Review: Ours Was The Shining Future

 Ours Was The Shining Future is an indictment of the "Brahmin Left" approach to politics. It doesn't brand itself that way, touting itself as a history of the story of the American dream, but it reads to me that way, since it was published pretty recently.

The book explains that we had one shining moment in time in the US where government policy, economic trends, and immigration came together to create momentum for a highly progressive future. He points out that the New Deal was outrageously unlikely:

The historian Jefferson Cowie has pointed out that the New Deal depended on an outrageously unlikely series of events—a depression that gripped the country for more than three years before a reform-minded president took office; an unsustainable coalition of northern liberals and southern segregationists; a reactionary Supreme Court that yielded only after the president won a landslide reelection; and, finally, a world war that unified the country and solidified the creation of mass prosperity. (kindle loc 6424)

Between the Eisenhower administration and the 1980s, the conservatives engineered ways to undo the New Deal whenever it was possible, publishing papers, drawing up list of politicians who were amenable to persuasion, and creating "supply-side economics" as a smoke screen to provide cover for administrations to lower taxes on the wealthy.

Leonhardt points out the similarities between Britain and the USA, in contrast to countries like Japan and Germany, who had much more progressive government policies:

Britain, as a victor in World War II and an economic leviathan for more than two centuries prior, had accumulated one of history’s great collections of interest groups. These interest groups—financial traders, farmers, miners, and others—had caused sclerosis in Britain’s economy. Germany and Japan, by contrast, had been devastated during the war. “We wiped the institutional slate clean for them,” Olson said. As they rebuilt their economies and political systems, they could prioritize the national interest over special interests because their special interests were so weak. Germany and Japan did not rise in spite of their defeat. They rose in part because of it. The parallels between Britain and the United States, though not exact, are plain enough. This country’s postwar period of preeminence produced a set of interest groups that were strong enough to block change. Farmers lobbied for policies that kept food prices high, as Olson had witnessed while growing up in North Dakota. Large corporations and Wall Street firms pushed for tax breaks. Some labor unions negotiated contracts that maximized wages even at the expense of a company’s long-term success. (kindle loc 6138)

 Most of the book is a history of US government policy and the machinations that got to where we are today. The big thing I learned was about immigration:

When immigration is a salient issue, it serves to remind many working-class voters that they agree with conservative parties on questions of patriotism, nationhood, and security. When immigration fades as an issue, voters think less about these questions and more about a society’s economic divisions. Those class divisions, in turn, remind workers that they generally agree with progressive parties on economic policies, such as tax rates and government benefits. Alesina also did pioneering research showing how immigration can undermine support for a generous welfare state. Societies are more likely to sustain such a welfare state, and the high taxes to fund it, when people view their fellow citizens as similar to themselves. Large amounts of immigration make a society feel more turbulent and less like a tight-knit community, at least in the short term. The contemporary United States fits this pattern. About one of every six workers is an immigrant, up from fewer than one in twenty in 1970, and roughly one-quarter of the population is either an immigrant or the descendant of a recent immigrant. The modern immigration wave has transformed the country in myriad ways, and communalists are often uncomfortable with rapid change, even when it has no economic downsides. They value tradition and stability. This is another reason that high levels of immigration tend to make a country more conservative. (kindle 5765)

Leonhardt's argument is that communalists (most working class people) are very different from universalists, who make statements like: "When donating to philanthropy why should we weight the lives of Americans more highly than lives of people in other countries? For the same amount of money we can save more lives outside the USA."  Communalists are more likely to agree with statements like: "Charity begins at home." No prizes for guessing which group of people think are less likely to have college degrees or having working class incomes.

The net net is that recent Democratic policies on immigration, social issues, and others that help working class folks can't over-ride the important issue of immigration. Not only is this true in the USA, but it's also true in the rest of the world, explaining the rise of the popularity of right-wing parties all over the developed world:

“For those who believe in a multicultural America, this question can be uncomfortable to confront, because any system short of open borders invariably requires drawing distinctions that declare some people worthy of entry and others unworthy,” wrote Jia Lynn Yang, a journalist, in her history of immigration law. Because of this discomfort, the modern Democratic Party has struggled to articulate an immigration policy beyond what might be summarized as: More is better, and less is racist. The party has cast aside the legacies of Jordan, Randolph, and other progressives who made finer distinctions. In response, many working-class voters have decided that the Democratic Party does not share their values. Notably, some of these voters are not White and are themselves the descendants of recent immigrants. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the Republican Party made gains among Latino voters, especially in Texas and Florida, as well as Asian American voters. Polls showed that a sizable chunk of both Latino and Black voters who otherwise leaned toward the Democratic Party preferred the Republican position on illegal immigration. “Immigration,” says Haidt, the psychologist, “is one of the top few blind spots of the left, which causes right-wing parties to win all over the Western world.” (kindle loc 5754)

By the way, I will note that just being an immigrant by itself doesn't make you pro-immigrant. Most legal immigrants I've met also detest illegal immigrants, viewing them as grabbing spots from law-abiding folks who are better deserving. The book also debunks claims such as immigrants doing jobs local born Americans won't do.

Other topics the book talks about include globalization, lowering of trade barriers, and other policies that neo-liberals adopted from the conservatives. Most of them had a deleterious effect on working-class Americans, leading to resentment of the Democratic party once again.

 All in all, the book was worth reading, and brought up salient points as to why immigration will continue to be an incredibly difficult challenge for center-left parties all over the developed world to deal with. Recommended.