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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   9695 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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The actual policy legacy of the Carter administration (as opposed to Carter's personal reputation) held up pretty well given that we are now 45 years out.

The unambiguous successes include:

  • Volcker as Fed Chair, inflation tamed primarily through monetary policy
  • Deregulation of interstate trucking, airlines, etc.
  • The Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt
  • Transferring primary responsibility for defending South Korea from North Korea to South Korea, where it properly belongs
  • An unusually clean White House

Things Carter changed with impacts decades later even if conservatives don't like the result:

  • The Chrysler bailout
  • Setting up the Education Department
  • Government recognition for Asian-Americans as an identity group
  • Head Start
  • Modest tightening of environmental laws
  • A deal with Panama which allowed US shipping access to the Canal while avoiding the expense of maintaining a garrison in the Canal Zone.

Things which still looked like a success after 10+ years where we probably shouldn't blame Carter for his policy continued beyond the point of usefulness:

  • Supporting the muhajadeen to quagmire the Soviets in Afghanistan
  • Normalising relations with Red China (including the continued-to-this-day policy of informal recognition of Taiwan).
  • The Superfund law for dealing with the worst cases of land contaminated by industrial pollution.

Good ideas which Carter couldn't get past Congress, but is right with hindsight:

  • Spending discipline, and in particular the idea that the Executive should identify specific wasteful spending and ask Congress to cut it.
  • Natural gas deregulation (Congress took so long to pass the legislation that the benefits were felt after Carter left office, but with hindsight this is Carter's greatest achievement)

Deregulation of interstate trucking, airlines, etc.

Setting up the Education Department

Government recognition for Asian-Americans as an identity group

Can you explain why you see those as good decisions?

The last 2 are changes which have had long-lasting effects that Carter would presumably have wanted given that he was a Democrat. Whether they are good decisions is a fairly straightforwardly partisan issue, then and now. But from the point of view of Presidential legacy, successfully changing policy in your preferred direction in a way that sticks is an achievement.

The Carter transport deregulations are all good because they significantly reduced costs to individuals and businesses.

The US trucking industry has a serious problem of truckers ageing out of business and scarcely getting replaced, which is supposedly the long-term consequence of Carter's and Reagan's deregulations turning it into an unappealing career choice, as I've read on the interwebz.

The things that make trucking suck can’t be solved by regulation.

Seems more likely it's the tech and regulations changing it from a job you can do pretty much without supervision to having electronic leashes tracking every hour of every day and fining you if you do it wrong.

Also that "autonomous trucks before 2050" has been the way to bet for more than a decade now, meaning that it is an unattractive career for young people to enter because of the high probability of being laid off and replaced by a robot.

Hahaha no. Truckers are mostly people who would like to join a trade but can’t hack it for whatever reason. They don’t think that far ahead.

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