OPINION
NICHOLAS
KRISTOF
Joe Biden Is Electrifying America Like F.D.R.
May 1, 2021
By Nicholas
Kristof
Opinion
Columnist
YAMHILL,
Ore. — The best argument for President Biden’s three-part proposal to invest
heavily in America and its people is an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s
explanation for the New Deal.
“In 1932
there was an awfully sick patient called the United States of America,”
Roosevelt said in 1943. “He was suffering from a grave internal disorder … and
they sent for a doctor.”
Paging Dr.
Joe Biden.
We should
be cleareyed about both the enormous strengths of the United States — its
technologies, its universities, its entrepreneurial spirit — and its central
weakness: For half a century, compared with other countries, we have underinvested
in our people.
In 1970,
the United States was a world leader in high school and college attendance,
enjoyed high life expectancy and had a solid middle class. This was achieved in
part because of Roosevelt.
The New
Deal was imperfect and left out too many African-Americans and Native
Americans, but it was still transformative.
Here in my
hometown, Yamhill, the New Deal was an engine of opportunity. A few farmers had
rigged generators on streams, but Roosevelt’s rural electrification brought
almost everyone onto the grid and output soared. Jobs programs preserved the
social fabric and built trails that I hike on every year. The G.I. Bill of
Rights gave local families a shot at education and homeownership.
Roosevelt’s
Public Works Administration provided $27,415 in 1935 (the equivalent of
$530,000 today) to help build a high school in Yamhill. That provided jobs for
90 people on the relief rolls, and it created the school that I attended and
that remains in use today.
In short,
the New Deal invested in the potential and productivity of my little town — and
of much of the nation. The returns were extraordinary.
These kinds
of investments in physical infrastructure (interstate highways) and human
capital (state universities and community colleges) continued under Democratic
and Republican presidents alike. They made America a stronger nation and a
better one.
Yet
beginning in the 1970s, America took a wrong turn. We slowed new investments in
health and education and embraced a harsh narrative that people just need to
lift themselves up by their bootstraps. We gutted labor unions, embraced
inequality and shrugged as working-class America disintegrated. Average weekly
wages for America’s production workers were actually lower in December 2020
($860) than they had been, after adjusting for inflation, in December 1972
($902 in today’s money).
What does
that mean in human terms? I’ve written about how one-quarter of the people on
my old No. 6 school bus died of drugs, alcohol or suicide — “deaths of
despair.” That number needs to be updated: The toll has risen to about
one-third.
We allocated
large sums of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate my friends and their children.
Biden proposes something more humane and effective — investing in children,
families and infrastructure in ways that echo Roosevelt’s initiatives.
The most
important thread of Biden’s program is his plan to use child allowances to cut
America’s child poverty in half. Biden’s main misstep is that he would end the
program in 2025 instead of making it permanent; Congress should fix that.
The highest
return on investment in America today isn’t in private equity but in early
childhood initiatives for disadvantaged kids of all races. That includes home
visitations, lead reduction, pre-K and child care.
Roosevelt
started a day care program during World War II to make it easier for parents to
participate in the war economy. It was a huge success, looking after perhaps
half a million children, but it was allowed to lapse after the war ended.
Biden’s
proposal for day care would be a lifeline for young children who might be
neglected. Aside from the wartime model, we have another in the U.S.: The
military operates a high-quality on-base day care system, because that supports
service members in performing their jobs.
Then there
are Biden’s proposed investments in broadband; that’s today’s version of rural
electrification. Likewise, free community college would enable young people to
gain technical skills and earn more money, strengthening working-class
families.
Some
Americans worry about the cost of Biden’s program. That’s a fair concern. Yet
this is not an expense but an investment: Our ability to compete with China
will depend less on our military budget, our spy satellites or our intellectual
property protections than on our high school and college graduation rates. A
country cannot succeed when so many of its people are failing.
As many
Americans have criminal records as college degrees. A baby born in Washington,
D.C., has a shorter life expectancy (78 years) than a baby born in Beijing (82
years). Newborns in 10 counties in Mississippi have a shorter life expectancy
than newborns in Bangladesh. Rather than continue with Herbert Hoover-style
complacency, let’s acknowledge our “grave internal disorder” and summon a
doctor.
The
question today, as in the 1930s, is not whether we can afford to make ambitious
investments in our people. It’s whether we can afford not to.
The Times
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here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Nicholas
Kristof has been a columnist for The Times since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer
Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can sign
up for his free, twice-weekly email newsletter and follow him on Instagram. His
latest book is "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope." @NickKristof
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