Anti-iraq war didn’t feel like peace and love at the time, Noah is sanitizing a lot lol. Post 9/11 was crazy and Iraq War opponents were called terrorist supporters.
Yes. For years trade has been partially sold as something to help other poorer countries (*as it does) and immigration as justice/humanitarianism for immigrants (* as t is). But more importantly, these are/ought to be part of economic growth strategies. It's just part of the DNA of Capitalism that economic exchange is mutually beneficial.
> But more importantly, these are/ought to be part of economic growth strategies. It's just part of the DNA of Capitalism that economic exchange is mutually beneficial.
Too long and too loud. And wrong. A theme of this blog is re-industrialisation of the US, which is necessary because of free trade ideology causing de-industrialisation
Fiscal deficits have harmed manufacturing. There are as I pointed out in one of my comments on the video a number of reasons to support certain manufacturing activities with subsidies if paid for and do not simply siphon resources away from other investment.
Climate change is not ALSO a growth/economic issue, it IS a growth/economic issue. Just like immigration.
The tragedy is that Progressives have turned them into win-lose culture war issues instead of win-win issues. [OK, it's up for grabs whether Progressive did it for stupid ("We don't know nottin 'bout no 'conomics.") reasons or the Right for strategic reasons.]
I think people should stop turning “progressives” into the boogieman and start articulating the politics they’d like to see. I doubt “climate change is a growth issue” is a very practical message in an extremely polarized environment, so I’m curious what the alternative proposal for getting things done is.
I think I’m pretty explicit about the policies I want to see: Less restriction on trade and immigration, lower deficits mainly through higher taxes on consumption, cost benefit regulation of externalities (most especially in land use and building codes). None of these are anti-Progressive in and income distribution sense; they are just pie-enlarging. But they are not the things that Progressive talk about.
That's because these are all classically (pre-Trump) right wing policies. If you dig into, say, the Paul Ryan budget plan from 2012 it'll sound exactly like this. I guess the externality stuff had already been thrown out the window by 2012, because it would have forced polluters to pay for things. But obviously that was just because politicians are venal, so you could add those things in if you weren't running for election (and know they'd be stripped out by actual conservative politicians.)
There's nothing wrong with being excited about right-wing policy proposals, obviously. But then don't be surprised that Progressives don't want to adopt Paul Ryan's policies. Hell, even the Republican party chose not to.
He was very much OK with reducing taxes an creating big deficits. (I'll give him or someone credit for reducing corporate tax rates.) He was NOT in favor of raising revenue to pay for the social insurance system. If he was in favor of immigration reform and freer trade he kept it to himself.
The heart of Ryan's plan was a consumption tax, both on businesses and on individuals. This would somehow replace the income tax in a way that would produce revenue, but also excuse the rich from paying taxes on income and investment profits. Ryan's version was particularly stupid, but that's a distraction: the basic idea has been a staple of the hard-core US right wing for ages. It's just so absurdly unworkable and regressive that even the GOP has never managed to pull it inside of the Overton window, which is saying a lot, given the place we're at today!
Anyway, insofar as the question is "why aren't progressives willing to champion an esoteric and regressive tax proposal that's only been championed by the right wing," I guess the question sort of answers itself. It's like being surprised that vegans don't enjoy the flavor of organ meats.
I thought it was the DBCF tax, which is sort of a replacement for corporate income taxation, but inferior in my view to a combination of VAT to finance social insurance (making that sub system zero depict/surplus) and a progressive personal consumption tax for the remainder of expenditures such that deficit <= public investments (activities with NPV>0)
I was talking about how activists and politicians should view it, as the least cost way to avoid future harm. How to persuade the public is a different issue. But it seems to me that “let’s tack some prudent low cost mesures” is better than “Crisis! The planet is burning.”
This was a great chat. Keep this up to continuously point out the left (my team's) chaotic, arrogant, narcissistic, self indulgent, and for a decade plus, mostly- unaccomplished.
I used to say much of the the above sunsets. onservatism. I still firmly believe it to be true.
I said as well, Conservatism, is sunsetting, bereft of any enduring or endearing values (to Americans writ large).
I think progressivism is now in that same sunset. As a strong liberal, a self-defenestrated conservative ( since 1990), I believe it will take a message focused nearly Trumpian but ethical, stout leader for us on the left.
