“Think Tank Explosion” is a white paper produced by the Government Research Service, reporting on their Think Tank Directory. The paper starts off by stating that think tanks have had a major impact on public policy. This statement is, in a sense, beside the point. The mission of a think tank is to influence policy; they would not “explode” unless they had an impact with their mission.
I need to temper one of my claims about think tanks in light of the information this report provides. Here’s an analogy to make sense of what I’m about to relate about think tank explosions. If I walked one mile per day the first week and ten miles per day the second week I’ve exploded my exercise regimen by ten times. If I then walked 100 miles per day the third week I’ve exploded by the same amount, ten times. There has been a similar think tank explosion. By 1910 there were 8 think tanks; by 1960 there were 98 think tanks; by 2006 there were 1106 think tanks. The rate of explosion has been fairly constant throughout the last 100 years. This contradicts my earlier emphasis on how think tanks have exploded since the seventies.
There is a significant difference between exploding your walking regimen from 1 to 10 miles, or from 10 to 100 miles. Most relatively fit bodies can handle the jump from 1 to 10 (though you need a lot of time on your hands); the jump to 100 is impossible for the great majority and impractical for the extremely scarce few that could handle it. This is not a perfect analogy (I’m writing a spur-of-the-moment blog, after all), but I would maintain that the explosion from 98 to 1106 think tanks over the past fifty years is more significant than what occurred in the previous fifty years. For one thing, there are the same amount of state governments now as in 1960, the same cannot be said for the period between 1910-1960. A more important factor has been the cause and support of think tanks.
The report provides a current snapshot of think tanks funding; the highest level are budgets over 10 million dollars with quite a few beyond that level. This is only a snapshot of think tank funding, but there has been an explosive funding of other tools to influence public policy since the seventies, namely lobbying and campaign finance. Corporations and corporate-sponsored foundations have been significant contributors to both lobbyists and think tanks. One would conclude the same explosion of corporate dollars that occurred with lobbyists also occurred with think tanks.
Let’s not forget the common denominator that spurred lobbying, campaign finance and think tank explosion. The Powell Memorandum in 1971 to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce called for a public relations campaign with an academic pedigree to influence the rational and influential segments of society in support of corporations. The “Think Tank Explosion” report categorizes 48% of the think tanks as having an economic mission; 37% as having a health policy mission.
These think tanks must have been successful at their task or else there would be no explosion. Most of these economic think tanks, certainly the ones in the 10 million dollar stratosphere, are self-described as “free market,” “libertarian,” or “free market libertarian.” So the economic system we have had since the seventies is the one these folks advocated, even as they use a misinformation technique of proclaiming a movement towards socialism.
I was merely concerned about these corporate shills before, but recent events are raising my concern to more of an alarm. You see, as the evidence accumulates that the very system these “free market libertarian” think tank folks wanted, which has been neither “free market” nor “liberty” friendly, just friendly to corporate masters, they have to resort to greater glitz and belligerence instead of substance to impose their message. This is starting to have alarming consequences in regards to the discourse and civility of our nation.
Tags: Economic Misinformation, Interest Groups, Middle Class Economics
