While you made some good points, I think that you fundamentally misunderstand what Liberalism is. Nor are you recognizing the fundamental ideals that you desire lead to this outcome.
The Liberalism of the 20th Century has nothing to do with the Liberalism of the 18th/19th Century. In many ways, it is the opposite.
The Liberalism of the 18th/19th Century was about minimizing government restrictions on people in the name of Liberty.
The Liberalism of the 20th Century was about expanding government spending, regulations, and taxes in the name of Equality. Because Equality is unachievable, it naturally over-extends, but the next generation just thinks that failure was due to not believing hard enough in the goal of Equality.
The Progressivism of the 21st Century is the result of the failures of Liberalism of the 20th Century to create Equality. It is not a mistake that can be unwound. It is the natural outcome of the goal of Equality.
As long as Equality is the goal of those Left-of-Center, it will always lead to what you reject. The problem is the goal itself: Equality.
It is unachievable, and attempts to achieve it do more harm to society that good. The only way to reliably move towards Equality is to tear down those who contribute most to society. It is far harder to build up those who have less, and that goal has nothing to do with Equality anyway.
The Left can only move forward if it rejects the goal of Equality (which is unachievable and zero-sum) and embraces the goal of Material Progress and Upward Mobility (which are achievable and positive-sum).
That is not what "Egalite" meant to French revolutionaries nor what "equality" meant to 1980s Liberals (or for that matter any 20th Century Liberals). It is not the relentless pursuit of mathematically impossible "equality of economic outcomes." There are some extreme leftist conceptions that revolve around that notion, but I don't think even the people we consider the extreme left in US politics (e.g., DSA members), subscribe to them fully.
I never said anything about equality of economic outcomes, and the believe in Equality as a prime moral goal clearly goes far beyond “the extreme Left.”
Virtually every belief on the Left (including the Center-Left) stems from trying to create some form of equality: race, gender, sexual identity, age, class, disability status, immigration status, education, work status, income, wealth, health status, etc.
Glad that you at least acknowledged that economic equality is mathematically impossible. That is the first step towards acknowledging the impossibility of all forms of equality other than equality of legal rights.
Equality to the French revolutionaries meant something more like "us rich people from non-nobility families demand the political rights we deserve from our success same as the rich nobility has."
Equality is about both progressive taxation and upward mobility. Equality in Europe has brought social-democratic parties (aka ''socialism'' in the US) and the welfare state and it has worked quite well up to now.
The problem I see has more to do with the French revolution idea of Fraternity. I think you need Fraternity for Equality (as social-democracy) to work. If people feel no connection to each other, solidarity will fail. In typical immigration countries like the US this means in my opinion that European style welfare state will not work as good as there is too much diversity. Having said that, Europe has seen in recent times both a decline of social-democratic parties as well as high immigration from other parts of the world and I do see a link between them (and in addition to this a shift to far right parties). In less homogeneous societies there will be less fraternity.
That is why the Social Democratic parties keep insisting on more government spending, taxation, and regulation to achieve Equality.
There has never been a nation where those on the Left (no matter how moderate) say that we have achieved enough Equality.
Nor does progressive taxation cause Equality.
Equality has nothing to do with Upward Mobility. Upward Mobility is about those who have less increasing their material standard of living over the course of their working lives. Upward Mobility does not in any way refer to how much other people have in comparison.
Equality is always about comparing to others. Upward Mobility is not about comparing to others.
That is why Equality is zero-sum and Upward Mobility is positive-sum.
Since this article is not about Fraternity or immigration, I will not address your other comment.
I never said anything about the French Revolution. The Jacobin were not Liberals.
"Everyone understands that real equality will never exist."
LOL
Appending the world "real" is doing alot of work in that sentence. Equality is the prime motivating goal of all Left-of-Center ideologies. Any form of equality beyond equality of legal rights is impossible.
If they already know that the goal is unachievable, then what does that tell you?
Yes, Equality is an unachievable ideal. Why is it "OK" to focus 50% of the resources of society on something that is unachievable, when the cost of doing so causes more harm to society than good?
Universal access to higher education does little to promote Upward Mobility. It will likely interfere with it. We already have too many college graduates.
It is much better to focus on achievable goals.
The reality is that Europeans have fundamentally undermined their long-term economic growth and the Upward Mobility of their working class and poor with their policies.
It isn't ethnic diversity in itself that has made the US especially anti-welfare, but rather the extreme anti-black racism of another minority of the population (white southerners).
Racism itself isn't the issue (Austria is very racist but still has a welfare state) and nor is it the fact that black Americans are a "subjugated" rather than "immigrant" minority (Francophones haven't made Canada anti-welfare).
And the minority status of southern whites is crucial because it meant that there was a pro-civil-rights majority since modern polling began in the 1930s, driving southern whites to ally with Republican enemies of the New Deal, to curb the power of the US federal government to the point that it couldn't enact the will of the majority.
Right. It's no coincidence that the only countries that have ever come within spitting distance of abolishing poverty were the Scandinavian nations between 1960 and 1990 - all three of which were virtually homogeneous culturally, ethnically and linguistically at the time. American progressives go through all kinds of Orwellian contortions to deal with that fact.
Noah, I already see a positive future for us libs/progs taking shape in the abundance agenda, in the turn away of the worst wokey excesses, and, especially, in the success of liberal/progressive governance where I live in Massachusetts. Construction and real estate prices are way too high in Mass. But otherwise I think the state (and maybe the Northeast generally) shows that progressive government (plus Puritanism?) can work. We have good schools, well-functioning state and local governments, low crime and are making a credible push toward a lower greenhouse gas future. If Mass can crack the construction and real estate problem—and both Gov. Healy and Boston Mayor Wu are trying—that'll be a big win for those of us on the left.
I don't think the Democratic party can become an Abundance party without renouncing almost all of it what stands for. The Democrats are a party of Redistribution to create Equality. Very little of what it does actually leads to Abundance. Making Abundance the central goal means abandoning everything else.
The Abundance people see a problem within the party, but I do not think that they are willing to give up on their other beliefs that align with the Left. So ultimately, Abundance will be little more than campaign rhetoric to win elections.
I hope that I am wrong, but right now the Democratic party is the Anti-Abundance party, which is exactly why progressive activists hate the Abundance movement. They see it as a fundamental conflict with their ideals, and they are correct.
You don't believe that the Democratic party stands for Redistribution to create Equality?
That pretty much captures every one of their policy stands.
At the very least, you must acknowledge that the above is different from Abundance and that focusing government resources on redistribution reduces resources available for creating Abundance.
Redistribution to achieve income equality would involve sharply higher taxes which no politician in the US - none of them - is advocating.
The policies of the Democratic Party are basically center-right by the standards of Europe, Japan, Australia, or other high income democracies. That's not a bad thing in my view, since I'm a centrist by European standards.
To the extent that it "works," it will just create economic stagnation, which exacerbates inequality.
That is exactly why promoting long-term economic growth and Upward Mobility is better for the poor and the working class than trying to promote Equality through high taxes.
I oppose sharply higher taxes to create income equality because I am cognizant of incentives. And yes, capital flight is also an issue.
I'm saying the US Democratic Party agrees with me. Even Bernie isn't recommending 95% tax rates. He wants to emulate Sweden, a proven economic model. And Bernie is the hardest left Democrat in the Senate (and left of me - I'm a Warren Democrat).
The Democratic Party stands for broad economic progress, opportunity, and reform along those lines. Nobody other than Communists call for anything like perfect equality.
I don’t see a conflict between redistribution and abundance. To be sure, if you tried to redistribute enough to get inequality down to zero that would destroy incentives and crash the economy, but elected Dems have never been interested in going that far. Most of them know that communism failed, and they know the reasons why.
Inequality only creates useful incentives *up to a point*; past a certain point, it becomes socially toxic, undermining democracy and creating perverse incentives to engage in bad behavior to seize or keep elite status. Higher taxes on high incomes would *improve* incentives, by making it easier to build social status via good behavior to cultivate a good reputation, and harder to build status via corruption and shameless buckraking.
I am personally convinced that a lot of the problems in our society are downstream of excessive inequality and the perverse incentives it creates, and raising taxes on the rich to 70% or greater would solve or reduce a lot of problems.
Of course, there is a fundamental conflict between government policies that focus on creating long-term economic growth and one that focuses on redistributing to create greater levels of equality.
Everything in life involves trad-offs. There are always finite resources, and devoting to one goal leaves less for the other goal.
The reality is that wealthy Western nations allocate FAR more resources towards redistribution. In fact, it is the dominant goal of domestic policies. Very little is allocated towards long-term economic growth.
I never claimed that "inequality creates useful incentives." My claim it is that high levels of inequality are inevitable in all societies that have advanced past the Hunter-Gather stage (which is pretty much all of them).
Taxing the rich does not lead to greater equality. It leads to rich shifting money elsewhere or hiding it from government.
There is no evidence that "a lot of the problems in our society are downstream of excessive inequality." You just claim that because you think inequality is morally bad. That is just like the claim that "Inequality is a threat to Democracy."
