There are three parts to the Trump political conglomerate: the MAGA faction, the tech bros and the Project 2025 Christian nationalists. It's the latter group that has the vision for America's Future. 2025's machinations (destroying the bureaucracy and the universities) are fused with MAGA (planting loyalists and loyal policies inside the institutions left standing). I agree with you that the destruction outweighs the construction, because, as in all things Trump, the President does not care about anything, not even the future, as much as he cares about himself.
The tech bros, specifically Thiel & co, also have their own vision: a 'libertarian', techno-feudalist state in which the people who own the land on which privately owned cities will be built can decide what rules there are. Surely not rules that will give opportunities to most people, as they don't believe the masses really have any rights beyond working to make the tech bro elite even richer.
The Christian nationalists want approximately the same, but then with church leaders being able to dictate most of the rules (which don't apply to the biggest donors, of course).
The destruction of institutions is the whole point of what Trump is doing (besides the money-grab), because with fewer institutions to unite and steer people towards collective actions with collective benefits, it's easier for a small elite to control the actions of people and direct them for personal gain.
The tech bros - or at least the segment that has given their support to Trump - don't really build anything of value anymore either. Just look at the billions of dollars they've pumped into crypto, a technology that has virtually no real use other than speculation. There's no real innovation there - the business model behind all these stablecoins that are launching is that of a bank: take deposits, issue an IOU in return, and then collect the interest on the deposits. Its a rent-seeking business. Likewise, the biggest VC funds operate more like hedge funds now. They collect so much in fees, and they are so large that even a winning investment doesn't move the needle much of their overall returns. AI may be the one area where real innovation is happening, but the actual building is being done by small teams of software developers that are increasingly eschewing VC money in favor of just bootstrapping their own businesses. The big players - Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft - have been stagnant for nearly a decade. Increasingly they all rely on revenue growth from rent-seeking digital ads and "services" businesses. Its no surprise at all that wealthy tech people who can't build anymore have gravitated to MAGA. Its the perfect vehicle for channeling their own boredom and rage at not being able to build anymore.
I think you're being a little too categorical here. I've been a big crypto skeptic for the last decade, but it seems like stablecoins may finally have some utility for more efficient financial services. We're seeing non-ideological companies like Stripe get more involved, which to me is a sign that there may be something real there.
As far as building, I do have to give credit to companies like Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX for building good businesses. In some cases, I have a lot of concerns about the founders' politics and ideas, but that's a slightly separate topic.
To pick out one company from your big tech list, Google is building self-driving cars and AI. And AI in general is probably the biggest tech wave since the advent of the web, if not bigger. We'll see.
So, I don't know. I think we can have concerns about people's political foibles without denying that there is still real building going on.
I see your point, but the all the companies and technologies that you mentioned are indicative of the larger problem of the tech industry being unable to innovate and and build like it used to.
Stablecoins and a handful of other crypto technologies may end up being useful, but more efficient payments running through traditional payment processors like Stripe and the big banks is hardly the torrent of innovation advocates for this technology were promising. It was supposed to unleash an entirely new version of the internet, running on the blockchain. Given the money and the valuations that have gone into crypto, anything short of that is complete failure. Further, most of the wealth in crypto has accrued to a very small number of tech elites who buy bitcoin and hold onto to it in perpetuity, to avoid crashing the price when selling.
On the surface, a company like Palantir looks like a smashing success. It is certainly a lucrative business, but its stock price is valued as if its something much bigger and more successful than it actually is. The company is 22 years old, and yet most Americans couldn't tell you what it does, and most people have never even seen, let alone used, its products. Further, while it may occupy an important niche in law enforcement and defense tech, nearly all its revenue comes from government contracts. Ditto SpaceX, which has spent over $10B and counting on the Starship rocket which can't even get to orbit, let alone carry the 100T payload that Musk has promised and which is required to successfully land on the moon - a feat the U.S accomplished over half a century ago. SpaceX's business is not growing either. The increase in annual launches is driven nearly entirely by its own need to launch the LEO satellites used by Starlink, an unprofitable business that now has significant competition.
I give Google credit for playing the long game with Waymo, and I agree that this is definitely one bright spot in tech. But surprisingly, the company getting the biggest market premium for self-driving cars isn't Google, but Tesla. And Tesla - which should be the leading example of how Silicon Valley is still capable of building and innovating - is going in entirely the wrong direction! Innovation in EV's and battery tech has stalled to the point that competitors like BYD have completely leap-frogged Tesla. Its business looks shakier and shakier by the day. Its absurd valuation is based entirely in technology it neither has today (humanoid robots) or that its been promising for the better part of a decade (full self driving). The recent robo-taxi launch was a joke, and the business model doesn't look great. Waymo, which actually has a viable robo-taxi business still loses money on every single ride.
I work in AI and there is undoubtedly building happening there. But the most interesting stuff happening there is through small teams of developers, not the big Silicon Valley tech firms. Even in AI, valuations have gotten way ahead of what the companies actually do. There's almost a whiff of desperation in the air when ex-OpenAI employees like Mira Murati are getting $10B valuations for AI companies that don't even have any products yet. Its too early to tell what's going to happen, but if this bubble pops before highly valued startups like these deliver anything of real value, I'm not sure how this could be construed as anything other than proof that Silicon Valley can't build like it used to.
I'm sure you know working in AI that there's already tons of value being created there. And bubbles and land grabs are nothing new to Silicon Valley. This is not dissimilar to the dot com boom back in the day, and even Covid-era valuations for many companies were ludicrous (Peloton was briefly worth something like $75B). So what you see as a break with the history of tech, I see as the usual pattern.
I agree with many of your points on crypto and Tesla. I suspect we would be better off if crypto had never happened, given the wasted time and talent, the rug pulls, and so on. But now it's a sunk cost, and if we get some incremental value out of it, that's better than nothing.
Yes, MAGA's feckless vandalism reminds one of the quip, *a brain stem in search of a cortex*. But yes, fostering a burning hatred of one's political opponents, while good for FOX ratings, isn't a plan for constructing a prosperous future.
If I remember correctly, most US populist movements have collapsed after the original unifying anger met with inevitable policy failure, demonstrating anew - positions are easy; policy is hard.
You're omitting the critical lynchpin to the entire MAGA movement: FOX News. Which along with its' lesser imitators like Newsmax, is what gets MAGA voters to actually pull the 'R' lever. Without those actual votes, there are no MAGA governmental "reforms", no tariffs, no DOGE. Votes and the concurrent GOP political legislation is the only viable way to quantify MAGA influence.
Last November's IPSOS poll found that a whopping 85% of Trump voters got some/most/all of their news from FOX News, and that 80% of these believed a whole coterie of MAGA nonsense; like that crime and unemployment were at all-time highs, that inflation was still at 8%, that the "Biden economy" was *already* in recession. And that's before you get into the weeds with other tabloid-esque MAGA fabulism, like Haitians eating people's pets.
My point is that the MAGA Base ingests and believes a whole ton of made up nonsense, and votes accordingly. Precisely *because* of what they see on FOX News and RW media. That Noah--a newspaper man--willfully ignores this 800-pound gorilla in the room is simply boggling.
