Somebody should get one of the American econ pseudo-Nobel laureates (paging Krugman?) to put in a nomination for Powell (and perhaps some of his Fed colleagues), for conclusively proving that it's possible to achieve a "soft landing". (Past laureates are automatically included in the class of people who can make nominations. See: https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/economic-sciences/ )
Noah is making the point that the US has substantially outperformed the rest of the world precisely *because* of Dem/Biden industrial policy. Not in spite of it. And that they're not getting credit for the first substantial re-shoring of manufacturing in my lifetime. Which is not surprising for conservative America, which gets their non-news from FOX.
Since we're now possibly tipping into recession, the jury is still out on GOP management of Fed policy, and history will likely Judge Powell for being too slow to raise rates during the pandemic, and then too slow to cut them. A Trump win will almost certainly tip us into recession--even if he doesn't immediately enact his wacky new tariff agenda--if current hiring reports are any indication.
A Trump win will also spell the end for Fed independence, as his GOP will immediately subordinate it to executive branch control. A massive cut to the prime WILL undoubtedly juice the economy, and possibly outweigh his recessionary tariffs policy. But likely at the cost of an inflationary spike.
LOL, what a load I am wading through here. Hip boots will not protect my clothing. I now feel dirty.
The unemployment issue was one of our making. We literally forced the closure of businesses and paid people to stay home. The vaccine and cutting payments for people to stay home brought people back to work. It took a while because people who worked in low-paying jobs did not want to return to those jobs.
Pay increased sufficiently enough to encourage service individuals to return to work. This is part of the inflation that occurred. The one Larry Summers told the Biden Administration about. We have had a wage-price spiral, and very few want to acknowledge that part of the inflation story. Nobody acknowledges that the substantial pay increases naturally had to influence the price of end products.
Our Federal government budget went up approximately 50% during Biden’s term. ARA literally turned on the printing presses, gassed up the helicopters, and flew them over America. Noah is correct in one thing. Powell is responsible for the eventual slowing of the rise of inflation.
The apologists for Democrats’ economic and lunatic spending policies talk about the slowing of inflation, never the fact that overall prices are 20% higher; however, in things that matter, like car insurance, it is well over 30%. In order to afford all this consumer spending, which fuels our economy, consumers have spent their savings and borrowed. Americans' average debt has never been higher.
After decades of low interest rates, consumers are having trouble paying down their debt. Here is note from the Fed;
"For the poorest 10% of ZIP codes, the delinquency rate increased from 14.9% in the third quarter of 2022 to 21% in the first quarter of 2024, or 41% in relative terms. The Percentage of Credit Card Debt That Is Delinquent Continues Climbing SOURCES: Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel and authors’ calculations.”
This is why people are not buying the happy talk Noah is giving us. Yes, the Macroeconomy has great numbers, but that does not reflect life in America, where everything is so much higher. This BS that inflation has come down is a canard. The magician is showing you something over here to distract you while hiding the coin over there.
Small businesses is still having issues finding employees. Yes, immigration is helping, I think the entire crew who put on the new roof on the house were illegal immigrants. I was asked to pay cash. Still, for the small restaurant owner to find affordable, competent managerial help is not able to see that person. You still can walk into JCPenney and not see a sole working anyway except for the one cashier in the middle of the store. Certainly, no one to help you.
What Noah describes as delivering can also be called populism, as he rightly described it. I would argue it is bad for the country. Biden’s dogged determination to thwart the Supreme Court and pay off student loans was a giveaway to garner votes. It is the worst kind of government action to buy votes. Between Kamala and Trump, they are giving away America’s future and the future economic well-being of my children.
Your children will eat as much candy as you are willing to give them. The American public loves free shit from the government. Who wouldn’t, it doesn’t mean it is good for them. Shortly, the SS and Medicare shortfalls will consume us. We will either print more money and try and get others to buy our debt, or the Federal Reserve will buy our debt and it will never get paid back. Our interest rates will continue to consume our Federal spending, higher than currently being the second largest item in the Federal Budget.
You can buy what Noah is selling at your own risk, but the dark clouds on the horizon will eventually cause a storm.
"Your children will eat as much candy as you are willing to give them. The American public loves free shit from the government. Who wouldn’t, it doesn’t mean it is good for them. Shortly, the SS and Medicare shortfalls will consume us."