I disagree with Noah's standing up for rich white people in admissions. A poor white person reaching the same level of achievement as a rich white person, it is genuinely more impressive. We could say that they should still be treated equally, according to some wiser criteria - i.e. if not so much SAT scores, but some more complex correlates of success or something like that.
However I would go further and say there is a principle-agent problem at work here.
Suppose that a poor white person would struggle more in college - have more difficulty catching up in the first year, might try to work through college, might not form natural study groups, will have fewer connections to land a lucrative career, etc. So on paper, the college can showcase a better graduate and expend fewer resources by selecting for the rich white person (even to the point of discriminating in favor of rich white people, which is what they do now). But at the same time, we know that those people were going to be successful at a lesser school, so the greatest value added (for the individual, for society at large), will be for the college to select the poor white person with high potential. So this is a pro-social thing that our society should be explicitly encouraging.
I'm with Matt - no racial affirmative action, yes economic affirmative action (which will also have the benefit of also promoting racial diversity because it will draw across a wider cross-section of society). If it squicks you out to do quotas or different standards, you can still choose policies that tend to promote regional diversity, like the "top X% of each high school" rule.
Just a heads up for anyone like me who is too impatient to listen... there is a transcript button on the bottom row, directly under Matt Y's right eye, that looks like a sheet of notebook paper with the top corner folded down.
The US, and probably the west in general, needs to look at the Singaporean model on race and racial agitation. All ethnic groups are protected including the majority and dominant Chinese. They are 70% of the population and not falling.
In a majority minority state the laws on hate speech should apply to anti white speech, which is bad news for the academic left.
Singapore's Chinese population stays at 70% because they're below replacement rate fertility and are constantly replenished via a steady stream of immigrants from China and Chinese Malays. Chinese Malays are actually victims of affirmative action in Malaysia that favors the majority Malays.
There's no constant source of white immigrants to the US to keep whites at their current 65-70%, unless we mass naturalize Ukrainian refugees and Trump's thing with Afrikaners works out. Most Europeans are happy staying in their countries.
Idk if it's official, but Singapore has a de-facto policy of keeping permanent residency and naturalization demographics in line with the current racial demographics. I'm not even opposed to the US explicitly favoring 70-80% white or even western immigrants but this is almost certainly unconstitutional and you know libs will scream their heads off about it.
Heath’s paper “Two Dilemmas for US Race Relations” addresses why the Singapore model might be ill-suited to the U.S. context. Highly recommend, if you’re curious. I had to download it via Academia.edu, but it’s probably available elsewhere.
A baby boomer’s perspective: We spent our early twenties watching body bags being unloaded on the news at 6:30. When we were in our mid twenties urban blight presented in the form of race riots and municipal bancruptcies. When it came time to buy a house mortgage rates were in the mid double digits. Still most of my cohort would likely agree that the vibe was positive. What explains that? I think it was because there were so many of us. Young people and people who live around young people tend to be happy. Who doesn’t like to tred in a world permeated with estrogen and testosterone? The world baby boomer’s knew is of course long gone. Demographics have tilted old. Old people tend to be less than sanguine. In a recent poll, for example, that asks Canadians if they feel welcome in the US more than half of those under fifty-five said they did, sixty percent of people over fifty-five said they didn’t. Providing affordable child care and tax incentives, would be good public policy for Dems to endorse. Dems might also consider that when baby boomers were young, income taxes were higher and skewed such that inequality was less of a felt issue.
Presumably not making a bunch of noise about it; not demonstrating, not intervening actively in other people’s lives, not finding political outlet for bigoted views, but just privately harbouring resentment and dislike and limiting personal social interactions with the disliked group.
It was an offhand comment, but I *strongly* disagree with Governor Newsome's veto of the AI safety bill SB1047 - it basically consisted of extremely reasonable common sense measures that most AI companies were already doing, and that also didn't actually apply to any AI model that currently existed when the bill was vetoed.
I enjoyed how many topics you hit and the amount of historical consideration woven into the conversation. Extremely high content density. Please do more!
Anti-iraq war didn’t feel like peace and love at the time, Noah is sanitizing a lot lol. Post 9/11 was crazy and Iraq War opponents were called terrorist supporters.
inward-looking arrogance;
Yes. For years trade has been partially sold as something to help other poorer countries (*as it does) and immigration as justice/humanitarianism for immigrants (* as t is). But more importantly, these are/ought to be part of economic growth strategies. It's just part of the DNA of Capitalism that economic exchange is mutually beneficial.
