidate in his own way showed he knows today’s Republican base electorate. In the two critical early caucus and primary states of Iowa and South Carolina, voters said the position they found most unacceptable from a presidential candidate was the belief that “climate change is man-made and action should be taken to combat it.”68

  In some GOP-controlled states, a number of Republican elected leaders are challenging the new Common Core curriculum because it accepts the reality of evolution and the Earth’s warming, and now the Next Generation Science Standards are coming under fire for teaching that human activity has contributed to climate change. The standards “handle global warming as settled science,” one Wyoming state representative complained. “There’s all kind of social implications involved in that, that I don’t think would be good for Wyoming.” And Wyoming became the first state to reject the standards over climate change, even though the state’s committee of science educators had unanimously endorsed them. The legislature barred any spending to implement the standards, and the State Board of Education ordered the state committee of science educators to come up with new standards.69

  In Oklahoma, the legislature successfully repealed the Next Generation Science Standards because, as one state senator explained, they “heavily promote global warming alarmism and do not prepare students for work in STEM fields.” In South Carolina, educators watered down the standards for climate change and evolution, though it remains to be seen whether that will be enough for the Republican legislature and governor, who will have the final word.70

  The dynamics of the Republican Party will not allow it to play a serious role mobilizing the country and its resources to address this growing national and global challenge.

  WHITHER THE MIDDLE CLASS?

  In December 2011, President Obama traveled to Osawatomie, Kansas, the same small town where Teddy Roosevelt gave his 1910 “New Nationalism” speech. Obama gave his own major speech and finally elevated the challenges of the middle class to being “the defining issue of our time.”

  This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.

  We have to
build a nation “where we’re all better off” and where every citizen can believe “that hard work will pay off, that responsibility will be rewarded, and that our children will inherit a nation where those values live on.”71

  The conservative intellectuals’ reaction looked very much like their more recent response to Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality, which I will discuss later in this chapter. They knew that if the public agenda centers on the state of the middle class and inequality, the voters will not be listening to the Republican Party.

  First, they rushed to attack the president for waging “class warfare.” They accused him of “scare-mongering targeted at the middle class” and trumpeting “the overstated problems of the middle class.” They alleged this class warfare will have the “shameful effect of unnecessarily raising Americans’ economic anxiety levels,” and further, they point out, with crocodile tears, that this ferment will delay “a full recovery.”72

  The conservative analysts engage in asymmetric warfare to undermine the legitimacy of this concern for the middle class. They recalculate the components of middle-class income to include social insurance or tax credits to show that things are better than you think. That is just a bait and switch, of course, because they then propose to eliminate those very programs that they think increase dependence among the poor. At the end of the day, the conservatives say America has no idea which policies could raise middle incomes, though it is all too clear which would be effective.

  Conservative writers showed breathless excitement about the study authored by Richard V. Burkhauser, Jeff Larrimore, and Kosali I. Simon for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “A ‘Second Opinion’ on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class.” Their research inspired The Washington Post editorial page to run an op-ed piece by Ron Haskins under the headline “THE MYTH OF THE DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS.” Scott Winship wrote a piece in The New Republic headlined to get a response: “STOP FEELING SORRY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS! THEY’RE DOING JUST FINE.” Fox News headlined their online contribution, “SORRY, MR. BIDEN MOST MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS ARE BETTER OFF NOW THAN THEY WERE THIRTY YEARS AGO.”73