My theory of the case for 2024 has been that Biden is a reasonable favorite so long as the current economic trends hold steady. 10 or so months from now of steady real income growth, relatively stable prices, and maybe a drop in interest rates, plus (God willing) the Israel-Gaza war being just about over for at least six or so months prior to the election should do a lot to stabilize Biden's position.
That, plus a re-orientation of the public with an every day in your face DJT should remind people why they hated him in the first place.
I have already noticed a shift in media coverage. Headline of the NYT today is another story about how radical Trump's second term can be, and I have seen more The Economy is Good, Actually stories lately, as well as the media explicitly calling out the gap between people's assessment of their own economic situation and their very negative assessment of the national economy.
All the above just takes time. This is simply the winter of Biden's discontent.
Most of what Trump talks about is based on feedback he gets from his rallies. He tries out different applause lines, keeps the winners, and discards the losers. Likely his focus on Obamacare followed that process. I think that shows something Matt talks about, people want it to be 2019 again. Overthrowing Obamacare is a nostalgic call back for his followers, akin to the Rolling Stones playing Satisfaction on their latest tour.
Trump and his followers, especially his followers, really believe that a vast majority of Americans feel the way they do, and the unpopularity of this position doesn't even cross their minds.
And the more that Biden (or preferably, the newly-appointed Biden Spokesperson Pete Buttigieg) goes to multiple events and contrasts Trump’s record with Biden’s EVERY DAY for the next year, the better his chances.
Has Trump publicly taken a stance on abortion policy in the 2024 cycle? Right now, he's still pulling the wool over voters' eyes with the moderate vibe, but if he is somewhat forced into adopting an unpopular position at the GOP convention, the above math will shift further into Biden's favor.
Ah, but Trump won't be forced to adopt an unpopular position at the GOP convention, because I'm willing to wager that the GOP will not adopt a platform at its convention. If it does, it will simply read "Whatever Trump wants."
It's the Democrats' job to make sure that Trump is carrying the abortion policy albatross no matter what he might say from time to time. He is his party's voice and his party's stand is perfectly clear.
Do you have any doubt that, no matter what he says, that he would sign a national ban if a Republican Congress sent one to his desk? I don't.
Trump has a strong ability to find the popular positions and meander there (we'll repeal ACA and pass something better, we'll make Social Security even stronger, etc). Will he do unpopular things like pass a tax cut that benefits him - sure. But would he do something unpopular that doesn't benefit him? I can't think of when he has.
Trump has no interest in policy, beyond (1) the desire to erase any evidence that Barack Obama was ever President and (2) the belief that tariffs are direct payments to the United States by foreigners. The House of Representatives has no interest in anything that doesn't get Republican members booked on FOX News. That means in a Trump Administration with a GOP Congress, the policy agenda will be driven by the senator who cares the most, and that means Mitch McConnell, and that means tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judicial appointments. Trump will sign any bill the last person to flatter him tells him to sign. All you have to do say "It's a big beautiful bill, the best bill, people who say how strong and decisive your leadership is."
In 2022 Democrats in states where reproductive rights were clearly in doubt did a great job hanging Dobbs around the necks GOP candidates. I expect they will hammer the Trump clip saying he's responsible for the end of Roe.
I agree with you. I'm done moping about having to vote for 81 year old Biden again. It's time for us all to let it go and support Biden because the alternative (any Republican, not just Trump) is so much worse.
I agree that any Republican is much worse than Biden for the years they are in office. But it seems to me that for the long run, it might be better if some non-Trumpy Republican like Haley actually wins the election, and shows Republicans they do better on that path than on the Trumpy path.
If Haley directly beats out Trump for the nomination next year, yes. But if Trump is nominated and the Dems “steal” the election again, the competition for the 2028 nomination, assuming Trump is done, will still be very Trumpy.
Eh, nobody likes losing. At some point, even if you believe the other side is cheating, if Trump can't over come that, you need to find someone who can. *Especially when the major selling point for Trump is that he is a fighter who won't back down! If he's a fighter who loses, you need a new fighter*
There's something here. As soon as possible for the sake of the country the current iteration of the GOP needs to collapse or change radically. Haley winning could be a path towards changing. Trump losing could be a path towards collapsing.
