DEMOCRACY'S TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
A Calm, Sane Conversation
A First Rough Draft of History podcast with BBC News Presenter emeritus Robin Lustig about this guy and the former guy who MAGA Republicans still think is the guy and who a New York jury thinks is GUILTY!
Robin Lustig and I cover a lot of ground in the podcast but one point went by too quickly: the disconnect in America between the statistical performance of the economy and the way voters think of the economy.
GDP is up and employment figures by all measures have not been this good since I was a kid—a very, very long time ago. Headline inflation is coming down. So everyone should be happy, right? But perceptions of the economy by many voters is that it is poor. This is a phenomenon perplexing Democratic operatives.
I think I may have found an explanation a few months ago, while researching something else entirely (what was on in the West End theatre in September 1970, if you want to know) It was in reports of a speech given in Tokyo by John Kenneth Galbraith in the Times. Galbraith noted that GNP (as it was then generally called) was not the best statistical measure of an economy:
“GNP growth coincided to a disconcerting degree with large military expenditures”
He adds, the test of a society’s achievement is not
“… the annual increase in output of a society but how well the society addresses itself to the tasks which improves the lives of its members.”
He then addresses growing inequality and ways to deal with it. Remember this is 1970, when the veneer of the post-war boom still lent a gloss to economic life in the US, at least. Galbraith was already thinking about how those left behind economically, whose experience was not reflected in the statistical measure of GDP, might act out their economic resentment in the political arena.
It is a remarkable speech by a remarkable man. Unfortunately, I cannot link to it as it is not online. I found it on a microfiche at the British Library.
The other thing Robin and I went past too quickly was that the problems in Anglo-American democracy may have less to do with politics than the polity making democratic decisions. But that’s a theme I know I will come back to in the months ahead, hopefully with Robin Lustig from time to time. We seem to have fans.
The podcast with Robin Lustig is the 200th edition of FRDH, First Rough Draft of History, since I launched it in September 2016. Along with this newsletter, started in the wake of Hamas’s attack, my work is always available for free but to sustain it I need your help. I have a combined readership/listenership of more than 10,000 but only around 120 or so people across both platforms make any kind of contribution to help me keep going. Please take out a paid subscription or make a donation at Paypal.
Thank you Michael for reminding readers of Galbraith and his work. Do you suppose the speech by Galbraith might be located in other places? In his own papers perhaps in a library? It should probably be unearthed and reprinted, giving the historical context. I always appreciated his clarity about economics and how the system works. Maybe Robert Reich would know how to get a copy?