Knowledge of Spending

Following up on the recent Pew poll of Americans' knowledge, Christopher Ingraham writes at The Washington Post:

Pew asked respondents which program the government spent the most money on: Social Security, transportation, foreign aid, or interest on the national debt. Here's how they responded:

The most popular answer was foreign aid at 33 percent, followed by interest on the debt, at 26 percent. Twenty percent named Social Security, and an additional 4 percent named transportation. For comparison, here's how much money we *actually* spend on those things:

Social Security is the largest item in the list by far, at $773 billion in spending in fiscal year 2012. That's roughly 17 times the annual spending on foreign aid, 8 times the amount spent on transportation, and 3.5 times the amount spent on net interest on the debt.

Responses to this question show how Americans' understanding of their world is deeply influenced by their political leanings and preconceived notions. Foreign aid is consistently rated as the least popular spending category by Americans, even though it accounts for roughly 1 percent of the federal budget. Several years of hysterics surrounding the debt and deficit have also clearly convinced people that debt spending takes up a larger share of the budget than it actually does.

Congress: Economic and Educational Background

At Brookings, Edward P. Rodrigue and Richard V. Reeves write that members of Congress are different from the rest of us.

The House is much wealthier than the rest of the country and wealthier than past Congresses. In the 112th Congress as a whole, most members are millionaires, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The freshman House members in the 112th Congress had a median net worth of $807,013; last year, the median American was worth $44,900.

...

The freshmen members of the 112th Congress were college-age around 1980. Of those who attended college, 6.5% did so at a two-year institution, compared to 28% of the same cohort of the general population. Half the freshman members with college degrees went to state schools (50%), compared to three out of four (76%) Americans of the same cohort. And while almost one in ten (9%) of freshman House members attended an Ivy League college, fewer than 2% of the general population did.

The educational backgrounds of House members suggest that they’re not only richer than the average American as adults, but come from more affluent families, too. This gap is stubbornly persistent, at least judging from our benchmarks.

The Middle Class Is Poorer

Unemployment is going down and GDP is going up, so why are the Democrats struggling in the polls?  Matt O'Brien explains at The Washington Post:

Part of this mystery isn't one at all: the economy simply isn't as healthy as the headline numbers suggest. Unemployment has fallen, in part, because so many people have given up looking for work rather than finding it, and there are still millions of part-timers who want full-time jobs.

But then there are deeper factors at work. The economy has gotten bigger, but much of that growth hasn't reached the middle class. Indeed, the top 1 percent grabbed 95 percent of all the gains during the recovery's first three years. And that's not even the most depressing part. Even adjusted for household size, real median incomes haven't increased at all since 1999. That's right: the middle class hasn't gotten a raise in 15 years.

But one of the biggest, and least appreciated reasons Democrats might be struggling, is that the middle class is poorer, too. Median net worth is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1989. Even worse, it's kept falling during the recovery.

Yes, even after the economy started to grow again, and the stock market started to boom, and housing prices began to bounce back, the median net worth of the average American household continued to decline.

Senate Polarization

At The Washington Post, Philip Bump illustrates polarization in the Senate by looking at National Journal scores:

Compare the 103rd Congress, in 1993, with today's. That purple zone in the 103rd Congress was where Republican and Democratic ideologies mixed, the left edge marked the most conservative Democrat and the right edge the most liberal Republican. There's no purple zone anymore.

 

Presidential Decision-Making

At PowerLine, Steve Hayward writes that President Reagan actively encouraged disagreement among aides and officials as a way of fostering deliberation.

In a 1983 interview with USA Today Reagan dilated the point:

“I understand that in the past, Cabinets, for example—each person had his own turf and no one else in the Cabinet would talk about a decision affecting the turf of that one Cabinet member. I don’t do business that way. Ours is more like a board of directors. I want all the input, because there are very few issues that don’t lap over into other areas. . . The only thing different from a board of directors is that I don’t take a vote. I know that I have to make the decision.”

Of course, our simpleminded media portrayed the divisions within the Reagan White House as merely representing a split between the “ideologues” and “pragmatists,” without ever stopping to ponder how this contradicted their other favorite dismissal of Reagan that he was chiefly a creature of his staff. (How could that be, if his staff was so bitterly divided?)