You have listed all the things that should break right. That’s an awfully low combined probability for a bunch of uncorrelated events. They can also break wrong. Plus there are as always unknown unknowns out there that would hurt the incumbent
This is a good critique. Taken separately all factors seem more likely than not to go as described (except maybe foreign events) but yeah, running the table on 5-6 factors with even a 90% chance of happening isn't great odds.
Also just made me think of a couple things that could go sideways - a high profile border surge beyond what we even see today, some kind of spectacular terrorist attack, another ill-timed SVB style financial event.
Makes kind of obvious what Biden should do to shore up his position - some kind of high profile border security maneuver, plus jamming all the buttons to get prices to go down wherever he can.
> running the table on 5-6 factors with even a 90% chance of happening isn't great odds.
We're really over-quantifying things here, but just to be clear, a 90% chance for five independent events still gives 59% overall and 53% if it's six. Being above 50% a year out seems pretty good, particularly if there are things one can do to increase these odds even more.
>All the above just takes time. This is simply the winter of Biden's discontent.<
My take, too. I keep getting the vibe that the last 3-4 years have more or less been one, long, vivid illustration of the strong penchant for impatience evinced by homo sapiens. It's an attribute that mostly has served our species well, mind you. But it ain't fun to be a politician on the receiving end of it.
I don't blame voters for being royally pissed by inflation, even if their purchasing power hasn't declined (or not much at any rate). It was a shocking, near-unprecedented event. It takes a while to get over your fear that it will happen again.
Give us ten more months of very moderate inflation and I believe people's fears will decline and inflation will be far less of an incendiary issue.
I also think that, even if Biden ends up running below replacement for the Dems, the GOP is likely also going to run a below replacement candidate in Donald Trump, so we have to see how the rematch is going to go relative to each of them.
I'd tell you why you're wrong except you're not. Well said. Too much political journalism has the feel of "the election is today! or if it's not, there's no way anything will change! or if it changes, we journalists are not capable to conveying to the reader that today's snapshot means far less than our stories pound home."
We truly live in an era of journalistic goldfish memory.
There needs to be a tremendous amount of the economy is good, actually, type articles because people kind of want to believe it is bad, economics are confusing, and a progressive habit is to promote the need for making things better in part by highlighting what is bad, including the economy. Couple that with the republicans also wanting to promote that things are bad to blame Biden, and their huge more conservative loyal information distribution network, and it is tough to counter.
My hope is that the herd mentality of the press corps leads to their becoming bored with "despite the numbers, people feel they're suffering" trope and will start moving en masse to "we may be seeing another 'Morning in America."
The most important thing about journalism is "the story always has to change -- that's why they call it 'news.'"
I don’t think you are wrong per se, but it would help if the passage of time were coupled with some visible deregulation efforts that will quickly or slowly reduce inflation. Biden needs to be seen working on this, at Matt argues.
I'd put money on it that any deregulatory action Biden could take at the executive level would have an 0.1% chance of affecting inflation in a way that voters would notice over the next year.
Other than opening the taps of the SPR and bringing the cost of gas way down.
I think you're generally correct, but would like to use your comment to drill a bit deeper.
I think many are making a mistake by focusing on national averaged statistics and then poo-pooing anyone who thinks the economy is bad. The thing with averaged statistics is that they are averages and hide a lot of variability.
So while it's true that the economy is - so far - recovering well when looking at it from a high level, once you drill down there are still a non-trivial number of people who are not doing as well as 2019. They may be a minority, but are still somewhere around 30-40% according to polling. As a matter of promoting Biden's reelection, I think it isn't smart to shove averaged national statistics in their face and tell them, in essence, they are ignorant or stupid. It's like telling someone who is going through a nasty divorce how wonderful it is that the divorce rate has gone down.
Additionally, the most important trends are what's happening in the swing states. How does the averaged national picture compare to what's going on in these states? What demographics are not doing well in those swing states? What can Biden and his allies do or say to address those demographics?
That would be useful to know but there seems to be a surprising amount of incuriosity on this point.
My advice to Democrats and the Biden campaign would be to stop sending the message that the economy is good and anyone who complains doesn't know what's going on. This presumes - incorrectly in my view - that the principle problem is just convincing ignorant people that the economy is better than they think.
