“A glance out the window shows blue sky,” Gregg Easterbrook writes in the New York Times (5/12/16). (Graphic: Matt Chase)
“When Did Optimism Become Uncool?” wonders a New York Times Sunday Review piece (5/12/16) by Gregg Easterbrook. “The country is, on the whole, in the best shape it’s ever been in,” Easterbrook writes. “So what explains all the bad vibes?”
It would be easier to be optimistic if the case for optimism didn’t involve so much manipulation and misrepresentation.
Take some of Easterbrook’s major points:
- “Job growth has been strong for five years, with unemployment now below where it was for most of the 1990s, a period some extol as the ‘good old days.’”
The broadest measure of employment is labor force participation—the number of people working or actively looking for work compared with the working-age population—which has been on a downward trend since the “good old days” of the 1990s. Back then, it fluctuated between 66 and 67 percent; it’s currently 62.8 percent.
Labor Force Participation Rate (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- “The American economy is No. 1 by a huge margin, larger than Nos. 2 and 3 (China and Japan) combined.”
Source: Knoema Data Atlas, based on IMF World Economic Outlook
This is based on nominal Gross Domestic Product, which expresses national output in terms of trade value, which is subject to the manipulation of currency exchange rates. When you look at GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, which looks at the actual value of goods and services and is generally considered a more accurate measure of standard of living, the US does not have the largest economy in the world—China does.
- “Living standards, longevity and education levels continue to rise.”
As Easterbrook tries to explain away later on, median household income has fallen more than $4,000 since 1999; it shows little signs of returning to the peak before the housing bubble burst, which itself was below the peak reached before the dot.com bubble burst.
As for longevity, Easterbrook is no doubt aware of the disturbing finding that life expectancy among middle-aged white Americans is actually dropping, due to increases in deaths from suicide, cirrhosis of the liver and opiate overdose. Perhaps he attributes such deaths to insufficient optimism.
The percentage of Americans with bachelor’s degrees is continuing to rise, due to legitimately good news about higher rates of college degrees for women. American men, however, are graduating from college at about the same rate they did 40 years ago. High-school graduation rates for both men and women plateaued at about the same time.
US median household income peaked in 1999. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
As I noted, Easterbrook tries to dismiss the generation-long decline in household income, probably the most basic reason for the pessimistic mood that puzzles him so:
Yes, inflation-adjusted middle-class household income peaked in 1998 and has dropped slightly since. But during the same period, federal income taxes on the middle class went down, while benefits went up. Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution has shown that when lower taxes and higher benefits are factored in, middle-class buying power has risen 36 percent in the current generation.
What is meant here by “higher benefits” is the mostly the fact that health insurance costs much more now than it did 20 years ago—an average family’s health insurance premium went from about $7,500 in 1996 to $16,000 in 2014 (both figures in 2014 dollars). Few people would point to rampant healthcare inflation as a reason for optimism.
Easterbrook likewise assures us that the loss of manufacturing jobs is nothing to worry about:
Is American manufacturing in free fall, as Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump assert? Figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show industrial output a tad below an all-time record level, while nearly double the output of the Reagan presidency, another supposed golden age. It’s just that advancing technology allows more manufacturing with fewer workers—a change unrelated to foreign competition.
Actually, as Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 5/7/16) has pointed out, manufacturing jobs held fairly steady at about 17.5 million from the late 1960s until 2000, whereupon they began to plunge precipitously, to the point where they’re now less than 12.5 million. This was not because technology suddenly began advancing faster in the 21st century, but because an over-valued dollar and changes in trade rules allowed for a dramatic rise in imports without a corresponding rise in exports. In any event, replacing “foreign competition” with “advancing technology” as a reason for manufacturing job loss is unlikely to boost optimism, as it’s people—not “industrial output”—that experience pessimism.
Source: CEPR, based on BLS data
Easterbrook is particularly upset about progressive pessimism. “In recent decades, progressives drank too deeply of instant-doomsday claims. If their predictions had come true…crop failures would be causing mass starvation.” According to the UN World Food Programme, malnutrition kills more than 3 million children a year. I guess that’s not mass enough for him.
Even when Easterbrook acknowledges problems, he uses them as an excuse to beat up progressives for insufficient optimism:
Climate change, inequality and racial tension are viewed not as the next round of problems to be solved, but as proof that the United States is horrible…. Optimists understand that where the nation has faults, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
It’s difficult to get to work, though, before the nation’s opinion makers have admitted the scope of the problem. Take climate change: The recent Paris Agreement was generally praised in US media as a landmark achievement in the effort to rein in greenhouse emissions. Yet as Bill McKibben (New York Times, 12/13/15) has noted, even if most nations stick to their commitments under the deal—an assumption that requires some, well, optimism—the result would be a temperature rise of more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit, an increase that would have catastrophic consequences. Should the reaction to that fact be “Things aren’t so bad”?
As for “racial tension,” after hundreds of years of systematic oppression, African-Americans can be forgiven by not getting overly optimistic about Easterbrook’s declaration that now is finally the time to “roll up our sleeves” and do something about it.