Actually, I am first and foremost a pragmatist: I believe in going with what works, and I also believe that nothing can or should be called moral if it doesn’t work. If extreme inequality actually worked to produce a better society, I’d be for it; but it’s clear to me that it doesn’t.
It’s true that all societies have some inequality, and we need some inequality to create the needed incentives for society to function. But some societies have more inequality than others, and that clearly matters. More equal societies where elites live more affluent but broadly similar lives to those of ordinary people are clearly better and more functional than societies with a vast gulf between the elites and masses, where the classes live in different material universes. There’s more social trust and better elite behavior in a more equal society compared to a less equal one. The evidence of this is everywhere, all over the world.
Also, if your supposed tradeoff between redistribution and abundance doesn’t work through incentives, how does it work? You seem to be simply asserting it without explaining it. Given that wealth has diminishing marginal utility, the direct effect of redistribution is to increase overall wellbeing; if it ends up being a negative, it’s through indirect effects. If not through incentives, then how?
Rich people will certainly try to hide assets and evade taxes, but that’s what tax law enforcement is for. Well-funded enforcement works, which is why the Republicans keep trying to cut the IRS.
Glad that you are “first and foremost a pragmatist” and that "nothing can or should be called moral if it doesn’t work."
That is a good first step.
I never claimed that "extreme inequality actually worked to produce a better society."
I never claimed that "the tradeoff between redistribution and abundance works through incentives."
As I said in other comments: my claim is that both the Left and Right should focus government policy on promoting long-term widely-shared economic growth and Upward Mobility instead of Equality:
Ok. If you didn’t say that, then what *did* you intend to say? If you don’t think the trade-off works through incentives, how *do* you think it works?
Re-reading your previous comment, it sounds like you claimed that economic growth and redistribution have a simple zero-sum relationship. I’ve never seen this claim from anyone else before, and I don’t have the impression that any economists would see it that way.
Redistribution has a lot of effects on economic growth, some direct and some indirect. It shifts wealth, which has diminishing marginal utility, away from people who have a lot towards people who have less; it can affect incentives on both ends; children whose parents receive redistributive transfers often grow up to receive higher wages than otherwise-similar children whose parents didn’t get transfers. All this has been studied and discussed extensively by economists for a long time. To be sure, no one can pay attention to everything, but this is not a simple instance of “anything given to one is taken away from the other” - it is much more complicated than that. Conservative economists who oppose redistribution tend to claim that there is a trade-off that works through incentives; liberal economists who support redistribution tend to claim that the incentive effects are not as serious as conservatives claim, and often argue that redistribution can actually increase economic growth by increasing the wellbeing of current and future workers in ways that make them more productive.
This would be an argument for joining the Republican party (as Noah mentioned in the article, but refuses to do). The Democratic party is an embodiment of the political movement and institutions that created the problem that abundance wants to solve. When it costs 10x more to build a mile of subway in NY than in Seoul, the people pocketing the 9x of waste are core constituencies of the Democratic party - lawyers, environmental consultants and activist groups, public employee unions, etc. You would be just a likely to convince these people to support abundance as you would to convince billionaires to support communists.
Attempting to push this agenda through the Republican party is certainly no guarantee of success either, but it is not a guarantee of failure like trying to push it through the Democrats.
Yes, I think the current Abundance movement puts loyalty to the Democratic party ahead of the goal of Abundance. As long as the Democratic party knows this, then they have no incentive to make Abundance any more than a flashy new campaign strategy with no real policy substance behind it.
“We have good schools, well-functioning state and local governments”
Pretty easy to have good schools when the poors can’t afford to live in the neighborhood. Amazing how DC public schools have improved with real estate prices. But NYC has the most expensive public school district in the country and is decidedly middle of the road.
The per capita expenditure of places like New York City seems completely unsustainable and I’m highly skeptical they’re getting good value for the expenditures.
And nothing will improve until the education bureaucrats start focusing on raising standards instead of raising funding. So far they have only ever done the opposite.
Sure, school quality largely tracks wealth, but that's true everywhere. Mass has emphasized raising the middle, and rankings (yes, with all their shortcomings) suggest it has done so. This is a little dated but rigorous: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-how-massachusetts-built-a-world-class-school-system/2016/12. Likewise, various state rankings consistently find Mass (the whole state, not just rich towns like Lexington and Weston) in the top 10.
This all works well if you are going to go back 10 years for data which people trying to make this point have to do. Try the most recent 10 years and see what you think. Massachusetts "excellence" is just not only not true, but slipping faster every year.
1. “NAEP Data Show Massachusetts Students Losing Their Edge” – Boston Globe, October 24 (2022)
What it shows: Massachusetts’s 4th‑ and 8th‑grade math and reading scores fell more steeply than the U.S. average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 2019 and 2022.
Key figures: 8th‑grade math ↓ 10 points (largest drop in state history).
Why it matters: NAEP is the nation’s most stable long‑term yardstick; a large relative drop means the “Massachusetts miracle” has reversed.
2. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education – Student Assessment Report (MCAS), 2023 release
What it shows: The percentage of students meeting or exceeding “Expectations” on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System remains well below pre‑pandemic levels across all tested grades.
Specifics: 10th‑grade ELA proficiency fell from 91 % (2019) → 84 % (2023); mathematics from 78 % → 70 %.
Trend: Recovery stalled despite full reopening—suggesting structural rather than temporary disruption.
3. “Pioneer Institute: Mass. Education Reform Eroding Under Politicized Curricula and Lower Standards” – Pioneer Institute Policy Brief, March 2024
What it shows: Revisions to history and science frameworks and easing of MCAS graduation requirements “undermine academic rigor that once made Massachusetts first in the nation.”
Data point: The state’s share of students scoring ‘Advanced’ on MCAS has dropped 40 % since 2017.
Broader issue: Bureaucratic expansion and “equity” mandates replacing merit‑based accountability.
4. “Teachers Leaving, Students Lagging: Massachusetts Educator Exodus Deepens” – WBUR (NPR Boston), September 2023
What it shows: Record educator turnover—departures up 28 % since 2018—hurts continuity and student outcomes, especially in math and science.
Supporting quote (DESE data): “Vacancy rates in high‑needs districts more than doubled since 2020.”
5. “The Once‑Great Massachusetts Model Is Slipping” – Education Next, Winter 2024 (issue 24 no. 1)
What it shows: Comparative analysis of NAEP, SAT, and AP data places Massachusetts behind Florida and Utah in combined reading‑math performance‑growth ranking.
Analysis: Attributes decline to “de‑emphasis on content mastery and rise of bureaucratic mandates.”
Conclusion: The article urges “a return to the 1993 reform principles that originally drove excellence.”
I wish that could be true. My worry is the internal contradictions and conflicts of the Dem coalition can’t be resolved. The de-growth environmental movement (along with your standard upper middle class home owner) and the self licking ice cream cone that is government employment will squash the abundance movement. The first will prevent building and the second will keep raising the tax burden. There’s some hope at the local level where a good pol can jettison both those elements but doubtful nationally.
85 year old “liberal” raised by a Taft Republican Father who believed in private charity and led not just with his mouth, but with his money and management effort and a Mother who voted for Truman over Dewey, was a practising artist before and after the kids and a recovering alchohlic. You might call my background typical upper middle class raised out in Iowa after the 5th grade.
I marched against the Vietnam War in early 1965, my young wife and I were clean for Gene in ‘68, owned a primative farmstead in central southern NS by 69, campaiged for Anderson in ‘80 and then focussed on my career, raising our two boys who are now a generation ahead of you with their own kids getting married, and continued to support mostly losing causes with the acception of Obama, by which time my first wife was dead.
I loved your recent post and thoughtful look back through hisstory and will pass on the article to my kids and grandkids. If I were a decade younger I would probably be retiring to Canada, but they don’t want any 85 year olds. I do have a retirement cottage by the sea up near Shelburne, NS and it is my mental and spiritual, if not physical retreat.
Keep up the writing and we will see what happens. We are currently being led over a cliff by a somewhat crazy and probably somewhat senile elderly bully with a cult following that long hid under rocks. As one who first visited the UK in ‘63, I suspect we may have their fate in store, but do not expect to be around to see it. By the way, I spent my career studying the atmosphere and climate in a world class research lab (GFDL/NOAA) and the climate future of the world is the least of my worrries right now.
I object! The tennents of liberalism are nothing you described. You described social justice and social welfare. Not at all classic liberalism.
Noah, I think you are a classic liberal democratic capitalist. Tell me I am wrong, and I will promptly cancel my subscription.
Here are the tennents of liberalism, it seems you have forgotten the things you stand for.
1) Individual liberty.
To speak you mind, worship whatever god you wish.
2) You have natural rights.
Life, liberty, and I’ll throw in the pursuit of happiness to brighten your day.
3) Limited Government
Government power should be constrained. Laws should be clear and not arbitrary.
4) Rule of Law
No one is above the law, justice is blind
5)Consent of the Governed
The people should decide who their leaders are
6) Property Rights
No one can steal your land, your land is owned by you.