If Trump gets his way, SS will go insolvent by 2031!
Source: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
You know there's a flip-side to housing costs. Millions of Americans have benefitted from the big rise in the price of housing because, what ho, 65% of Americans own their homes.
Yeah, this post is a steaming pile of bullshit. Taking just a few of the issues:
Noah praises Biden for increasing "the percentage of prime-age Americans who have a job." But that plot shows that the number just barely recovered to where it was under Trump. And under Trump the numbers were on a clear upward trend, while under Biden it has leveled off. So this is a failure, not a success.
Noah also praises Biden for record fracking. Biden tried very hard, especially early in his term, to shut down oil and gas in general and fracking in particular. He lightened up on that a bit after the Ukraine war, but it certainly hasn't ended. He is still blocking LNG terminals.
Noah praises Biden and the Democrats for restraining spending after inflation jumped up. To do so, he shows a plot of Federal spending jumping from under $5 trillion/year under Trump to nearly $7 trillion/year, with a clearly accelerating rate. I mean, I guess they theoretically could have done worse, but it's hard to describe that as restrained spending.
Don't believe your lying eyes, believe what Noah tells you. This is a total loss of credibility.
Also, as the article Noah linked to says, a permit takes 10 years to develop, so the permits that the court forced Biden to issue did not yet contribute to the current production increases.
I'd like to nominate as a major, unaddressed problem the underlying reason Biden isn't getting much credit for any of this: changes in the media ecosystem. Conservative talk radio, cable news, and social media are rotting US political culture from the inside and (just look at the Republicans) rapidly degrading the country's ability to make good decisions and pursue prudent policies.
The state of media, broadly defined, is a first-rank emergency and media reform has to be a very high priority. And you don't need to shred the First Amendment to do it: Adopt a progressive tax on digital ads, bring back the fairness doctrine, do some antitrust about TV stations, etc.
It seems to me that while the mainstream media are left-leaning and likely to cover the things Biden is successful at, the growth of right-wing media and the consequent decamping of right-leaning people to that means that they're never going to hear of it. Conversely, it seems likely (being inside that bubble myself) that the mainstream media underemphasize the things Biden hasn't done well.
Now if we can only get the Democrats to follow the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, etc, and drop their full-throated support for the viciously homophobic treatment of gay kids, I'd be able to vote for them again. https://substack.com/@sullydish/note/c-74962762
There's a fair amount of evidence that gay kids are being misdiagnosed as trans and Andrew Sullivan and others have written about it plenty of times. Whether that constitutes as homophobia or radical trans activism, I don't know and I don't care. This is a real issue and that's why the countries that US progressives look up to as the leaders of social progressivism have dialed it back on gender reassignment treatments for minors.
I want to see some of that evidence! My understanding is that young trans people are more likely to identify as gay in their new gender than as gay in their old gender (which would undercut this claim), but perhaps there has been some change in that. At any rate, I’ve heard this claim made most strongly by older lesbians who hypothesize that they would have been encouraged to identify as trans under new norms, but not from people who actually work with younger gay or trans people.
Then you should read more about it and make your own conclusions. Apart from Andrew Sullivan, Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog have written quite extensively about it.
If Biden had been able to explain his policies as you do, explaining "here's what we're doing and why", via a modern version of FDR's fireside chats, he and his policies would be a lot more popular than they are now. Instead, he largely shunned that kind of engagement with the public, or when he did engage, he sounded like an old guy shouting from his front porch. If he had an understanding of what he and his team were doing -- domestically, I'm not sure he did, while on foreign policy I think his instincts and understanding were spot on -- he was never able to articulate it clearly and forcefully.
I’m personally not convinced that the ARP needed to be 1.9 trillion. It was passed based on political opportunism and not entirely on need. They should have waited till the vaccines were rolled out and the reopening of the economy to assess whether more stimulus was needed. When Obama passed the stimulus, we were at the peak of the recession and the economy was shedding 800k jobs per month. The pandemic induced recession was over in Q1 2021, so it was a very different scenario. Also, US oil production has been trending up since the Bush Presidency. I’m not sure how much credit each subsequent president deserves but the only time growth paused was during the pandemic.
