One of the most telling statistics surrounding the 2024 election was that voters who spent time with the news in attempts to understand what was happening voted overwhelmingly for Biden/Harris. Those who had their heads in the sand or depended entirely on Trump friendly media went overwhelmingly for Trump.
Despite the fact that I took a couple of freshman classes in economics at the Wharton School at UPenn (coincidentally at the same time as a certain orange-haired self-described ‘stable genius' was also there) I am not even remotely an economic sage. But one thing is very clear to me. For us ‘amateurs’ the fact is that the number of economists who disagree with one another increases directly as the number of economists there are. Therefore we tend to be most influenced by our own experience of what is happening on the ground then by diverging ‘expert’ opinion.
But that doesn’t alter the fact that reading and making a valiant attempt to understand what’s going on is crucial to maintaining our Republic.
I remember one of those wonderful, often slightly alcohol fueled late-night college dorm discussions (albeit in the days before they could be co-ed). The topic, oddly enough was the importance of a good education. One of the disputants put it this way. "A good basic education should equip us to ask reasonable questions in a number of relevant areas, and, at least, to have a good idea when the answers we are getting back are bullshit".
I can’t think of a better nutshell description of one of the crucial reasons for the fix we find ourselves in now. And the continuing right wing attempts to denigrate the value of education outside what are generally considered ‘career-centered courses’ and to refuse the concept of ‘expertise’ is an excellent indication of one of the reasons why so many of us accepted all the bullshit we were getting from Trump and his myrmidons.
Educated Americans vote Democrat by margins of two and three to one precisely because of the endless lies and doublespeak coming from conservative politicians and elites.
If Trump had actually won in '20, FOX News would've been running non-stop segments on *how much worse* inflation was hurting consumers in every other industrialized country. RW media would've had Americans collectively thanking their lucky stars that savior Trump was keeping inflation the lowest in the world. In other words, de facto conservative control of the nation's media directly results in the mis- and dis-information influencing low-information voters.
And how. The coming big push by Trump/GOP to renew--or even expand--the 2017 tax cuts is the next big political fight. Never mind that close to $1.9 trillion of our current debt was generated by it.
Dems should frame it as the "Leave No Billionaire Behind Bill".
The weird thing about Biden is that I don't think he's a 'new' Progressive thinker but an old one. Of the tenants of the old thinking listed many pre-date the current Progressive orthodoxy:
-Subsidies for “care industries” like health care, eldercare, and child care
-Vigorous antitrust and suspicion of corporate concentration
-Strong support for unions, and for policies to push up wages.
-Industrial policy, especially for green technologies to fight climate change
-An expanded welfare state focused on child tax credits
-Higher taxes on the super-rich
-A general suspicion of fiscal austerity, tolerance of government deficits, and a focus on full employment above all other macroeconomic goals
Of these: strong support for unions (one of Biden's central tenants) has been around for ages. Vigorous anti-trust is not new either, nor is an expanded welfare state (although the focus has bounced around), and finally: higher taxes on the wealthy. Some of these are even popular, depending on how you frame them: support for unions is popular, higher taxes on the wealthy is popular, and social programs are popular (well, once they take hold typically).
Overall, Biden over-reached economically, and the pieces of this old agenda which aren't working are not intuitive. Supporting unions is popular, but Democratic support for unions is fruitless. Biden and Harris got almost no credit for their support for unions in 2024. I don't think anti-trust packs the punch, and was not a trade off worth pushing, and any social program needs to be carefully pushed when the fiscal situation is right. The biggest takeaway I have is that Democrats cannot ignore fiscal realities: spending a bunch of money in inflationary environments is a bad idea. The second is that if you set a goal: focus! Biden should have made building more factories the focus and damn all the other consequences.
None of this would have saved his Presidency. Events swept him away, and his age would have done him in either way. That doesn't mean he was a failure; I don't think Biden is Jimmy Carter, but it is quite unfortunate.
Biden’s policies tried to balance old progressive values with modern realities. Unions and antitrust aren’t new, but applying them to sectors like tech and green energy isn’t just a rehash of the past—it’s responding to today’s concentrated corporate power and climate threats. The real problem wasn’t spending itself but the failure to communicate why that spending mattered in the face of inflation (and in terms of COVID infusions caused inflation itself.)
Focusing solely on factories would have ignored the broader structural issues—wealth, monopoly, the lack of blue-collar income value, and tax fairness—that industrial policy alone can’t fix.
Lessons learned from lost elections are usually wrong and over thought. Inflation and immigration combined with a seemingly weak candidate lost the election and not policy since most Americans are clueless . Just a few years ago the GOP was DOA after Donnie and his Jan 6 coup attempt yet here we are.
I think it's important to be careful when attacking Biden's "profligate" spending and the impact that had on inflation. We need to remember that it wasn't as obvious how stable the economy was when that was being negotiated and (as with many decisions), his administration had to determine where to put their risk - too much spending or too little. While they probably still overspent, it's much easier to criticize when we now know exactly how much was "needed"; that was an unknown when the decision was made and I'd rather have inflation to tame than a failing economy that we then have to jump-start.
“. . . the underlying strength of Biden-Era forces pushing up investment in America was much more powerful than either side thought likely.”
— Brad DeLong
Inflation at 4% and unemployment under 4% has never happened outside of a recession. This is why gasbags like Larry Summer publicly stated that 6 million Americans would need to lose their jobs in order to tame inflation.
So, the Biden stimulus plans caused temporary inflation. Six million people didn’t lose jobs. And inflation was tamed without a recession.
