Stanford University Press Blog

A government report released earlier this week confirmed that the American economy will see a recession in 2008. Families across the country are facing foreclosure on their homes, and the dollar is at record lows.  In an article in The Chronicle Review, David Glenn asks why presidential candidates, especially Republicans, still propose tax cuts based on the now-debunked supply-side economic theory:

The hopes of the supply-side theorists of the 1970s, who proposed that revenue would often rise after tax cuts, have been thoroughly dashed by the last 30 years. Federal revenue fell after Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and again after George W. Bush's 2001 cuts. The vast majority of economists now say that tax cuts must be matched by spending cuts, or deficits will ensue.

For an answer, he turns to The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics, released this week by Stanford University Press. Author Isaac William Martin argues that “Republican political leaders (falsely but successfully) interpreted Proposition 13's success in California in 1978 as a broad mandate for cutting income taxes as well as property taxes,” a policy that has shaped and symbolized the party every since.

Martin’s showcasing of how the Republican Party came to so deeply associate itself with tax cuts helps us understand why President Bush stands so firmly by his economic policies in the face of economic upheaval. 

New Pathways to Fighting Poverty

 Author David Grusky is looking to further strengthen the fight against poverty with the new magazine Pathways. Grusky, a professor of Sociology at Stanford and founding director of its Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, serves as editor of the magazine. This role is not new to Grusky, as he has edited several books for Stanford University Press including Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics with Stephen L. Morgan and Gary S. Fields (2006) and Poverty and Inequality with Ravi Kanbur (2006), in addition to co-authoring Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men with Maria Charles (2004).  All of his titles have been tremendous additions to SUP’s Studies in Social Inequality series.

Describing the goals of Pathways, Grusky says, "It provides new trend data detailing how some types of inequality are taking off, others are declining, and yet others are stable. It describes which interventions are working and which aren't. And it brings to the public new research that is changing how we understand the sources of and solutions to poverty and inequality."

The magazine has had quite the auspicious, and timely, beginning with its inaugural issue featuring essays from this year's top Democratic presidential nominees: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. The candidates discuss their policies on reducing poverty and revitalizing the economy, discussions that dovetail nicely with the upcoming February 5 primary elections.

Pathways has received press in our area with articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and Stanford News Service. The magazine is published four times a year and is free to readers courtesy of the Elfenworks Foundation.

UPK Debate Heats Up as 2008 Election Nears

With the ongoing debate over the feasibility and benefits of universal preschool and now with the spotlight of the upcoming 2008 presidential election, Bruce Fuller’s Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education is more of resource than ever. In the past year Fuller, a professor of Education and Public Policy at University of California at Berkeley, has been called upon by numerous media outlets—ranging from the Washington Post to Education Week to KQED’s Forum—to weigh in on issues such as No Child Left Behind and universal Pre-K (UPK) education. Most recently, his book was recommended as a resource for doctors and parents by the prestigious American Academy of Pediatrics.

Last week Fuller appeared in a New York Times article that focused on the significance of the UPK movement as a campaign issue in 2008. Fuller’s pragmatic look at the costs and effectiveness of a “one system for all” preschool program appears alongside the pro-UPK argument of fellow UC Berkeley Public Policy professor David Kirp. Fuller questions the educational benefits of a mass preschool program, while Kirp believes that UPK education is essential to developing brighter students and closing the education gap.

Just as these two policy experts differ in opinion, the 2008 presidential candidates are also decidedly split on the issue, mainly between the Democratic and Republican parties. Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Christopher Dodd, support federal funding for universal pre-K education, while most other Democratic candidates at the very least support increased funding for programs such as Head Start. Noticeably absent from the list of vocal UPK supporters are the Republican candidates, who have traditionally supported a limited role for the federal government when it comes to education, and are choosing to focus more on issues such as school choice and vouchers.

As the Bush administration nears its end, presidential candidates must gear up with plans on handling the state of post-NCLB education, an already contentious issue. With its clear analysis of the pros and cons of the universal preschool movement, Standardized Childhood will be especially invaluable as we come upon the 2008 election and decide the fate of our nation’s educational system.

Crime and Punishment

Under the Bush administration, the policing power of the US government has expanded extensively, from warrant-less wiretapping programs to enhanced interrogation techniques. In such an atmosphere, the growing field of police science is gaining attention.

The New Police Science examines the many meanings and components of police, from the preventive actions taken by the state (laws, regulations, etc.) to the enforcement and punishment of criminal justice systems. The editors point out:

it is clear that recent developments in the United States have suddenly made this…highly relevant. Agamben’s theorization of modern life as variations on the theme of ‘camp,’ with the concentration camp regarded not as an exception but as the foundation of law and sovereignty, seemed like one of those radical rants that Italian Marxists are famous for—until Guantánamo.