Came here to say something similar. Appreciate Noah’s analysis, but disagree with the conclusion. At the end of the day, Trumpism & MAGA movement have a vision of a white, patriarchal (nominally Christian) society functioning under a “strongman leader.” The thing is that this new nation, if it emerges, will be a far weaker actor than the United States we’ve known of the last century. There are no global leaders among nations that oppress half their population, looking to the past instead of the future. Trump & MAGA don’t care as much about USA’s place in the world (despite America First professions) as much as they do about their own domestic power & profit. We may end up with a second rate country that’s been raped and pillaged by a bunch of corrupt incompetents.
I was struggling with making this point. If Trump's most loyal supporters (and his vice president) want the restoration of Christendom then nothing the administration does will contradict this goal. Ordinary normies can turn away from Trump if he does not deliver concrete outcomes about the economy but people who think of him as chosen to save America never will.
> I don’t see Trump supporters reviving any American civic national traditions like neighborhood barbecues, parades, etc.
In fact, his parade for the 250th anniversary of the US Army (and also coincidentally for his birthday) became a global joke!
In Vietnam (my country) many people said that "after this parade many countries will dare to fight America", and "even North Korea, being sanctioned, can march properly; why can't G.I. do this?"
As for other countries...the best joke about this is that "Trump ordered this march through Temu, but with such high tariffs, he couldn't receive all of it!"
The troops who "marched" for Trumps Big Beautiful Parade shuffled their feet on purpose in an attempt to show their disdain for a five-time draft dodger masquerading as president. In face there was no backlash from the brass, who could have severely punished them for their sloppy walking. This was a huge middle finger to Trump, amirite?
Or it was simply because America just didn't do military parade that much - the last time that the US did parade before the June one was in 1991!
When one of the presidents (Eisenhower) said that "we do not need to have a parade to prove our strength", you can bet that American soldiers would not really like this kind of pomp and pageantry.
This is correct. For most US troops, drill ends after basic training and *maybe* AIT (usually if you're being punished). There are honor guard who march for performances and presentations and they happen to be pretty crisp. Drill is a skill, and like any skill, it rusts if you don't practice.
For the most part, the US Army is content to perform its actual mission and leave the performances for specialized units.
I was at the march and this was not my impression at all. The historical processions at the beginning showed a great deal of attention to detail. I found it enjoyable. I would be interested in survey data from other countries, where I would be surprised if any significant part of the population even knew the parade was happening.
I think the parade has good ideas behind, just bad execution and bad political timing (coincidentally it was Trump's birthday, so you can bet that it would not be popular with roughly half of Americans!)
Speaking about my observation as Vietnamese, there are 2 big military parades in Vietnam this year (for the victory in Vietnam War and the 80th national day), so many people really care about other parades, to see "how they are compared to Vietnam".
The biggest meme out of it is that how G.I. marched was just similar to how veterans of South Vietnam marched though!
No, there was video of the practice session before the parade, and the troops marched quite a bit better than they did in the actual parade. Certainly US troops don't do a lot of marching after their initial training, but they're lot better at it than they were in Trump's parade. They sandbagged, on purpose.
"MAGA culture isn’t about meeting up with other MAGA people in real life and doing any sort of shared activity; its about going online and praising Trump and denouncing “the left”. How long until that just gets boring?"
Correct. An entertainment writer I know is the perfect encapsulation of this. She's one of those "Why I Left the Left" folks. Her disgust with woke culture drove her into the arms of Trump. In spite of his win in 2024, you can tell she's not happy. All she does day after day is rant about Democrats and the Left, in spite of the fact that her side now holds all the power.
That's also relatable to the Texan guy that abandonned the US due to "Biden's woke LGBT policies", brought his family to Russia, and ended up being killed by an Ukrainian drone!
That's because by any measure other than "destroying woke culture" the entire MAGA agenda has been a complete failure.
DOGE turned out to be such a chaotic joke that MAGA's who were enthusiastically cheering it on as recently as a few months ago now don't even want to talk about it. And it failed for exactly the reason "elites" said it would - you can't make significant reductions in the budget without touching entitlements and defense spending.
The Epstein files - which was always a proxy for going after the shady cabal of elites that MAGA's believe run the world - has ended up being one of the most significant crises Trump has had to face in either of his two terms. And it doesn't look like its going away anytime soon.
The reboot of Russiagate as a distraction for the Epstein Files fiasco is also turning out to be a complete joke and will ultimately serve to remind MAGAs in no uncertain terms that the SCOTUS decision granting presidents immunity for "official acts" applies equally to Republican and Democratic presidents.
Illegal immigration - Trump's strongest issue - has also inconveniently hit reality. Trump keeps contradicting his own policies on whether ICE should be aggressively deporting workers in agriculture and hospitality. On top of that, deportations are no where near the numbers he promised and won't get there anytime soon.
The "big beautiful bill" is one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation passed in recent memory. Nobody likes it.
MAGA has won some battles in the war on "wokeness" in elite universities, but in doing so it has shown itself willing to even more flagrantly trample on the right to free speech than the universities themselves. This latter point makes writers like the one you mentioned very uncomfortable. For non-MAGA's, its been extremely satisfying to watch people like Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Joe Rogan contort themselves in knots trying to explain how yanking government funding for allowing students to publish op-eds critical of Israel is somehow not a free speech issue.
So, in the absence of any real policy wins and some spectacular failures like DOGE, its hardly surprising these people are bitter. All they have to show for Trump's electoral success is their rage.
Nailed it. Taibbi and Weiss are especially disappointing. They were valuable during the height of the social justice excesses, but I had a sneaking suspicion both of them would turn into Trump apologists/minimizers. That's what happened, and it sucks.
Its abundantly clear by now that far from creating a new, improved media ecosystem, "new media" types such as Weiss, Rogan, and Taibbi have just speed-run in a matter of a year or two into the exact same bad habits that took decades to form in legacy media. In a fragmented media ecosystem where consumers have nearly infinite choices, audience capture is almost a necessity and folks like Weiss, Taibbi and Rogan have leaned into this way more than legacy media ever did. They lash out - Taibbi in particular - when anybody dares call them out on this, and yet they never, ever stray from the narratives that got them their audience in the first place. They are prisoners to it and its obvious to those of us looking at it from the outside. But they don't even really pretend to live up to their stated ideals of free, open speech and going wherever the truth is, even if it takes them to an uncomfortable place. Its simply too profitable for them to pump out the content they know their audience wants.
When Sasha Stone was profiled by the NYT they brought forward that she would go back to the left but she "has to remember what the left is now". She is a cautionary tale for me of what happens when your entire social circle wants to talk about how much they hate Trump but not fixing any of the things that are broken that made it possible for him to emerge.
(This emphatically includes the media that paid attention to what Trump wanted them to and not the many disqualifying policy statements that came out of his mouth the first time)
Yeah. She was too Online. Too sucked into the social media maelstrom. If only she had normie friends and activities, maybe it wouldn't have gotten this bad.
I think what happened to Batya Ungar-Sargon is far sadder. Even if my experiences with Firedoglake were utterly soul-destroying they showed me that Trump is the wrong answer to a set of very real grievances that a pro-working-class left should have solutions for.
Trump clearly appealed to a lot of these people because they had learned to distrust politicians and he emphatically didn't sound like a politician. This didn't mean that he had policies that would particularly help them.