> But more importantly, these are/ought to be part of economic growth strategies. It's just part of the DNA of Capitalism that economic exchange is mutually beneficial.
You think that argument has not been made?
Not for long enough and loud enough.
Too long and too loud. And wrong. A theme of this blog is re-industrialisation of the US, which is necessary because of free trade ideology causing de-industrialisation
Fiscal deficits have harmed manufacturing. There are as I pointed out in one of my comments on the video a number of reasons to support certain manufacturing activities with subsidies if paid for and do not simply siphon resources away from other investment.
Fiscal deficits are a consequence not a cause.
Exactly the difference between revenue and expenditure.
Climate change is not ALSO a growth/economic issue, it IS a growth/economic issue. Just like immigration.
The tragedy is that Progressives have turned them into win-lose culture war issues instead of win-win issues. [OK, it's up for grabs whether Progressive did it for stupid ("We don't know nottin 'bout no 'conomics.") reasons or the Right for strategic reasons.]
I think people should stop turning “progressives” into the boogieman and start articulating the politics they’d like to see. I doubt “climate change is a growth issue” is a very practical message in an extremely polarized environment, so I’m curious what the alternative proposal for getting things done is.
I think I’m pretty explicit about the policies I want to see: Less restriction on trade and immigration, lower deficits mainly through higher taxes on consumption, cost benefit regulation of externalities (most especially in land use and building codes). None of these are anti-Progressive in and income distribution sense; they are just pie-enlarging. But they are not the things that Progressive talk about.
That's because these are all classically (pre-Trump) right wing policies. If you dig into, say, the Paul Ryan budget plan from 2012 it'll sound exactly like this. I guess the externality stuff had already been thrown out the window by 2012, because it would have forced polluters to pay for things. But obviously that was just because politicians are venal, so you could add those things in if you weren't running for election (and know they'd be stripped out by actual conservative politicians.)
There's nothing wrong with being excited about right-wing policy proposals, obviously. But then don't be surprised that Progressives don't want to adopt Paul Ryan's policies. Hell, even the Republican party chose not to.
I think you are being very generous to Paul Ryan.
He was very much OK with reducing taxes an creating big deficits. (I'll give him or someone credit for reducing corporate tax rates.) He was NOT in favor of raising revenue to pay for the social insurance system. If he was in favor of immigration reform and freer trade he kept it to himself.
The heart of Ryan's plan was a consumption tax, both on businesses and on individuals. This would somehow replace the income tax in a way that would produce revenue, but also excuse the rich from paying taxes on income and investment profits. Ryan's version was particularly stupid, but that's a distraction: the basic idea has been a staple of the hard-core US right wing for ages. It's just so absurdly unworkable and regressive that even the GOP has never managed to pull it inside of the Overton window, which is saying a lot, given the place we're at today!
Anyway, insofar as the question is "why aren't progressives willing to champion an esoteric and regressive tax proposal that's only been championed by the right wing," I guess the question sort of answers itself. It's like being surprised that vegans don't enjoy the flavor of organ meats.
I thought it was the DBCF tax, which is sort of a replacement for corporate income taxation, but inferior in my view to a combination of VAT to finance social insurance (making that sub system zero depict/surplus) and a progressive personal consumption tax for the remainder of expenditures such that deficit <= public investments (activities with NPV>0)
But I’m championing a progressive consumption tax to go along with a flat VAT (that’s still more progressive than the wage tax).
I was talking about how activists and politicians should view it, as the least cost way to avoid future harm. How to persuade the public is a different issue. But it seems to me that “let’s tack some prudent low cost mesures” is better than “Crisis! The planet is burning.”
This was a great chat. Keep this up to continuously point out the left (my team's) chaotic, arrogant, narcissistic, self indulgent, and for a decade plus, mostly- unaccomplished.
I used to say much of the the above sunsets. onservatism. I still firmly believe it to be true.
I said as well, Conservatism, is sunsetting, bereft of any enduring or endearing values (to Americans writ large).
I think progressivism is now in that same sunset. As a strong liberal, a self-defenestrated conservative ( since 1990), I believe it will take a message focused nearly Trumpian but ethical, stout leader for us on the left.
I don't see one emerging yet.