And 40% of voters who cast a ballot for Trump don’t understand any of this. It’s as if six million people lost jobs, factored by a belief that the economy was doing badly and inflation was devastating. In fact, wage gains during this same period beat inflation.
Instead, a demented incompetent was voted in and we’re just beginning to see and experience the damage on all fronts of the federal government.
“Don’t it always go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”
— Joni Mitchell
In other words, Harris was going to lose no matter what type of campaign she ran. You can’t swim in the mainstream media’s ocean of bullshit.
I think it’s mostly the subsidies part that really gets Americans up in arms. Well, subsidies for families and/or poor people. We subsidize the hell out of billionaires and corporations, which doesn’t get as much ire. It will be interesting to see if Dems can get a better plan, but I’m not hopeful. I think that they’ll eventually double down when Donnie messes it all up and then get routed again when a competent Republican comes around.
"Leave No Billionaire Behind" is the GOP mantra. The entire Conservative raison d'etre is to be errand boys for the ultra-rich. They have lost any credibility as being Natsec hawks, fiscally responsible or pro-law enforcement.
“. . . what we’re seeing is what you’d expect if China and Russia had somehow managed to install people who wanted to sabotage America’s international position at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”
This democrats’ new industrial policy seems to be doubling down on the old industrial policy. It doesn’t address the fundamental issues of how or why the US exported manufacturing in the first place. Nor does it address why the US needs to import so many H1b visa engineers at all. The source is the lack of STEM graduates which finds focus on affirmative action in which minorities (Asians are not minorities) do not major in engineering. It was fine to stroll your way through a marathon when your authoritarian competitors were kids. As this is not the case anymore, the US will now need to do the heavy training in order to stay ahead or risk losing the global race.
Yes. When said H1B holders are top STEM graduates of elite foreign universities. But, sadly, the bulk of new imports are just brought in to pad Wall street profits at the expense of native Americans.
"The source is the lack of STEM graduates which finds focus on affirmative action in which minorities (Asians are not minorities) do not major in engineering."
I don't understand your point here, James. You seem to be implying that it is a problem that non-Asian minorities are not pursuing STEM education, but also that the cause is in some way affirmative action programs (which would be directed at drawing non-Asian minorities into STEM education).
There are twice as many Americans who fit your definition of non-minority than fit your definition of minority. If the goal is to increase absolute numbers of STEM-trained people, that's where the biggest pool of candidates will be. On the other hand, if cultural and educational patterns have led minorities to avoid pursuing STEM education, then there may be larger percentage payoffs for increased investments in overcoming that avoidance.
Wasn't offshoring of manufacturing driven more by the mercantilist economic policies of East Asian nations (as well as the USD's status of global reserve currency) than by anything wrong with the US educational system?
And H-1B is a bad program that helps fuel anti-immigration sentiment: immigrants should be employed either on the same terms as citizens, or in jobs (such as agricultural manual labor) that citizens don't want.
Agree that it is vastly better if, "immigrants [are] be employed... on the same terms as citizens." The H-1B program, however, is mostly good even as it stands.
I feel there is a misunderstanding of what affirmative action is. For college it is a race-based, rather than a merit based, process. For certain there is need and advantage to have advanced education for minorities. But regarding the military black engineers award, does it not feel like back-handed slap to black engineers?
First, affirmative action was not raced-based *rather than* merit based. It provided point advantages to minority candidates qualified on the merits, and those points could move their admissions placement up in the ranks. So it was a merit-based system that incorporated minority preferences. It was ended in 2023 by the Supreme Court. Many colleges continue to use economically based preferences that counter the unequal distribution of opportunities the flow from family wealth. This too is affirmative action, but it is not race based, and it has broad support because there is wide recognition that comparable qualifications coming from candidates who have faced unequal challenges often indicates greater potential for the candidate who has had greater obstacles to overcome.
That is the underlying rationale for recognition such as the Black Engineering Award. It is an award given by a private company that specializes in personnel supply to the military, and the award presentation is a venue for military recruitment. You can pick at the idea of an award limited to members of a certain identity group and call it a back-handed slap if you like, but the military's boycott the recruitment opportunity has the dual effect of discriminating against that group and closing an avenue of top talent recruitment for the military, and that is a front-handed slap to both those engineers and to the citizens who cannot benefit from their military employment.
And, by the way, although I don't know the data supporting either side of the argument, I do know that the debate about the H1B visa centers on evidence that it is not so much that STEM expertise is in short supply in the US, as that the special terms of the visa incentivize companies to bypass US citizens with adequate expertise in favor of equally trained or even less well qualified foreign candidates who can be tightly controlled by restrictions entailed in the visa and paid substantially less than US market rates for talent. This perspectives sees H1B employees as resembling indentured servants in the limited employment options they have and the economic leverage over them held by their employers, while American STEM workers see the market for their talents shrink.
Certain portions of the US population tend towards STEM majors and would excel in those fields. That some were awarded an opportunity means that others, that were more capable, did not. The 60 year experiment is due to end soon.
"Certain portions of the US population tend towards STEM majors and would excel in those fields."
Sure: people who find they have facility with math.
"That some were awarded an opportunity means that others, that were more capable, did not."
No: opportunity for STEM education is limited only by available teaching resources, and, apart from special needs programs in areas of cognitive deficits, teaching resources are not directed away from students with STEM capabilities. On the contrary, there have been major efforts to provide more STEM education.
But I'll note again the episode I cited from Military.com (which has been widely reported) that the new administration's policy appears not to be seeking an expansion of STEM talent, but in discouraging STEM talent by declining to recruit within a particularly well qualified association because it is associated with a minority group. The thinking seems to be that demonstrated competence by members of a minority group should not be allowed to overcome a belief that minority group members cannot demonstrate competence.