7)The right of free markets.
Citizens have the right to enter into a free exchange of goods
8) Freedom of Speech and Expression
9) Freedom of Religion
10) Separation of powers
Each branch can put a check on the other powers.
Now, if you do not hold any of the above, I would be gobsmacked.
In the same any discussion of health insurance always leads to a discussion of health care. They are very separate subjects, and the conflation screws up any chance of having an honest debate.
You were stuck in the retail politics of how society is organized. What we as citizens can argue about is how much social welfare the government should offer. Civil rights should never need to be discussed if you are a classic liberal.
When civil rights are conflated with societal norms is where things often go awry. The country has largely decided that lopping off children’s sex organs before they are adults isn’t something the country supports. Protecting children is just a norm; it has nothing to do with whether you are a communist, a liberal, or a liberal democratic capitalist.
Progressives are in a narrow camp. A bigger government to redistribute wealth. Sometimes they stray into socialistic tendencies. For example, they would love for the government to control our energy and health care industries.
I gather you would like to see more taxpayer dollars sent to the poor, the working poor, along with more support for the infirm, addicted, and afflicted. That is just an argument over resources. That is politics and has zero impact on whether you are a classic liberal democratic capitalist.
First, it's "tenets". Second, you are describing elements of political liberalism (or elements of Rawls's "basic structure") that make a liberal political order possible. These are the things that allow people with very different ideas about how to live to each pursue their own (potentially conflicting) conceptions of the good (life).
I believe Noah is reflecting on what it means to be a member of that society pursuing the 20th Century "Liberal" conception of the good -- how to implement policies that reflect the values underlying that conception. For better or worse, the reality of life as a 20th/21st Century liberal is that the exercise or constraint of state power in the implementation of public policy is the primary arena of conflict, as in, should the state prohibit discrimination against people based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc.? It's all well and good to claim that such laws "should never need to be discussed" if you are a true "liberal", but that's obvious nonsense to anybody alive and alert between 1865 and the present who actually wanted to improve the material conditions of people suffering from pervasive discrimination -- in other words, "Liberals".
The areas of conflict between a "1980s Liberal" (think Ted Kennedy) and a 2026 "Progressive" (and here I will renew my longstanding complaint about the hijacking of that name) are seemingly vast. The former believes that actual material progress is possible, that people have a right to expect a job and good health care (in the sense that our society has the wealth to provide this and that government policy should strive to make it possible whenever practical), that discrimination against people in jobs, housing, health care, lending, etc. on the basis of race, sex, gender, etc. is both morally wrong and is a drag on the economy and on human potential, that the environment (and now, the climate system as a whole) can be protected while still growing and improving economic outcomes, that a good education is the cornerstone of a happy, productive life and a competent, responsible citizenry, so should be a priority for government to ensure, and that military preparedness is a necessity in a world that still contains hostile actors who wish us harm, even after the multi-decadal Soviet enemy collapsed.
I happen to think this is still a pretty good list, even though it provides plenty of scope to argue about implementation details with people to both to the right and to the left of the 1980s Liberal on each and every item on the list. I also think it remains a pretty decent electoral platform to take to the average American voter -- good enough that the Republican/Conservative movement has been trying to poach a lot of it for at least 2 decades now while the far left was too busy punching "1980s Liberals" to notice.
The gravest failings of 1980s Liberalism (and I say this as somebody who was there) were (1) the failure to grapple with the implications of post-industrial technological change and to integrate it into a coherent vision that comported with the goals of the traditional industrial labor movement -- which was then still a component of the Liberal coalition; and (2) the unwillingness to curb "legalism" as the answer to every environmental regulatory issue. Both are understandable, but these mistakes are haunting 21st Century Liberalism to this day.
People really were proposing heinous environmental crimes in the 60s and 70s that demanded a "Liberal" response (there are people alive today who can trace their environmental activism to the proposals of that era to fill in and pave over 90% of San Francisco Bay). Creating a government agency (BCDC) to regulate development within 100 feet of the SF Bay shoreline is one thing, while fostering and celebrating a regulatory and legal regime that inserts endless rounds of litigation, consultant-mongering, union featherbedding, and discretionary approval extortion in order to build any form of housing anywhere... is something very different. But there is no denying that the latter is the child of the former. YIMBYs and Abundancistas are the best successors to 1980s Liberals because they can sign up for the 1980s Liberal list, but can also function as the stern parents looking at the profligacy and irresponsibility of that child and imposing some "tough love" to get them back on course. "Progressives" and lefties function as that crazy but appealing Aunt who encourages the child to continue in its wanton excesses, even as the child is obviously failing outright to meet any of the child's own goals.
I said you should never even have to talk about civil rights in a country that was liberal. Sadly, that was not the state of America for 150 years after slavery, so in 1964, we made it a law, and still some people did not honor the tenets of our Declaration and Constitution.
A liberal tradition does not guarantee success, nor does our constitution; that is what the progressive argument is. They want guaranteed success. In their narrow thinking, they don’t understand that people behave differently and that the government cannot control people's behavior. In America, you have the freedom to tell people you are a Nazi, but you cannot behave as a Nazi, as you would inevitably end up trampling on others' rights as given to humanity.
Progressivism is not a way to govern; it is a platform of redistribution. Those who feel the white man has all the power wish to give that power to non-whites. In the end, this progressive agenda is about money. Perhaps, some power. When progressives get stuck on the organizing principle for their redistribution, they slide into Democratic Socialism in the belief that it is what the Scandinavian countries practice.
Their ignorance is so exhausting to deal with. I have decided that while I don’t mind having a civil conversation with one, it never leads anywhere. they end up denying their philosophy has killed million and millions of people
I don't think any political theory claims to "guarantee success", but some are more forthright about eliminating barriers to success and more expansive in their conception of what constitutes a "barrier" that is amenable to state regulation. "Progressivism" in its original form was absolutely a "way to govern" when the barriers to success were seen as market manipulation and trusts (Sherman and Clayton Acts), or the political disenfranchisement of women (19th Amendment), or the exploitation of child labor to suppress wages, or the manipulation of the money markets by insiders (Federal Reserve Act), or the corruption of the Senate by venal and captured state legislatures (17th Amendment) or the pollution of the public "food stream" by unscrupulous operators (Pure Food and Drug Act), etc. The thing we now call "Progressivism" is putting forth a list of so-called barriers to mainstream economic success that is at once both absurdly narrow and uselessly imprecise. See for example Jayapal's list asserting that all modern affordability problems are the fault of "billionaires", or the common lefty assertion that all our problems are caused by "late stage capitalism"...whatever that is supposed to mean.
The thing about governing is that you actually have to propose concrete things in words that can be interpreted and implemented by courts and companies and regulators. So is a "wealth tax" a good idea? Maybe, but it depends on how much tax on how many people and on what assets... Is "Medicare for All" a good idea? Maybe, but what level of subsidies for which people for what services? Will "free buses" work to address the urban transportation barrier? Maybe, but how are we defining the objectives, what constitutes "success" and what will we do if it costs too much? I take seriously the ideas of "Progressives" like Warren, Mamdani and AOC when they make them concrete and implementable -- although I usually think they are not practical so not worth implementing. But I don't take the ideas of the "Progressives" who consider all of North America "Occupied Turtle Island", for instance.
In some ways it's just our language failing us, as there are no strong defintional limits between "Liberalism", modern "Progressivism" and batshit-crazy leftist ideology that call itself "Progressive" in order to free-ride its way into the mainstream political discourse.
I was nearly sick in my mouth reading 'First, it's "tenets"'. Maybe try being less of a snively little pedant freak when trying to make an argument. Garbage comment.
I've seen so many people in the past decade do the whole "Wokeness has gone too far, I'm voting for Trump" thing. I respect the hell out of you for not doing that. It's been frustrating seeing so many "heterodox" thinkers I used to like fall victim to Trump apologia/minimization, revealing themselves to be exactly what progressives said they were all along.
This stuff is hard! It takes discipline to think things through and come up with a nuanced stance. It's way easier to get seduced by a siren song of audience capture and let yourself be carried away on its currents.
My problem is the silence of liberals with respect to elements of wokeness that went too far. The stance of the Democratic Party today remains the same. Hooray for Noah who does speak up.
What were they scared of, exactly? Polling has always been very clear that a large majority of the public, including Democrat voters, is against that stuff. Watching how fast the so called moderates of the Democratic party got behind the woke nonsense in 2020 has made me believe that they are really just wolves in sheep's clothing.
"It's been frustrating seeing so many 'heterodox' thinkers fall victim to Trump apologia/minimization, revealing themselves to be exactly what progressives said they were all along"?
Those "progressives" are lucky to have Trump as a foil -- and so they gloat. That gloating (and the toxic symbiosis that it represents) is not so healthy for the rest of us -- as Noah's duly aware.
This is a great post. As an independent liberal, it’s been frustrating to see both parties abandon liberalism. It’s even more frustrating as a Californian to not see a moderate Republican state party emerge to pose some challenge to the third rate local and state Democratic Party. It was easy to support the Democratic Party under Obama because of the high profile screw ups under Bush. Since then, both parties have continued to screw up when in power and neither have shown any kind of competence or integrity. I still hold out hope that the exit of Trump will bring back some normal, old school politicians.