The problem, of course, is that the economy is not better for everyone, and so it's critical to understand who is not doing well and then do what FDR did and mention - yes - that things have improved and trend lines are positive, but focus on those who've been left behind and are at the bottom end of those averaged national statistics. This is especially the case if those people are among critical demographics in swing states.
In an absolute sense, the economy is always bad for some part of the population. What we have to understand is how the public's perception of the economy compares to how they felt in the past under different conditions. Things are out of kilter now compared to earlier both good times and bad times, and the question is why. My belief is that it is a hangover from a truly unusual event (the inflation spike) and that may self-correct over time to bring public perceptions more in line with economic realities.
I think there are two things to consider - one is what you state here, and I tend to agree that perceptions take time to change.
The other thing is the effort to improve Biden's chance for reelection. That is more what my comment is about. Yes, it's true that the economy is always bad for some people. But in this case, a strong majority blame Biden. That's a problem, and telling people for whom the economy is bad - whose votes Biden likely needs to win - that they don't understand how good the economy is and it's just about misconception and the vibes, is not a constructive message to get them to vote for Biden - quite the opposite IMO.
The Republican/MAGA coalition is more ideologically/culturally homogenous. The Democratic/Anti-MAGA coalition is larger, but it's also more fragmented and diverse. You have everyone from the AOC wing to NeverTrump Republicans, you have moderates who think Biden has been too left-wing and progressives who don't think he has been left wing enough.
In 2020, Biden was able to mobilize the democratic coalition on the strength of being not Trump. In 2024, he'll have a record to defend and some people won't be happy- you can see now that Arab/Muslim voters are threatening to abandon Biden, which could really hurt in Michigan. You risk a situation like in 2016, where Trump wins with a plurality after many democratic voters stay home or vote third party.
The hope has to be that as Trump becomes the nominee and gets more attention, that it reminds enough people why they couldn't stand Trump and the Democratic coalition turns out despite misgivings about Biden.
Say more? I suspect Gaza will be less of an issue in November 2024 or other events will overwhelm any lingering dismay among those particular Michigan voters, but how do you see it as being overhyped? They do seem very mad and/or concerned.
I've already given a good bunch of money to the Biden re-elect and am trusting his professional team knows how to run a campaign. I'm not sure what the ordinary Democrat should do and how this "apparent complacency" manifests itself. You can react with alarm right now, and you can also burn yourself out months before the actual election.
What should Democrats be doing right now instead of being complacent?
I grudgingly accept that Haley as the R nominee would be much better for the country, even if it hugely increases the chance of the Republicans winning. But I think the chances of that are pretty close to zero and in any case, it's not something that Democrats can really affect.
My own preference is for Haley to consolidate the non-Trump wing and for she and Trump to rip each other apart so savagely over the next five months that the ultimate winner is a bleeding carcass just ripe for a Biden coup de grace.
Except I know that Trump is going to win the nomination easily.
I'm snagging your quote re: Caesar for my English class this afternoon. We're reading Shakespeare's Caesar right now, and this lil' nugget of a juicy quote will do well to show how the subject of Caesar and the concerns bound up within his story crop up time and again. Thanks!
>Until last night, I really couldn't understand the apparent complacency of Democrats in the looming face of Trump<
We must be living on different planets. Complacency? Most Democrats I know are well aware Trump could very conceivably be our next president. He might even be a modest favorite.
One implication of this is that Trump is an enormous albatross around the GOP's neck. Starmer and Poilievre are on track for landslide victories and Trump is tied with Biden. If Haley or some backbench senator was likely to be the Republican nominee, 2024 would not be close.
I'm not sure about "not be close." Haley would still be running on an agenda that would repeal the ACA and a six week abortion ban. Voters don't like that stuff!
You’re being imprecise Ben. She said she would have signed a six week abortion ban. I know you’re a Democrat and want to shout that from the mountain top (just like the White House) but that doesn’t mean it’s her preferred position or she’s “running” on it.
She actually signed a 20 week ban in South Carolina. That’s aligned with where many people are at. I’m not sure of her preferred position.
Title is “as Governor.” What she said in the debate is that she is pro-life, but would let states decide barring 60 senators agreeing, which she said won’t happen. Saying that practically it is up to the states is a GOP candidate testing how to moderate messaging and avoid the issue without losing the base.