The Dems economic policies should exist in two realms for two audiences. One realm would be the "in the weeds" stuff, where they explain their philosophy and proposed policies for academics policy makers and nerdy wonks, stuff like Noah likes to write about, and his readers love to debate. Stuff based on reality. The kinda stuff that doesn't make headlines.
The second realm would be where they speak to the average Joe and make a range of appealing promises. The one promise they should always make is to cut taxes. If Harris had spent all her time promising to cut the average American's taxes she might have won.
They should never be concerned if the two realms contradict each other. They should always proclaim that the differences are not in reality differences. They should never admit that their desired policies put the promises to the average Joe in jeopardy. NEVER let worries about deficits get in the way of a tax cut. The more the promises are called into question the stronger they should make their commitment. Just like the Republicans do.
When the Dems confine themselves to reality based policies while the repubs are free to invent a reality divorced from it they will never be able to please the public. It doesn't matter how good or bad the economy is in reality. The staunch willful ignorance of the MAGA voter has demonstrated it, but they are really nothing new.
We can diagnose the Dems problems by getting into the weed's finding programs or policies that anger someone and declare those the reason for Dem unelectability, but when the other side can invent reality there will always be "reasons". The Dems can keep twisting their proposals to address the criticisms that the right inflames out of proportion, but the right just inflames something else.
When reality based thinking becomes reactive to invented reality, it loses.
It even loses its own grip on reality as it seeks to make sense of it's coming up short in the world of invented reality.
What is enough? Not a devotion to reality. What is enough? The ability to invent reality.
Your comments are a good review of how we got to where we are at the moment. On the other hand, we are in the Shock stage of Trump's Shock and Awe and Implosion scenario. You are correct, that in a hot economy Biden should have been more involved in the deficit/cost/benefit aspects.
My analysis points to a high probability of an economic implosion starting in the second half of 2025. That would imply that Democrats need to model 2026 economic responses for an economy that will more resemble the 1930's than the 2020's.
As long as the GOP can revive--or even increase--the 2017 tax cuts bill this year, they'll consider all this chaos worthwhile. What's a few more trillion added to the national debt, if it enriches our oligarchs?
Yes, that is what kicks off the AWE stage in second quarter. I see the implosion stage triggered later by reality, stuff like jobs and GDP which will not be pretty.
What we need right now is a clean break from neoliberalism, progressivism, conservatism, and all the other ism's. They all represent a "system" that the public largely blames for our current situation. Trump saw this ten years ago and has migrated the Republicans away from the isms, positioning themselves as a solution to the problem. The Democrats, however, seem to be doubling down on the problem. They are ignoring the public, and are paying a political price for it. What they need to do is make their break with the past, admit there is a problem, and offer competing solutions to solve the problem. For example, instead of wasting their breath whining about every proposal Musk and Trump make, they should agree that the bureaucracy is out of control and offer a better plan to address it than DOGE. They need a new brand. Democrats need to start listening to their purple state governors who have been successful in navigating these waters. For example, Josh Shapiro's "Get Shit Done" mantra in Pennsylvania is something that could translate to a winning strategy nationally. Now would be a good time for the Democrats to check themselves into rehab. They clearly need to detox and embark on a 12-step recovery program before it is too late.
Mr. Steiner, I don't disagree with your point about Purple State governors, but it seems to me that this was the major hallmark of Biden's first two years when he had leverage to govern. There was 'ismy' stuff included because you can't totally blow off your base, but everything had to clear Manchin and Biden worked with that.
I think others have hit on an essential point, and it's not the -isms. It's that we have one party whose brand is effective government and another whose brand is putting on a scripted reality show and driving the ratings. It's easy to see which is more entertaining, and in that environment power flows with the freedom to invent narrative and cosplay without the friction of real life. It's a terrific advantage.
Recalling some urban riots of the past I think about the people who ditched protest for social progress in favor of "loot and destroy." *So* much easier to loot and destroy, and you can wind up with a few TVs and so much good liquor you need to buy a cabinet. MAGA is even more ambitious: loot, destroy, and entertain. Irresistible! If only the folks burning down Detroit in '67 had thought to cut disks with Motown while they were at it, they might have had the nation on their bandwagon.
The "green energy transition" was properly rejected by the voters when they elected Trump. All Biden achieved was to suppress American living standards while India and China continued to build several new coal-fired power plants every week. If global warming is a problem, the only solution that would actually work is also the cheapest--geoengineering.
It seems to me that using the idea of geoengineering as a rationalization for continuing fossil fuel expansion is not responsible. There is at this time no scaled version of geoengineering that exists, no understanding of how the costs to scale up would be met (since, unlike solar technology and battery storage improvements there is no direct short-term economic contribution--it may be "cheap" in terms of gross investment costs, but not in terms of net short/medium turn balances), and no experience that will validate faith in the absence of unanticipated negative consequences.
It is absolutely true that China and India are making important short-term gains by steering investment to fossil fuel based energy. It's a real problem and a valid point. But I don't think you can wave away the consequences of solving it by emulating the Asian approach by invoking a loosely defined set of techniques that will not attract private capital.
Many of the geo-engineering techniques are well understood and more easily modeled than the global climate models used for forecasting. And many like cloud brightness enhancement with sea water, sulfur dioxide injection into the stratosphere and orbital solar shades cost less than what was spent by Biden’s IRA. But environmentalists are against even testing these ideas because they think it will reduce the need for the other expensive carbon reduction programs, which is what pays their salaries. As in the case of other NGOs, they don’t actually want the problems they are working on to be solved, because it makes their jobs and government donations unnecessary.