I live in CA too. And, it is a pity, on the whole, not just for CA, that we don’t have a decent opposition party (the Charlie Baker, Phil Scott types) to balance out the worst excesses of state and local Democrats - and I’m a Democrat! This is how SF wound up with Chesa Boudin (good riddance) and school board members who were nit picking about changing the names of schools rather than worrying about school performance.
I miss Obama. But I can see the danger also in putting the fate of the party into whether there is one big charismatic leader. This is how you get an Obama - but it’s also how you get a Trump. On the whole, political parties, I think, really ought to be mostly consisted of solid boring competent people who do their jobs. With the current appetite for charismatic leaders and attention spans ruined by social media, I don’t know how feasible this is in the short run, but in the long run, I think the pendulum will swing back.
Yes, that’s true. The new mayor, Daniel Lurie, is definitely an improvement but there are some things that go with being a mayor of SF because of the kind of people who live there.
Noah, very interesting article, but you seem to have missed three important factors. First, the demise of fair and progressive tax policy which has caused the soaring national debt. Second, the unprecedented level of CEO greed, with no taxation or jaw-bone response. And third, except for Lisa Khan, the virtual elimination of effective anti-monopoly enforcement.
Combined US taxes are much more progressive than in Europe. They have a big social safety net, but they pay for it with high income taxes on the middle class and high VAT taxes that hit everyone, but hurt people who need to buy more as a portion of their income. The US also has a huge social safety (but surprise - it mostly goes to old people) net but only the high income pay most of federal income tax, most people pay none or get back EIC. So the cause of the big debt isn’t lack of progressive taxes, it’s the lack of taxes on people making less than $400K (the Biden Harris “rich” cutoff) and too many voters ignoring the SS and Medicare collapse which is coming fast.
The combined net worth of all US based billionaires is 7 trillion. The current yearly deficit (meaning part that is unfunded) is 2 trillion. That means if we took all billionaire wealth it would plug the gap for 3.5 years.
Progressives delusionally think that if we raise taxes we will be able to afford new welfare/entitlement programs. We won't. We will just be able to pay for what we already have… for 3.5 years.
What demise are you referring to? And how has it caused the national debt? Link data please. This article contains a chart showing that redistribution has increased over the last 40 years. And tax revenue as a percent of gdp is basically flat over the same 40 years.
US tax revenue has been remarkably consistent over the last 70ish years, only changing by a percent or two despite big changes in marginal tax rates.
The problem is the over spending, in particular the unfunded promises for entitlements. If you want a generous welfare state like Europe then middle class taxes will have to go up a LOT.
Yeah people love to talk about how Reagan gutted the government by slashing taxes but never bother to look at the stats on federal revenue to note that it was basically unchanged and increased every year of Reagan's presidency. I'm not sure how 'anti trust' is supposed to help us either. What exactly is breaking up NVIDIA, Amazon or Tesla supposed to do for us?
I’m primarily a pragmatic liberal, perhaps with a dose of libertarian thrown in. Your piece side-eyes pragmatism but I think one of the biggest failures of progressives is the complete rejection of pragmatism in service of ideological conformity.
Old school liberals were pragmatic in the sense of being willing to take half a loaf instead of no loaf, and were willing to make incremental gains toward bigger goals. Too often today both liberals and progressives reject that approach and demand perfect solutions, only relenting when it’s too late.
We also need more pragmatism in terms of evaluating what the American people actually want and will tolerate. More pragmatism means listening more to normie, bougie concerns and less to the “groups,” among other things. That’s the path to raising confidence in the Democratic party among the public.
I agree with you. I don’t know how much of the “No Compromise” types are just the terminally onlines, but, it seems to have been forgotten that “politics is the art of the possible.” Too many progressives these days would rather be “pure” losers than “tainted” winners. How very dare you work with people who don’t pass whatever litmus test 100%! It’s really frustrating.
What we are missing is representation for the center. There's a close to 30% hard left and right each. That leaves a more than 40% center which has to choose the lesser evil because our rules need a majority vote. If we had a system where a candidate with simply the most votes could win we would have a chance. But as long as we have to think and vote in terms of black and white some nuanced gray option has no chance.
I agree. As long as we choose between one party or the other, we are effectively enabling that party to continue to make a mockery of our liberal ideals. Both parties suck, and if the debate is about which sucks worse, we have already lost.
I just wish Noah would take his enlightenment and use it to reject being partisan. Don’t be an enlightened Democrat or Republican. Just be enlightened.
There has to be some kind of voting reform. Winner take all primaries are ensuring our only candidates are incapable of governing. Getting worse every cycle.
Thank you Noah; I generally, at least somewhat agree. I'm left of center regarding cultural issues; and right of center regarding fiscal and monetary issues. In other words, an outlier, unlikely to be listened to. An old businessman, with a libertarian bent, who believes each adult has a responsibility to earn his or her keep unless he or she is genuinely disabled. And retirement for 25 or 30 years is an unreasonable burden on taxpayers.
By the way, I'm a fiscal conservative who believes reasonable DEI is a positive development, certainly before it became "anti-racist". My ideological cohort likely is quite small, regrettably unlikely to find many new members.
Inspiring. Truly, it gives me hope because it is easy for me or anybody to fall into terminal pessimism by not looking at the bigger picture. However, as a Canadian, the American definition of liberal as left of center is confounding (to the rest of the world as well). Going back to your principles for a good society ( "A clean and livable environment. Respect for free expression. Democracy and political inclusion. A tolerant society that lets people pursue their private desires."), these are the principles that a classical liberal, whether center-right or center-left, would adhere to. You seem to be precluding building a larger tent with those who share these principles, but not necessarily agree on policies. As you know, in an electoral democracy, power flows from building the largest vote winning coalition. How is this supposed to happen if the political right is excluded from the process of building that coalition? As Walter Lippman put it: the goal of democracy is to get people who don't think alike to act alike.
Well there are plenty of conservative intellectuals and commentators who want these things (e.g. David Brooks, David French and David Frum, all Davids! A trend?). There is also a lot of sociological evidence that most people, in any society, are moderate and don't adhere to rigid orthodoxies, whether of the right of the left. There are plenty of conservatives who like democracy, free expression, and of course respecting people's privacy. There is even evidence of rising concern about climate change in the American right (https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2025/05/27/survey-do-more-conservatives-fear-climate-change-than-liberals/). You should not confuse the current management of the Republican party (which rules by terror) with the American political right.
Ah yes, the undertrodden and superannuated, despised and RINO’d by the ascendant and dominant voices. I mean, you’re not wrong that those people still exist, and I stand corrected, only it doesn’t give me much hope for coalition building? Because unlike you I’m not confident moderates still constitute a majority — or no, more accurate to say I have the strong suspicion that what the majority wants and thinks has been rendered irrelevant and politically impotent by the gloves-off extremism that characterizes a more starkly polarized culture. (This absolutely blows as a stance, fwiw. Catch me on a higher-energy day and I’ll have something more bracing to say.)
I don’t personally know anyone that is to my right that does not want those four things. Your comment implies that you do not see this. Can you elaborate, preferably using actual people you know.
Thanks so much for this essay, Noah - it is a tonic for a tired and frustrated mind.
I second this
Noah Smith 2028 :-)
At a minimum, this article should form the basis for a rational Democratic platform in 2028
Yes, because..."Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/us/politics/democratic-party-voter-registration-crisis.html
While you made some good points, I think that you fundamentally misunderstand what Liberalism is. Nor are you recognizing the fundamental ideals that you desire lead to this outcome.
The Liberalism of the 20th Century has nothing to do with the Liberalism of the 18th/19th Century. In many ways, it is the opposite.
The Liberalism of the 18th/19th Century was about minimizing government restrictions on people in the name of Liberty.
The Liberalism of the 20th Century was about expanding government spending, regulations, and taxes in the name of Equality. Because Equality is unachievable, it naturally over-extends, but the next generation just thinks that failure was due to not believing hard enough in the goal of Equality.
The Progressivism of the 21st Century is the result of the failures of Liberalism of the 20th Century to create Equality. It is not a mistake that can be unwound. It is the natural outcome of the goal of Equality.
As long as Equality is the goal of those Left-of-Center, it will always lead to what you reject. The problem is the goal itself: Equality.
It is unachievable, and attempts to achieve it do more harm to society that good. The only way to reliably move towards Equality is to tear down those who contribute most to society. It is far harder to build up those who have less, and that goal has nothing to do with Equality anyway.
The Left can only move forward if it rejects the goal of Equality (which is unachievable and zero-sum) and embraces the goal of Material Progress and Upward Mobility (which are achievable and positive-sum).