Here she takes the extreme ban at 6 weeks position "as Governor" for the base, but what she'll say in a general election is the same thing she said in the debate, which is that the only thing that matters federally is what 60 senators can agree on and that ain't much. That line has the virtue of actually being true, which allows a candidate in a GOP primary to say look I'm true believer just like you, but unfortunately we will never have all the votes general election voters who want abortion to be legal.
People complain about the errors Democrats make all the time, some forced and some unforced, but the GOP has committed a series of own goals on their own side as well.
Remember, only Democrats have agency. The GOP dousing themselves with gasoline and then jumping into a volcano is apparently our fault because we didn’t stop them.
I earnestly believe that the "cool" and "serious" opinion in this comment section is not that indistinguishable from the above. The Dems do have a lot of issues and we should examine them and recommend course corrections. That shouldn't blind us to the fact that there is no reasonable opposition. Nominating Haley would certainly be a step in the right direction, but it would still be a party untethered to reality in terms of rhetoric and policy.
I hate that the response to this is then "ugh, all these weirdos believe in 'no enemies to the left' or 'no punching left.'" No, that's not it. You can punch left and have enemies to the left but punch left in a way that tries to persuade them to adjust their tactics to lead to better outcomes.
Wokeism is very damaging and annoying. Progressives can also be very annoying. But I think Derek Thompson said it best on his podcast a month or so ago that "I refuse to make the fact that the left can be really f***ing annoying the centerpiece of my political perspective" I almost drove off the road when he said that because it's so spot on to what I believe but could never properly articulate!
And while Trump may be the root of the problem, he's not the only problem: GOP primaries went to way too many below replacement clowns like Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, and on and on. I'll be curious if they still have problems with this downballot in 2024.
You have the GOP always double down and then go on fidelity/purity purges with ever more bizarre and deranged litmus tests. This is why the pool of competent people willing to run in GOP primaries is drying up.
They have lost my fiancé! He was initially hoping to convince our state GOP to support the young economically-conservative pro-LGBT cohort, but that hope has utterly withered. Genuinely a loss for them: I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t like my fiancé. He has so much charisma and a solid head for policy too.
Trump appeared to finally fire a shotgun at the head of zombie Reaganism, but when it comes to governing, most Republicans are still coming from that place.
There was an interview with Tim Walz, who was just elected chair of the Democratic Governors’ Association, where he said, with delightfully subtle Midwestern shade, “These guys are weird.” These guys = Republican candidates or incumbents.
Outside of very red states, the only candidate who can get away with acting like Trump is, well, Trump. In Georgia, Herschel Walker, a weirdo in the Trumpian mold, lost, but Brian Kemp, who presented as a boring normie Mitt Romney-type Republican, won. In Arizona, Blake “Norman Bates” Masters and Kari the Lake Mess Monster lost, but treasurer Kimberly Yee, a strait-laced McCain Republican, cleaned up. (In the 2022 midterms.)
And George Santos, who managed to out-weird Trump and the late James Traficant put together, did get expelled…though he seems to still be milking his weirdo schtick for all it’s worth.
I think you are right that Trump is going to steal all the Republican thunder, and the wanna-be Trumplets will run behind the normies of both parties.
Who do you consider your fellow conservatives? I'm not sure most of the Republican voter base could pass a screening test for "conservative." They could certainly easily be considered anti-progressive or just anti-democratic party, but what I understood to be the core values of conservatism through most of my life are no longer the driving force in the Republican party or what passes for the conservative movement. Most disturbing is the tact taken by the evangelical movement. I've always disagreed with them on almost all issues, include their theological interpretations of the Bible. But today they seem to have gone off the deep end in ways that truly frighten me, because they now believe in some faith that I find wholly unreconcilable with Christianity.
I’m sure that’s true to some extent, but I think the GOP elites - politicians and conservative media - really drove the base to their present location of Crazytown. The rank and file kept a lot of “forbidden” thoughts to themselves until Fox and Trump gave them license to air racist, anti-democratic, xenophobic, etc. ideas.
No, because it took Trump and media to activate and direct their anger. Otherwise we would have heard the majority of Republicans talk that way 20 years earlier.
I agree. I also cannot decide on the exact moment the GOP jumped the shark. There are so many moments you can point to and say this was the point of no return.