Calling these techniques "well understood" feels like a stretch, but I agree they deserve more funding and research. The bigger issue is the lack of political and economic will to explore geoengineering and address climate change as a whole.
I appreciate the links, though I'm skeptical about the science. Without proper control scenarios, it's tough to trust outcomes at scale. And that's not even touching the bigger command-and-control risks these projects could pose.
You have some proposals here I was unaware of Buzen. I appreciate your responding substantively. Both the proposals I was aware of and the sun shades (new to me) seem like good ideas but I can't assess the claims of these papers and others I've encountered. (It's not my field.) But I want to stress three points:
1. Until operational we will not have proof of concept. (Of course we should pursue what's promising! We shouldn't assume the theories will work without introducing unanticipated factors.)
2. These solutions may seem cheap, but that is relative to the damage of climate change. These would require new fleets of airplanes, ships, etc., etc., and there is, so far as I can see, no conventional investment return that would incentivize private capital without guarantees of government funding. The sun-shade study claims that the costs have previously been seen as prohibitive, but this new theory would cut them--however, this depends entirely on the practiality and effectiveness of the method. Since the article made it into an Elsevir publication it clearly has prima facie merit--a little browsing indicates the idea continues to be pursued.
3. There is no evidence I see that scientists and non-profits are lobbying to forestall application of these methods. The fact that climate change research is escalating geometrically does not imply--to any degree at all--that these authors are trying to prevent solutions that would end the need for their research.
It appears to me that because all these methods require convincing governments to provide funding or contract guarantees the impediments to moving forward are substantial and scientifically normal. The costs associated with the IRA all concern up-front incentives to produce a self-sustaining market for the production and consumption of green energy. That envisions a rapidly escalating GDP payback for the investment. Speculative investments that will produce no GDP growth, but are designed to prevent long-term negative impacts are naturally going to be a much harder sell. (Build us a huge fleet of specially designed ships/planes and we'll prove this works! -- there's no mystery why that would be a difficult sell. You don't need a conspiracy of self-interested scientific opponents, hoping to sacrifice the planet so they can gain tenure or promotion.)
Late edit: It occurred to me that what actually seems to be operating on this thread and the world in general is some people saying, "forget green technology, we already have an answer--geoengineering--and perfect faith in its effectiveness," and others saying, "until we confirm the promise of geoengineering our only hedge against extreme climate is green technology," while you're interpreting the latter as saying, "forget geoengineering, we already have an answer--green technology--and perfect faith in its effectiveness." It seems to me the right approach is: "all of the above to the degree we're able to follow the science and come up with funding."
You make valid points about the untested, but still great promise of geoengineering.
When push comes to shove, even a partly botched geoengineering regime may be vastly preferable to the economic devastation of end-stage global warming. Which could kills billions of human being; and impoverish the rest.
The 2020 election went to Biden because Trump was elected to correct the monetary deflation that he inherited from Obama and instead he allowed it to get worse. But the "green transition" is just expensive virtue signaling that Americans can't afford.
I sure that your position is very woke in some circles. For those of us actually following the "green transition." Green energy has already won. It is cheaper and being installed everywhere (e.g. the left wing bastion of Texas) because if it .
Neo-liberalism is as dead as neo-conservatism. The former went insane with wokeness and the latter failed to conserve anything. So the voters replaced them.
I like your list though:
* Subsidies for “care industries”
* Vigorous antitrust and suspicion of corporate concentration
* Strong support for unions, and for policies to push up wages
* Industrial policy, especially for green technologies to fight climate change
* An expanded welfare state focused on child tax credits
* Higher taxes on the super-rich
* A general suspicion of fiscal austerity
* Tolerance of government deficits
* Focus on full employment
I would vote for a party that advocated that without all the woke, culture-war crap. Give me this without dicks in cheerleaders' locker rooms, anti-abortion protestors imprisoned, and florists who don't want to work gay weddings bankrupted... and you've probably got my vote.
Which is why I'm a Trump voter -- most of what's on this list is the new GOP coalition. It looks a little different obviously: industrial policy isn't narrowly focused on "green"; pro-family policy instead of just welfare; progressive taxation is getting easier to sell but still hard in the GOP; we like unions if they keep out of non-labor politics. However, in the aggregate, this agenda is the rising center of the GOP: libertarians are out; Christians are out; pro-abundance is in, common-sense is in, 8-5 blue-collar conservatives are in.
Vance and Cotton and the generation that will take the reigns when Trump waddles into the Florida sunset would broadly agree with this list. Perhaps there's some bipartisan opportunities here.
One of the most telling statistics surrounding the 2024 election was that voters who spent time with the news in attempts to understand what was happening voted overwhelmingly for Biden/Harris. Those who had their heads in the sand or depended entirely on Trump friendly media went overwhelmingly for Trump.
Despite the fact that I took a couple of freshman classes in economics at the Wharton School at UPenn (coincidentally at the same time as a certain orange-haired self-described ‘stable genius' was also there) I am not even remotely an economic sage. But one thing is very clear to me. For us ‘amateurs’ the fact is that the number of economists who disagree with one another increases directly as the number of economists there are. Therefore we tend to be most influenced by our own experience of what is happening on the ground then by diverging ‘expert’ opinion.
But that doesn’t alter the fact that reading and making a valiant attempt to understand what’s going on is crucial to maintaining our Republic.
I remember one of those wonderful, often slightly alcohol fueled late-night college dorm discussions (albeit in the days before they could be co-ed). The topic, oddly enough was the importance of a good education. One of the disputants put it this way. "A good basic education should equip us to ask reasonable questions in a number of relevant areas, and, at least, to have a good idea when the answers we are getting back are bullshit".
