{"id":535,"date":"2016-12-11T17:18:21","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T22:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/?p=535"},"modified":"2017-08-05T23:04:53","modified_gmt":"2017-08-06T03:04:53","slug":"reforms-as-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/reforms-as-experiments\/","title":{"rendered":"Reforms as Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Justice Louis Brandeis,\u00a0New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann<\/a><\/p>\n
It looks as though we are about to once again embark on a national program of deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy<\/a>, and austerity for everyone else. So how has that worked out so far? Economist Robert Reich explains.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\nSocial psychologist Donald Campbell, in a 1969 paper entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cem.org\/attachments\/publications\/CEMWeb027%20Reforms%20As%20Experiments.pdf\">\u201cReforms as Experiments,\u201d<\/a> argued that we ought to try out various social policies, carefully evaluating the results, and repeat only those that are successful. Of course, Reich\u2019s comparison is\u00a0not really an experiment. California, Kansas and Texas\u00a0were not randomly assigned to conditions of austerity or public investment, and even if they had been, there were many pre-existing differences between the\u00a0three states. Nevertheless, prevailing evidence <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/12\/28\/these_5_charts_prove_that_the_economy_does_better_under_democratic_presidents\/\">argues strongly against conservative economics<\/a>\u00a0and in favor of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epi.org\/publication\/a-public-investment-agenda-that-delivers-the-goods-for-american-workers-needs-to-be-long-lived-broad-and-subject-to-democratic-oversight\/\">public investment as a long-term strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\nYou may also be interested in reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/the-cost-of-climate-inaction\/\">The Cost of Climate Inaction<\/a><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/the-invisible-hand\/\">The Invisible Hand<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. Justice Louis Brandeis,\u00a0New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann It looks as though we are about … <a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/reforms-as-experiments\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading Reforms as Experiments<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,152],"tags":[99,98],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-social-policy","tag-public-investment","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6FkJj-8D","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}