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-achieving-equality-is-an-impossible
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-central-moral-dilemma-of-the
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-and-upward-mobility
That is not what "Egalite" meant to French revolutionaries nor what "equality" meant to 1980s Liberals (or for that matter any 20th Century Liberals). It is not the relentless pursuit of mathematically impossible "equality of economic outcomes." There are some extreme leftist conceptions that revolve around that notion, but I don't think even the people we consider the extreme left in US politics (e.g., DSA members), subscribe to them fully.
However, equality evolved into equity which the far left and DSA subscribe to.
I never said anything about equality of economic outcomes, and the believe in Equality as a prime moral goal clearly goes far beyond “the extreme Left.”
Virtually every belief on the Left (including the Center-Left) stems from trying to create some form of equality: race, gender, sexual identity, age, class, disability status, immigration status, education, work status, income, wealth, health status, etc.
Glad that you at least acknowledged that economic equality is mathematically impossible. That is the first step towards acknowledging the impossibility of all forms of equality other than equality of legal rights.
Equality to the French revolutionaries meant something more like "us rich people from non-nobility families demand the political rights we deserve from our success same as the rich nobility has."
Equality is about both progressive taxation and upward mobility. Equality in Europe has brought social-democratic parties (aka ''socialism'' in the US) and the welfare state and it has worked quite well up to now.
The problem I see has more to do with the French revolution idea of Fraternity. I think you need Fraternity for Equality (as social-democracy) to work. If people feel no connection to each other, solidarity will fail. In typical immigration countries like the US this means in my opinion that European style welfare state will not work as good as there is too much diversity. Having said that, Europe has seen in recent times both a decline of social-democratic parties as well as high immigration from other parts of the world and I do see a link between them (and in addition to this a shift to far right parties). In less homogeneous societies there will be less fraternity.
Equality does not exist in Europe.
That is why the Social Democratic parties keep insisting on more government spending, taxation, and regulation to achieve Equality.
There has never been a nation where those on the Left (no matter how moderate) say that we have achieved enough Equality.
Nor does progressive taxation cause Equality.
Equality has nothing to do with Upward Mobility. Upward Mobility is about those who have less increasing their material standard of living over the course of their working lives. Upward Mobility does not in any way refer to how much other people have in comparison.
Equality is always about comparing to others. Upward Mobility is not about comparing to others.
That is why Equality is zero-sum and Upward Mobility is positive-sum.
Since this article is not about Fraternity or immigration, I will not address your other comment.
The ideals of the French revolution are Liberty, Equality (has given birth to socialism) and Fraternity (has given birth to Nationalism).
Equality does not exist you say, but that is because it is an ideal. Everyone understands there will never be real equality and that is ok.
Social-democratic parties in Europe have been very much about upward mobility with for example universal access to (higher) education.
BTW I write this as a European.
I never said anything about the French Revolution. The Jacobin were not Liberals.
"Everyone understands that real equality will never exist."
LOL
Appending the world "real" is doing alot of work in that sentence. Equality is the prime motivating goal of all Left-of-Center ideologies. Any form of equality beyond equality of legal rights is impossible.
If they already know that the goal is unachievable, then what does that tell you?
Yes, Equality is an unachievable ideal. Why is it "OK" to focus 50% of the resources of society on something that is unachievable, when the cost of doing so causes more harm to society than good?
Universal access to higher education does little to promote Upward Mobility. It will likely interfere with it. We already have too many college graduates.
It is much better to focus on achievable goals.
The reality is that Europeans have fundamentally undermined their long-term economic growth and the Upward Mobility of their working class and poor with their policies.
It is time for a change.
It isn't ethnic diversity in itself that has made the US especially anti-welfare, but rather the extreme anti-black racism of another minority of the population (white southerners).
Racism itself isn't the issue (Austria is very racist but still has a welfare state) and nor is it the fact that black Americans are a "subjugated" rather than "immigrant" minority (Francophones haven't made Canada anti-welfare).
And the minority status of southern whites is crucial because it meant that there was a pro-civil-rights majority since modern polling began in the 1930s, driving southern whites to ally with Republican enemies of the New Deal, to curb the power of the US federal government to the point that it couldn't enact the will of the majority.
Right. It's no coincidence that the only countries that have ever come within spitting distance of abolishing poverty were the Scandinavian nations between 1960 and 1990 - all three of which were virtually homogeneous culturally, ethnically and linguistically at the time. American progressives go through all kinds of Orwellian contortions to deal with that fact.
Noah, I already see a positive future for us libs/progs taking shape in the abundance agenda, in the turn away of the worst wokey excesses, and, especially, in the success of liberal/progressive governance where I live in Massachusetts. Construction and real estate prices are way too high in Mass. But otherwise I think the state (and maybe the Northeast generally) shows that progressive government (plus Puritanism?) can work. We have good schools, well-functioning state and local governments, low crime and are making a credible push toward a lower greenhouse gas future. If Mass can crack the construction and real estate problem—and both Gov. Healy and Boston Mayor Wu are trying—that'll be a big win for those of us on the left.
I don't think the Democratic party can become an Abundance party without renouncing almost all of it what stands for. The Democrats are a party of Redistribution to create Equality. Very little of what it does actually leads to Abundance. Making Abundance the central goal means abandoning everything else.
The Abundance people see a problem within the party, but I do not think that they are willing to give up on their other beliefs that align with the Left. So ultimately, Abundance will be little more than campaign rhetoric to win elections.
I hope that I am wrong, but right now the Democratic party is the Anti-Abundance party, which is exactly why progressive activists hate the Abundance movement. They see it as a fundamental conflict with their ideals, and they are correct.
That is not what I believe the Democratic Party stands for. That may be what you believe it stands for.
You don't believe that the Democratic party stands for Redistribution to create Equality?
That pretty much captures every one of their policy stands.
At the very least, you must acknowledge that the above is different from Abundance and that focusing government resources on redistribution reduces resources available for creating Abundance.
The Democratic Party stands for “undefined” to me at the moment. The old guard is incredibly weak. The newcomers seem promising.
I am very pro-abundance and I guess Mamdani is, too 😂
Redistribution to achieve income equality would involve sharply higher taxes which no politician in the US - none of them - is advocating.
The policies of the Democratic Party are basically center-right by the standards of Europe, Japan, Australia, or other high income democracies. That's not a bad thing in my view, since I'm a centrist by European standards.
Sharply higher taxes will not create income equality.
It will just produce tax evasion and the flight of wealth overseas. People with high income and wealth are extremely geographically mobile.
https://www.henleyglobal.com/publications/henley-private-wealth-migration-report-2025/country-wealth-flows
To the extent that it "works," it will just create economic stagnation, which exacerbates inequality.
That is exactly why promoting long-term economic growth and Upward Mobility is better for the poor and the working class than trying to promote Equality through high taxes.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-and-upward-mobility
I oppose sharply higher taxes to create income equality because I am cognizant of incentives. And yes, capital flight is also an issue.
I'm saying the US Democratic Party agrees with me. Even Bernie isn't recommending 95% tax rates. He wants to emulate Sweden, a proven economic model. And Bernie is the hardest left Democrat in the Senate (and left of me - I'm a Warren Democrat).
The Democratic Party stands for broad economic progress, opportunity, and reform along those lines. Nobody other than Communists call for anything like perfect equality.
I don’t see a conflict between redistribution and abundance. To be sure, if you tried to redistribute enough to get inequality down to zero that would destroy incentives and crash the economy, but elected Dems have never been interested in going that far. Most of them know that communism failed, and they know the reasons why.
Inequality only creates useful incentives *up to a point*; past a certain point, it becomes socially toxic, undermining democracy and creating perverse incentives to engage in bad behavior to seize or keep elite status. Higher taxes on high incomes would *improve* incentives, by making it easier to build social status via good behavior to cultivate a good reputation, and harder to build status via corruption and shameless buckraking.
I am personally convinced that a lot of the problems in our society are downstream of excessive inequality and the perverse incentives it creates, and raising taxes on the rich to 70% or greater would solve or reduce a lot of problems.
Of course, there is a fundamental conflict between government policies that focus on creating long-term economic growth and one that focuses on redistributing to create greater levels of equality.
Everything in life involves trad-offs. There are always finite resources, and devoting to one goal leaves less for the other goal.
The reality is that wealthy Western nations allocate FAR more resources towards redistribution. In fact, it is the dominant goal of domestic policies. Very little is allocated towards long-term economic growth.
I never claimed that "inequality creates useful incentives." My claim it is that high levels of inequality are inevitable in all societies that have advanced past the Hunter-Gather stage (which is pretty much all of them).
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-achieving-equality-is-an-impossible
Taxing the rich does not lead to greater equality. It leads to rich shifting money elsewhere or hiding it from government.
There is no evidence that "a lot of the problems in our society are downstream of excessive inequality." You just claim that because you think inequality is morally bad. That is just like the claim that "Inequality is a threat to Democracy."
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/is-inequality-the-key-problem
If your claim of these negative impacts were disproven, you would likely immediately look for a different reason why inequality is bad.
Inequality is the human condition.
Actually, I am first and foremost a pragmatist: I believe in going with what works, and I also believe that nothing can or should be called moral if it doesn’t work. If extreme inequality actually worked to produce a better society, I’d be for it; but it’s clear to me that it doesn’t.