True. Biden's current low numbers with Democrats strikes me as their venting of frustrations prior to next year's hard work of consolidating the coalition and taking it to Trump and the Republicans. I have to believe that next year when faced with the reality of the Trumpist return they'll come home except for the fringe voters who yearn for Jill Stein or Cornel West.
Ok, but also the other incumbent parties cited in the article have been in power longer than Biden, so it’s not particularly surprising. Justin Trudeau has won three consecutive elections already and the UK Conservatives have been in power for over 13 years. Anti incumbency bias is bound to take a toll on them at this point.
Would going after the hugely lucrative car dealership sector be a popular move?
Musk is a dick but cutting out dealerships and offering transparent pricing is great for consumers in my book, and if other manufacturers were free to do the same nationwide it would be a good thing.
I have no idea how legally feasible it might be. Would it be a political win?
I yield to nobody in my disdain for the cartel-like behavior of car dealerships. Other than perhaps a novel anti-trust theory, though, I don't know how the federal government intervenes on state-level regulations. Like all sorts of regulatory capture situations, the solution lies in the states.
I'd love to be wrong on this. Car dealers, Realtors, hairdressers all deserve to have their power knocked down.
Unfortunately, I agree. And has been noted in many times, car dealership owners are sort of secretly the most powerful lobbying force in America; forget congressional districts, there isn't a state legislative district that doesn't have a car dealership in it. As powerful as oil and finance are, the big players are still centered in a handful of places. Creates perfect stew to help influence and block state level policy.
Two perhaps hopeful avenues. First, could a case be made that car dealerships are engaged in cartel/monopolistic behavior? Could a consumer bring a suit arguing the cost of their car was overpriced due to cartel behavior? Not a lawyer, but I would love to see a commentator who is one tell me how feasible or not feasible this is.
The other more fruitful avenue is precisely the fact this is a state level issue. While car dealership owners definitely lobby and give donations to both parties, I think I'm safe in saying this a right leaning constituency. Point being, I think the gambit is to find a state with a blue trifecta that doesn't have their head up their own asses (so definitely not New York, my home state) and try to organize a campaign to deregulate car selling. I'd say right now Minnesota seems like a good place to try to start organizing and lobbying; government there has seemed more willing lately to be forward thinking then almost any other state with a blue trifecta.
Not necessarily. Law has no shortage of more or less nakedly protectionist restrictions and rent-seeking aspects to it (e.g, unauthorized practice of law vagaries that don't even make nominal sense for people practicing federal law, pro hac fees for individual federal courts) but by now they're all pretty long in the tooth (and the absolute worst ones were actually gotten rid of because they were antitrust violations masquerading as ethics rules in a way so naked as not to even have a fig leaf of cover). But the overall goal of the bar is to self-regulate enough to avoid having formal legislative oversight make practice harder, so there's something of an emphasis on minimizing rather than maximizing the legislative footprint of the profession.
I think you're interpreting me to be arguing a point I'm not actually trying to make. I'm specifically just claiming that lawyers don't as a class do a ton of profession-specific lobbying.
This is just straightforward price-matching, though. Cravath (or occasionally Milbank or some other top firm) announces a raise, and everyone else just jumps on the bandwagon to stay competitive in recruiting, because the salaries paid are public information. These top-level lawyers are 100% not all getting in a room together to violated antitrust law by coordinating some kind of price fixing. It's the salary-raise version of Target or whoever doing price matching.
Also, because these associates make bank, frankly no one's complaining that much...
No, but the most perfect place in America to be turned into an apartment complex was recently turned into a Lexus dealership near where I live.
Not joking about this. There was an old abandoned art deco building sitting on about half an acre of dirt (not a park. Dirt) right next to the Freeport, NY Long Island railroad stop. No worries about ripping up trees. No displaced low income renters. Not a nice park families like to use. Dirt. They paved potential paradise and put up something worse than a parking lot.
Just re- the first avenue ... Consumers would have to show harm and all prior analysis indicates the brand-aligned franchise dealer maps are narrowly enough defined to create liquid competition. Said differently your town might have a single Honda or Ford dealer but an average consumer's shopping radius includes like 2.5 brand aligned dealerships (NOTE: I don't remember the real number and can't find it right now).