Edit: I looked at the graph again, and oil production started trending up since the Obama Presidency. Was down or mostly flat during the Bush years. I doubt that many Americans know this.
On housing, another possible problem with grant aiding first time buyers is that while income-related eligibility restrictions are necessary to ensure additionality and targeting, they can become a public rationing device whereby an applicant just below the qualifying threshold can secure, in effect, a substantial capital grant but someone just above qualifies for zilch: a cliff edge.
That shortcoming could be alleviated by eligibility tapering, but then usual issues associated with means-tested benefits come into play including added administrative complexity.
The grant could be attached to the property rather than the purchaser with its value subtracted from subsequent market resales to retain the subsidy in perpetuity, but then later purchases would need to be restricted again to eligible first time buyers and the dwelling would become a form of intermediate social housing.
Similar issues apply in the UK context. There supply elasticity is low and the dominant volume housebuilders trickle out additional supply to maximise margin rather than volume. Perhaps most US local markets are more competitive and efficient!?
Singapore is certainly an interesting case, although situation there needs on-going monitoring and evaluation for replication purposes.
There is a fundamental problem here that housing can't be cheap and available and also an investment. If house prices grow 2% a year faster than inflation, then houses become 2x as expensive in 35 years, 4x in 70, etc. There is no policy that can fix this mathematical problem. The day of reckoning must come.
They can if incomes grow at more than 2% above inflation. They also can if you count the fact that now you’re paying rent to yourself. They also can if you’re borrowing costs are less than 2% above inflation. I don’t think people make money on housing because prices grow fast, they make money on housing because they save on rent, are able to borrow cheaply, and lock in a fixed price of housing while their incomes keep going up. In theory.
all the good stuff that has happened during this administration has been undersold and also underbought. as you say, its hard to determine causation but it sure aint zero. as regards immigration, you are bang on and the admin wont admit that they screwed up and were really forced to accept the bi-partisan bill that Trump did torpedo. they acted late; maybe too late. if they lose, i think it will be over this issue. Asylum just doesn't work anymore in a world torn by conflict and climate, the nice places cant and wont accept all the people from the not nice places.
The new idea that has really changed my thinking is the contrast between the rhetorical effectiveness of Trump and the rhetorical deficit of Biden. If Biden could have sold his achievements more effectively, this election probably wouldn't be this close.
David Roberts: "Democrats are currently locked in a 50/50 race with a deranged fascist, so can we say with confidence that deliverism didn't work?"
Noah handles this argument well with, "If inflation or unemployment were still high, or if violent crime was still running rampant, Harris probably wouldn’t even have a chance right now."
But why wouldn't she have a chance? Harris is effectively an incumbent, and given a strong economy, she should be walking away with this race. Is she just a uniquely bad candidate? Are things not going that well (I don't believe this; Noah's economic analysis appears spot on). And why would a VP of an overwhelmingly successful administration be running away from those policies instead of trumpeting his (and her) successes? Further, if Donald Trump and his minions are deranged fascists (while Noah might quibble with that term, this largely seems to square with his view of Trump) how is this race 50/50?
The close race implies that, while this epistemological frame is overwhelmingly popular among the laptop class and is reflected in Harris' increasingly hyperbolic claims about Trump's evilness, most of the country appears to not believe it. Americans aren't stupid. Facing a choice between a VP whose administration produced a roaringly successful economy and tamed inflation and a former President who intends to create an American fascist state, this race would not be close. Something in that analysis is off. Either A is false, B is false, of there's a C that the left-wing media class is missing and is overriding both.
It's a good argument, but I'm not totally convinced.
1. FBI reversed then doubled crime numbers for 2022, why should I trust their numbers for other years? Especially when the National Crime Victimization Survey and my own experiences shopping say that crime is still high.
2. The jobs creation seems gamed as well, especially with the amount of immigration and stats showing the vast majority of new hiring has been of immigrants and based on "equity" numbers. Again, in my own life the number of openings I see in my field are much lower.
3. Oil was a Trump thing that Biden just wasn't able to shut down, though he tried. Same for tariffs.
4. Industrial policy is nice, but for every success story there's plenty of stories about charging stations going unbuilt because they insist on DEI requirements.