This collection, recently reviewed in Law & Politics Book Review, provides a valuable perspective for anyone interested in the ways power and justice are changing in modern America.

Bruce Fuller in the Media

Bruce Fuller, author of Standardized Childhood, agrees with presidential candidate Hilary Clinton that we, as a society, need to invest heavily in early childhood education. He takes a firm stance against funding universal preschool, however: studies show that the lasting benefits of preschool are mainly for those coming from low-income families, so that he where Fuller believes we should target our money and attention.

In a recent Op-Ed in the San Jose Mercury News, Fuller analyzes Clinton’s preschool proposal. He believes that “Clinton pinpoints the right problems,” but that her proposals “suffer from the political expediencies and loose thinking that sank Hollywood activist Rob Reiner's universal preschool plan last summer.”

As Virginia works to expand its preschool programs, the Washington Post turned to Fuller to comment upon the issue.

Fuller also expressed his views on the KQED show Forum yesterday, matching wits with David Kirk, author of The Sandbox Investment, who argued in favor of universal preschool.

Japan vs. Iraq: What we did differently?

Going into the war in Iraq, President Bush invoked the American occupation of Japan after World War II, an occupation that transformed a feudal society into a democratic nation:

America has done this kind of work before. Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments. We committed years and resources to this cause. And that effort has been repaid many times over in three generations of friendship and peace. America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit -- for their sake, and our own. (September 7, 2003)

Now, historian Takeshi Matsuda presents a vivid description of the American occupation of Japan in Soft Power and its Perils (2007). He explains why the Japanese consented to the changes the American occupation brought, while we have seen the Iraqis become increasingly hostile to an American presence in their country.

One of the primary differences, in his view, is that the United States approached Japan with a genuine interest to understand Japanese culture and to create mutual understanding between the two nations. Matsuda argues that, while the American occupation was certainly geared toward a certain level of cultural imperialism, the US also prepared huge reserve of knowledge about how Japanese and American cultures would interact well before the occupation began:

“In contrast to the current situation in Iraq, the U.S occupation of Japan was a democratic experiment supported by American soft power, as well as hard power…U.S. preparation for the occupation of Japan began immediately after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—that is, four years before the actual occupation of the country.” In addition, “intergovernmental agencies in Washington also spent a great deal of effort defining the general objectives of the occupation of Japan and formulating programs need to meet the specific objectives of the United States.”

Matsuda argues for the importance of academics in shaping the perceptions of both countries of one another. Following World War II, there was an explosion of Japanese Studies in the US and American Studies in Japan, the latter often heavily subsidized by the US. According to Matsuda, this facilitated understanding between the two cultures, such that “U.S.-Japan cultural relations flourished and became full blown in later years in ways that few people would have ever dreamed.”

Taxing the Family

In All In The Family, Patricia Strach shows how the family is used by the US government to implement policies and explores the challenges that arise when employing something as nebulous and uncontrolled as family relations to administer policy.

Since 1948, family has been the basic taxable unit in the US. This not only results in different tax rates based on an individual’s familial role (spouse, dependent, single parent, single childless adult, etc.), but also sets expectations for how members of a family act toward one another and taxes based on those expectations.

For example, parents are expected to provide food, clothing, and shelter for their offspring, and they are awarded tax credits, deductions, and exemptions to assist with those expenses. In using such tax expenditures to pay parents to support their children, the government saves itself the cost of creating an agency to accomplish that goal. At the same time, it presupposes that parents will use the savings from these tax expenditures for the goals the government intends, but there is no oversight to insure that this is the case, as their would be for an official government agency.

The government’s assumptions that family units have combined resources and act to help their members are seen in the prohibition from deducting student loan interest when the loan comes from a family member, whereas the interest on a loan from a stranger is tax deductible. This can be seen as a limit the government places on individual taxpayers to help their family financially.   

As the average American household increasingly moves away from the nuclear family with a single breadwinner around which these taxes were originally designed, definitions of family within various parts of the tax code struggle to keep up.  The so-called marriage tax penalty came about when a significant number of married women entered the workplace: suddenly, a tax code that had been seen as equitable and progressive for families with a single breadwinner was seen as taking resources away from families. Similarly, untraditional households—from unmarried parents to individuals or couples caring for children who are not their biological offspring—are not recognized in the same way across the tax code.

Amongst debates over gay marriage, the role of family in immigration, and adoption rights, our laws continue to use family as a determiner of responsibilities as well as rights. And responsibilities that are not given to or taken up by individuals often fall to the government itself.