Right. Even rural areas, even if there is only one car dealership in your town, you can drive your beat up Honda (I'm giving that example because I'm assuming you're buying a car for a reason) to car dealerships in towns 10, 20, 30 miles away that affiliated with other car companies, which means there is enough competition for your dollar.
I guess then what would be needed is some sort of leaked emails or texts where the car dealership owners all agreed to tack on a "finder's fee" and all agree not to waive so they can all benefit from this "rent seeking" fee. In that case, you would have clear evidence of collusion to keep a price artificially high. Do I have this right?
I can't really follow the second part -- but just to share my experience working with different franchise dealerships groups (e.g., Group 1, Sonic, Bob Rohrman, Pohanka, etc.). They all fucking HATE each other. I mean -- they're selling the exact same product. Their only point of differentiation is service. It's a nightmare business. Nothing is being kept artificially high.
If someone wants to the really help consumers ... they need to go after the Buy Here Pay Here (BHPH) segment. That's an all out scam. I've seen $2000 vehicles "sold" for > $10k. Sucks.
At least in Florida, yes they compete. But they ALL charge a document fee that is either $999 or $1099 per car. Every dealer does it. It beggars belief that this isn't due to collusion. Add to that the fact they successfully block direct-to-consumer sales by requiring a service network (I.e, dealer network) and I conclude that they are competitive, but only within a narrow (and very profitable for all) band.
Right, so well functioning markets are ones where the various competitors probably should hate each other. Feel like that's exactly the scenario to help the consumer.
To maybe clarify my point I was trying to make. If you found out Group 1, Sonic, Bob Rohrman, Pohanka had emails leaked that showed they agreed to keep some fee or price artificially high, that's where grounds for anti-trust case could be made.
I guess, the real takeaway is that the legal avenue is probably not particularly feasible which is probably why it hasn't happened and real solution is to just reform state laws so that car manufactures can legally directly sell you vehicles.
Just to be clear here ... Franchise dealers make 50% of gross profits from their parts and service department. The rest is split between new vehicle sales, financing, used vehicle sales, and used vehicle wholesale. Agree of the consolidation point tho ... it would be a terrible outcome for consumers.
Right. The average net profit margin for a franchise dealer is 1-2%. It's a tough business. There's no shot the OEMs could run a better model direct.
Re-auctions ... you probably went to Manheim but ADESA is / was the other major player and ADESA bought the company I started back in 2017 - so I worked for them for like a year. Sadly, that's also a tough business now.
The dealers make money selling the cars too but often it's not big gross profit relative to purchase price -- there is some of that but often less than consumers think (at least before pandemic "market adjustment" mark ups made things weird due to restricted supply). Instead AIUI the manufacturer (which *is* making meaningful gross profit on unit sales, since that's their primary business) will indirectly split some of the new car unit-sale profits with the dealership in the form of volume incentives to move X units of Y car in Z time period.
(Plus financing / captive finance arm stuff which AIUI is also largely volume- based at the level of dealer incentives.)
And on extended warranties, and dealer-installed options, and on service that they push at frequencies much shorter than is recommended in the manufacturers’ manuals. And they make a boatload of money on trade-ins.
I think it makes more sense to have very strong licensing requirements for things like bleach and color and curl and other chemical treatments, where you really need to understand a lot about how these things work and interact.
But there should be legal room for low-requirement or even fully unlicensed braids and extensions and probably cuts too.
Licensing by merit can be fine, as long as everyone has a fair and equal chance to gain it. Licensing by quota is always bad, and it can often turn into that.
Franchise dealers only "power" here is a set of negotiated franchise agreements. No different any other commercial agreement. The incremental state level regulations only came about after the OEMs attempted to break the agreements. I can't imagine a scenario where the federal government could individually target franchise car dealers without putting ~ all other franchise agreements at risk.
I think dealerships are a fun combination of super unpopular among consumers, but very well connected at the state GOP level. Here in CT we can't even change state law to allow direct sale of Teslas to consumers because of the dealership lobby.
I really can't think of a more fully GOP constituency and they donate lots to state level candidates.
I'm not sure about this. It might be like one of those situations where everyone hates Congress but loves their own congressmembers. Car dealerships in general have a bad reputation, but then everyone knows the one dealership who sponsored your kid's little league team, and if that one starts telling sob stories on the local news, watch out.