I can’t think of a better nutshell description of one of the crucial reasons for the fix we find ourselves in now. And the continuing right wing attempts to denigrate the value of education outside what are generally considered ‘career-centered courses’ and to refuse the concept of ‘expertise’ is an excellent indication of one of the reasons why so many of us accepted all the bullshit we were getting from Trump and his myrmidons.
Well stated.
Educated Americans vote Democrat by margins of two and three to one precisely because of the endless lies and doublespeak coming from conservative politicians and elites.
If Trump had actually won in '20, FOX News would've been running non-stop segments on *how much worse* inflation was hurting consumers in every other industrialized country. RW media would've had Americans collectively thanking their lucky stars that savior Trump was keeping inflation the lowest in the world. In other words, de facto conservative control of the nation's media directly results in the mis- and dis-information influencing low-information voters.
AMEN!
Based. That is all.
Curious your thoughts on the specifics of what a new new Democratic economic agenda should be
I'm glad you countered Furmans Foreign Affairs piece.
Mr. Furman appears to consider Macroeconomics, fiscal policy as a Piano missing 24 keys on the keyboard.
Some hit. Some miss. And sometimes smart but discordant.
You lost me on “general suspicion of fiscal austerity, tolerance of government deficits.”
Tolerance of deficits in favor of tax cuts has been the conservatism Republican position since the early 2000s.
And how. The coming big push by Trump/GOP to renew--or even expand--the 2017 tax cuts is the next big political fight. Never mind that close to $1.9 trillion of our current debt was generated by it.
Dems should frame it as the "Leave No Billionaire Behind Bill".
The weird thing about Biden is that I don't think he's a 'new' Progressive thinker but an old one. Of the tenants of the old thinking listed many pre-date the current Progressive orthodoxy:
-Subsidies for “care industries” like health care, eldercare, and child care
-Vigorous antitrust and suspicion of corporate concentration
-Strong support for unions, and for policies to push up wages.
-Industrial policy, especially for green technologies to fight climate change
-An expanded welfare state focused on child tax credits
-Higher taxes on the super-rich
-A general suspicion of fiscal austerity, tolerance of government deficits, and a focus on full employment above all other macroeconomic goals
Of these: strong support for unions (one of Biden's central tenants) has been around for ages. Vigorous anti-trust is not new either, nor is an expanded welfare state (although the focus has bounced around), and finally: higher taxes on the wealthy. Some of these are even popular, depending on how you frame them: support for unions is popular, higher taxes on the wealthy is popular, and social programs are popular (well, once they take hold typically).
Overall, Biden over-reached economically, and the pieces of this old agenda which aren't working are not intuitive. Supporting unions is popular, but Democratic support for unions is fruitless. Biden and Harris got almost no credit for their support for unions in 2024. I don't think anti-trust packs the punch, and was not a trade off worth pushing, and any social program needs to be carefully pushed when the fiscal situation is right. The biggest takeaway I have is that Democrats cannot ignore fiscal realities: spending a bunch of money in inflationary environments is a bad idea. The second is that if you set a goal: focus! Biden should have made building more factories the focus and damn all the other consequences.
None of this would have saved his Presidency. Events swept him away, and his age would have done him in either way. That doesn't mean he was a failure; I don't think Biden is Jimmy Carter, but it is quite unfortunate.
Benjamin,
Biden’s policies tried to balance old progressive values with modern realities. Unions and antitrust aren’t new, but applying them to sectors like tech and green energy isn’t just a rehash of the past—it’s responding to today’s concentrated corporate power and climate threats. The real problem wasn’t spending itself but the failure to communicate why that spending mattered in the face of inflation (and in terms of COVID infusions caused inflation itself.)
Focusing solely on factories would have ignored the broader structural issues—wealth, monopoly, the lack of blue-collar income value, and tax fairness—that industrial policy alone can’t fix.
Tim
you can't do everything
Lessons learned from lost elections are usually wrong and over thought. Inflation and immigration combined with a seemingly weak candidate lost the election and not policy since most Americans are clueless . Just a few years ago the GOP was DOA after Donnie and his Jan 6 coup attempt yet here we are.
I think it's important to be careful when attacking Biden's "profligate" spending and the impact that had on inflation. We need to remember that it wasn't as obvious how stable the economy was when that was being negotiated and (as with many decisions), his administration had to determine where to put their risk - too much spending or too little. While they probably still overspent, it's much easier to criticize when we now know exactly how much was "needed"; that was an unknown when the decision was made and I'd rather have inflation to tame than a failing economy that we then have to jump-start.
“. . . the underlying strength of Biden-Era forces pushing up investment in America was much more powerful than either side thought likely.”
— Brad DeLong
Inflation at 4% and unemployment under 4% has never happened outside of a recession. This is why gasbags like Larry Summer publicly stated that 6 million Americans would need to lose their jobs in order to tame inflation.
So, the Biden stimulus plans caused temporary inflation. Six million people didn’t lose jobs. And inflation was tamed without a recession.
And 40% of voters who cast a ballot for Trump don’t understand any of this. It’s as if six million people lost jobs, factored by a belief that the economy was doing badly and inflation was devastating. In fact, wage gains during this same period beat inflation.
Instead, a demented incompetent was voted in and we’re just beginning to see and experience the damage on all fronts of the federal government.
“Don’t it always go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”
— Joni Mitchell
In other words, Harris was going to lose no matter what type of campaign she ran. You can’t swim in the mainstream media’s ocean of bullshit.
