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> a symbol of misplaced priorities at the time This always feels terribly myopic to me. There's a lot of state capacity and doing a sing;e time bound endeavor
by ch4s3 3y ago
> a symbol of misplaced priorities at the time
This always feels terribly myopic to me. There's a lot of state capacity and doing a sing;e time bound endeavor did not prevent civil rights legislation from passing or economic development in Mississippi. The moonshot caused NASA's funding to peak at ~4% of the federal budget for a single year in 1966, returning to less than 1% by '73.
- actionfromafar 3y agoBut in 1969 it was not settled that the country should fix civil rights. Probably Apollo would have been received differently by many people if other, more humane areas had seen as enthusiastic spending. Not saying it was wrong to do Apollo, though! It was important, another great outcome was that it made the Soviet system crack faster. It was also not clear from originally that Apollo would be single time limited project, in the beginning there was a lot of talk about moon bases and such.
- ch4s3 3y agoPeople use that kind of framing to say my highest priority isn't being addressed therefore anything else government does is wrong. I don't think this is logically sound, or a convincing argument.
- philwelch 3y agoThere were a lot of enthusiastic spending programs and civil rights reforms in the 1960’s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, Civil Rights Act of 1968 (which included the Fair Housing Act), the establishment of Medicare, Medicaid, federal funding for elementary and secondary schools, Job Corps, Head Start, expansion of Social Security benefits, the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio, the Department of Transportation (along with federal funding for mass transit and high speed rail), the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and food stamps, just to name the highlights.
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat is your point? That they happened and therefore had sufficient support and capability? In particular ... > enthusiastic spending programs ... what does "enthusiastic" mean here? Enthusiastic support? There was plenty of opposition.
- philwelch 3y agoTry reading the comment I was responding to for context. I was responding to these claims in particular: > But in 1969 it was not settled that the country should fix civil rights. I responded to that by enumerating some of the civil rights laws that were passed during the 1960's. > Probably Apollo would have been received differently by many people if other, more humane areas had seen as enthusiastic spending. I agree that "enthusiastic spending" is an awkward phrase, but I was specifically calling back to actionfromafar's usage of it. And I responded by listing all of the humane spending programs that had been enacted in that period, ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to Social Security expansion to new funding programs for education, food stamps, transportation, and other such things. In reality the administration of Lyndon Johnson was the second greatest expansion of the American federal welfare state in history (after the New Deal); it's simply not true to claim that the federal government during that period lacked "enthusiasm" for such things.
- wolverine876 3y agoYou're right that I didn't look at the other comments. Your comment was worth reading. I agree, btw, I was just trying to make sense of that part.