What's so interesting is how effective CarMax's branding has been. They pay the absolutely lowest offer on trade-ins because they operate trade-ins as a separate wholesale channel rather than a sourcing model for their retail inventory and people absolutely *pay* for the convivence of selling to CarMax - just with much lower offer prices.
It's lower salience but I think the Jones Act is the right play here assuming you were to pick only one of two oxen to gore. People hate car dealership bullshit but as Colin observes they're actually an electorally-powerful constituency that's well-connected and widely dispersed across the United States and in various Congressional Districts. Conversely, AFAICT and especially outside of Hawaii, the absolute number of people enjoying Jones Act pork is objectively tiny--like, not even just relative to the number bearing costs rather than enjoying benefits, there literally just are not even many direct beneficiaries of the Jones Act, period.
"There is currently no Jones Act compliant LNG tanker, and therefore, no LNG tanker can move LNG between U.S. terminals—for example from the Gulf region, where many LNG plants are located, to regions where there is a need for LNG, such as Puerto Rico or New England."
That's not a bad idea. Plus, I've always gathered car dealerships are one of the most Republican-leaning constituencies under the sun, so probably not a lot of lost votes by picking this particular fight. I strongly suspect if addressing out-of-control car prices is the issue, a big part of any real solution is importing some of shit-ton of EV capacity being produced by the Chinese. But for obvious reasons neither party is going there any time soon.
To be fair, the current overlap between the EVs produced in China, and the cars Americans buy, is not as great as you might hope. I mean, the BYD Seal and the MG4 are both reportedly excellent, but one is the size of a VW Golf and the other is the size of a Model 3.
Giant SUVs and pickups are almost exclusively an American phenomenon. Yes, the rest of the world drives SUVs now too, but they tend to be much smaller.
I'm a huge Tesla fan. I follow the company very closely. I have an older Model S that continues to require a lot of service - so I get a lot of up close experience. I just think we have to acknowledge that Tesla deciding not have a franchise dealer network -- while offering a lower cost structure -- is a tradeoff for services and capabilities. Their dealership network has been much slower to build out otherwise. Their authorized repair network is still 2-3 years behind the demand curve. They don't know how to value a used car and trading in a vehicle is a huge pain point. I know Tesla's two prior GMs of pre-owned pretty well ... it's just not a focus for the company and Elon specifically. They will eventually have to solve this.
That's so interesting to me. My folks have traded in 2 Teslas in the past 10 years for newer versions and have reported the experience to be super straightforward and pain free. They also LOVE the maintenance experience (the ability to schedule a repair on the app and have them show up at your house seems to be especially pleasant to them). I actually kind of roll my eyes at how much they fanboy a car company, and their love of the maintenance process seems disproportionate to the actual experience (an aside- my Dad once GUSHED over how amazing it was that Tesla was able to change out his spare tire in only like 4 hours while he waited in their shop. In my experience, getting one tire changed can frequently be done in about an hour, so taking 4x that didn't seem like the salutary experience my Dad made it out to be ;)). It's interesting to hear your perspective of the issue.
(1) They have absolutely innovated on the service side. Their app and remote repair options are the clear market leaders. It's the total type of first principles innovation that their known for (e.g., unibody castings, modular software). Their pricing is shockingly transparent and fair. For example, I just had to replace the low voltage battery. They charged me straight list price and like $35 to come out and change it. It was an awesome experience. Any other dealer would have marked up the part price and rounded up the 10 minute repair to 1 hour of labor.
(2) The trade-in process - can sometimes work if you're trading in a Tesla ... but even then they're offering below market prices. Where it really breaks down is on brand-misaligned cars (e.g., Honda, Ford). They have to wholesale them so they're not at all price competitive with their offer.
I think most of the regulations are state law rather than federal. Now, obviously, it's under the interstate commerce clause, so they could override that, but that would very definitely need an Act of Congress, and there's no way to get through a Republican House.
I of course agree with you, but sadly agree with all the replies to you below as to how futile it is, which just gets me more sour about state governments as a whole.
Please stop exaggerating for effect and avoiding a real discussion. Going after monopolies and rent-seeking is proper and has nothing to do with "uprooting" the poor. (lol)
But as we see in this subthread, entrenching that capital and ownership into car dealers that end up highly influential in state and local affairs has its own problems.