Totally concur
I think it’s mostly the subsidies part that really gets Americans up in arms. Well, subsidies for families and/or poor people. We subsidize the hell out of billionaires and corporations, which doesn’t get as much ire. It will be interesting to see if Dems can get a better plan, but I’m not hopeful. I think that they’ll eventually double down when Donnie messes it all up and then get routed again when a competent Republican comes around.
"Leave No Billionaire Behind" is the GOP mantra. The entire Conservative raison d'etre is to be errand boys for the ultra-rich. They have lost any credibility as being Natsec hawks, fiscally responsible or pro-law enforcement.
“. . . what we’re seeing is what you’d expect if China and Russia had somehow managed to install people who wanted to sabotage America’s international position at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”
— Paul Krugman
This democrats’ new industrial policy seems to be doubling down on the old industrial policy. It doesn’t address the fundamental issues of how or why the US exported manufacturing in the first place. Nor does it address why the US needs to import so many H1b visa engineers at all. The source is the lack of STEM graduates which finds focus on affirmative action in which minorities (Asians are not minorities) do not major in engineering. It was fine to stroll your way through a marathon when your authoritarian competitors were kids. As this is not the case anymore, the US will now need to do the heavy training in order to stay ahead or risk losing the global race.
Regardless of how many STEM graduates we have. We should always be importing more. We are always in a race. Winning is good.
Yes. When said H1B holders are top STEM graduates of elite foreign universities. But, sadly, the bulk of new imports are just brought in to pad Wall street profits at the expense of native Americans.
"The source is the lack of STEM graduates which finds focus on affirmative action in which minorities (Asians are not minorities) do not major in engineering."
I don't understand your point here, James. You seem to be implying that it is a problem that non-Asian minorities are not pursuing STEM education, but also that the cause is in some way affirmative action programs (which would be directed at drawing non-Asian minorities into STEM education).
There are twice as many Americans who fit your definition of non-minority than fit your definition of minority. If the goal is to increase absolute numbers of STEM-trained people, that's where the biggest pool of candidates will be. On the other hand, if cultural and educational patterns have led minorities to avoid pursuing STEM education, then there may be larger percentage payoffs for increased investments in overcoming that avoidance.
The new administration, on the other hand, is taking the approach that the solution is to cease recruitment of STEM talent among minorities (https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/10/military-drops-recruiting-efforts-prestigious-black-engineering-awards-event.html). This anti-affirmative action approach will have the sole effect of lowering incentives for STEM careers among minority groups with no corresponding gains.
Wasn't offshoring of manufacturing driven more by the mercantilist economic policies of East Asian nations (as well as the USD's status of global reserve currency) than by anything wrong with the US educational system?
And H-1B is a bad program that helps fuel anti-immigration sentiment: immigrants should be employed either on the same terms as citizens, or in jobs (such as agricultural manual labor) that citizens don't want.
https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/12/31/segmentation-fault/
Agree that it is vastly better if, "immigrants [are] be employed... on the same terms as citizens." The H-1B program, however, is mostly good even as it stands.
I feel there is a misunderstanding of what affirmative action is. For college it is a race-based, rather than a merit based, process. For certain there is need and advantage to have advanced education for minorities. But regarding the military black engineers award, does it not feel like back-handed slap to black engineers?
I take it this a response to me, James.
First, affirmative action was not raced-based *rather than* merit based. It provided point advantages to minority candidates qualified on the merits, and those points could move their admissions placement up in the ranks. So it was a merit-based system that incorporated minority preferences. It was ended in 2023 by the Supreme Court. Many colleges continue to use economically based preferences that counter the unequal distribution of opportunities the flow from family wealth. This too is affirmative action, but it is not race based, and it has broad support because there is wide recognition that comparable qualifications coming from candidates who have faced unequal challenges often indicates greater potential for the candidate who has had greater obstacles to overcome.
That is the underlying rationale for recognition such as the Black Engineering Award. It is an award given by a private company that specializes in personnel supply to the military, and the award presentation is a venue for military recruitment. You can pick at the idea of an award limited to members of a certain identity group and call it a back-handed slap if you like, but the military's boycott the recruitment opportunity has the dual effect of discriminating against that group and closing an avenue of top talent recruitment for the military, and that is a front-handed slap to both those engineers and to the citizens who cannot benefit from their military employment.
And, by the way, although I don't know the data supporting either side of the argument, I do know that the debate about the H1B visa centers on evidence that it is not so much that STEM expertise is in short supply in the US, as that the special terms of the visa incentivize companies to bypass US citizens with adequate expertise in favor of equally trained or even less well qualified foreign candidates who can be tightly controlled by restrictions entailed in the visa and paid substantially less than US market rates for talent. This perspectives sees H1B employees as resembling indentured servants in the limited employment options they have and the economic leverage over them held by their employers, while American STEM workers see the market for their talents shrink.
Certain portions of the US population tend towards STEM majors and would excel in those fields. That some were awarded an opportunity means that others, that were more capable, did not. The 60 year experiment is due to end soon.
"Certain portions of the US population tend towards STEM majors and would excel in those fields."
Sure: people who find they have facility with math.
"That some were awarded an opportunity means that others, that were more capable, did not."
No: opportunity for STEM education is limited only by available teaching resources, and, apart from special needs programs in areas of cognitive deficits, teaching resources are not directed away from students with STEM capabilities. On the contrary, there have been major efforts to provide more STEM education.
But I'll note again the episode I cited from Military.com (which has been widely reported) that the new administration's policy appears not to be seeking an expansion of STEM talent, but in discouraging STEM talent by declining to recruit within a particularly well qualified association because it is associated with a minority group. The thinking seems to be that demonstrated competence by members of a minority group should not be allowed to overcome a belief that minority group members cannot demonstrate competence.
