Bill Moyers & Company S1E5: Economic Malpractice and the Millennials [New]
Episode description:
Economic Malpractice and the Millennials
February 10, 2012There are 80-plus million Americans today who were born roughly between 1978 and 2000, and they’re getting hit hard by economic circumstances created over the past 30 years. The Millennials are the first generation of Americans who cannot count on doing better than their parents. Many Millennials are working longer hours, and have seen their earnings decrease. Meanwhile, their personal debt has increased over the last four years to the point where they face unrelenting payments on interest for money they borrowed for college or just to stay above water.
How have these realities affected their outlook? And how will it impact Barack Obama’s future? Millennials turned out for him by huge margins in 2008, but their enthusiasm has waned. On this week’s Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers talks with a Millennial who has dedicated herself to tackling these issues. At 31, Heather McGhee directs the Washington office of the research and advocacy group Demos, and is fighting for financial reforms and consumer protection.
“Our generation is the most diverse generation in American history… But we are also the generation that is experiencing record inequality — inequality in our economy and inequality in our democracy,” McGhee tells Moyers. “We need to become a very politically-engaged generation.”
In the same broadcast, Moyers talks with conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, who wrote “the bible” for the Reagan Revolution, worked on domestic policy for the Reagan White House, and served as a top treasury official under the first President Bush. Now he’s a heretic in the conservative circles where he once was a star.
Bartlett argues that right-wing tax policies — pushed in part by Grover Norquist and Tea Party activists — are destroying the country’s economic foundation. When he called George W. Bush out as “a pretend conservative” in his book Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Bartlett was fired from his position as a senior fellow at a conservative think tank. His new book is The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform — Why We Need It and What It Will Take.
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What Do You Think?
10 Responses to 'Bill Moyers & Company S1E5: Economic Malpractice and the Millennials'
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bystander.again [New]
Saturday, 11 Feb, 2012 at 8:34 am
I’m finding this march of Republicans needing rehabilitation (Stockman, Bartlett…) through Moyers’ show disturbing. Ostensibly, the premise of the show’s series is the Winner Take All Economy. But the seeds for our descent, while sown by Carter, were well watered and tended by these promoters of Reagan’s Supply Side economics. Maybe there’s a narrative arc that’s being built which will make all this make sense. Or, maybe that narrative arc is all about the rehabilitation of an array of actors. I find myself chafing at the way Stockman and Bartlett have been able to (1) side step their own contributions to our economic malaise, and (2) are promoting the kinds of solutions that take the neo-liberal/neoclassical economic ideology as given. Maybe Jamie Galbraith and William Black (for example) would do the same thing. Dunno.
Moyers’ tell-it-like-it-is guests have been interesting, but I’m finding this tendency of the show to try and rehab “the right” off-putting. I value these Republicans who have been shunned by the right for their break from the reactionary ideology of the current GOP, but that doesn’t mean they were practicing sound economics before that break. If David Frum is Moyers’ next guest, I’m giving up on the show altogether.
bystander.again [New]
Saturday, 11 Feb, 2012 at 9:45 am
A cranky addendum:
A tweet from John McQuaid to Jay Rosen re: Komen’s handling of their PR crisis.
Maybe that’s what Moyers is trying to rehabilitate; a decorous George HW Bush Republicanism. I wish him luck with that.
Emocrat [New]
Saturday, 11 Feb, 2012 at 10:41 am
Spot on, bystander.
I couldn’t watch the entire Bartlett interview, mostly for its insipid display of ignorance on Bartlett’s part. Apparently, he has a friend describing for him the state of affairs. That’s fortunate for him, since he apparently has no clue. My question then, is why Moyers feels the need to have such ignoramuses on his show to flog books that offer the reader nothing of value.
Perhaps Moyers is trying to rehabilitate some mythical notion of Republican “values.” Perhaps he’s trying to get books like Bartlett’s onto “liberal” shelves in a silly effort to engender some kind of “common ground.” I can’t tell.
I’m not sure it matters either.
bystander.again [New]
Saturday, 11 Feb, 2012 at 11:10 am
Well, in an effort to take the other side of my argument, Firedog Lake recently did a book Salon for Bartlett’s book which Jamie Galbraith moderated. Bartlett is promoting a VAT. Essentially, the discussion can be captured in this exchange:
I think I’ve captured that fairly.
