Professor Zero Discusses History

I could, but do not have the energy or time, to reproduce my spontaneous speech in class today but it was only the second time I have ever had students applaud and the first time was at the traditional time, at the end of class on the last day.

It was in response to certain comments. I went out of [neutral] character.

Student: Poverty could be eliminated if taxes on large businesses were eliminated. Poverty only exists because large businesses cannot afford to employ everyone.

Student: Discrimination could be eliminated if the teaching of history were eliminated. So long as THEY know what WE did to them, THEY will hate US and be racist [sic] against US. What happened THEN has no relation to what is happening now.

Professor Zero’s Spontaneous Speech [starting]: My mother’s house is built on her TV repairman’s ancestral land, and you say that what happened then has no relation to what is happening now. My family had Frederick Douglass on their plantation, and sent him to a slave-breaker, and I have a Ph.D. and his descendants do not, and you say that what happened then has no relation to what is happening now. . . .

Axé.

One thought on “Professor Zero Discusses History”

This is worthy of a whole post but there is only so much time. See http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/madrick

In particular:

“Some still argue, of course, that the 1981 income tax cuts under Reagan produced the Clinton boom. Given that they occurred fifteen years earlier, the claim is farfetched on the face of it. Reagan did not even cut taxes overall. While income taxes were cut, which conservative economists argue should have provided wonderful incentives for economic growth, payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare were markedly increased. Total taxes as a proportion of GDP were about the same in Reagan’s last year in office as they were in three of the four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

What Reagan did was undermine the impact of regulations, largely failing to enforce or implement many of them. Despite the lower income tax rate and persistent deregulation, productivity growth rates (adjusted for the ups and downs of the business cycle) did not improve under Reagan or his successor, George H.W. Bush. The productivity takeoff began in 1996, not long after the Clinton income tax increase. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, Republican House leader Dick Armey and others predicted that the tax increase would have the opposite effect.

How did the wealthiest nation in history come to believe for a generation, even when it was prosperous in the late 1990s, that it was not wealthy enough to provide what was needed in a more complex and global society?

In the past, when America required canals, railroads and highways, it financed them. When it needed better and broader education, it provided it. When it needed sewer and sanitation systems, and vaccines to prevent widespread disease, it created them. When unemployment became a fact of industrial life, it insured workers against it. When America was at its best, it did not look back and say, We never did this before so we can’t do it now. Ultimately it did what was necessary.

Part of the nation’s new agenda must be to rid itself of the deep-seated pessimism that it does not acknowledge. Promising a new “morning in America,” Reagan ironically ushered in the age of limits he accused Carter of creating. With Reagan, slow wage growth and high levels of unemployment became accepted. Today’s coming deep recession is a consequence.

America has no free and high-quality daycare or pre-K institutions to nourish and comfort two-worker families, and work and family are undermined as a consequence. College has become far more expensive, and attendance is bifurcated by class: the privileged go to the best colleges, and good jobs are increasingly available only to those who attend the best colleges. Transportation infrastructure has been notoriously neglected. It is decaying and has not been adequately modernized to meet energy-efficient standards or global competition. America has not responded to a new world of high energy costs and global warming. The country has a health-care system that is out of control, providing inadequate quality at very high prices–specializing in high-technology medicine at the expense of better overall care. And its financial system has run amok. Speculation and financial panic reminiscent of the harsh 1800s has been the result. Most important, average incomes have been flat or only slightly higher for a generation; for men, that has been true since the early 1970s. In the 2000s, compensation for men and women has fallen. As we enter a recession, wages are about to fall sharply.”

*The pessimism. That is what my parents have and what Reeducation had. The assault on common sense and integrity and identity and on the idea that things could improve and that one could do things.

*What I woke up with this morning: the realization that Reeducation was an attack on identity and being and integrity, it was this constant trial. Remembering that this feeling of being on trial is what characterized my childhood. And that it is what is like to be a professor, which is why I have always been bored by professordom.
HMMMM all of these things are interrelated and I do not know how, so I am just taking notes on them.

profacero says:

14/11/2008 at 06:02

This is worthy of a whole post but there is only so much time. See http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/madrick

In particular:

“Some still argue, of course, that the 1981 income tax cuts under Reagan produced the Clinton boom. Given that they occurred fifteen years earlier, the claim is farfetched on the face of it. Reagan did not even cut taxes overall. While income taxes were cut, which conservative economists argue should have provided wonderful incentives for economic growth, payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare were markedly increased. Total taxes as a proportion of GDP were about the same in Reagan’s last year in office as they were in three of the four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

What Reagan did was undermine the impact of regulations, largely failing to enforce or implement many of them. Despite the lower income tax rate and persistent deregulation, productivity growth rates (adjusted for the ups and downs of the business cycle) did not improve under Reagan or his successor, George H.W. Bush. The productivity takeoff began in 1996, not long after the Clinton income tax increase. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, Republican House leader Dick Armey and others predicted that the tax increase would have the opposite effect.

How did the wealthiest nation in history come to believe for a generation, even when it was prosperous in the late 1990s, that it was not wealthy enough to provide what was needed in a more complex and global society?

In the past, when America required canals, railroads and highways, it financed them. When it needed better and broader education, it provided it. When it needed sewer and sanitation systems, and vaccines to prevent widespread disease, it created them. When unemployment became a fact of industrial life, it insured workers against it. When America was at its best, it did not look back and say, We never did this before so we can’t do it now. Ultimately it did what was necessary.

Part of the nation’s new agenda must be to rid itself of the deep-seated pessimism that it does not acknowledge. Promising a new “morning in America,” Reagan ironically ushered in the age of limits he accused Carter of creating. With Reagan, slow wage growth and high levels of unemployment became accepted. Today’s coming deep recession is a consequence.

America has no free and high-quality daycare or pre-K institutions to nourish and comfort two-worker families, and work and family are undermined as a consequence. College has become far more expensive, and attendance is bifurcated by class: the privileged go to the best colleges, and good jobs are increasingly available only to those who attend the best colleges. Transportation infrastructure has been notoriously neglected. It is decaying and has not been adequately modernized to meet energy-efficient standards or global competition. America has not responded to a new world of high energy costs and global warming. The country has a health-care system that is out of control, providing inadequate quality at very high prices–specializing in high-technology medicine at the expense of better overall care. And its financial system has run amok. Speculation and financial panic reminiscent of the harsh 1800s has been the result. Most important, average incomes have been flat or only slightly higher for a generation; for men, that has been true since the early 1970s. In the 2000s, compensation for men and women has fallen. As we enter a recession, wages are about to fall sharply.”

*The pessimism. That is what my parents have and what Reeducation had. The assault on common sense and integrity and identity and on the idea that things could improve and that one could do things.

*What I woke up with this morning: the realization that Reeducation was an attack on identity and being and integrity, it was this constant trial. Remembering that this feeling of being on trial is what characterized my childhood. And that it is what is like to be a professor, which is why I have always been bored by professordom.
HMMMM all of these things are interrelated and I do not know how, so I am just taking notes on them.

coldhearted scientist وداد

Writing in Memory of Paulo Freire