5. Inflation was the Fed and it's solution was the Fed. They said they were going to do it to prevent a recession and then they did it. This whole thing is arguing over tea leaves
6. Finally, Biden and the Dems haven't solved my #1 problem from the early 2020s, which is that they are squirmy authoritarian fucks who will make awful decisions, lie and then try to get you cancelled for pointing it out. See: This lates dumb shit about apostrophe's and Trumpers being garbage.
Number 4 is a great example of why I just won't vote for Democrats. Even when I like the policies they propose, I can be fairly sure they won't get done because they will insist on adding all kinds of stupid bureaucracy to get in the way. It seems like they just attract these busybody bureaucratic homeowners association types who are absolutely allergic to getting anything done or taking any risk. And good policy just can't overcome bad personality.
As a brief for why Biden's policies were and Harris's policies will be better than Trump's, as a reminder at how much better the economy and the border and crime is, this is fine, but to say those polices "fixed" much is a stretch.
In regard to the immigration mess specifically, it seems to me that the driving forces are (1) the deep progressive desire to have the United States be the universal place of refuge for people fleeing sucky situations and countries, (2) the fact that US asylum law considerably supports that, (3) most of the public supports the concept but not if it is coupled with any cost or inconvenience, at which point they decide that Americans have no intrinsic obligations to foreigners, and (4) the current situation has caused refugee-type immigrants to land in very concentrated locations, causing high costs to small polities, which the federal government (and often the states) do not pay for.
Facts 2 and 3 make the issue fraught for Harris, as she doesn't want to alienate the Democratic base but she still wants to win. It's a classic wedge issue.
Fact 4 can be seen here in deeply Democratic Massachusetts. The state has a law saying that it will guarantee housing to families with children or pregnant women. But it also has a housing shortage. The state sets up various shelters. These are costing $1 billion a year in a state budget of $52 billion a year. But wherever a shelter is set up, a large slug of non-English-speaking students are placed in the local schools, students with particular problems since immigrants don't get the usual welfare support. This has caused a political firestorm in many places and likely will get a few Republicans elected to the Legislature.
"During his term in office, Biden’s policies competently and effectively addressed our main short-term economic problems — first unemployment, and then inflation ..."
This is totally false and I have a hard time thing that Noah does not know it is false. Both the excellent recovery in employment and the over-target inflation (whihc in part was necessary to obtain the recovery in employment) AND the subsequent deceleration of inflation back to target were NOT the result of any Biden policies to "competently and effectively" to address them. For good or ill, and it was mainly good, the Fed did it. It was a huge political mistake by Biden (the Administration) to have given the appearance of involvement in macroeconomic management. It raises the stakes in a wager a whose outcome a President cannot affect.
And, sure enough, Biden is getting blamed for inflation that was not his fault and not getting any credit for the recovery for whihc he deserves none. The only thing Biden could have done to reduce the stakes was to have high volume "confidence" that J Powell knew what he was doing in his inflation and employment management. OK, taking on the Longshoremen to get the ports unclogged was useful. And more and quicker backtracking on anti-fossil fuels rhetoric and policy and more permitting reform could have been demagogued as "anti-inflationary."
Apologies... while not a Trump fan, I think this article is unnecessarily positive on Biden/Democrats.
It seems to me the reality is:
1) Economy: The current state of the US economy is not really a function of either party... rather private interests/innovation have gotten us here. The government investments which were made important years ago. The true impact of Trump/Biden investments won't be known for years.
2) Crime: Crime has been going down in a longer term for a lot of reasons (including the ubiquitous use of cheap camera technology). More police is good.
3) Budget Deficit: Both parties have created the current situation.. I don't see a big difference.
4) Regulations: You are very right to focus on this topic. Both the budget and regulations need to be a focus.
5) On manufacturing, I think you are far too negative. First, it is best to look at manufacturing at a North America Level. On the Arsenal of democracy, before WWII the situation was not much better...never mind WWI. If needed, this can be cranked up quickly.. it's a choice.
Somebody should get one of the American econ pseudo-Nobel laureates (paging Krugman?) to put in a nomination for Powell (and perhaps some of his Fed colleagues), for conclusively proving that it's possible to achieve a "soft landing". (Past laureates are automatically included in the class of people who can make nominations. See: https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/economic-sciences/ )
Noah is making the point that the US has substantially outperformed the rest of the world precisely *because* of Dem/Biden industrial policy. Not in spite of it. And that they're not getting credit for the first substantial re-shoring of manufacturing in my lifetime. Which is not surprising for conservative America, which gets their non-news from FOX.