What is enough ?
The Dems economic policies should exist in two realms for two audiences. One realm would be the "in the weeds" stuff, where they explain their philosophy and proposed policies for academics policy makers and nerdy wonks, stuff like Noah likes to write about, and his readers love to debate. Stuff based on reality. The kinda stuff that doesn't make headlines.
The second realm would be where they speak to the average Joe and make a range of appealing promises. The one promise they should always make is to cut taxes. If Harris had spent all her time promising to cut the average American's taxes she might have won.
They should never be concerned if the two realms contradict each other. They should always proclaim that the differences are not in reality differences. They should never admit that their desired policies put the promises to the average Joe in jeopardy. NEVER let worries about deficits get in the way of a tax cut. The more the promises are called into question the stronger they should make their commitment. Just like the Republicans do.
When the Dems confine themselves to reality based policies while the repubs are free to invent a reality divorced from it they will never be able to please the public. It doesn't matter how good or bad the economy is in reality. The staunch willful ignorance of the MAGA voter has demonstrated it, but they are really nothing new.
We can diagnose the Dems problems by getting into the weed's finding programs or policies that anger someone and declare those the reason for Dem unelectability, but when the other side can invent reality there will always be "reasons". The Dems can keep twisting their proposals to address the criticisms that the right inflames out of proportion, but the right just inflames something else.
When reality based thinking becomes reactive to invented reality, it loses.
It even loses its own grip on reality as it seeks to make sense of it's coming up short in the world of invented reality.
What is enough? Not a devotion to reality. What is enough? The ability to invent reality.
Your comments are a good review of how we got to where we are at the moment. On the other hand, we are in the Shock stage of Trump's Shock and Awe and Implosion scenario. You are correct, that in a hot economy Biden should have been more involved in the deficit/cost/benefit aspects.
My analysis points to a high probability of an economic implosion starting in the second half of 2025. That would imply that Democrats need to model 2026 economic responses for an economy that will more resemble the 1930's than the 2020's.
As long as the GOP can revive--or even increase--the 2017 tax cuts bill this year, they'll consider all this chaos worthwhile. What's a few more trillion added to the national debt, if it enriches our oligarchs?
Yes, that is what kicks off the AWE stage in second quarter. I see the implosion stage triggered later by reality, stuff like jobs and GDP which will not be pretty.
What we need right now is a clean break from neoliberalism, progressivism, conservatism, and all the other ism's. They all represent a "system" that the public largely blames for our current situation. Trump saw this ten years ago and has migrated the Republicans away from the isms, positioning themselves as a solution to the problem. The Democrats, however, seem to be doubling down on the problem. They are ignoring the public, and are paying a political price for it. What they need to do is make their break with the past, admit there is a problem, and offer competing solutions to solve the problem. For example, instead of wasting their breath whining about every proposal Musk and Trump make, they should agree that the bureaucracy is out of control and offer a better plan to address it than DOGE. They need a new brand. Democrats need to start listening to their purple state governors who have been successful in navigating these waters. For example, Josh Shapiro's "Get Shit Done" mantra in Pennsylvania is something that could translate to a winning strategy nationally. Now would be a good time for the Democrats to check themselves into rehab. They clearly need to detox and embark on a 12-step recovery program before it is too late.
Mr. Steiner, I don't disagree with your point about Purple State governors, but it seems to me that this was the major hallmark of Biden's first two years when he had leverage to govern. There was 'ismy' stuff included because you can't totally blow off your base, but everything had to clear Manchin and Biden worked with that.
I think others have hit on an essential point, and it's not the -isms. It's that we have one party whose brand is effective government and another whose brand is putting on a scripted reality show and driving the ratings. It's easy to see which is more entertaining, and in that environment power flows with the freedom to invent narrative and cosplay without the friction of real life. It's a terrific advantage.
Recalling some urban riots of the past I think about the people who ditched protest for social progress in favor of "loot and destroy." *So* much easier to loot and destroy, and you can wind up with a few TVs and so much good liquor you need to buy a cabinet. MAGA is even more ambitious: loot, destroy, and entertain. Irresistible! If only the folks burning down Detroit in '67 had thought to cut disks with Motown while they were at it, they might have had the nation on their bandwagon.
The "green energy transition" was properly rejected by the voters when they elected Trump. All Biden achieved was to suppress American living standards while India and China continued to build several new coal-fired power plants every week. If global warming is a problem, the only solution that would actually work is also the cheapest--geoengineering.
It seems to me that using the idea of geoengineering as a rationalization for continuing fossil fuel expansion is not responsible. There is at this time no scaled version of geoengineering that exists, no understanding of how the costs to scale up would be met (since, unlike solar technology and battery storage improvements there is no direct short-term economic contribution--it may be "cheap" in terms of gross investment costs, but not in terms of net short/medium turn balances), and no experience that will validate faith in the absence of unanticipated negative consequences.
It is absolutely true that China and India are making important short-term gains by steering investment to fossil fuel based energy. It's a real problem and a valid point. But I don't think you can wave away the consequences of solving it by emulating the Asian approach by invoking a loosely defined set of techniques that will not attract private capital.
Many of the geo-engineering techniques are well understood and more easily modeled than the global climate models used for forecasting. And many like cloud brightness enhancement with sea water, sulfur dioxide injection into the stratosphere and orbital solar shades cost less than what was spent by Biden’s IRA. But environmentalists are against even testing these ideas because they think it will reduce the need for the other expensive carbon reduction programs, which is what pays their salaries. As in the case of other NGOs, they don’t actually want the problems they are working on to be solved, because it makes their jobs and government donations unnecessary.