I am going to say one thing in "defense" of Trump and the people who voted for him: it was always clear that US politicians *could* do much more than they claimed they could, if they were willing to buck the various veto points built into the system. Trump is the first politician to prove this. It's unfortunate that his policies won't fix anything, and will in fact make most things worse.
But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Trump voters were right about the first part. Not sure what this means for the future.
Right, people like Don Moynihan and Jennifer Pahlka who actually know how the federal government works are aware that the federal bureaucracy is captive to process and biased towards finding a way to stop things. But the choice being put towards American voters has been whether government can be trusted to do anything at all.
What it comes down to is this: MAGA, in reflection of Trump himself, does not have any understanding of how the world works, nor any interest in learning. He can get his way in politics where the rules are malleable, while economics, physics, and society are stubbornly insistent on playing by their own rules that MAGA neither understands nor has bothered to try.
But it's not entirely true to say that MAGA has built nothing. They've built scam upon scam upon scam. $TRUMP coin, Truth Social, Trump Bibles, political action committees, etc. The perverse thing is that Trump is a compulsive builder, but either he can only conceive of, or is only interested in, projects that benefit himself. That's the other appeal of MAGA, though: the draw of the Ponzi scheme and prosperity gospel, the promise that nearness to obscene wealth will spill over.
This is exactly right and I’ve been thinking about what a future of a dismantling ethos looks like. In Star Wars it’s all about salvage. Everyone is looking for spare parts. People start tooling in their garages. Is this what is ahead for better or worse?
I don't usually read your letters as they are long and I don't have the time. Having said that, this letter was what I think to be one of your most important letters to date. "No MAGA vision for the future " is why even protest groups, signs and comments mostly don't get us anywhere. The "VISION" idea or lack thereof is where we need to focus. I hope you will keep this in your future letters. Thanks.
The obvious thing that MAGA is building is autocracy. Not everything is economic, and you should know better.
MAGA is simply the latest veneer over attempts by business and religion to control the USA.
Will people lose interest in MAGA? It won't matter: those same conservative forces will still pump untold fortunes into preserving their dominance through the next political movements they fund.
MAGA ***IS*** creating institutions: for example, it is recreating officially sanctioned racism and xenophobia. It is creating systems of control over other institutions such as academia, unions, commerce, etc. These will continue to be popular: we all have seen how difficult it is to reduce racism because people want to think they are better than others. That applies to control over other institutions as well. The 5 minute of hate strategy works very well to sustain interest.
And as long as Trump is leading, everybody will jump onto the MAGA bandwagon in hopes that they will succeed him. We should expect to see some spectacular infighting after Trump's death.
While Mr Smith is entirely correct in his analysis, he has left out, perhaps because of his focus, an even deeper issue - not what MAGA doesn’t actually build, but what it is willfully aiding and abetting - the deconstruction of the United States as defined by our Constitution. The question that raises goes far beyond the movement’s actual tenure and whatever it might have built if it chose to do so. .
It's interesting to think about what Fox and that talk radio ecosystem are built ON: Boredom. Legions of Americans sit bored to tears for long hours of the day, every day, in their cars, trucks, and farm equipment; and then in front of their televisions. Rage and fear stave off the boredom and make their lives more interesting and meaningful. Social media is filling much the same role now that they're staring at their phones and listening to podcasts all day.
In a sense, anything that drags people away from their phones and televisions is a mortal threat to Fox News and the rest of the ecosystem; is it any wonder that they're uninterested in building up other institutions?
And one reason why political audio media (first talk radio, then podcasts) are so right-wing dominated is because these formats are especially convenient for people who spend much of their lives behind a steering wheel, and those people are predisposed to right-wing politics anyway by the zero-sum competition for road space and parking space.
I have a brother-in-law who became besotted with right-wingnutism exactly the way you describe...I watched it happen in real time as he transitioned to epistemological closure.
Fox News and the talk radio ecosystem are built on the fact that the news media leaned leftward and there was a huge market that was dissatisfied with that.
It’s sad that we’ve reached a place where pretty much all “news” leans either left or right and often verges on opinion, but that’s where the money is.
Noah argued that "MAGA couldn't build institutions" though, not like "MAGA doesn't need institutions"!
And even the manosphere...it was already existed before, and Trump just used it way better than the Democrats (remember how Joe Rogan endorsed Trump since he came to the talk, while Kamala didn't?)
My objection wasn't that Trump built Fox News, just that Fox News is and was a super important conservative institution that came about in the late 90's (so post Reagan) that was probably the most important enabler of Trump's rise to power.
And it wasn't mentioned. At all.
Why are so many conservatives now Anti Vax?
Why are so many people convinced that Russia DIDN'T try to help Trump get elected?
They are building Alligator Alcatraz concentration camps, a Gestapo reporting to the POTUS and populating all institutions with loyalists for the benefit of the MAGA leadership and elites.
As far as the MAGA base goes, kidnapping browns and shuffling them off to the concentration camps in the US and elsewhere is both the primary expectation and deliverable for this movement.
There is a lot to criticize about President Trump, and MAGA in general. Regrettably, Noah usually gives our Democrat friends a mostly free pass. Excessive business taxes and regulations promulgated by Democrats has definitely hurt American manufacturing. I know; I've lived it for five decades.
One example, the cost of electricity in New England. If solar and wind mandates supposedly reduce the cost of energy, why has the its cost skyrocketed here, more than double many other regions? "Save the planet" nonsensical mandates, while more coal is burned worldwide each year. Suppose President Biden's "Build Back Better" spending bill had become law? Inflation and federal deficits, you ain't seen nothing yet! Two courageous Democrat Senators saved us.
Both political parties are irresponsible, to say the least. At least Trump is trying to revive American manufacturing. We cannot be a prosperous nation by services alone, taking in each other's laundry so to speak. I disagree with Trump about many issues. Yet, the Democrats have been death by one thousand cuts over the years, like piranha fish, constantly imposing their theories to the detriment of American manufacturers.
Yes, the major reason I subscribe to Noahopinion is precisely because Noah *does* criticize Democratic shortcomings, particularly stupid Progressive antics. Plus he has to buy rabbit food ;)
Noah, no offense intended, sincerely. I subscribe to your site because you are a good economist, and try to be an honest broker.
It's simply this. If Paul Krugman were my mentor, given that he is a talented economist, I'm almost certain I would believe in his egalitarian instincts. Redistribution of income and wealth is an important government priority. I do not blame you for your general bias in this direction; it's ok! No problem, I understand.
For me personally, saving and investment, deferred financial gratification, is who I am. I'm not especially sympathetic to the takers from governments; I am very sympathetic to the employed middle-class, the people who awake early each morning and get the work done. The "rich" are too few; they cannot pay for Democrat aspirations. The middle-class can pay, but at a substantial degradation to their lifestyles and well-being.
I simply disagree with the center left. Not you in particular.
Trump isn't trying to bring back manufacturing, though. All of MAGA's talk about economic nationalism is just that - talk. Look at the budget bill that just passed. Its bog-standard WSJ editorial board approved supply side economics. There is no difference between this bill and one that a guy like Paul Ryan would have put through 10 years ago.
I agree that progressives, particularly at the local and state level, have failed at building anything themselves. At the federal level, though, democratic leaders have been far more successful at passing legislation with lasting impact. You can disagree whether this legislation has been positive or negative, but at the end of the day, bills like the ACA are the law of the land and have been for a long time. And although Trump is doing his best to dismantle it, the CHIPS act also had a long term vision. By the time Trump exists the WH, we'll have nothing more than expiring tax cuts and ballooning deficits to show for his time in office.
