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A President’s Economic Record Is ‘Heavily Dominated by Luck’

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Two United Press International stories about the economic records of Joe Biden and Donald Trump called on UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly for insights. Tilly assessed the economic principles surrounding measures such as tax cuts and infrastructure investments, but also pointed out that the role a president plays in the fiscal health of the country is often overstated. “We tend to give presidents too much credit or blame,” he said. “Most of what is going on in the economy is not something the president can control.” The United States is one cog in a global economy that can be roiled by war, political turmoil, weather emergencies and catastrophic events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. ”The economic record of a four-year period is heavily dominated by luck, good or bad,” Tilly said.

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New Book by Fairlie Reveals Risks and Rewards of the U.S. Startup Economy

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A new book co-authored by Robert Fairlie, chair of Public Policy at UCLA Luskin, provides a broad view of entrepreneurship that challenges the assumption that startup companies in the United States create jobs and power economic growth. Federal, state and local governments spend billions of dollars each year on incubators, loan programs, tax breaks and investor incentives to encourage the formation of job-creating businesses, yet these expenditures are often made without knowing whether they lead to lasting, decent-paying jobs. In “The Promise and Peril of Entrepreneurship: Job Creation and Survival Among US Startups,” published by MIT Press, Fairlie and co-authors Zachary Kroff, Javier Miranda and Nikolas Zolas use a comprehensive new data set to provide clarity. Their findings show that startup job creation and survival rates are much lower than those typically reported by federal sources. Official statistics indicate that each startup creates six new jobs on average, and 50% of startups survive up to five years. However, those numbers reflect only new businesses that have employees, not the millions of startups that launch without employees every year, the authors found. “Understanding the early-stage dynamics of entrepreneurship is important,” they write. “Starting a business is difficult, with many potential barriers and risks,” including the legal requirements and resources needed to hire employees. The authors also explore who owns startups, focusing on differences by race and ethnicity and documenting how some minority groups face significant barriers to entrepreneurship. Fairlie’s book is among five recently getting capsule reviews by the Financial Times, which lauds its use of reliably sourced data and says it will “help those seeking to nurture an entrepreneurial culture themselves: the policymakers, academics, incubator operators and business degree students.”

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Assessing the Health of American Democracy

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A Washington Post article on different assessments of the stability of American democracy cited the 2022 Berggruen Governance Index, which tracks quality of life, governance and democracy in countries around the world. The article noted that the U.S. political status quo has triggered pessimism and despair, yet several countries still regard the United States as a bulwark of liberal democratic values. The recently released Berggruen Governance Index, a collaborative project of UCLA Luskin and the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, identified significant declines in U.S. “state capacity” and “democratic accountability” over the past 20 years. “The steepness of the U.S.’s drop is unusual: Its path parallels Brazil, Hungary and Poland much more closely than that of Western Europe or the other wealthy Anglophone countries,” according to Markus Lang and Edward Knudsen, researchers who work with the governance index’s principal investigator, Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Helmut Anheier.

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Gun Violence Creates Shockwaves, Kaplan Says

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Social Welfare Professor Mark Kaplan was featured in an Alabama Media Group article about a shooting at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. The attack left three people dead, but it is not considered a “mass shooting” since that term technically refers to shootings with four or more victims. Experts have noted that gun violence is on the rise in Alabama and across the United States, and the entire community of Vestavia Hills was rocked by the shooting. “When we hear about shootings in schools, churches, grocery stores, that does send shockwaves across the citizens,” said Kaplan, an authority on gun violence.

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Yin on National Burden of Medical Debt

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Associate Professor of Public Policy Wesley Yin spoke to Verywell Health about the results of his research on the burden of medical debt in the United States. “Medical debt has become the largest source of debt and collections than all other sources combined,” Yin said, referring to recent research he co-authored that found 17.8% of individuals in the U.S. had medical debt in collections as of June 2020. “It just speaks to how important the expansion of Medicaid has been towards financial security, financial well-being, as well as reducing disparities in these communities,” he said. When medical bills are left unpaid, it can negatively impact an individual’s credit score and make it more difficult to qualify for loans. In order to curb medical debt, Yin recommended extending subsidies that would allow patients to purchase more affordable insurance plans with a smaller deductible. He also suggested expanding Medicaid, an approach that has been shown to reduce state spending.

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Diaz on Providing a Pathway to Citizenship

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, was featured in a Spectrum News 1 interview about the recent ruling by a Texas federal judge that deemed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to be unlawful. According to Diaz, the central question is “can we provide a pathway towards work, towards opportunity for people who have known no other country but the United States?” There are currently 800,000 DACA recipients in the United States, and about one quarter reside in California. “When immigrants don’t trust the government, they are likely to stay in the shadows, not report crimes that are committed against them and not deal with substandard working conditions,” Diaz warned. The ruling could have important implications for Latino voters in the 2022 midterm elections. “It’s certainly an issue that should drive Latino turnout in upcoming elections if the stakes are made clear with active outreach and dedicated engagement,” she said.

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Roy on Global Poverty and Social Justice

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In a Team Human podcast hosted by Douglas Rushkoff, Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare Ananya Roy discussed poverty and social justice from a global perspective. Roy explained how the “visible forms of poverty and inequality” in her childhood “shaped [her] interests in the study of cities and the manifestation of social inequality.” Roy discussed the relationships and discrepancies between poverty in the United States compared to developing countries in the global south, explaining that “poverty in many other parts of the world is not necessarily associated with political disenfranchisement in the ways in which it is in the United States.” Roy discussed spaces of mobilization and political power, noting that while “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house, the master’s tools can certainly occupy the master house.” Roy concluded, “As Americans, we have an ethical and political responsibility to address the policies that then produce poverty around the world and in the United States as well.”

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In Op-Ed, Gilens Cites 5 Reforms for Broken Policymaking in Washington

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In an opinion piece for the political news website The Hill, UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens, professor of public policy, joins co-author Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University in proposing a set of reforms that would actually increase democratic responsiveness. They say their research indicates that the most important and most promising changes fall into five groups: 1. Give equal political voice to all citizens; 2. Curb the political power of money; 3. Democratize the electoral process; 4. Improve House and Senate representation of all citizens; 5. Overcome remaining sources of gridlock.

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