What We See Pales in Comparison to the Stories We Tell
Paul Krugman reminds us that, even with the sudden absence of campaign ads, post-election does not mean we have moved beyond the problem of branded information—sound bites designed to mislead us, to encourage us all to share ‘conventional wisdoms’ that are inconsistent with the best available data. 

In this column Krugman reminds us that those who most passionately argue against a return to the Clinton era tax rates on the most affluent and long for a return to the 1950’s when men were men, are wrong on at least two accounts.

First, our nostalgia for the 1950’s does not support the claim that taxing the affluent or attacking union labor leads to economic growth. 

“Above all, the success of the postwar American economy demonstrates that, contrary to today’s conservative orthodoxy, you can have prosperity without demeaning workers and coddling the rich….  [I]n the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what they pay today.”

And nostalgia for the 1950s overlooks other characteristics an era where median family incomes doubled (1947-1973):  unions were stronger than today and that meant corporate leadership negotiated in good faith more often, Paul Ryan types criticized the 1950s at the time in the same terms they criticize America today as they call for a return to the 1950s, and our corporate leadership—perhaps humbled by their experiences in WWII—lived much like the rest of us, sharing neighborhoods and schools, parks and shopping districts.

“Squeezed between high taxes and empowered workers, executives were relatively impoverished by the standards of either earlier or later generations. In 1955 Fortune magazine published an essay, “How top executives live,” which emphasized how modest their lifestyles had become compared with days of yore. The vast mansions, armies of servants, and huge yachts of the 1920s were no more; by 1955 the typical executive, Fortune claimed, lived in a smallish suburban house, relied on part-time help and skippered his own relatively small boat.

The data confirm Fortune’s impressions….  Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever — and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of “socialism.”

Does this mean we should return to the Clinton era tax rates?  No.  It does, however, mean that as we discuss our options we will all be better served if reject self-interested misinformation designed to confuse us and protect some options from serious scrutiny. 

Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing.  The older I get the better it was may feel good and support some incredibly powerful-feeling rants, but it is still more hat than cattle.  It makes it even more difficult to move forward to sort out the conflicts we face together.  Because it also makes it more difficult to understand where we have been and the progress we have made, as Krugman reminds us at the conclusion of his column.

“There are, let’s face it, some people in our political life who pine for the days when minorities and women knew their place, gays stayed firmly in the closet and congressmen asked, “Are you now or have you ever been?” The rest of us, however, are very glad those days are gone. We are, morally, a much better nation than we were. Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.

Along the way, however, we’ve forgotten something important — namely, that economic justice and economic growth aren’t incompatible. America in the 1950s made the rich pay their fair share; it gave workers the power to bargain for decent wages and benefits; yet contrary to right-wing propaganda then and now, it prospered. And we can do that again.”