I live in New Hampshire, the only Republican-leaning New England state, and the situation is no better here. There's zero appetite for building anything but roads. Whatever New England's problem is (my personal theory is a combination of home values being too large a part of peoples' wealth, centuries' worth of legal cruft, and an over-focus on culture war issues) it's endemic; the parties are just giving the people what they want.
Many voters want something for nothing. Don't tax you, don't tax me; tax the man behind the tree. Many tens of millions of voters from coast to coast. The politicians are happy in indulge these voters' fantasies.
There is nowhere near an adequate supply of rich people behind the tree to pay for European style social welfare benefits. The economic middle class would endure most of the financial pain for Democrat largess. Similarly, Republicans do not face up to the high federal debt level and large fiscal deficit in a full employment economy, and desire tax reductions.
Economically literate people in both parties understand this standoff is unsustainable. The battle is where the baseline budget will be when the manure encounters the air moving device. Accordingly, The Democrats want maximum spending in the baseline budget, and the Republicans want taxes as low as possible, when this collision occurs.
I fear that MAGA doesn't have to build much to survive for a long time. As an example, consider Peronism, which seems to have inflicted disastrous economic mismanagement on Argentina from 1946 until (possibly) 2023, which is 77 years.
I tend to model MAGA as fundamentally a class war of the working class (people who get their money from employment, but their employment isn't based on education) against the professional class (people who get their money from employment, and their employment is based on education). Nobody seems to know how to restore the working class to its glory circa 1950 -- the automation of manual labor has proceeded far -- but their position in the pecking order can be restored if the employment of the professional class is destroyed. This is a point of view where "bringing manufacturing back from China and sending scientific research to China" makes sense.
And I think that may be a stable political situation -- political support to a movement which directly suppresses the growth of a large social class that is better off than the working class.
I would argue that at least Peronism built things: many Argentines are nostalgic for Peron's times, since he was the one who created the modern Argentine welfare state, and industrialized the country; though his economic mismanagement is one of the causes for Argentine decline.
"The history started with Christmas gifts/And housing for everyone/The (nationalized) train/ The YPF (Argentine oil company)/The Argentine automobile/The air company (aerolineas) is now for the state/The paid vacations, the women suffrage/and also work compensation for me/Free universities, all goals by Peron/And now, we have to go for more!"
Even Milei, anarcho-capitalist as his rhetoric is, is not radical enough to tear down these achievements from the welfare state though.
Compared to MAGA, what did/would they build to have such a lasting legacy, that would influence US politicians afterwards? Sure, the NYT wrote that on trade and immigration, Trump already won before last election, but as long as he still bungles on this then the next Dems president would just return to mostly status quo.
True, if you define building as a comprehensive welfare state that distributes lots of goodies to the middle class, I think that was a signature Peronist accomplishment. But that sort of policy tends to cramp the development of the GDP/capita rather badly.
And I think that's rather a significant factor in what MAGA may or may not become -- I think it could easily develop ways of redistributing from the various high-value-added industries that hire highly-educated people to what is now called the working class, and thus raising the economic status of the working class relative to the professional class. But that will simultaneously discourage further investment in those industries by appropriating their profits for redistribution.
A more extreme version of this would be to just outright attack the high-value-added industries, not to raise the standard of living of the working class, but to reduce that of the professional class, and thus raise the economic status of the working class relative to the professional class.
That that prospect strikes me as rather similar to Peronism, which you report added lots of redistribution. But I've read that in the 1920s, Argentina was one of the 10 richest countries in the world. Now it's number 85.
OK, it would also probably fit with Trump's and MAGA's views of trade and the world in general as a zero-sum game (so "it would be better to see others being hurt rather than helping everyone").
Going back to Peronism, it's also worth noting that anti-Peronists even banished his party once (after the coup in 1955), and that Peronism is very diverse in itself: Carlos Menem, even though being in Peronist movement, ended up open the economy; which became a disaster with the collapse of Argentine economy in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998%E2%80%932002_Argentine_great_depression
So blaming Argentine economic failure as due to redistribution is not enough, but rather you need to consider weak institutions/military coups/development policy; and there's a reason why many even in Argentina is still skeptical on Milei.
It's not just that MAGA has no positive agenda. It's also that it's centered entirely around one person. When he goes so will it. Trump has an appeal that is unique to him. Plenty of other Republicans have tried to replicate it and all have been flops. I write about that phenomenon somewhat regularly on my newsletter below.
Among other reasons, it's why all the commentary about Democrats being doomed is so ridiculous. What we may discover soon is a lot of people were just voting for Trump or against inflation, not voting for the GOP. We discovered that last decade with the blue wall breaking. There's a good chance a whole lot of places we think are red now really aren't and are just Trump places.
Isn’t it just as likely that Trump sucks up all the air in the room, preventing anyone else from ascending to the throne while he is still alive? And in that vacuum after his inevitable death (fingers crossed!) there’s plenty of room for someone “good enough” to take up the MAGA gauntlet? You could probably just task some LLM with the publicity side by plugging in dates and verbiage used by trump in tweets and in rallies, there’s really not much to bloviating like Trump does
I agree on the lack of constructive activity by MAGA and the Republicans but I think you don't emphasize their destructiveness enough. It's hard to see a positive future in an America where people are afraid to be quoted by the New York Times. Worst case: the rule of law disappears and the Republicans adopt the Abundance agenda, or at least, the housing part of it. In addition, I don't see the Republicans repairing their destruction of science or limiting Trump's retribution.
Noah, it is always easier to tear something down than build something up. Trump is about retribution.
While America First, isolation, and regressive policies are all in the mix of various people and factions inside of MAGA, it has been evident from the beginning that Trumpism is about Trump.
It is a cult of personality. Regarding building projects, due to the funding, a physical barrier will be constructed on the southern border.
I joke a bit, but the only thing I see Trump doing is deals. We still have to remember that whatever trade deal he makes, he still will end up taxing Americans. Now, instead of using the Tariff money to pay down the debt, he wants to send checks to Americans. The wrong thing to do.
There are three parts to the Trump political conglomerate: the MAGA faction, the tech bros and the Project 2025 Christian nationalists. It's the latter group that has the vision for America's Future. 2025's machinations (destroying the bureaucracy and the universities) are fused with MAGA (planting loyalists and loyal policies inside the institutions left standing). I agree with you that the destruction outweighs the construction, because, as in all things Trump, the President does not care about anything, not even the future, as much as he cares about himself.
The tech bros, specifically Thiel & co, also have their own vision: a 'libertarian', techno-feudalist state in which the people who own the land on which privately owned cities will be built can decide what rules there are. Surely not rules that will give opportunities to most people, as they don't believe the masses really have any rights beyond working to make the tech bro elite even richer.
The Christian nationalists want approximately the same, but then with church leaders being able to dictate most of the rules (which don't apply to the biggest donors, of course).
The destruction of institutions is the whole point of what Trump is doing (besides the money-grab), because with fewer institutions to unite and steer people towards collective actions with collective benefits, it's easier for a small elite to control the actions of people and direct them for personal gain.