It’s true that all societies have some inequality, and we need some inequality to create the needed incentives for society to function. But some societies have more inequality than others, and that clearly matters. More equal societies where elites live more affluent but broadly similar lives to those of ordinary people are clearly better and more functional than societies with a vast gulf between the elites and masses, where the classes live in different material universes. There’s more social trust and better elite behavior in a more equal society compared to a less equal one. The evidence of this is everywhere, all over the world.
Also, if your supposed tradeoff between redistribution and abundance doesn’t work through incentives, how does it work? You seem to be simply asserting it without explaining it. Given that wealth has diminishing marginal utility, the direct effect of redistribution is to increase overall wellbeing; if it ends up being a negative, it’s through indirect effects. If not through incentives, then how?
Rich people will certainly try to hide assets and evade taxes, but that’s what tax law enforcement is for. Well-funded enforcement works, which is why the Republicans keep trying to cut the IRS.
Glad that you are “first and foremost a pragmatist” and that "nothing can or should be called moral if it doesn’t work."
That is a good first step.
I never claimed that "extreme inequality actually worked to produce a better society."
I never claimed that "the tradeoff between redistribution and abundance works through incentives."
As I said in other comments: my claim is that both the Left and Right should focus government policy on promoting long-term widely-shared economic growth and Upward Mobility instead of Equality:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-and-upward-mobility
Ok. If you didn’t say that, then what *did* you intend to say? If you don’t think the trade-off works through incentives, how *do* you think it works?
Re-reading your previous comment, it sounds like you claimed that economic growth and redistribution have a simple zero-sum relationship. I’ve never seen this claim from anyone else before, and I don’t have the impression that any economists would see it that way.
Redistribution has a lot of effects on economic growth, some direct and some indirect. It shifts wealth, which has diminishing marginal utility, away from people who have a lot towards people who have less; it can affect incentives on both ends; children whose parents receive redistributive transfers often grow up to receive higher wages than otherwise-similar children whose parents didn’t get transfers. All this has been studied and discussed extensively by economists for a long time. To be sure, no one can pay attention to everything, but this is not a simple instance of “anything given to one is taken away from the other” - it is much more complicated than that. Conservative economists who oppose redistribution tend to claim that there is a trade-off that works through incentives; liberal economists who support redistribution tend to claim that the incentive effects are not as serious as conservatives claim, and often argue that redistribution can actually increase economic growth by increasing the wellbeing of current and future workers in ways that make them more productive.
I have such great news for you - you're totally wrong in your understanding of the Democrat party!
This would be an argument for joining the Republican party (as Noah mentioned in the article, but refuses to do). The Democratic party is an embodiment of the political movement and institutions that created the problem that abundance wants to solve. When it costs 10x more to build a mile of subway in NY than in Seoul, the people pocketing the 9x of waste are core constituencies of the Democratic party - lawyers, environmental consultants and activist groups, public employee unions, etc. You would be just a likely to convince these people to support abundance as you would to convince billionaires to support communists.
Attempting to push this agenda through the Republican party is certainly no guarantee of success either, but it is not a guarantee of failure like trying to push it through the Democrats.
Yes, I think the current Abundance movement puts loyalty to the Democratic party ahead of the goal of Abundance. As long as the Democratic party knows this, then they have no incentive to make Abundance any more than a flashy new campaign strategy with no real policy substance behind it.
“We have good schools, well-functioning state and local governments”
Pretty easy to have good schools when the poors can’t afford to live in the neighborhood. Amazing how DC public schools have improved with real estate prices. But NYC has the most expensive public school district in the country and is decidedly middle of the road.
The per capita expenditure of places like New York City seems completely unsustainable and I’m highly skeptical they’re getting good value for the expenditures.
And nothing will improve until the education bureaucrats start focusing on raising standards instead of raising funding. So far they have only ever done the opposite.
Sure, school quality largely tracks wealth, but that's true everywhere. Mass has emphasized raising the middle, and rankings (yes, with all their shortcomings) suggest it has done so. This is a little dated but rigorous: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-how-massachusetts-built-a-world-class-school-system/2016/12. Likewise, various state rankings consistently find Mass (the whole state, not just rich towns like Lexington and Weston) in the top 10.
This all works well if you are going to go back 10 years for data which people trying to make this point have to do. Try the most recent 10 years and see what you think. Massachusetts "excellence" is just not only not true, but slipping faster every year.
1. “NAEP Data Show Massachusetts Students Losing Their Edge” – Boston Globe, October 24 (2022)
What it shows: Massachusetts’s 4th‑ and 8th‑grade math and reading scores fell more steeply than the U.S. average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 2019 and 2022.
Key figures: 8th‑grade math ↓ 10 points (largest drop in state history).
Why it matters: NAEP is the nation’s most stable long‑term yardstick; a large relative drop means the “Massachusetts miracle” has reversed.
2. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education – Student Assessment Report (MCAS), 2023 release
What it shows: The percentage of students meeting or exceeding “Expectations” on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System remains well below pre‑pandemic levels across all tested grades.
Specifics: 10th‑grade ELA proficiency fell from 91 % (2019) → 84 % (2023); mathematics from 78 % → 70 %.
Trend: Recovery stalled despite full reopening—suggesting structural rather than temporary disruption.
3. “Pioneer Institute: Mass. Education Reform Eroding Under Politicized Curricula and Lower Standards” – Pioneer Institute Policy Brief, March 2024
What it shows: Revisions to history and science frameworks and easing of MCAS graduation requirements “undermine academic rigor that once made Massachusetts first in the nation.”
Data point: The state’s share of students scoring ‘Advanced’ on MCAS has dropped 40 % since 2017.
Broader issue: Bureaucratic expansion and “equity” mandates replacing merit‑based accountability.
4. “Teachers Leaving, Students Lagging: Massachusetts Educator Exodus Deepens” – WBUR (NPR Boston), September 2023
What it shows: Record educator turnover—departures up 28 % since 2018—hurts continuity and student outcomes, especially in math and science.
Supporting quote (DESE data): “Vacancy rates in high‑needs districts more than doubled since 2020.”
Effect: Workforce attrition feeds achievement decline; institutional capacity erodes.
5. “The Once‑Great Massachusetts Model Is Slipping” – Education Next, Winter 2024 (issue 24 no. 1)
What it shows: Comparative analysis of NAEP, SAT, and AP data places Massachusetts behind Florida and Utah in combined reading‑math performance‑growth ranking.
Analysis: Attributes decline to “de‑emphasis on content mastery and rise of bureaucratic mandates.”
Conclusion: The article urges “a return to the 1993 reform principles that originally drove excellence.”
I wish that could be true. My worry is the internal contradictions and conflicts of the Dem coalition can’t be resolved. The de-growth environmental movement (along with your standard upper middle class home owner) and the self licking ice cream cone that is government employment will squash the abundance movement. The first will prevent building and the second will keep raising the tax burden. There’s some hope at the local level where a good pol can jettison both those elements but doubtful nationally.
Especially since any attempt to reform public employment after this point will have the stench of Trump about it for the foreseeable future.
Michelle Wu is exactly who the left needs to run away from.
Just for trying to ban autonomous vehicles in Boston, although there are many other reasons.
State just voted to
Dear Noah,
85 year old “liberal” raised by a Taft Republican Father who believed in private charity and led not just with his mouth, but with his money and management effort and a Mother who voted for Truman over Dewey, was a practising artist before and after the kids and a recovering alchohlic. You might call my background typical upper middle class raised out in Iowa after the 5th grade.
I marched against the Vietnam War in early 1965, my young wife and I were clean for Gene in ‘68, owned a primative farmstead in central southern NS by 69, campaiged for Anderson in ‘80 and then focussed on my career, raising our two boys who are now a generation ahead of you with their own kids getting married, and continued to support mostly losing causes with the acception of Obama, by which time my first wife was dead.
I loved your recent post and thoughtful look back through hisstory and will pass on the article to my kids and grandkids. If I were a decade younger I would probably be retiring to Canada, but they don’t want any 85 year olds. I do have a retirement cottage by the sea up near Shelburne, NS and it is my mental and spiritual, if not physical retreat.
Keep up the writing and we will see what happens. We are currently being led over a cliff by a somewhat crazy and probably somewhat senile elderly bully with a cult following that long hid under rocks. As one who first visited the UK in ‘63, I suspect we may have their fate in store, but do not expect to be around to see it. By the way, I spent my career studying the atmosphere and climate in a world class research lab (GFDL/NOAA) and the climate future of the world is the least of my worrries right now.
Hiram “Chip” Levy II
I object! The tennents of liberalism are nothing you described. You described social justice and social welfare. Not at all classic liberalism.
Noah, I think you are a classic liberal democratic capitalist. Tell me I am wrong, and I will promptly cancel my subscription.
Here are the tennents of liberalism, it seems you have forgotten the things you stand for.
1) Individual liberty.
To speak you mind, worship whatever god you wish.
2) You have natural rights.
Life, liberty, and I’ll throw in the pursuit of happiness to brighten your day.
