fantapolitica
humorous look at Italian politics (bilingual)Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Stanley Greengerg wrote an interesting article on Democrats and the White Working Class I have a grumpy comment. Dear Stanley Greenberg I admire you and your work, but I have two objections to this post. 1) You write of what is implied by many people none of whom you name. "many observers [skip] Implicitly, they are asking whether Democrats can build a national majority [skip] while paying scant attention to the so-called lunch-pail economic and material issues that are traditionally of greatest concern to working-class whites." Who proposes paying such skant attention. Even if you didn't list and quote them to save space in the article, you should have a list of quotes on hand here to respond in comments. Who proposed that when and where ? I can't think of anyone. I think an editor should demand to see the list and the quotes even if there isn't space for them in the article. Consider the last word in the quoted passage. Lunch pail issues are traditionally of greatest concern to working-class non whites too. In fact, this is your main point, but I don't think you are arguing with anyone. Until you name someone, I will believe that the article mainly sets up and knocks down a straw man. 2. The set of people being discussed varies from paragraph to paragraph. Throughout only whites without college degrees are in it, but sometimes women and millenials are excluded too. There are lots of white millenials without college degrees. Again this is your main point. However, you are, I think, arguing with your former self (or, more exactly, the straw Stanley Greenberg who assumes nothing has changed since you accurately described public opinion in 1980). Sometimes the set is only of middle aged and elderly men. The white working class is then hawkish, uninterested in gender equality, against gay marriage, and suspicious of means tested government programs. Other times, the set is of people with low wage jobs who are disproportionally female and young (and of course non white). Then the majority's opinions on non lunch pail issues are the opposite (for one thing the means tested programs are lunch pail issues for lots of young and female workers). I think an editor should demand a formal definition of terms of art central to the article (here what does "white working class" mean) and enforce consistent use of the same definition for the same phrase.
I think that Ed Kilgore's views on welfare reform have changed dramatically over the past two years. His latest post on the topic is entitled "The Despised and Abandoned" In this post grinding old axes meets I told you so. There is no point in reading it. It mainly consists of a link to and quotations from an article by Tom Edsall which decries the extent to which US anti poverty spending has been redirected to the less poor of the poor. Kilgore presents no criticisms of Edsall and I think it is clear he doesn't approve of the shift. He identifies the part he doesn't like with the 1996 welfare reform bill
As Edsall notes, eligibility for cash assistance was time-limited and work-conditioned—and significantly reduced—by the famous 1996 welfare reform legislation. At the same time, serial expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child and Dependent Tax Credit have provided a real bonus to the working poor, particularly those who are married.Only when cutting to paste did I notice the extremely unfortunate wording "At the same time, serial ..." Obviously serial expansions don't occur at any one time. Not obviously, but in fact, none of them occured in 1996. By "At the same time" Kilgore clearly means during the past three decades. Click the link if you doubt my claim. You really should, because this post celebrates the fact that Kilgore is no longer defending "welfare reform" by conflating the expansion of the EITC and the 1996 reform bill which did not expand the EITC. I have repeatedly criticized Kilgore for claiming that the 1993 expansion of the EITC was part of welfare reform. On the topic, I quoted Brad DeLong who was there when the expansion was proposed by the Clinton administration.
Brad DeLong Apr 11 to me OUCH! That is painful... IIRC the EITC expansion came about to offset the adverse distributional impact of the BTU tax... Brad DeLongMy original objection to Kilgore's original post focussed exactly on the question of whether EITC expansion occured "at the same time" as the 1996 welfare reform bill. I think Kilgore has conceded the point in fact while oddly using the exact wrong language. I have often wondered why Kilgore's April 10 2012 made me so angry that I am still angry about it. I have noted (mostly but not only to myself) that my inability to just let it go is suboptimal and unhealthy. I just re-read only the snippets in my original denunciation of the post and I am enraged all over again. (here is a google of my less than a google posts denouncing that one post of his) Re-reading my April 11 2012 post, I note typographical errors but find I absolutely still believe everything I wrote. In particular, it is clear that Kilgore forgot the timing of the EITC expansion. Snipping the snippets, I find that he declares his topic to be the 1996 bill "Clinton-era welfare reform legislation. ... some progressives seem to be going along with the characterization in order to grind some old axes about the 1996 act." So the topic is the 1996 act (also describing in 2012 its effects on people in 2012 is grinding old axes). Then "TANF costs and caseloads were intended to go down in no small part because the other safety net programs, along with the extremely important earned income tax credit (EITC) were intended to pick up the slack." The "extremely important earned income tax credit" was not at all affecte by "the 1996 act." I had forgotten that Kilgore explicitly stated that the debate was about the 1996 act. Any case he could possibly have been making depended entirely on the assertion that "welfare reform" does not refer to the 1996 act alone but to both the 1993 and the 1996 acts. Now it is absolutely true that any mention of Kilgore's April 10 2012 post IS grinding old axes. I think he has faced the facts and learned from the data in the past 2 years. Any mention of years old errors of fact and judgment is both rude and bad strategy (would be divisive if anyone paid attention). So after 2 years 2 months and 10 days I have to finally really truly and permanently let it go.
