Caldwell, cont.

By the standards of 279-page popular-audience books written by conservatives, Caldwell is not too bad. (That's not much praise.) In the chapter on gender issues, whatever its flaws, he concedes a lot in places.  For instance, he makes a point that had not previously occurred to me: The GI Bill, for all the good it did for America, also temporarily set back gender equity in higher ed via a massive influx of men (WWII vets). Women had been growing as a share of college students for a few decades, but the GI Bill re-adjusted the balance, setting back the trends of institutions learning to accommodate women.

More promisingly, he admits that Ronald Reagan drove the debt sky-high, and that the Laffer Curve is a flawed concept. He even concedes that the 1980's, during which Boomers were all over the workforce and America could have been saving lots of money, were a giant missed opportunity for fiscal policy.

And then he screws it all up by saying that Reagan's debts bought America social peace via domestic redistribution programs.

Yes, that was part of the budget in the 1980's, but the military was an even bigger part. And it's the part that Reagan worked hardest to expand. I will grant that Reagan avoided "guns vs butter" trade-offs, but let's not kid ourselves about which side was larger.

Some might argue that Reagan did for Johnson what many presidents have done for predecessors of the opposite party, declining to substantially reverse signature policies (i.e. Johnson's Great Society), but the ratification of the Great Society happened under Nixon and Ford; it was a fait accompli by the time of Reagan.