I disagree with Noah's standing up for rich white people in admissions. A poor white person reaching the same level of achievement as a rich white person, it is genuinely more impressive. We could say that they should still be treated equally, according to some wiser criteria - i.e. if not so much SAT scores, but some more complex correlates of success or something like that.
However I would go further and say there is a principle-agent problem at work here.
Suppose that a poor white person would struggle more in college - have more difficulty catching up in the first year, might try to work through college, might not form natural study groups, will have fewer connections to land a lucrative career, etc. So on paper, the college can showcase a better graduate and expend fewer resources by selecting for the rich white person (even to the point of discriminating in favor of rich white people, which is what they do now). But at the same time, we know that those people were going to be successful at a lesser school, so the greatest value added (for the individual, for society at large), will be for the college to select the poor white person with high potential. So this is a pro-social thing that our society should be explicitly encouraging.
I'm with Matt - no racial affirmative action, yes economic affirmative action (which will also have the benefit of also promoting racial diversity because it will draw across a wider cross-section of society). If it squicks you out to do quotas or different standards, you can still choose policies that tend to promote regional diversity, like the "top X% of each high school" rule.
Just a heads up for anyone like me who is too impatient to listen... there is a transcript button on the bottom row, directly under Matt Y's right eye, that looks like a sheet of notebook paper with the top corner folded down.
The US, and probably the west in general, needs to look at the Singaporean model on race and racial agitation. All ethnic groups are protected including the majority and dominant Chinese. They are 70% of the population and not falling.
In a majority minority state the laws on hate speech should apply to anti white speech, which is bad news for the academic left.
Singapore's Chinese population stays at 70% because they're below replacement rate fertility and are constantly replenished via a steady stream of immigrants from China and Chinese Malays. Chinese Malays are actually victims of affirmative action in Malaysia that favors the majority Malays.
There's no constant source of white immigrants to the US to keep whites at their current 65-70%, unless we mass naturalize Ukrainian refugees and Trump's thing with Afrikaners works out. Most Europeans are happy staying in their countries.
Idk if it's official, but Singapore has a de-facto policy of keeping permanent residency and naturalization demographics in line with the current racial demographics. I'm not even opposed to the US explicitly favoring 70-80% white or even western immigrants but this is almost certainly unconstitutional and you know libs will scream their heads off about it.
Heath’s paper “Two Dilemmas for US Race Relations” addresses why the Singapore model might be ill-suited to the U.S. context. Highly recommend, if you’re curious. I had to download it via Academia.edu, but it’s probably available elsewhere.
Noah,
Are you saying that Xi does not surround himself with obsequious sycophants?
A baby boomer’s perspective: We spent our early twenties watching body bags being unloaded on the news at 6:30. When we were in our mid twenties urban blight presented in the form of race riots and municipal bancruptcies. When it came time to buy a house mortgage rates were in the mid double digits. Still most of my cohort would likely agree that the vibe was positive. What explains that? I think it was because there were so many of us. Young people and people who live around young people tend to be happy. Who doesn’t like to tred in a world permeated with estrogen and testosterone? The world baby boomer’s knew is of course long gone. Demographics have tilted old. Old people tend to be less than sanguine. In a recent poll, for example, that asks Canadians if they feel welcome in the US more than half of those under fifty-five said they did, sixty percent of people over fifty-five said they didn’t. Providing affordable child care and tax incentives, would be good public policy for Dems to endorse. Dems might also consider that when baby boomers were young, income taxes were higher and skewed such that inequality was less of a felt issue.
white ppl as a minority kept thinking of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4Tbji8ZsN0
Waterworld!
Matt,
John Kerry suffered from the Swift Boat debacle.
Matt,
Kamela received the nomination, because Biden needed to appease Pelosi.
Noah,
What is being "quietly racist?"
Presumably not making a bunch of noise about it; not demonstrating, not intervening actively in other people’s lives, not finding political outlet for bigoted views, but just privately harbouring resentment and dislike and limiting personal social interactions with the disliked group.
Thanks for your remarks.
More often please!!
But with transcript.
It was an offhand comment, but I *strongly* disagree with Governor Newsome's veto of the AI safety bill SB1047 - it basically consisted of extremely reasonable common sense measures that most AI companies were already doing, and that also didn't actually apply to any AI model that currently existed when the bill was vetoed.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/asteriskzvi-on-californias-ai-bill
I enjoyed how many topics you hit and the amount of historical consideration woven into the conversation. Extremely high content density. Please do more!