The tech bros - or at least the segment that has given their support to Trump - don't really build anything of value anymore either. Just look at the billions of dollars they've pumped into crypto, a technology that has virtually no real use other than speculation. There's no real innovation there - the business model behind all these stablecoins that are launching is that of a bank: take deposits, issue an IOU in return, and then collect the interest on the deposits. Its a rent-seeking business. Likewise, the biggest VC funds operate more like hedge funds now. They collect so much in fees, and they are so large that even a winning investment doesn't move the needle much of their overall returns. AI may be the one area where real innovation is happening, but the actual building is being done by small teams of software developers that are increasingly eschewing VC money in favor of just bootstrapping their own businesses. The big players - Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft - have been stagnant for nearly a decade. Increasingly they all rely on revenue growth from rent-seeking digital ads and "services" businesses. Its no surprise at all that wealthy tech people who can't build anymore have gravitated to MAGA. Its the perfect vehicle for channeling their own boredom and rage at not being able to build anymore.
I think you're being a little too categorical here. I've been a big crypto skeptic for the last decade, but it seems like stablecoins may finally have some utility for more efficient financial services. We're seeing non-ideological companies like Stripe get more involved, which to me is a sign that there may be something real there.
As far as building, I do have to give credit to companies like Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX for building good businesses. In some cases, I have a lot of concerns about the founders' politics and ideas, but that's a slightly separate topic.
To pick out one company from your big tech list, Google is building self-driving cars and AI. And AI in general is probably the biggest tech wave since the advent of the web, if not bigger. We'll see.
So, I don't know. I think we can have concerns about people's political foibles without denying that there is still real building going on.
I see your point, but the all the companies and technologies that you mentioned are indicative of the larger problem of the tech industry being unable to innovate and and build like it used to.
Stablecoins and a handful of other crypto technologies may end up being useful, but more efficient payments running through traditional payment processors like Stripe and the big banks is hardly the torrent of innovation advocates for this technology were promising. It was supposed to unleash an entirely new version of the internet, running on the blockchain. Given the money and the valuations that have gone into crypto, anything short of that is complete failure. Further, most of the wealth in crypto has accrued to a very small number of tech elites who buy bitcoin and hold onto to it in perpetuity, to avoid crashing the price when selling.
On the surface, a company like Palantir looks like a smashing success. It is certainly a lucrative business, but its stock price is valued as if its something much bigger and more successful than it actually is. The company is 22 years old, and yet most Americans couldn't tell you what it does, and most people have never even seen, let alone used, its products. Further, while it may occupy an important niche in law enforcement and defense tech, nearly all its revenue comes from government contracts. Ditto SpaceX, which has spent over $10B and counting on the Starship rocket which can't even get to orbit, let alone carry the 100T payload that Musk has promised and which is required to successfully land on the moon - a feat the U.S accomplished over half a century ago. SpaceX's business is not growing either. The increase in annual launches is driven nearly entirely by its own need to launch the LEO satellites used by Starlink, an unprofitable business that now has significant competition.
I give Google credit for playing the long game with Waymo, and I agree that this is definitely one bright spot in tech. But surprisingly, the company getting the biggest market premium for self-driving cars isn't Google, but Tesla. And Tesla - which should be the leading example of how Silicon Valley is still capable of building and innovating - is going in entirely the wrong direction! Innovation in EV's and battery tech has stalled to the point that competitors like BYD have completely leap-frogged Tesla. Its business looks shakier and shakier by the day. Its absurd valuation is based entirely in technology it neither has today (humanoid robots) or that its been promising for the better part of a decade (full self driving). The recent robo-taxi launch was a joke, and the business model doesn't look great. Waymo, which actually has a viable robo-taxi business still loses money on every single ride.
I work in AI and there is undoubtedly building happening there. But the most interesting stuff happening there is through small teams of developers, not the big Silicon Valley tech firms. Even in AI, valuations have gotten way ahead of what the companies actually do. There's almost a whiff of desperation in the air when ex-OpenAI employees like Mira Murati are getting $10B valuations for AI companies that don't even have any products yet. Its too early to tell what's going to happen, but if this bubble pops before highly valued startups like these deliver anything of real value, I'm not sure how this could be construed as anything other than proof that Silicon Valley can't build like it used to.
I'm sure you know working in AI that there's already tons of value being created there. And bubbles and land grabs are nothing new to Silicon Valley. This is not dissimilar to the dot com boom back in the day, and even Covid-era valuations for many companies were ludicrous (Peloton was briefly worth something like $75B). So what you see as a break with the history of tech, I see as the usual pattern.
I agree with many of your points on crypto and Tesla. I suspect we would be better off if crypto had never happened, given the wasted time and talent, the rug pulls, and so on. But now it's a sunk cost, and if we get some incremental value out of it, that's better than nothing.
Anyway, I'm more in the glass half full camp.
Yes, MAGA's feckless vandalism reminds one of the quip, *a brain stem in search of a cortex*. But yes, fostering a burning hatred of one's political opponents, while good for FOX ratings, isn't a plan for constructing a prosperous future.
If I remember correctly, most US populist movements have collapsed after the original unifying anger met with inevitable policy failure, demonstrating anew - positions are easy; policy is hard.
You're omitting the critical lynchpin to the entire MAGA movement: FOX News. Which along with its' lesser imitators like Newsmax, is what gets MAGA voters to actually pull the 'R' lever. Without those actual votes, there are no MAGA governmental "reforms", no tariffs, no DOGE. Votes and the concurrent GOP political legislation is the only viable way to quantify MAGA influence.
Last November's IPSOS poll found that a whopping 85% of Trump voters got some/most/all of their news from FOX News, and that 80% of these believed a whole coterie of MAGA nonsense; like that crime and unemployment were at all-time highs, that inflation was still at 8%, that the "Biden economy" was *already* in recession. And that's before you get into the weeds with other tabloid-esque MAGA fabulism, like Haitians eating people's pets.
My point is that the MAGA Base ingests and believes a whole ton of made up nonsense, and votes accordingly. Precisely *because* of what they see on FOX News and RW media. That Noah--a newspaper man--willfully ignores this 800-pound gorilla in the room is simply boggling.
Came here to say something similar. Appreciate Noah’s analysis, but disagree with the conclusion. At the end of the day, Trumpism & MAGA movement have a vision of a white, patriarchal (nominally Christian) society functioning under a “strongman leader.” The thing is that this new nation, if it emerges, will be a far weaker actor than the United States we’ve known of the last century. There are no global leaders among nations that oppress half their population, looking to the past instead of the future. Trump & MAGA don’t care as much about USA’s place in the world (despite America First professions) as much as they do about their own domestic power & profit. We may end up with a second rate country that’s been raped and pillaged by a bunch of corrupt incompetents.
I was struggling with making this point. If Trump's most loyal supporters (and his vice president) want the restoration of Christendom then nothing the administration does will contradict this goal. Ordinary normies can turn away from Trump if he does not deliver concrete outcomes about the economy but people who think of him as chosen to save America never will.
> I don’t see Trump supporters reviving any American civic national traditions like neighborhood barbecues, parades, etc.
In fact, his parade for the 250th anniversary of the US Army (and also coincidentally for his birthday) became a global joke!
In Vietnam (my country) many people said that "after this parade many countries will dare to fight America", and "even North Korea, being sanctioned, can march properly; why can't G.I. do this?"