3) Limited Government
Government power should be constrained. Laws should be clear and not arbitrary.
4) Rule of Law
No one is above the law, justice is blind
5)Consent of the Governed
The people should decide who their leaders are
6) Property Rights
No one can steal your land, your land is owned by you.
7)The right of free markets.
Citizens have the right to enter into a free exchange of goods
8) Freedom of Speech and Expression
9) Freedom of Religion
10) Separation of powers
Each branch can put a check on the other powers.
Now, if you do not hold any of the above, I would be gobsmacked.
In the same any discussion of health insurance always leads to a discussion of health care. They are very separate subjects, and the conflation screws up any chance of having an honest debate.
You were stuck in the retail politics of how society is organized. What we as citizens can argue about is how much social welfare the government should offer. Civil rights should never need to be discussed if you are a classic liberal.
When civil rights are conflated with societal norms is where things often go awry. The country has largely decided that lopping off children’s sex organs before they are adults isn’t something the country supports. Protecting children is just a norm; it has nothing to do with whether you are a communist, a liberal, or a liberal democratic capitalist.
Progressives are in a narrow camp. A bigger government to redistribute wealth. Sometimes they stray into socialistic tendencies. For example, they would love for the government to control our energy and health care industries.
I gather you would like to see more taxpayer dollars sent to the poor, the working poor, along with more support for the infirm, addicted, and afflicted. That is just an argument over resources. That is politics and has zero impact on whether you are a classic liberal democratic capitalist.
First, it's "tenets". Second, you are describing elements of political liberalism (or elements of Rawls's "basic structure") that make a liberal political order possible. These are the things that allow people with very different ideas about how to live to each pursue their own (potentially conflicting) conceptions of the good (life).
I believe Noah is reflecting on what it means to be a member of that society pursuing the 20th Century "Liberal" conception of the good -- how to implement policies that reflect the values underlying that conception. For better or worse, the reality of life as a 20th/21st Century liberal is that the exercise or constraint of state power in the implementation of public policy is the primary arena of conflict, as in, should the state prohibit discrimination against people based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc.? It's all well and good to claim that such laws "should never need to be discussed" if you are a true "liberal", but that's obvious nonsense to anybody alive and alert between 1865 and the present who actually wanted to improve the material conditions of people suffering from pervasive discrimination -- in other words, "Liberals".
The areas of conflict between a "1980s Liberal" (think Ted Kennedy) and a 2026 "Progressive" (and here I will renew my longstanding complaint about the hijacking of that name) are seemingly vast. The former believes that actual material progress is possible, that people have a right to expect a job and good health care (in the sense that our society has the wealth to provide this and that government policy should strive to make it possible whenever practical), that discrimination against people in jobs, housing, health care, lending, etc. on the basis of race, sex, gender, etc. is both morally wrong and is a drag on the economy and on human potential, that the environment (and now, the climate system as a whole) can be protected while still growing and improving economic outcomes, that a good education is the cornerstone of a happy, productive life and a competent, responsible citizenry, so should be a priority for government to ensure, and that military preparedness is a necessity in a world that still contains hostile actors who wish us harm, even after the multi-decadal Soviet enemy collapsed.
I happen to think this is still a pretty good list, even though it provides plenty of scope to argue about implementation details with people to both to the right and to the left of the 1980s Liberal on each and every item on the list. I also think it remains a pretty decent electoral platform to take to the average American voter -- good enough that the Republican/Conservative movement has been trying to poach a lot of it for at least 2 decades now while the far left was too busy punching "1980s Liberals" to notice.
The gravest failings of 1980s Liberalism (and I say this as somebody who was there) were (1) the failure to grapple with the implications of post-industrial technological change and to integrate it into a coherent vision that comported with the goals of the traditional industrial labor movement -- which was then still a component of the Liberal coalition; and (2) the unwillingness to curb "legalism" as the answer to every environmental regulatory issue. Both are understandable, but these mistakes are haunting 21st Century Liberalism to this day.
People really were proposing heinous environmental crimes in the 60s and 70s that demanded a "Liberal" response (there are people alive today who can trace their environmental activism to the proposals of that era to fill in and pave over 90% of San Francisco Bay). Creating a government agency (BCDC) to regulate development within 100 feet of the SF Bay shoreline is one thing, while fostering and celebrating a regulatory and legal regime that inserts endless rounds of litigation, consultant-mongering, union featherbedding, and discretionary approval extortion in order to build any form of housing anywhere... is something very different. But there is no denying that the latter is the child of the former. YIMBYs and Abundancistas are the best successors to 1980s Liberals because they can sign up for the 1980s Liberal list, but can also function as the stern parents looking at the profligacy and irresponsibility of that child and imposing some "tough love" to get them back on course. "Progressives" and lefties function as that crazy but appealing Aunt who encourages the child to continue in its wanton excesses, even as the child is obviously failing outright to meet any of the child's own goals.
I said you should never even have to talk about civil rights in a country that was liberal. Sadly, that was not the state of America for 150 years after slavery, so in 1964, we made it a law, and still some people did not honor the tenets of our Declaration and Constitution.
A liberal tradition does not guarantee success, nor does our constitution; that is what the progressive argument is. They want guaranteed success. In their narrow thinking, they don’t understand that people behave differently and that the government cannot control people's behavior. In America, you have the freedom to tell people you are a Nazi, but you cannot behave as a Nazi, as you would inevitably end up trampling on others' rights as given to humanity.
Progressivism is not a way to govern; it is a platform of redistribution. Those who feel the white man has all the power wish to give that power to non-whites. In the end, this progressive agenda is about money. Perhaps, some power. When progressives get stuck on the organizing principle for their redistribution, they slide into Democratic Socialism in the belief that it is what the Scandinavian countries practice.
Their ignorance is so exhausting to deal with. I have decided that while I don’t mind having a civil conversation with one, it never leads anywhere. they end up denying their philosophy has killed million and millions of people
I don't think any political theory claims to "guarantee success", but some are more forthright about eliminating barriers to success and more expansive in their conception of what constitutes a "barrier" that is amenable to state regulation. "Progressivism" in its original form was absolutely a "way to govern" when the barriers to success were seen as market manipulation and trusts (Sherman and Clayton Acts), or the political disenfranchisement of women (19th Amendment), or the exploitation of child labor to suppress wages, or the manipulation of the money markets by insiders (Federal Reserve Act), or the corruption of the Senate by venal and captured state legislatures (17th Amendment) or the pollution of the public "food stream" by unscrupulous operators (Pure Food and Drug Act), etc. The thing we now call "Progressivism" is putting forth a list of so-called barriers to mainstream economic success that is at once both absurdly narrow and uselessly imprecise. See for example Jayapal's list asserting that all modern affordability problems are the fault of "billionaires", or the common lefty assertion that all our problems are caused by "late stage capitalism"...whatever that is supposed to mean.
The thing about governing is that you actually have to propose concrete things in words that can be interpreted and implemented by courts and companies and regulators. So is a "wealth tax" a good idea? Maybe, but it depends on how much tax on how many people and on what assets... Is "Medicare for All" a good idea? Maybe, but what level of subsidies for which people for what services? Will "free buses" work to address the urban transportation barrier? Maybe, but how are we defining the objectives, what constitutes "success" and what will we do if it costs too much? I take seriously the ideas of "Progressives" like Warren, Mamdani and AOC when they make them concrete and implementable -- although I usually think they are not practical so not worth implementing. But I don't take the ideas of the "Progressives" who consider all of North America "Occupied Turtle Island", for instance.
In some ways it's just our language failing us, as there are no strong defintional limits between "Liberalism", modern "Progressivism" and batshit-crazy leftist ideology that call itself "Progressive" in order to free-ride its way into the mainstream political discourse.
I was nearly sick in my mouth reading 'First, it's "tenets"'. Maybe try being less of a snively little pedant freak when trying to make an argument. Garbage comment.
You should see a doctor for your mouth disease. If you don't care about how words work or what they mean, you should stop reading and writing.
I've seen so many people in the past decade do the whole "Wokeness has gone too far, I'm voting for Trump" thing. I respect the hell out of you for not doing that. It's been frustrating seeing so many "heterodox" thinkers I used to like fall victim to Trump apologia/minimization, revealing themselves to be exactly what progressives said they were all along.
This stuff is hard! It takes discipline to think things through and come up with a nuanced stance. It's way easier to get seduced by a siren song of audience capture and let yourself be carried away on its currents.
Keep up the great work.
My problem is the silence of liberals with respect to elements of wokeness that went too far. The stance of the Democratic Party today remains the same. Hooray for Noah who does speak up.
I agree with that too. They were largely silent because they were scared.
What were they scared of, exactly? Polling has always been very clear that a large majority of the public, including Democrat voters, is against that stuff. Watching how fast the so called moderates of the Democratic party got behind the woke nonsense in 2020 has made me believe that they are really just wolves in sheep's clothing.
"It's been frustrating seeing so many 'heterodox' thinkers fall victim to Trump apologia/minimization, revealing themselves to be exactly what progressives said they were all along"?