Do you have sources for these very broad statements about these techniques and the motivations of scientists and non-profits, Buzen?
Sure, here are some references. If you have any references that refute these, please post them.
Sea water injection for cloud brightening, uses only water and a few specialized ships,
https://phys.org/news/2014-12-cloud-brightening-cooler-planet-revealed.html
SO₂ insertion, effective cheap and safe when injected into the stratosphere for low costs.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Barrett+S+2008+The+incredible+economics+of+geoengineering+Environ.+Resour.+Econ.+39+45%E2%80%9354
Orbital sun shades, cost estimates are several billion a year (less than the IRA costs) and will be cheaper as SpaceX further reduces launch costs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576522006762
As for motivations of environmental scientists, look at the explosion of scientists working on climate change, and the lack of progress.
This shows the number of climate change papers published is doubling every 5 years.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0160393
Buzen,
Calling these techniques "well understood" feels like a stretch, but I agree they deserve more funding and research. The bigger issue is the lack of political and economic will to explore geoengineering and address climate change as a whole.
I appreciate the links, though I'm skeptical about the science. Without proper control scenarios, it's tough to trust outcomes at scale. And that's not even touching the bigger command-and-control risks these projects could pose.
Tim
You have some proposals here I was unaware of Buzen. I appreciate your responding substantively. Both the proposals I was aware of and the sun shades (new to me) seem like good ideas but I can't assess the claims of these papers and others I've encountered. (It's not my field.) But I want to stress three points:
1. Until operational we will not have proof of concept. (Of course we should pursue what's promising! We shouldn't assume the theories will work without introducing unanticipated factors.)
2. These solutions may seem cheap, but that is relative to the damage of climate change. These would require new fleets of airplanes, ships, etc., etc., and there is, so far as I can see, no conventional investment return that would incentivize private capital without guarantees of government funding. The sun-shade study claims that the costs have previously been seen as prohibitive, but this new theory would cut them--however, this depends entirely on the practiality and effectiveness of the method. Since the article made it into an Elsevir publication it clearly has prima facie merit--a little browsing indicates the idea continues to be pursued.
3. There is no evidence I see that scientists and non-profits are lobbying to forestall application of these methods. The fact that climate change research is escalating geometrically does not imply--to any degree at all--that these authors are trying to prevent solutions that would end the need for their research.
It appears to me that because all these methods require convincing governments to provide funding or contract guarantees the impediments to moving forward are substantial and scientifically normal. The costs associated with the IRA all concern up-front incentives to produce a self-sustaining market for the production and consumption of green energy. That envisions a rapidly escalating GDP payback for the investment. Speculative investments that will produce no GDP growth, but are designed to prevent long-term negative impacts are naturally going to be a much harder sell. (Build us a huge fleet of specially designed ships/planes and we'll prove this works! -- there's no mystery why that would be a difficult sell. You don't need a conspiracy of self-interested scientific opponents, hoping to sacrifice the planet so they can gain tenure or promotion.)
Late edit: It occurred to me that what actually seems to be operating on this thread and the world in general is some people saying, "forget green technology, we already have an answer--geoengineering--and perfect faith in its effectiveness," and others saying, "until we confirm the promise of geoengineering our only hedge against extreme climate is green technology," while you're interpreting the latter as saying, "forget geoengineering, we already have an answer--green technology--and perfect faith in its effectiveness." It seems to me the right approach is: "all of the above to the degree we're able to follow the science and come up with funding."
You make valid points about the untested, but still great promise of geoengineering.
When push comes to shove, even a partly botched geoengineering regime may be vastly preferable to the economic devastation of end-stage global warming. Which could kills billions of human being; and impoverish the rest.
By this logic, the "green energy transition" was also anointed the rule of the land by the election of Biden. Let's not be silly, shall we?
The 2020 election went to Biden because Trump was elected to correct the monetary deflation that he inherited from Obama and instead he allowed it to get worse. But the "green transition" is just expensive virtue signaling that Americans can't afford.
I sure that your position is very woke in some circles. For those of us actually following the "green transition." Green energy has already won. It is cheaper and being installed everywhere (e.g. the left wing bastion of Texas) because if it .
Neo-liberalism is as dead as neo-conservatism. The former went insane with wokeness and the latter failed to conserve anything. So the voters replaced them.
I like your list though:
* Subsidies for “care industries”
* Vigorous antitrust and suspicion of corporate concentration
* Strong support for unions, and for policies to push up wages
* Industrial policy, especially for green technologies to fight climate change
* An expanded welfare state focused on child tax credits
* Higher taxes on the super-rich
* A general suspicion of fiscal austerity
* Tolerance of government deficits
* Focus on full employment
I would vote for a party that advocated that without all the woke, culture-war crap. Give me this without dicks in cheerleaders' locker rooms, anti-abortion protestors imprisoned, and florists who don't want to work gay weddings bankrupted... and you've probably got my vote.
Which is why I'm a Trump voter -- most of what's on this list is the new GOP coalition. It looks a little different obviously: industrial policy isn't narrowly focused on "green"; pro-family policy instead of just welfare; progressive taxation is getting easier to sell but still hard in the GOP; we like unions if they keep out of non-labor politics. However, in the aggregate, this agenda is the rising center of the GOP: libertarians are out; Christians are out; pro-abundance is in, common-sense is in, 8-5 blue-collar conservatives are in.
Vance and Cotton and the generation that will take the reigns when Trump waddles into the Florida sunset would broadly agree with this list. Perhaps there's some bipartisan opportunities here.