The Orwellian Redefinition of the Past

The Right is in love with its myths. They see a rise of American during the 1980s driven by Reagan. The reality is quite different. Here is a post from Paul Krugman that demonstrates how a right wing economist -- who should know better -- rewrites the past:

Matthew Yglesias catches Eugene Fama making a strange assertion:

Beginning in the early 1980s, the developed world and some big players in the developing world experienced a period of extraordinary growth. It’s reasonable to argue that in facilitating the flow of world savings to productive uses around the world, financial markets and financial institutions played a big role in this growth.

The assertion about developed countries is, of course, entirely wrong. From Angus Maddison’s dataset:

And as Matt points out, the giant success story in the developing world was China, where the driver was the end of Communism — not modern finance. Actually, it’s even more absurd to give finance the credit than Matt realizes: China has not been experiencing net inflows of capital, partly because it has maintained capital controls, effectively insulating itself from the whole finance thing.

So why does Fama believe that something wonderful happened around 1980? Part of it, I suspect, is that in his milieu the politically correct thing is to pretend that nothing good happened until Reagan came along.

And this has a truly weird effect in the American context: the best quarter-century of growth America has ever experienced, the postwar generation — which happens to be the era during which many of the founders of neoconservatism came of age! — has gone down the memory hole. After all, it’s impossible that living standards would double under a regime of high marginal tax rates, generous minimum wages, and strong unions. So it just didn’t happen.

One way to win supporters is to lie to them. But how do you keep them as supporters when they learn the truth? I guess Eugene Fama is counting on an American public that gets more ignorant over time. What a bizarre way to build a political position.

What I can't believe is that it appears that the US voting public has no memory of the past. Not even the immediate past. See Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey makes me wonder. Did these people realize that it was right wing Republican idea -- those of "the only good government is no government", "deregulation", and catering to the desires of Wall Street -- that set the US up for the financial crisis in Sept 2008. But apparently people have forgotten a major past event in just one year. It is shocking that they would "forget" the pain and suffering caused by the Republican party and go out and vote them back in. I'm amazed.