Maybe the problem is that the Old Guard Republican side can articulate reforms that would fit within the existing ideological constraints. The left leaning liberal side doesn’t share that vision, but can’t articulate one of its own.
[It always makes me anxious to work without a preview function, but maybe I just don't see one because of NoScript]
ETA: Ah! No Preview but there is Edit.
Emocrat [New]
Saturday, 11 Feb, 2012 at 9:43 pm
That exchange shows Bartlett’s consistency, if nothing else.
I wouldn’t say the leftish side can’t articulate its own vision. Galbraith and others have articulated a great deal. The Vision Thing problem I think lies in the attitude of the conservadroids to cling to their pseudo-scientific position in the face of an uncooperative reality, whereas the heterodox folks don’t feel the need to go there. There’s a million ways to make policy that will have desirable outcomes.
But conservatives don’t believe that. They think the universe revolves around their “rules”, like laws of physics, and as such can’t be convinced of much of anything that doesn’t conform to their worldview.
That makes rational discourse extremely difficult. Add in a wholly politicized media that is largely ignorant of economics generally and the discussion is rigged along rather pathetic lines. Hence the appearance of a lack of articulation.
bystander.again [New]
Monday, 13 Feb, 2012 at 8:40 am
Maybe I need a different working hypothesis altogether to figure out what Moyers is doing. In other words, it could be time for me to just sit down and STFU.
Item A: Jay Rosen recently offered a Theory of the Republican Party:
Item B: Moyers is interviewing Old Guard Republicans. You’d think I was born in 1970 imagining Stockman and Bartlett as old guard rather than Nelson Rockefeller. But, for the sake of argument, at least Stockman and Bartlett aren’t Paul Ryan.
Item C: Krugman writes:
My error could be that I imagined myself as Moyers’ audience. But, maybe I’m not Moyers’ intended audience at all. If I loosely fit these pieces together – without tightening any screws – I imagine Moyers trying to appeal to a very different audience which doesn’t include me at all.
Which leads me to a couple of tentative questions.
* Does Moyers imagine that our political recovery will require us to transition back through a Republican framework of a more nearby era?
* Does Moyers rule out any punctuated transitions to a different trajectory than the one we seem to be on?
If, Yes and Yes, then the narrative arc of Moyers and Company – in as much as it has been revealed – makes more sense to me.
Emocrat [New]
Monday, 13 Feb, 2012 at 11:00 am
Well, don’t STFU, because these are all good questions worthy of some thought.
I tend to think you’re right about the audience. PBS viewers tend to be older, more establishmentarian folks of some education. I have no doubt he’s serving as some sort of confessional for certain people. But his other guests are also pointing out the nature of social problems to people who almost certainly have little or no understanding of them.
My own impression of Moyers is that he’s trying to save his notion of Liberal Democracy with his call to “let us reason… together.” I certainly can’t fault him for that, even if it does seem a tad anachronistic at this point. I’m also sure he has to tread lightly, because of all the conservatives on the board of PBS. If he were to start pointing out the fundamental nihilism in our political system, he might find his show cancelled with all speed.
Watching Obama’s re-election efforts and his various audiences’ reactions, I tend to think the nihilistic rot extends well into both parties… just not as completely with Democrats. But given enough time and a few hundred million dollars more worth of propaganda, who knows?
Now given Moyers own background, it rather seems to me he would be very good at deconstructing our nihilist politics. Perhaps that’s where he’s headed. I dunno. But I would pay good money to see it…
bystander.again [New]
Tuesday, 14 Feb, 2012 at 8:28 am
Fair point about the structure of PBS and its traditional audience.
Thanks for the opportunity to kick it around and think it through, Emocrat. It’s really had me scratching my head.
Mark [New]
Monday, 13 Feb, 2012 at 10:06 pm
No script might mess it up, but there is a preview. Scroll down and you’ll see the preview as you type.
bystander.again [New]
Tuesday, 14 Feb, 2012 at 8:33 am
Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I finally caught on to the Preview function. As in, Wait! I don’t remember pushing the Post Comment button. How’d it get there. Duh.
Any of you guys want to help Salon fix the technical disaster their IT made out of the comments there? You’ve done a really spectacular job with this one. It’s the other side of Sweet and Sophisticated. What a pleasure to use.