Which brings me to Ryan Lizza’s story two years ago in The New Yorker about Obama’s very hierarchical decision-making process. People have started saying the Obama has “checked out” of his own presidency. I’m not sure he ever really checked in to begin with. Looking back now at Lizza’s piece we could already see that Obama had become the president that Reagan’s critics wrongly said he was:

President Bush preferred oral briefings; Obama likes his advice in writing. He marks up the decision memos and briefing materials with notes and questions in his neat cursive handwriting. In the morning, each document is returned to his staff secretary. She dates and stamps it—“Back from the OVAL”—and often e-mails an index of the President’s handwritten notes to the relevant senior staff and their assistants. . .

If the document is a decision memo, its author usually includes options for Obama to check at the end. The formatting is simple, but the decisions are not. As Obama told the Times, early in his first term, Presidents are rarely called on to make the easy choices. “Somebody noted to me that by the time something reaches my desk, that means it’s really hard,” he said. “Because if it were easy, somebody else would have made the decision and somebody else would have solved it.”

Knowledge in Fall 2014

Pew reports on its latest News IQ quiz.

The survey finds that a large majority (73%) is able to correctly identify the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour (from a list of other amounts ranging from $5.25 to $12.50).

In addition, amid ongoing U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic militants in the Middle East, 67% can identify Syria as one of the countries in which the militant group known as ISIS currently controls territory (from a list that included Pakistan, Kuwait and Egypt). And 60% know that Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union; the other choices were Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Scandinavia.

Other questions prove more challenging. About half (49%) know that the term “Common Core” refers to school curriculum standards. Relatively few choose the other options, which include “the military’s code of conduct,” “abdominal exercises” and “a newly developed microprocessor,” but 37% volunteer that they don’t know the answer.

As the death toll from the Ebola crisis rises, 46% are able to identify Liberia from among four African countries as the one that has experienced a major outbreak of the disease. The survey was conducted before a man who had recently arrived in the U.S. from Liberia was diagnosed with Ebola. When it comes to the domestic economy, even fewer (33%) know the unemployment rate is currently closest to 6%; many estimate it higher – 45% say either it is 9% or 12%.

And, as in past News IQ quizzes, questions requiring name recall prove difficult. Just 38% could identify Benjamin Netanyahu as the current prime minister of Israel, while even fewer (24%) named Janet Yellen as the current chair of the Federal Reserve Board (17% say it is Alan Greenspan, who stepped down as Fed chair in 2006).

On nine of the 12 questions included in the survey, only about half or fewer get the answer correct. The average number of correct answers given is five. The news quiz survey was conducted September 25-28 among 1,002 adults. (Full question wording.)

Hollywood, Education Reform, and a State Election

In our textbook, we mention the political role of the entertainment media, the politics of education reform, and the significance of state elections.  This item, from The San Francisco Chronicle, touches on all three:

Hollywood isn’t shy about putting its star status and cash behind big-deal political candidates.

But candidates running for the wonky state superintendent of public instruction job doesn’t usually draw A-list interest.

Until now.

Marshall Tuck, who is running against incumbent Tom Torlakson, has released a video featuring Joel McHale (“Community”); Adam Scott (“Parks and Recreation”); Dax Shepard (“Parenthood”); and Kristen Bell (“House of Lies”

The ad features Tuck at a kitchen table with McHale, Shepard and Bell, who are grilling him about public education in California. They ultimately throw their support behind Tuck, with Scott joining them between bites of pizza.

John Hrabe writes at CalNewsroom.com:

Election Day is still a month away, but Marshall Tuck’s campaign for State Superintendent of Public Instruction has already delivered the best ad of the 2014 cycle.

With the perfect blend of facts and humor, “Tuck Gets New Consultants” explains why the education reformer and charter school executive is qualified to oversee California’s public school system. In the ad, actors Joel McHale, Dax Shepard, Kristen Bell and Adam Scott grill Tuck about his background and California’s under-performing schools, which rank 45th in math and reading.

There’s so much to love about this ad: It’s funny. It uses celebrities in a constructive way. It educates the public about California’s failing education system. It informs voters about Tuck’s background. It corrects the misconception that he’s the private school candidate. And it includes a dig on the San Francisco Chronicle.

“You’ve been endorsed by The San Francisco Chronicle. Who gives a (BLEEP)?” Shepard says.