By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist
(YAMHILL, OR) - - 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.