As for other countries...the best joke about this is that "Trump ordered this march through Temu, but with such high tariffs, he couldn't receive all of it!"
The troops who "marched" for Trumps Big Beautiful Parade shuffled their feet on purpose in an attempt to show their disdain for a five-time draft dodger masquerading as president. In face there was no backlash from the brass, who could have severely punished them for their sloppy walking. This was a huge middle finger to Trump, amirite?
Or it was simply because America just didn't do military parade that much - the last time that the US did parade before the June one was in 1991!
When one of the presidents (Eisenhower) said that "we do not need to have a parade to prove our strength", you can bet that American soldiers would not really like this kind of pomp and pageantry.
This is correct. For most US troops, drill ends after basic training and *maybe* AIT (usually if you're being punished). There are honor guard who march for performances and presentations and they happen to be pretty crisp. Drill is a skill, and like any skill, it rusts if you don't practice.
For the most part, the US Army is content to perform its actual mission and leave the performances for specialized units.
I was at the march and this was not my impression at all. The historical processions at the beginning showed a great deal of attention to detail. I found it enjoyable. I would be interested in survey data from other countries, where I would be surprised if any significant part of the population even knew the parade was happening.
I think the parade has good ideas behind, just bad execution and bad political timing (coincidentally it was Trump's birthday, so you can bet that it would not be popular with roughly half of Americans!)
Speaking about my observation as Vietnamese, there are 2 big military parades in Vietnam this year (for the victory in Vietnam War and the 80th national day), so many people really care about other parades, to see "how they are compared to Vietnam".
The biggest meme out of it is that how G.I. marched was just similar to how veterans of South Vietnam marched though!
No, there was video of the practice session before the parade, and the troops marched quite a bit better than they did in the actual parade. Certainly US troops don't do a lot of marching after their initial training, but they're lot better at it than they were in Trump's parade. They sandbagged, on purpose.
"MAGA culture isn’t about meeting up with other MAGA people in real life and doing any sort of shared activity; its about going online and praising Trump and denouncing “the left”. How long until that just gets boring?"
Correct. An entertainment writer I know is the perfect encapsulation of this. She's one of those "Why I Left the Left" folks. Her disgust with woke culture drove her into the arms of Trump. In spite of his win in 2024, you can tell she's not happy. All she does day after day is rant about Democrats and the Left, in spite of the fact that her side now holds all the power.
See for yourself. It's sad. https://sashastone.substack.com/
That's also relatable to the Texan guy that abandonned the US due to "Biden's woke LGBT policies", brought his family to Russia, and ended up being killed by an Ukrainian drone!
not a janky ruso-iranian flying dildo..
That's because by any measure other than "destroying woke culture" the entire MAGA agenda has been a complete failure.
DOGE turned out to be such a chaotic joke that MAGA's who were enthusiastically cheering it on as recently as a few months ago now don't even want to talk about it. And it failed for exactly the reason "elites" said it would - you can't make significant reductions in the budget without touching entitlements and defense spending.
The Epstein files - which was always a proxy for going after the shady cabal of elites that MAGA's believe run the world - has ended up being one of the most significant crises Trump has had to face in either of his two terms. And it doesn't look like its going away anytime soon.
The reboot of Russiagate as a distraction for the Epstein Files fiasco is also turning out to be a complete joke and will ultimately serve to remind MAGAs in no uncertain terms that the SCOTUS decision granting presidents immunity for "official acts" applies equally to Republican and Democratic presidents.
Illegal immigration - Trump's strongest issue - has also inconveniently hit reality. Trump keeps contradicting his own policies on whether ICE should be aggressively deporting workers in agriculture and hospitality. On top of that, deportations are no where near the numbers he promised and won't get there anytime soon.
The "big beautiful bill" is one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation passed in recent memory. Nobody likes it.
MAGA has won some battles in the war on "wokeness" in elite universities, but in doing so it has shown itself willing to even more flagrantly trample on the right to free speech than the universities themselves. This latter point makes writers like the one you mentioned very uncomfortable. For non-MAGA's, its been extremely satisfying to watch people like Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Joe Rogan contort themselves in knots trying to explain how yanking government funding for allowing students to publish op-eds critical of Israel is somehow not a free speech issue.
So, in the absence of any real policy wins and some spectacular failures like DOGE, its hardly surprising these people are bitter. All they have to show for Trump's electoral success is their rage.
Nailed it. Taibbi and Weiss are especially disappointing. They were valuable during the height of the social justice excesses, but I had a sneaking suspicion both of them would turn into Trump apologists/minimizers. That's what happened, and it sucks.
Its abundantly clear by now that far from creating a new, improved media ecosystem, "new media" types such as Weiss, Rogan, and Taibbi have just speed-run in a matter of a year or two into the exact same bad habits that took decades to form in legacy media. In a fragmented media ecosystem where consumers have nearly infinite choices, audience capture is almost a necessity and folks like Weiss, Taibbi and Rogan have leaned into this way more than legacy media ever did. They lash out - Taibbi in particular - when anybody dares call them out on this, and yet they never, ever stray from the narratives that got them their audience in the first place. They are prisoners to it and its obvious to those of us looking at it from the outside. But they don't even really pretend to live up to their stated ideals of free, open speech and going wherever the truth is, even if it takes them to an uncomfortable place. Its simply too profitable for them to pump out the content they know their audience wants.
In other words, they are complete frauds.
They were already apologists looking for a grift. This was extremely obvious the whole time, it just took longer for some to figure it out.
When Sasha Stone was profiled by the NYT they brought forward that she would go back to the left but she "has to remember what the left is now". She is a cautionary tale for me of what happens when your entire social circle wants to talk about how much they hate Trump but not fixing any of the things that are broken that made it possible for him to emerge.
(This emphatically includes the media that paid attention to what Trump wanted them to and not the many disqualifying policy statements that came out of his mouth the first time)
Yeah. She was too Online. Too sucked into the social media maelstrom. If only she had normie friends and activities, maybe it wouldn't have gotten this bad.
I thought you knew Bari Weiss lmao
Lol this could apply to her too 😉
I think what happened to Batya Ungar-Sargon is far sadder. Even if my experiences with Firedoglake were utterly soul-destroying they showed me that Trump is the wrong answer to a set of very real grievances that a pro-working-class left should have solutions for.
Yup Batya too. Just because working class people flocked to Trump doesn't mean they're right.
Trump clearly appealed to a lot of these people because they had learned to distrust politicians and he emphatically didn't sound like a politician. This didn't mean that he had policies that would particularly help them.
I am going to say one thing in "defense" of Trump and the people who voted for him: it was always clear that US politicians *could* do much more than they claimed they could, if they were willing to buck the various veto points built into the system. Trump is the first politician to prove this. It's unfortunate that his policies won't fix anything, and will in fact make most things worse.
But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Trump voters were right about the first part. Not sure what this means for the future.
Right, people like Don Moynihan and Jennifer Pahlka who actually know how the federal government works are aware that the federal bureaucracy is captive to process and biased towards finding a way to stop things. But the choice being put towards American voters has been whether government can be trusted to do anything at all.
What it comes down to is this: MAGA, in reflection of Trump himself, does not have any understanding of how the world works, nor any interest in learning. He can get his way in politics where the rules are malleable, while economics, physics, and society are stubbornly insistent on playing by their own rules that MAGA neither understands nor has bothered to try.