Since we're now possibly tipping into recession, the jury is still out on GOP management of Fed policy, and history will likely Judge Powell for being too slow to raise rates during the pandemic, and then too slow to cut them. A Trump win will almost certainly tip us into recession--even if he doesn't immediately enact his wacky new tariff agenda--if current hiring reports are any indication.
A Trump win will also spell the end for Fed independence, as his GOP will immediately subordinate it to executive branch control. A massive cut to the prime WILL undoubtedly juice the economy, and possibly outweigh his recessionary tariffs policy. But likely at the cost of an inflationary spike.
LOL, what a load I am wading through here. Hip boots will not protect my clothing. I now feel dirty.
The unemployment issue was one of our making. We literally forced the closure of businesses and paid people to stay home. The vaccine and cutting payments for people to stay home brought people back to work. It took a while because people who worked in low-paying jobs did not want to return to those jobs.
Pay increased sufficiently enough to encourage service individuals to return to work. This is part of the inflation that occurred. The one Larry Summers told the Biden Administration about. We have had a wage-price spiral, and very few want to acknowledge that part of the inflation story. Nobody acknowledges that the substantial pay increases naturally had to influence the price of end products.
Our Federal government budget went up approximately 50% during Biden’s term. ARA literally turned on the printing presses, gassed up the helicopters, and flew them over America. Noah is correct in one thing. Powell is responsible for the eventual slowing of the rise of inflation.
The apologists for Democrats’ economic and lunatic spending policies talk about the slowing of inflation, never the fact that overall prices are 20% higher; however, in things that matter, like car insurance, it is well over 30%. In order to afford all this consumer spending, which fuels our economy, consumers have spent their savings and borrowed. Americans' average debt has never been higher.
After decades of low interest rates, consumers are having trouble paying down their debt. Here is note from the Fed;
"For the poorest 10% of ZIP codes, the delinquency rate increased from 14.9% in the third quarter of 2022 to 21% in the first quarter of 2024, or 41% in relative terms. The Percentage of Credit Card Debt That Is Delinquent Continues Climbing SOURCES: Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel and authors’ calculations.”
This is why people are not buying the happy talk Noah is giving us. Yes, the Macroeconomy has great numbers, but that does not reflect life in America, where everything is so much higher. This BS that inflation has come down is a canard. The magician is showing you something over here to distract you while hiding the coin over there.
Small businesses is still having issues finding employees. Yes, immigration is helping, I think the entire crew who put on the new roof on the house were illegal immigrants. I was asked to pay cash. Still, for the small restaurant owner to find affordable, competent managerial help is not able to see that person. You still can walk into JCPenney and not see a sole working anyway except for the one cashier in the middle of the store. Certainly, no one to help you.
What Noah describes as delivering can also be called populism, as he rightly described it. I would argue it is bad for the country. Biden’s dogged determination to thwart the Supreme Court and pay off student loans was a giveaway to garner votes. It is the worst kind of government action to buy votes. Between Kamala and Trump, they are giving away America’s future and the future economic well-being of my children.
Your children will eat as much candy as you are willing to give them. The American public loves free shit from the government. Who wouldn’t, it doesn’t mean it is good for them. Shortly, the SS and Medicare shortfalls will consume us. We will either print more money and try and get others to buy our debt, or the Federal Reserve will buy our debt and it will never get paid back. Our interest rates will continue to consume our Federal spending, higher than currently being the second largest item in the Federal Budget.
You can buy what Noah is selling at your own risk, but the dark clouds on the horizon will eventually cause a storm.
"Your children will eat as much candy as you are willing to give them. The American public loves free shit from the government. Who wouldn’t, it doesn’t mean it is good for them. Shortly, the SS and Medicare shortfalls will consume us."
If Trump gets his way, SS will go insolvent by 2031!
Source: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/what-would-trump-campaign-plans-mean-social-security
LOL (because apparently this makes my comment self assured and obviously tears down yours).
Inflation *has* come down. But it is not reversed, of course, so we are all still adjusting and affected by it.
Housing prices is an issue that makes many still feel like they aren't doing better. But who is seriously addressing this? Certainly not republicans!
