Podcasts Are Changing Politics Now the Way that Talk Radio Changed Politics in the 1990s

I visited Reagan's Presidential Library about a year ago. I was so struck by the obvious: Reagan had mastered radio and TV before he entered politics. He'd been an radio announcer, then movie star, and then had a radio commentary program before running for office. He was an incredibly effective politician in large part because he had mastered mass media. (He won re-election with nearly 60% of the popular vote and with 98% of the electoral vote.)

He left office with early onset dementia and talk radio came in to fill the gap that this communicator had left. Reagan left office in 1989, the year that Rush Limbaugh's radio career took off.

What talk radio did for politics after Reagan's presidency, podcasts are now doing for politics in the years after Obama's presidency.

Radio fractures attention with lots of ads and artificial deadlines (news at the top of the hour, traffic reports every 15 minutes, etc.). To keep you tuned in, it has to provoke. To get callers, it has to create controversy.

By contrast, podcasts don't have to fit any time slot. The same podcast could be 26 minutes one week and 66 minutes the next, depending on the guest and conversation. No one calls in, so they can explore ideas without feeling the need to make them argumentative. People have time to explain nuance, explore causes, and talk about possibilities. Concise is nice but inadequate for some conversations. Conservatives on talk radio simply have to defend the past and that lends itself to concision; progressives on podcasts are trying to define a new future and that process lends itself to long digressions rather than quick quips. Some issues have taken a long time to develop, will probably take a long time to resolve, and might - just might - take more than 3 minutes to discuss. Oh, and some topics have more than two sides, more than two options for moving forward. Podcasts lend themselves to exploration and not just advocacy and I think they were a big influence on what happened in the 2018 election and what will happen in this year's election.

I enjoy Ezra Klein's podcasts. This conversation of his with Ta-Nehisi Coates is really timely and also a good example of what is possible in a longer conversation that isn't perpetually interrupted by ads and is more intent on manufacturing possibilities than dissent. You may enjoy it.

The Ezra Klein Show: Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful

Deficit Swing - How Deficits Have (and are projected to) Change Under Each President

Trump signed a budget that will increase the deficit to a trillion dollars.

The deficit will grow simply because the economy is growing. If the deficit were stable as a percentage of GDP, it would grow about $100 billion during Trump’s four-year term.

Using the average spending and tax levels since 1979, the deficit under Trump would grow from about $600 to $700 billion. But given his tax cut this year and spending increases in the next few, it will instead hit $1,017 billion (a trillion) in 2020, or about $300 billion higher than what it would be if the Republican budget just met average standards for fiscal responsibility. (Since 1979, spending has averaged 20.6% of GDP and taxes 17.4%.) And this during a projected boom time; if you aren’t going to lower the deficit when unemployment is under 4% and the stock market is at an all-time high, you aren’t going to lower the deficit.

Here’s a table showing how much the deficit swung during a president’s time in office. Reagan’s first year in office, he had a deficit equal to 2.5% of GDP. In George H. Bush’s first he had a deficit of 2.7% of GDP. So, during Reagan’s time the deficit swung negative by 0.2 percentage points of GDP, which you can see in the "Swing" column.

	Deficit (-) or Surplus (+) Swing
	Inherited	Passed on		Swing
Ronald Reagan	-2.5	-2.7		-0.2
George H. Bush	-2.7	-3.8		-1.1
Bill Clinton	-3.8	+1.2		+5.0
George W. Bush	+1.2	-9.8		-11.0
Barack Obama	-9.8	-3.5		+5.3
Donald Trump	-3.5	-4.9		-1.4

Trump's first year in office he inherited a deficit equal to 3.5% of GDP.

According to CBO projections, whoever is president in 2021 will inherit a deficit of 4.9% of GDP. And that assumes no recession, which could raise the deficit by hundreds of billions.

Since 1981, the deficit has worsened every time a Republican president was signing and vetoing bills and has improved every time a Democrat was. You know what they say: you campaign like a fiscal conservative and govern like you're trying to make friends with everyone at the bar. "Tax cuts on me! For everyone!"

Job Numbers in Historical Context

Here are some graphs and a couple of tables to compare this decade and administration with those of the last few decades.

This first graph assumes that the monthly average for job creation during these first 4 years and 5 months holds through the rest of the decade. You can see that this decade's numbers aren't much different from the 1990s.

However, if we adjust the raw numbers to percent of population (you might think that a population of 300 million would be able to - and need to - create more jobs than a population of 200 million), you can see that this decade is so-so.

Here is a graph showing the cumulative job creation numbers during the last four re-elected administrations.

The ranking of administrations through month 64 - the most recent month for which job numbers have been reported for the Obama administration - results in this ranking.

Assuming that the effect of a president's policies won't be felt until at one year in (if even then, given the myriad forces at work on the economy, including Congress's tendency to at turns exacerbate or mitigate the president's plans), this graph shows job creation without the first year.

The ranking without the inclusion of that first year (a particularly favorable change for Obama given that during his first six months in office the American economy hemorrhaged 3.4 million jobs), Obama and Reagan trade places on the ranking.

It does look as though - Great Recession aside - this decade and Obama's administration are shaping up to be fairly normal in comparison to past decades and administrations. 

The Deficit's Root Cause

The deficit is pretty simple. The federal government spends more than it collects in taxes.

It's worth asking why Americans feel entitled to both low taxes and high levels of government spending. Maybe the root problem is simply one of growth in incomes. Or rather, a lack of growth.

Between 1900 and 1999, wages grew from $4,200 to $33,700. That's a lot. Faster growth than at any time in history. Ever. This allowed for two things: households got a steady growth in take home pay even while paying more in taxes and getting more government programs like public education and social security.

Yet the phenomenal wage growth slowed late in the century. From 1900 to 1980, wages grew 2.2% a year.

In the 1980s, when Reagan's policies supposedly had such a positive impact on the economy, wage growth slowed to 1.8%.

In the 1990s, when Clinton's policies supposedly had such a positive impact on the economy, wage growth slowed further to just 1.6%.

In the first decade of the 21st century, it got worse. Wage growth dropped into negative range, to -.3%.

These might sound like small differences, but percentages have a way of quickly compounding. By 2009 wages were about $44,000. They would have been $62,000 had wages grown at the same rate in the 30 years after 1980 as they had in the 80 years before 1980. 

Slower growth means that wages are about $18,000 a year less. That's a difference of 40%.

What does this have to do with deficits? 

You could make the case that politicians have been giving tax cuts because the work place is no longer giving raises. American workers expect their take home to raise every year. For that to happen when wages don't go up, taxes must go down. 

One big reason for the polarization in politics is the sharp division on how to deal with lower incomes. The left wants to mitigate the pain of lower incomes with government spending; the right wants to do it by lowering taxes. 

As long as wages continue to stagnant or drop, this polarization - and the painful choices - will only get worse. 

It might be worth thinking about how to jump start income growth again. Any other solution will leave Americans feeling poorer for the simple reason that they are. 

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For more on wages in the 20th century, look at Donald M. Fisk, American Labor in the 20^th Century, http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar02p1.htm