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It doesn't take a pundit to know that American politics are screwed up beyond measure. Congress is stuck in gridlock, the economy is stalled, elections are decided by culture war attack ads, and politics itself is derided as a pursuit for lying hustlers. Everybody has a a scapegoat, but Mettler actually has some evidence backing her theory.
The key issue is not the government we see, but the government we don't, the vast tangle of tax breaks, public-private partnerships, and incentives that Mettler deems 'the submerged state'. The size of the submerged state is astounding, 8% of the GDP, or half the the size of the visible state (Medicare, social security, Medicaid, the military, servicing the debt, and the relatively minuscule discretionary funding that covers everything else the government does, from transportation to education to NASA and foreign aid).
Mettler deploys economic and social statistics to show that for all it's expense, the submerged state is a failure on nearly every level. Whatever your politics, there is something to dislike about the submerged state. It represents a transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy, when most Americans abstractly support reducing inequality. It is a distortionary government influence on the workings of the free market, without even the relativity clarity of direct purchases or regulations. It often fails to accomplished stated policy goals of improving access to education, healthcare, or housing. It leads to civic disengagement, as those who benefit fail to see how the government has helped them, or how they can meaningfully impact politics through voting. And above all, it is corrupt, as it replaces broad public participation with the lobbying of narrowly constituted wealthy interests groups.
This book is not perfect. Mettler is a liberal political scientist, and she has the biases of her profession: that conservatives are responsible for much of what's gone wrong with America over the past 30 years (disclosure: I agree), and that citizens would vote 'better' (I.e. for liberals) is they were just better informed. She is also not quite up to the task of sinking the submerged state. But these are minor quibbles. In the social sciences, I evaluate theories on their explanatory power, and Mettler has provided a powerful lens for seeing many divergent policies as part of a unitary whole.
In a just and reasonable world, the 2012 Presidential campaign would about Mettler's book. Unfortunately, we're still living on Earth, and so it's going to be about Obama's socialism and Romney's tax returns.
The key issue is not the government we see, but the government we don't, the vast tangle of tax breaks, public-private partnerships, and incentives that Mettler deems 'the submerged state'. The size of the submerged state is astounding, 8% of the GDP, or half the the size of the visible state (Medicare, social security, Medicaid, the military, servicing the debt, and the relatively minuscule discretionary funding that covers everything else the government does, from transportation to education to NASA and foreign aid).
Mettler deploys economic and social statistics to show that for all it's expense, the submerged state is a failure on nearly every level. Whatever your politics, there is something to dislike about the submerged state. It represents a transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy, when most Americans abstractly support reducing inequality. It is a distortionary government influence on the workings of the free market, without even the relativity clarity of direct purchases or regulations. It often fails to accomplished stated policy goals of improving access to education, healthcare, or housing. It leads to civic disengagement, as those who benefit fail to see how the government has helped them, or how they can meaningfully impact politics through voting. And above all, it is corrupt, as it replaces broad public participation with the lobbying of narrowly constituted wealthy interests groups.
This book is not perfect. Mettler is a liberal political scientist, and she has the biases of her profession: that conservatives are responsible for much of what's gone wrong with America over the past 30 years (disclosure: I agree), and that citizens would vote 'better' (I.e. for liberals) is they were just better informed. She is also not quite up to the task of sinking the submerged state. But these are minor quibbles. In the social sciences, I evaluate theories on their explanatory power, and Mettler has provided a powerful lens for seeing many divergent policies as part of a unitary whole.
In a just and reasonable world, the 2012 Presidential campaign would about Mettler's book. Unfortunately, we're still living on Earth, and so it's going to be about Obama's socialism and Romney's tax returns.