The defense of state presence in the economy returns to Tariff
POLICY
Back to the future
The defense presence in the economy returns to the agenda
SUMMARY
Posta in check in the 80 and 90, the policy of social welfare and the strong presence of state in the economy back to the debate on testing of Tony Judt, pointing social harm resulting from the reduction of the state in the U.S. and Europe, and book on Eisenhower, the Republican chairman who had contributed to the New Deal Democrat.
RAFAEL Cariello
EVIL OUTBREAK, the crisis of 2008 forced the U.S. government to make heavy investments in critical areas of the economy as the banking industry and the automotive industry. To many observers, attending to the back of an intervention model that seemed to overcome since the coming to power of Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The same debacle worsened over the following months, the record budget deficits of European countries, soon forced to cut spending and public benefits. Some assess that as a result of these decisions, the actual state of social welfare is at risk. The liberalizing reforms advocated by the Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had finally reached continental Europe.
As you can see, these tests are contradictory, and rushed. Seek to understand the present moment under the two major political-ideological wave of the 20th century, hegemonic.
The history of these two models of state intervention, the Social Democrats, between the 30s and 70s, and liberal, in the two final decades of the century, is narrated by British social scientist Tony Judt (1948-2010) in the last book which appeared in life, "Ill Fares the Land" (something like "evil consumes the earth," title from a verse of the poet Oliver Goldsmith).
From Grande Depression, and with more force since the Second World War, the Social Democrats won the support of politicians from the center-right to center-left in the U.S. and Europe. With the exception of radical groups on both ends of the ideological spectrum, everyone seemed to agree on the need for the state to do this in broad sectors of the economy, public transport to the steel industry, without compromising the representative democracy.
For decades, the model worked well, until he went into crisis in 70 years. In the two final decades of the 20th century, the watchword was to make room for the market. Reducing the state to a minimum, removing them not only productive activity but also, in many areas of its regulatory role.
State intervention came to be blamed for social and economic ills of every kind, reversing the anti-liberal logic that will emerge from the crisis of the 30s. Neither model "pure-blood" appears to raise more unrestricted and general sympathies, although they still are inclined at trial Judt, for an excessive anti-statism.
Anyway, what once seemed to belong to the realm of history inexorably, to a process of linear development, today is the sphere of technology and politics. What contradictory narratives of the post-crisis in the U.S. and Europe demonstrate is that the presence in the economy and the provision of social security is in dispute, subject to adjustments in degree but not of nature.
Tony Judt takes sides in this clash and builds on "Ill Fares the Land" [Penguin USA, 256 pp., $ 47], a sophisticated libel against the excesses of deregulation and the dismantling of the state, standing up for social democracy and welfare services.
Their strategy is to present each argument as a pragmatic and moderate synthesis of ideological confrontations of the past. "We can free ourselves from the belief of the mid-20th century never universal, but certainly widespread, that the state is possibly the best answer to any problem. Now we must rid ourselves of the notion opposite, "he says. It is that" the State is, always and by definition, the worst possible choice. "
" If we were not able to learn anything more from the 20th century, we should at least have understood that the more perfect response to [our problems], most were terrible and frightening consequences. "
" Ill Fares the Land "is intended to submit to a generation that did not live the traumas of the Great Depression and World War II the reasons that helped to make near-consensus to defend the strong State presence in various sectors the economy-and the creation of large public systems of education, health and welfare.
For Judt, leaders and bureaucrats Americans and Europeans soon realized, with the end of the war that was necessary at all costs avoid the unprecedented levels of social and economic insecurity faced since the 1929 crisis and subsequent years, the led to the greatest military conflict in history.
was this sense of fear that fueled the Nazis, says Judt. The winners of the war, on both sides of the Atlantic, understood what was needed to prevent its resurgence. It is in this context that the state of social welfare, societies middle class and systems of "insurance" against public misfortunes.
The same applies to the U.S., always mindful to provide bows to economic liberalism and free enterprise. Among the New Deal in the 30s, and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1963-69), which gave itself the task of ending poverty in the richest country in the planet, the strong State presence in strategic sectors and policies on promoting social equality showed the world the American way of life. " The typical middle-class American 50's and 60 poses in her suburban home to a portrait of the time.
The process was not restrained or even under the sole Republican government (1953-1961) to stop the nearly four decades of prominence of the Democratic Party in American politics.
"It was a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who authorized the massive interstate highway project, supervised by the federal government," argues historian, referring to the heavy investment in infrastructure that private enterprise would not have been able, alone, accomplish. "Despite all the rhetoric made obeisance to the competition and free markets, the U.S. economy depended largely on those years of protection from foreign competition, and standardization, regulation, subsidies, price adjustments and government guarantees. "
Reader conservative and suspicious of the arguments of a" socialist "Britain can check the correctness of description in" Going Home to Glory - A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969 "[Simon & Schuster, 336 pp., R $ 63], written by David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon Eisenhower. The unsuspecting authors, married to another, known grandchildren of former Republican presidents, make up a memory of retirement years of the general who led the Allies against fascism.
Between games of bridge and golf, the former president strives, according to the narrative of his heirs, to impose a moderate line the Republican Party in 60 years. "Except in matters moral and sciences, radical views are always wrong," argues Eisenhower.
lovers of American politics are at work in description of the general's commitment to his brother Milton Republican candidate to succeed Johnson. "Its main problem," however, "was the ambiguous political commitment," said the more conservative opponents. Milton, who had worked under the leadership of Roosevelt, "had contributed enthusiastically to the New Deal." For reasons more or less voluntary, also his brother had given continuity to that work. As a skilled lawyer
its cause, Tony Judt is able to recognize exaggerations on state intervention. Statist options mid-century have not always led to good results, he admits. The increasing control and "planning" of society are major examples: urban interventions authoritarian, impersonal housing, inefficient meddling in economic sectors that would be better served by private enterprise. It seems unbelievable today
the British state has taken charge, for decades, until the sale of coffee and sandwiches served at railway stations (not fair, however, blame the state bureaucracy for the poor quality of food in the UK).
But nothing compares, according to the historian, the distortions promoted since the 1980s by the government "enterprisers." Judt uses statistical studies to make a compliment of social equality, achieved mainly in countries with greater state intervention, tax burden and public spending.
higher income inequality, the greater the incidence of health problems and social pathologies. "There's a reason the fact that infant mortality rates, life expectancy, crime, prison population, mental illness, unemployment, obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, economic insecurity, anxiety and debt accumulation are the worst in the U.S. and UK than in continental Europe. "
This, according to Tony Judt, the evils that consume the earth. Before die at the height of their productivity, a leading academic in the 20th century left a legacy of a manifesto on the need to hold them, with the help of the state, so moderate and cautious. "incremental advances from unsatisfactory conditions are best we can expect, and probably all that we seek. "
What's contradictory narratives? post-crisis in the U.S. and Europe is shown that the presence in the economy and the provision of services? social security? is in dispute
How skillful lawyer of his cause, Tony Judt is able to recognize exaggerations on state intervention. Statist options mid-century have not always led to good results.
(Removed from the Folha de Sao Paulo, 12/12/2010, Illustrious)
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