You know there's a flip-side to housing costs. Millions of Americans have benefitted from the big rise in the price of housing because, what ho, 65% of Americans own their homes.
Yeah, this post is a steaming pile of bullshit. Taking just a few of the issues:
Noah praises Biden for increasing "the percentage of prime-age Americans who have a job." But that plot shows that the number just barely recovered to where it was under Trump. And under Trump the numbers were on a clear upward trend, while under Biden it has leveled off. So this is a failure, not a success.
Noah also praises Biden for record fracking. Biden tried very hard, especially early in his term, to shut down oil and gas in general and fracking in particular. He lightened up on that a bit after the Ukraine war, but it certainly hasn't ended. He is still blocking LNG terminals.
Noah praises Biden and the Democrats for restraining spending after inflation jumped up. To do so, he shows a plot of Federal spending jumping from under $5 trillion/year under Trump to nearly $7 trillion/year, with a clearly accelerating rate. I mean, I guess they theoretically could have done worse, but it's hard to describe that as restrained spending.
Don't believe your lying eyes, believe what Noah tells you. This is a total loss of credibility.
> Biden allowed an unprecedented amount of oil and gas drilling in the U.S
No he didn't. He stopped issuing new leases the day after he took office https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-billings-a3a37acf2fce55449b704b01badc1f67
But this was ruled illegal by a judge https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/judge-doubles-down-blocking-biden-oil-gas-pause-13-states-2022-08-19/
Also, as the article Noah linked to says, a permit takes 10 years to develop, so the permits that the court forced Biden to issue did not yet contribute to the current production increases.
I'd like to nominate as a major, unaddressed problem the underlying reason Biden isn't getting much credit for any of this: changes in the media ecosystem. Conservative talk radio, cable news, and social media are rotting US political culture from the inside and (just look at the Republicans) rapidly degrading the country's ability to make good decisions and pursue prudent policies.
The state of media, broadly defined, is a first-rank emergency and media reform has to be a very high priority. And you don't need to shred the First Amendment to do it: Adopt a progressive tax on digital ads, bring back the fairness doctrine, do some antitrust about TV stations, etc.
It seems to me that while the mainstream media are left-leaning and likely to cover the things Biden is successful at, the growth of right-wing media and the consequent decamping of right-leaning people to that means that they're never going to hear of it. Conversely, it seems likely (being inside that bubble myself) that the mainstream media underemphasize the things Biden hasn't done well.
Now if we can only get the Democrats to follow the UK, France, Sweden, Norway, etc, and drop their full-throated support for the viciously homophobic treatment of gay kids, I'd be able to vote for them again. https://substack.com/@sullydish/note/c-74962762
What are you talking about? Are you saying it is homophobic to allow kids to identify as trans?
There's a fair amount of evidence that gay kids are being misdiagnosed as trans and Andrew Sullivan and others have written about it plenty of times. Whether that constitutes as homophobia or radical trans activism, I don't know and I don't care. This is a real issue and that's why the countries that US progressives look up to as the leaders of social progressivism have dialed it back on gender reassignment treatments for minors.
I want to see some of that evidence! My understanding is that young trans people are more likely to identify as gay in their new gender than as gay in their old gender (which would undercut this claim), but perhaps there has been some change in that. At any rate, I’ve heard this claim made most strongly by older lesbians who hypothesize that they would have been encouraged to identify as trans under new norms, but not from people who actually work with younger gay or trans people.
Then you should read more about it and make your own conclusions. Apart from Andrew Sullivan, Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog have written quite extensively about it.
If Biden had been able to explain his policies as you do, explaining "here's what we're doing and why", via a modern version of FDR's fireside chats, he and his policies would be a lot more popular than they are now. Instead, he largely shunned that kind of engagement with the public, or when he did engage, he sounded like an old guy shouting from his front porch. If he had an understanding of what he and his team were doing -- domestically, I'm not sure he did, while on foreign policy I think his instincts and understanding were spot on -- he was never able to articulate it clearly and forcefully.