More than 20 years ago, FAIR’s magazine Extra! (7–8/95) published a critique of Easterbrook’s “Limbaughesque science.” His work has not improved with age.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. He can be followed on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Wikipedia says that Easterbrook is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and at the New Republic.
What would anyone expect from either magazine, even the new slightly less jingoistic New Republic?
Of course the NY Times can’t be bothered to make the link to these publications and only mentions an Easterbrook book.
Of course he’s inventing and mis-directing, and lying about life expectancy; it’s the NY Times’ weakest “serious” section.
Would that be a “looking glass” … ?
I’m a great admirer of FAIR’s work and especially the output of Jim Naureckas, but I’m severely disappointed by this article, which uses the well-known trick of misleading readers by presenting graph data with a baseline other than zero. It will be apparent that, for example, if the Labor Force Participation Rate graph had a baseline of zero percent instead of 62 percent, the drop in the rate since 1990 would appear immeasurably less impressive. Perhaps the excuse would be that with the correct graph, detail would be lost–but the whole idea of using graphical representation is to enhance, not reduce, understanding. At the very least one would expect a qualification in the text. This article is not what one would expect of FAIR.
It’s not the case that graphs should always start with a baseline of zero. If you illustrated climate change with a graph that started at zero degrees Celsius (or Kelvin?), the significant temperature rise since 1940 would be invisible.
A self-evident fact. So, Johnson is trying to destroy the place and whether his intent is good or criminal, the misery is just as painful.
Consideration of temperature readings as an argument against zero baselines is a red herring. There is no real zero point for temperatures–assignment of “zero” to a particular temperature is arbitrary, depending on the scale. Stated differently, there is no such thing as an absence of temperature. This is manifestly untrue for such attributes as income and labor participation.
There IS a real zero point for temperatures. It’s called absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin. It would be beyond stupid to use 0 Kelvin as the baseline of a climate change graph, since it would end up like almost a straight line.
DARKNESS — CALLING ENLIGHTENMENT EVIL
A 5% reduction in our work force since the glory years of our Empire, tens of thousands of working age people out of work when they would love to be at work, you thank that is unimpressive and should be shown graphically as something insignificant?
NEW LAW
As the corporate rich own/fund all of mainstream media, as this is a worldwide corruption so satanic and evil that it just destroyed the democratically elected government of Brazil, just enslaved 55 million Brazil voters to the will of a most corrupt rich nobility, it is hereby degreed that all of the rich owners of media that said the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a good thing, every penny of their wealth shall be nationalized and passed on down to the impoverished lower-half of society.
easterbrook is still a douchebag wanker
wtf is the nyt doing publishing this jagoff ???
shows how NON-liberal the nyt is (and has not been and will not be)
stunning that this assklown gets work at all !!!!
Everything about Easterbrook is infuriating. The New York Times has become a grotesque read. I still have an account for arts coverage but even then I’d better off reading the AV Club or something. Privileged middle-aged journalists using what’s left of their waning influence to elect ineffective moderate candidates. I am deeply discouraged by their election coverage this year with the knowledge that so many of these seemingly liberal but wealthy people I work for in the media industry think similarly to the regressive politics currently being espoused by the NY Times.
Nice math from the GOP clown !!
Listening to Obama’s final State of the Union earlier this year, I was actually moved to tears on the realization that we actually DO have so much to be optimistic about. We just need to make sure we elect leaders that retain the legacy of progressivism. The 2016 campaign slogan should be ‘We can do better!’
Then you fell for the typical SOTU propaganda that is nothing more than excellent speech-writing.
“A man who strays from the path of understanding
comes to rest in the company of the dead.”
Easterbrook is a serial fabricator and distorter — it’s almost not worth the effort to take on his bs. But since you decided to do so, shame on you Jim – the situation is much worse than you lay out.
The huge jump in health care costs does indeed account for the apparent increase in overall compensation. But not only are premiums much higher than they were twenty years ago — those premiums buy much less actual health care now. Just since the passage of the ACA alone, deductibles have increased at 6 times the rate of workers’ compensation.
I still don’t see this as any reason to be pessimistic. Sure, things could be better. Sure, we have problems to solve. But sitting around writing articles that point fingers and bash the writing of others won’t solve any of those problems. The original aricle may have had some facts and statistics that only show a portion of the true story – but the message was to be optimistic and work to solve the world’s problems.
Reading this piece, I lose hope. It’s good to give people the facts, but it’s bad to leave them with the conclusion that we’re powerless to do anything about it.
When people have no hope, what’s the point in even trying?
Hope is what keeps people going. Optimism is a source of hope, and it’s what will keep us fighting to end global poverty, and to create more jobs, and to help grow the middle class.
So do your research, understand the issues, and how far they reach. An uphill battle is not an unwinnable one.
The NY Times also promotes nuclear energy and all you have to do is scroll thru the headlines on ENENEWS to learn how dirty and dangerous nuclear energy really is.
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