Those "progressives" are lucky to have Trump as a foil -- and so they gloat. That gloating (and the toxic symbiosis that it represents) is not so healthy for the rest of us -- as Noah's duly aware.
This is a great post. As an independent liberal, it’s been frustrating to see both parties abandon liberalism. It’s even more frustrating as a Californian to not see a moderate Republican state party emerge to pose some challenge to the third rate local and state Democratic Party. It was easy to support the Democratic Party under Obama because of the high profile screw ups under Bush. Since then, both parties have continued to screw up when in power and neither have shown any kind of competence or integrity. I still hold out hope that the exit of Trump will bring back some normal, old school politicians.
I live in CA too. And, it is a pity, on the whole, not just for CA, that we don’t have a decent opposition party (the Charlie Baker, Phil Scott types) to balance out the worst excesses of state and local Democrats - and I’m a Democrat! This is how SF wound up with Chesa Boudin (good riddance) and school board members who were nit picking about changing the names of schools rather than worrying about school performance.
I miss Obama. But I can see the danger also in putting the fate of the party into whether there is one big charismatic leader. This is how you get an Obama - but it’s also how you get a Trump. On the whole, political parties, I think, really ought to be mostly consisted of solid boring competent people who do their jobs. With the current appetite for charismatic leaders and attention spans ruined by social media, I don’t know how feasible this is in the short run, but in the long run, I think the pendulum will swing back.
Or maybe not the "long run"? Doesn't it seem like San Francisco is taking some steps toward self-correcting?
Yes, that’s true. The new mayor, Daniel Lurie, is definitely an improvement but there are some things that go with being a mayor of SF because of the kind of people who live there.
https://abc7news.com/amp/post/san-francisco-mayor-daniel-lurie-signs-measure-create-reparations-fund-black-residents-initial-funding/18340758/
Well, the good news is that this was just empty virtue signalling with no taxpayer dollars promised.
Yeah but even empty virtual signaling is a liability if he has higher ambitions.
Remember "Pantsuit Nation", the attempt to build a personality cult around Hillary Clinton??
Noah, very interesting article, but you seem to have missed three important factors. First, the demise of fair and progressive tax policy which has caused the soaring national debt. Second, the unprecedented level of CEO greed, with no taxation or jaw-bone response. And third, except for Lisa Khan, the virtual elimination of effective anti-monopoly enforcement.
Combined US taxes are much more progressive than in Europe. They have a big social safety net, but they pay for it with high income taxes on the middle class and high VAT taxes that hit everyone, but hurt people who need to buy more as a portion of their income. The US also has a huge social safety (but surprise - it mostly goes to old people) net but only the high income pay most of federal income tax, most people pay none or get back EIC. So the cause of the big debt isn’t lack of progressive taxes, it’s the lack of taxes on people making less than $400K (the Biden Harris “rich” cutoff) and too many voters ignoring the SS and Medicare collapse which is coming fast.
The combined net worth of all US based billionaires is 7 trillion. The current yearly deficit (meaning part that is unfunded) is 2 trillion. That means if we took all billionaire wealth it would plug the gap for 3.5 years.
Progressives delusionally think that if we raise taxes we will be able to afford new welfare/entitlement programs. We won't. We will just be able to pay for what we already have… for 3.5 years.
What demise are you referring to? And how has it caused the national debt? Link data please. This article contains a chart showing that redistribution has increased over the last 40 years. And tax revenue as a percent of gdp is basically flat over the same 40 years.
US tax revenue has been remarkably consistent over the last 70ish years, only changing by a percent or two despite big changes in marginal tax rates.
The problem is the over spending, in particular the unfunded promises for entitlements. If you want a generous welfare state like Europe then middle class taxes will have to go up a LOT.
Yeah people love to talk about how Reagan gutted the government by slashing taxes but never bother to look at the stats on federal revenue to note that it was basically unchanged and increased every year of Reagan's presidency. I'm not sure how 'anti trust' is supposed to help us either. What exactly is breaking up NVIDIA, Amazon or Tesla supposed to do for us?
I’m primarily a pragmatic liberal, perhaps with a dose of libertarian thrown in. Your piece side-eyes pragmatism but I think one of the biggest failures of progressives is the complete rejection of pragmatism in service of ideological conformity.
Old school liberals were pragmatic in the sense of being willing to take half a loaf instead of no loaf, and were willing to make incremental gains toward bigger goals. Too often today both liberals and progressives reject that approach and demand perfect solutions, only relenting when it’s too late.
We also need more pragmatism in terms of evaluating what the American people actually want and will tolerate. More pragmatism means listening more to normie, bougie concerns and less to the “groups,” among other things. That’s the path to raising confidence in the Democratic party among the public.
I agree with you. I don’t know how much of the “No Compromise” types are just the terminally onlines, but, it seems to have been forgotten that “politics is the art of the possible.” Too many progressives these days would rather be “pure” losers than “tainted” winners. How very dare you work with people who don’t pass whatever litmus test 100%! It’s really frustrating.
It's not really about "purity" among "losers"; it's about self-interest on the part of "The Groups," foundations, and NGOs.
What part of an Executive Director's salary (or of NPR's still-ample budget) are you counting as a loss?
Moral panic? As one (unusually honest) NGO bureaucrat once confided to me -- when it comes to fund-raising, "It works"!
Noah, you really do get it. Your essay helps me organize my own thoughts about where we are and where we are going.
Best essay of the year so far!
What we are missing is representation for the center. There's a close to 30% hard left and right each. That leaves a more than 40% center which has to choose the lesser evil because our rules need a majority vote. If we had a system where a candidate with simply the most votes could win we would have a chance. But as long as we have to think and vote in terms of black and white some nuanced gray option has no chance.
I agree. As long as we choose between one party or the other, we are effectively enabling that party to continue to make a mockery of our liberal ideals. Both parties suck, and if the debate is about which sucks worse, we have already lost.
I just wish Noah would take his enlightenment and use it to reject being partisan. Don’t be an enlightened Democrat or Republican. Just be enlightened.
There has to be some kind of voting reform. Winner take all primaries are ensuring our only candidates are incapable of governing. Getting worse every cycle.
30% is an overestimate for both the hard left and hard right. If 30% were hard left, Bernie would have been the Democratic nominee.
Thank you Noah; I generally, at least somewhat agree. I'm left of center regarding cultural issues; and right of center regarding fiscal and monetary issues. In other words, an outlier, unlikely to be listened to. An old businessman, with a libertarian bent, who believes each adult has a responsibility to earn his or her keep unless he or she is genuinely disabled. And retirement for 25 or 30 years is an unreasonable burden on taxpayers.
Cheers, keep up your good work.
By the way, I'm a fiscal conservative who believes reasonable DEI is a positive development, certainly before it became "anti-racist". My ideological cohort likely is quite small, regrettably unlikely to find many new members.
After writing the comment below, I saw the receipt for my subscription payment for 2026. Noah is worth it, and today's essay confirms that.
Inspiring. Truly, it gives me hope because it is easy for me or anybody to fall into terminal pessimism by not looking at the bigger picture. However, as a Canadian, the American definition of liberal as left of center is confounding (to the rest of the world as well). Going back to your principles for a good society ( "A clean and livable environment. Respect for free expression. Democracy and political inclusion. A tolerant society that lets people pursue their private desires."), these are the principles that a classical liberal, whether center-right or center-left, would adhere to. You seem to be precluding building a larger tent with those who share these principles, but not necessarily agree on policies. As you know, in an electoral democracy, power flows from building the largest vote winning coalition. How is this supposed to happen if the political right is excluded from the process of building that coalition? As Walter Lippman put it: the goal of democracy is to get people who don't think alike to act alike.
Earnest question: where on the American right are the people who want those four things?
Well there are plenty of conservative intellectuals and commentators who want these things (e.g. David Brooks, David French and David Frum, all Davids! A trend?). There is also a lot of sociological evidence that most people, in any society, are moderate and don't adhere to rigid orthodoxies, whether of the right of the left. There are plenty of conservatives who like democracy, free expression, and of course respecting people's privacy. There is even evidence of rising concern about climate change in the American right (https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2025/05/27/survey-do-more-conservatives-fear-climate-change-than-liberals/). You should not confuse the current management of the Republican party (which rules by terror) with the American political right.
Ah yes, the undertrodden and superannuated, despised and RINO’d by the ascendant and dominant voices. I mean, you’re not wrong that those people still exist, and I stand corrected, only it doesn’t give me much hope for coalition building? Because unlike you I’m not confident moderates still constitute a majority — or no, more accurate to say I have the strong suspicion that what the majority wants and thinks has been rendered irrelevant and politically impotent by the gloves-off extremism that characterizes a more starkly polarized culture. (This absolutely blows as a stance, fwiw. Catch me on a higher-energy day and I’ll have something more bracing to say.)
You cited conservatives. I hope that you include progressives in the cause.
I don’t personally know anyone that is to my right that does not want those four things. Your comment implies that you do not see this. Can you elaborate, preferably using actual people you know.
Me, for one.