I’m personally not convinced that the ARP needed to be 1.9 trillion. It was passed based on political opportunism and not entirely on need. They should have waited till the vaccines were rolled out and the reopening of the economy to assess whether more stimulus was needed. When Obama passed the stimulus, we were at the peak of the recession and the economy was shedding 800k jobs per month. The pandemic induced recession was over in Q1 2021, so it was a very different scenario. Also, US oil production has been trending up since the Bush Presidency. I’m not sure how much credit each subsequent president deserves but the only time growth paused was during the pandemic.
Edit: I looked at the graph again, and oil production started trending up since the Obama Presidency. Was down or mostly flat during the Bush years. I doubt that many Americans know this.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m
On housing, another possible problem with grant aiding first time buyers is that while income-related eligibility restrictions are necessary to ensure additionality and targeting, they can become a public rationing device whereby an applicant just below the qualifying threshold can secure, in effect, a substantial capital grant but someone just above qualifies for zilch: a cliff edge.
That shortcoming could be alleviated by eligibility tapering, but then usual issues associated with means-tested benefits come into play including added administrative complexity.
The grant could be attached to the property rather than the purchaser with its value subtracted from subsequent market resales to retain the subsidy in perpetuity, but then later purchases would need to be restricted again to eligible first time buyers and the dwelling would become a form of intermediate social housing.
Similar issues apply in the UK context. There supply elasticity is low and the dominant volume housebuilders trickle out additional supply to maximise margin rather than volume. Perhaps most US local markets are more competitive and efficient!?
Singapore is certainly an interesting case, although situation there needs on-going monitoring and evaluation for replication purposes.
There is a fundamental problem here that housing can't be cheap and available and also an investment. If house prices grow 2% a year faster than inflation, then houses become 2x as expensive in 35 years, 4x in 70, etc. There is no policy that can fix this mathematical problem. The day of reckoning must come.
They can if incomes grow at more than 2% above inflation. They also can if you count the fact that now you’re paying rent to yourself. They also can if you’re borrowing costs are less than 2% above inflation. I don’t think people make money on housing because prices grow fast, they make money on housing because they save on rent, are able to borrow cheaply, and lock in a fixed price of housing while their incomes keep going up. In theory.
all the good stuff that has happened during this administration has been undersold and also underbought. as you say, its hard to determine causation but it sure aint zero. as regards immigration, you are bang on and the admin wont admit that they screwed up and were really forced to accept the bi-partisan bill that Trump did torpedo. they acted late; maybe too late. if they lose, i think it will be over this issue. Asylum just doesn't work anymore in a world torn by conflict and climate, the nice places cant and wont accept all the people from the not nice places.
The new idea that has really changed my thinking is the contrast between the rhetorical effectiveness of Trump and the rhetorical deficit of Biden. If Biden could have sold his achievements more effectively, this election probably wouldn't be this close.
David Roberts: "Democrats are currently locked in a 50/50 race with a deranged fascist, so can we say with confidence that deliverism didn't work?"
Noah handles this argument well with, "If inflation or unemployment were still high, or if violent crime was still running rampant, Harris probably wouldn’t even have a chance right now."
But why wouldn't she have a chance? Harris is effectively an incumbent, and given a strong economy, she should be walking away with this race. Is she just a uniquely bad candidate? Are things not going that well (I don't believe this; Noah's economic analysis appears spot on). And why would a VP of an overwhelmingly successful administration be running away from those policies instead of trumpeting his (and her) successes? Further, if Donald Trump and his minions are deranged fascists (while Noah might quibble with that term, this largely seems to square with his view of Trump) how is this race 50/50?
The close race implies that, while this epistemological frame is overwhelmingly popular among the laptop class and is reflected in Harris' increasingly hyperbolic claims about Trump's evilness, most of the country appears to not believe it. Americans aren't stupid. Facing a choice between a VP whose administration produced a roaringly successful economy and tamed inflation and a former President who intends to create an American fascist state, this race would not be close. Something in that analysis is off. Either A is false, B is false, of there's a C that the left-wing media class is missing and is overriding both.
It's a good argument, but I'm not totally convinced.
1. FBI reversed then doubled crime numbers for 2022, why should I trust their numbers for other years? Especially when the National Crime Victimization Survey and my own experiences shopping say that crime is still high.
2. The jobs creation seems gamed as well, especially with the amount of immigration and stats showing the vast majority of new hiring has been of immigrants and based on "equity" numbers. Again, in my own life the number of openings I see in my field are much lower.