But it's not entirely true to say that MAGA has built nothing. They've built scam upon scam upon scam. $TRUMP coin, Truth Social, Trump Bibles, political action committees, etc. The perverse thing is that Trump is a compulsive builder, but either he can only conceive of, or is only interested in, projects that benefit himself. That's the other appeal of MAGA, though: the draw of the Ponzi scheme and prosperity gospel, the promise that nearness to obscene wealth will spill over.
If Trump is a builder, he's a builder who only constructs facades. There is never any substance behind them.
I never said he was a good builder, only a compulsive one. His casinos and wineries and universities might fail spectacularly, but he does build them.
This is exactly right and I’ve been thinking about what a future of a dismantling ethos looks like. In Star Wars it’s all about salvage. Everyone is looking for spare parts. People start tooling in their garages. Is this what is ahead for better or worse?
I don't usually read your letters as they are long and I don't have the time. Having said that, this letter was what I think to be one of your most important letters to date. "No MAGA vision for the future " is why even protest groups, signs and comments mostly don't get us anywhere. The "VISION" idea or lack thereof is where we need to focus. I hope you will keep this in your future letters. Thanks.
The obvious thing that MAGA is building is autocracy. Not everything is economic, and you should know better.
MAGA is simply the latest veneer over attempts by business and religion to control the USA.
Will people lose interest in MAGA? It won't matter: those same conservative forces will still pump untold fortunes into preserving their dominance through the next political movements they fund.
MAGA ***IS*** creating institutions: for example, it is recreating officially sanctioned racism and xenophobia. It is creating systems of control over other institutions such as academia, unions, commerce, etc. These will continue to be popular: we all have seen how difficult it is to reduce racism because people want to think they are better than others. That applies to control over other institutions as well. The 5 minute of hate strategy works very well to sustain interest.
And as long as Trump is leading, everybody will jump onto the MAGA bandwagon in hopes that they will succeed him. We should expect to see some spectacular infighting after Trump's death.
What a mess
While Mr Smith is entirely correct in his analysis, he has left out, perhaps because of his focus, an even deeper issue - not what MAGA doesn’t actually build, but what it is willfully aiding and abetting - the deconstruction of the United States as defined by our Constitution. The question that raises goes far beyond the movement’s actual tenure and whatever it might have built if it chose to do so. .
I think your spot on, while the movement might not last, it probably will destroy so much of the constitution it’ll be too late when it fizzles
I think it's odd that Fox News is not mentioned in terms of institutions. I would argue that it is the "institution that built MAGA."
Like Fox News built on the talk radio ecosystem and built a whole architecture of angry (mostly) men yelling about Culture War stuff.
Trump was just the missing piece to use this pre existing infrastructure.
It's interesting to think about what Fox and that talk radio ecosystem are built ON: Boredom. Legions of Americans sit bored to tears for long hours of the day, every day, in their cars, trucks, and farm equipment; and then in front of their televisions. Rage and fear stave off the boredom and make their lives more interesting and meaningful. Social media is filling much the same role now that they're staring at their phones and listening to podcasts all day.
In a sense, anything that drags people away from their phones and televisions is a mortal threat to Fox News and the rest of the ecosystem; is it any wonder that they're uninterested in building up other institutions?
And one reason why political audio media (first talk radio, then podcasts) are so right-wing dominated is because these formats are especially convenient for people who spend much of their lives behind a steering wheel, and those people are predisposed to right-wing politics anyway by the zero-sum competition for road space and parking space.
I have a brother-in-law who became besotted with right-wingnutism exactly the way you describe...I watched it happen in real time as he transitioned to epistemological closure.
I expect the banning of most in-person socialising during the pandemic will also have made a lot of people easy prey to toxic social media.
Fox News and the talk radio ecosystem are built on the fact that the news media leaned leftward and there was a huge market that was dissatisfied with that.
It’s sad that we’ve reached a place where pretty much all “news” leans either left or right and often verges on opinion, but that’s where the money is.
Noah argued that "MAGA couldn't build institutions" though, not like "MAGA doesn't need institutions"!
And even the manosphere...it was already existed before, and Trump just used it way better than the Democrats (remember how Joe Rogan endorsed Trump since he came to the talk, while Kamala didn't?)
My objection wasn't that Trump built Fox News, just that Fox News is and was a super important conservative institution that came about in the late 90's (so post Reagan) that was probably the most important enabler of Trump's rise to power.
And it wasn't mentioned. At all.
Why are so many conservatives now Anti Vax?
Why are so many people convinced that Russia DIDN'T try to help Trump get elected?
I'm still attracted to Phillip Hallam-Baker's hypothesis is that the main way Russia helped Trump get elected (in 2016) was THRU Fox News.
They are building Alligator Alcatraz concentration camps, a Gestapo reporting to the POTUS and populating all institutions with loyalists for the benefit of the MAGA leadership and elites.
As far as the MAGA base goes, kidnapping browns and shuffling them off to the concentration camps in the US and elsewhere is both the primary expectation and deliverable for this movement.
Yep, they are building a fascist culture and fascist institutions and fascist infrastructure.
There is a lot to criticize about President Trump, and MAGA in general. Regrettably, Noah usually gives our Democrat friends a mostly free pass. Excessive business taxes and regulations promulgated by Democrats has definitely hurt American manufacturing. I know; I've lived it for five decades.
One example, the cost of electricity in New England. If solar and wind mandates supposedly reduce the cost of energy, why has the its cost skyrocketed here, more than double many other regions? "Save the planet" nonsensical mandates, while more coal is burned worldwide each year. Suppose President Biden's "Build Back Better" spending bill had become law? Inflation and federal deficits, you ain't seen nothing yet! Two courageous Democrat Senators saved us.
Both political parties are irresponsible, to say the least. At least Trump is trying to revive American manufacturing. We cannot be a prosperous nation by services alone, taking in each other's laundry so to speak. I disagree with Trump about many issues. Yet, the Democrats have been death by one thousand cuts over the years, like piranha fish, constantly imposing their theories to the detriment of American manufacturers.
Not sure how I give Democrats a free pass, when I write stuff like this:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/zohran-mamdanis-policies-will-mostly
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/progressives-take-their-best-shot
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/hey-democrats-stop-fiddling-while
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/blue-states-dont-build-red-states
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/what-is-there-left-to-believe-in
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/bidens-tarnished-industrial-legacy
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/good-cities-cant-exist-without-public
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/democrats-need-to-loudly-reject-progressive
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/no-you-are-not-on-indigenous-land
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-blue-cities-must-be-fixed
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-educated-professional-class-is
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/identity-politics-isnt-working
Yes, the major reason I subscribe to Noahopinion is precisely because Noah *does* criticize Democratic shortcomings, particularly stupid Progressive antics. Plus he has to buy rabbit food ;)
Noah, no offense intended, sincerely. I subscribe to your site because you are a good economist, and try to be an honest broker.
It's simply this. If Paul Krugman were my mentor, given that he is a talented economist, I'm almost certain I would believe in his egalitarian instincts. Redistribution of income and wealth is an important government priority. I do not blame you for your general bias in this direction; it's ok! No problem, I understand.