3. Oil was a Trump thing that Biden just wasn't able to shut down, though he tried. Same for tariffs.
4. Industrial policy is nice, but for every success story there's plenty of stories about charging stations going unbuilt because they insist on DEI requirements.
5. Inflation was the Fed and it's solution was the Fed. They said they were going to do it to prevent a recession and then they did it. This whole thing is arguing over tea leaves
6. Finally, Biden and the Dems haven't solved my #1 problem from the early 2020s, which is that they are squirmy authoritarian fucks who will make awful decisions, lie and then try to get you cancelled for pointing it out. See: This lates dumb shit about apostrophe's and Trumpers being garbage.
Number 4 is a great example of why I just won't vote for Democrats. Even when I like the policies they propose, I can be fairly sure they won't get done because they will insist on adding all kinds of stupid bureaucracy to get in the way. It seems like they just attract these busybody bureaucratic homeowners association types who are absolutely allergic to getting anything done or taking any risk. And good policy just can't overcome bad personality.
As a brief for why Biden's policies were and Harris's policies will be better than Trump's, as a reminder at how much better the economy and the border and crime is, this is fine, but to say those polices "fixed" much is a stretch.
In regard to the immigration mess specifically, it seems to me that the driving forces are (1) the deep progressive desire to have the United States be the universal place of refuge for people fleeing sucky situations and countries, (2) the fact that US asylum law considerably supports that, (3) most of the public supports the concept but not if it is coupled with any cost or inconvenience, at which point they decide that Americans have no intrinsic obligations to foreigners, and (4) the current situation has caused refugee-type immigrants to land in very concentrated locations, causing high costs to small polities, which the federal government (and often the states) do not pay for.
Facts 2 and 3 make the issue fraught for Harris, as she doesn't want to alienate the Democratic base but she still wants to win. It's a classic wedge issue.
Fact 4 can be seen here in deeply Democratic Massachusetts. The state has a law saying that it will guarantee housing to families with children or pregnant women. But it also has a housing shortage. The state sets up various shelters. These are costing $1 billion a year in a state budget of $52 billion a year. But wherever a shelter is set up, a large slug of non-English-speaking students are placed in the local schools, students with particular problems since immigrants don't get the usual welfare support. This has caused a political firestorm in many places and likely will get a few Republicans elected to the Legislature.
"During his term in office, Biden’s policies competently and effectively addressed our main short-term economic problems — first unemployment, and then inflation ..."
This is totally false and I have a hard time thing that Noah does not know it is false. Both the excellent recovery in employment and the over-target inflation (whihc in part was necessary to obtain the recovery in employment) AND the subsequent deceleration of inflation back to target were NOT the result of any Biden policies to "competently and effectively" to address them. For good or ill, and it was mainly good, the Fed did it. It was a huge political mistake by Biden (the Administration) to have given the appearance of involvement in macroeconomic management. It raises the stakes in a wager a whose outcome a President cannot affect.
And, sure enough, Biden is getting blamed for inflation that was not his fault and not getting any credit for the recovery for whihc he deserves none. The only thing Biden could have done to reduce the stakes was to have high volume "confidence" that J Powell knew what he was doing in his inflation and employment management. OK, taking on the Longshoremen to get the ports unclogged was useful. And more and quicker backtracking on anti-fossil fuels rhetoric and policy and more permitting reform could have been demagogued as "anti-inflationary."
See: https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/an-unfair-evaluation-of-bidens-economic
Apologies... while not a Trump fan, I think this article is unnecessarily positive on Biden/Democrats.
It seems to me the reality is:
1) Economy: The current state of the US economy is not really a function of either party... rather private interests/innovation have gotten us here. The government investments which were made important years ago. The true impact of Trump/Biden investments won't be known for years.
2) Crime: Crime has been going down in a longer term for a lot of reasons (including the ubiquitous use of cheap camera technology). More police is good.
3) Budget Deficit: Both parties have created the current situation.. I don't see a big difference.
4) Regulations: You are very right to focus on this topic. Both the budget and regulations need to be a focus.
5) On manufacturing, I think you are far too negative. First, it is best to look at manufacturing at a North America Level. On the Arsenal of democracy, before WWII the situation was not much better...never mind WWI. If needed, this can be cranked up quickly.. it's a choice.