For me personally, saving and investment, deferred financial gratification, is who I am. I'm not especially sympathetic to the takers from governments; I am very sympathetic to the employed middle-class, the people who awake early each morning and get the work done. The "rich" are too few; they cannot pay for Democrat aspirations. The middle-class can pay, but at a substantial degradation to their lifestyles and well-being.
I simply disagree with the center left. Not you in particular.
With kind regards.
Trump isn't trying to bring back manufacturing, though. All of MAGA's talk about economic nationalism is just that - talk. Look at the budget bill that just passed. Its bog-standard WSJ editorial board approved supply side economics. There is no difference between this bill and one that a guy like Paul Ryan would have put through 10 years ago.
I agree that progressives, particularly at the local and state level, have failed at building anything themselves. At the federal level, though, democratic leaders have been far more successful at passing legislation with lasting impact. You can disagree whether this legislation has been positive or negative, but at the end of the day, bills like the ACA are the law of the land and have been for a long time. And although Trump is doing his best to dismantle it, the CHIPS act also had a long term vision. By the time Trump exists the WH, we'll have nothing more than expiring tax cuts and ballooning deficits to show for his time in office.
I live in New Hampshire, the only Republican-leaning New England state, and the situation is no better here. There's zero appetite for building anything but roads. Whatever New England's problem is (my personal theory is a combination of home values being too large a part of peoples' wealth, centuries' worth of legal cruft, and an over-focus on culture war issues) it's endemic; the parties are just giving the people what they want.
Many voters want something for nothing. Don't tax you, don't tax me; tax the man behind the tree. Many tens of millions of voters from coast to coast. The politicians are happy in indulge these voters' fantasies.
There is nowhere near an adequate supply of rich people behind the tree to pay for European style social welfare benefits. The economic middle class would endure most of the financial pain for Democrat largess. Similarly, Republicans do not face up to the high federal debt level and large fiscal deficit in a full employment economy, and desire tax reductions.
Economically literate people in both parties understand this standoff is unsustainable. The battle is where the baseline budget will be when the manure encounters the air moving device. Accordingly, The Democrats want maximum spending in the baseline budget, and the Republicans want taxes as low as possible, when this collision occurs.
I fear that MAGA doesn't have to build much to survive for a long time. As an example, consider Peronism, which seems to have inflicted disastrous economic mismanagement on Argentina from 1946 until (possibly) 2023, which is 77 years.
I tend to model MAGA as fundamentally a class war of the working class (people who get their money from employment, but their employment isn't based on education) against the professional class (people who get their money from employment, and their employment is based on education). Nobody seems to know how to restore the working class to its glory circa 1950 -- the automation of manual labor has proceeded far -- but their position in the pecking order can be restored if the employment of the professional class is destroyed. This is a point of view where "bringing manufacturing back from China and sending scientific research to China" makes sense.
And I think that may be a stable political situation -- political support to a movement which directly suppresses the growth of a large social class that is better off than the working class.
I would argue that at least Peronism built things: many Argentines are nostalgic for Peron's times, since he was the one who created the modern Argentine welfare state, and industrialized the country; though his economic mismanagement is one of the causes for Argentine decline.
There is a song written to support Sergio Massa (the Peronist candidate) in 2023 election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lISzf5d2uM&list=PL3sl5IPWrbX6IaLFKY2LMol_Rbialo1Np&index=80&ab_channel=JPSantaRosa-Mendoza
"The history started with Christmas gifts/And housing for everyone/The (nationalized) train/ The YPF (Argentine oil company)/The Argentine automobile/The air company (aerolineas) is now for the state/The paid vacations, the women suffrage/and also work compensation for me/Free universities, all goals by Peron/And now, we have to go for more!"
Even Milei, anarcho-capitalist as his rhetoric is, is not radical enough to tear down these achievements from the welfare state though.
Compared to MAGA, what did/would they build to have such a lasting legacy, that would influence US politicians afterwards? Sure, the NYT wrote that on trade and immigration, Trump already won before last election, but as long as he still bungles on this then the next Dems president would just return to mostly status quo.
True, if you define building as a comprehensive welfare state that distributes lots of goodies to the middle class, I think that was a signature Peronist accomplishment. But that sort of policy tends to cramp the development of the GDP/capita rather badly.
And I think that's rather a significant factor in what MAGA may or may not become -- I think it could easily develop ways of redistributing from the various high-value-added industries that hire highly-educated people to what is now called the working class, and thus raising the economic status of the working class relative to the professional class. But that will simultaneously discourage further investment in those industries by appropriating their profits for redistribution.
A more extreme version of this would be to just outright attack the high-value-added industries, not to raise the standard of living of the working class, but to reduce that of the professional class, and thus raise the economic status of the working class relative to the professional class.
That that prospect strikes me as rather similar to Peronism, which you report added lots of redistribution. But I've read that in the 1920s, Argentina was one of the 10 richest countries in the world. Now it's number 85.
OK, it would also probably fit with Trump's and MAGA's views of trade and the world in general as a zero-sum game (so "it would be better to see others being hurt rather than helping everyone").
Going back to Peronism, it's also worth noting that anti-Peronists even banished his party once (after the coup in 1955), and that Peronism is very diverse in itself: Carlos Menem, even though being in Peronist movement, ended up open the economy; which became a disaster with the collapse of Argentine economy in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998%E2%80%932002_Argentine_great_depression
So blaming Argentine economic failure as due to redistribution is not enough, but rather you need to consider weak institutions/military coups/development policy; and there's a reason why many even in Argentina is still skeptical on Milei.
It's not just that MAGA has no positive agenda. It's also that it's centered entirely around one person. When he goes so will it. Trump has an appeal that is unique to him. Plenty of other Republicans have tried to replicate it and all have been flops. I write about that phenomenon somewhat regularly on my newsletter below.
Among other reasons, it's why all the commentary about Democrats being doomed is so ridiculous. What we may discover soon is a lot of people were just voting for Trump or against inflation, not voting for the GOP. We discovered that last decade with the blue wall breaking. There's a good chance a whole lot of places we think are red now really aren't and are just Trump places.
https://coldpoliticaltakes.substack.com/
Isn’t it just as likely that Trump sucks up all the air in the room, preventing anyone else from ascending to the throne while he is still alive? And in that vacuum after his inevitable death (fingers crossed!) there’s plenty of room for someone “good enough” to take up the MAGA gauntlet? You could probably just task some LLM with the publicity side by plugging in dates and verbiage used by trump in tweets and in rallies, there’s really not much to bloviating like Trump does
I agree on the lack of constructive activity by MAGA and the Republicans but I think you don't emphasize their destructiveness enough. It's hard to see a positive future in an America where people are afraid to be quoted by the New York Times. Worst case: the rule of law disappears and the Republicans adopt the Abundance agenda, or at least, the housing part of it. In addition, I don't see the Republicans repairing their destruction of science or limiting Trump's retribution.
Noah, it is always easier to tear something down than build something up. Trump is about retribution.
While America First, isolation, and regressive policies are all in the mix of various people and factions inside of MAGA, it has been evident from the beginning that Trumpism is about Trump.
It is a cult of personality. Regarding building projects, due to the funding, a physical barrier will be constructed on the southern border.
I joke a bit, but the only thing I see Trump doing is deals. We still have to remember that whatever trade deal he makes, he still will end up taxing Americans. Now, instead of using the Tariff money to pay down the debt, he wants to send checks to Americans. The wrong thing to do.