They only do that charity to ingratiate themselves in the community and insulate them from people asking why their cars cost 20% more than they should.
Dude. Car dealerships need government protection to stay in business. It’s a jobs program. They aren’t necessary and make cars more expensive for the middle class (the people you pretend the care about)
This is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Banks are highly regulated; whenever the government tries to limit overdraft fees or crack down on predatory lending, they scream bloody murder. Lawyers are subject to strict ethical standards and can lose their license for anything that brings the profession into disrepute; that's a sword of Damocles over their heads. Car dealers are everywhere and, like any group, seek to maximize their own profit at the expense of people who buy cars. Wanting to pay less when buying a car has nothing to do with having it out to get noncollege people.
Literally nobody is saying these things because of who works at dealers. In fact, you have no evidence that dealers employ the people you are supposedly advocating for. And nobody here wants to hate on non-college educated people. You want that to be the case because...reasons?
Hint: the only conspiracy is the massive lobbying effort the dealers do to protect their millions. Not a conspiracy with all liberals hating on someone selling an F-150 at a 20% markup.
I disagree pretty strongly with Graham on this subject, but he is not a parody account, and he gives us good challenges from a different point of view.
I have been saying for years that expectations have become decoupled from material reality in our abundant society. We live in an era of post-material politics, where people will assert material conditions are worsening while their standards of living increase. So many people dismiss political actions that bring material improvements in the quality of people's lives and assert nothing is being done.
I think this is part of the nihilistic contrarian loop where people get validation from victim narratives or opposing the current "bad thing." Lying has always been easier than knowing.
I think people care more about their relative socio-economic rank against others, moreso than their absolute level of economic wellbeing. And there are lots of people who see themselves as relatively worse off than before.
I feel like you are getting close but still missing the larger point, which is this: the global ruling class, by which I mean everyone from academia to mainstream churches to cultural institutions to education to medicine to politicians and policy wonks, has just utterly lost the trust and confidence of ordinary people.
From the "let them eat cake" attitude towards inflation, to the transgender debacle, to COVID everything, to declines in our schools, to the awful state of movies and fiction publishing, to aggressive efforts to address climate change without giving AF about how it effects regular people, to the dishonesty in our media ... people are done.
It doesn't matter if the economy improves, or that schools have reopened, or anything else
What matters is that the chattering class openly didn't give a sh*t when it was bad.
There is just a wide spread sense right now that all our institutions are just bullsh*t run by self serving bullsh*ters and posting a bunch of stats and graphs at this point just gets eye rolls as more bullsh*t.
And I think the situation in the Middle East is the last straw for a lot of people.
Polls show that overwhelming majorities of ordinary people support Israel and are horrified by Hamas. We have zero illusions about who the good guys and bad guys are here. People understandably feel threatened by the mass immigration of other people from a culture whose literal foundations are the brutal murder and conquest of everyone else in the name of God.
And yet our media carefully crafts narratives to not make Palestinians look bad, the UN can't bring themselves to codemn a terrorist group, and the elite crows about "global pressure on Israel" because of "protests", as if a bunch of child radicals hostile to civilization represent - or have ever represented - an actual mass movement.
Most people aren't "progressive activists" but we - the people who work real jobs, have real families, the actual grown ups in society - are constantly held hostage culturally and politically by a bunch of juvenile activists and their ridiculous, anti social posturing.
And then we are told to pony up to pay off their college loans.
Institutions have become so unresponsive to normal people that we have lost all investment in them, and the only way to make ourselves heard above the noise of the chattering classes is to vote for whoever promises to burn it all down.
Which is probably why the establishment is so keen to cast opposition as being vaguely "against democracy" as an excuse to exclude it from democracy.
No, populism is democracy. It's democracy striking back.
This is what is happening. Yes, it is scary. I didn't vote for Trump either time, because I was unnerved by the 'burn it all down" mentality. I voted for Biden as the "return to normal" candidate.
Instead he empowered the worst of the left to just carry on.
When people inside our president's own administration are protesting that the president isn't nice enough to TERRORISTS who are still holding children hostage and torturing them, I'm done.
The rot is so deep.
I will probably vote for Trump this time. Our institutions appear unsalvageable.
When you’re this far into nihilism there’s really no effective reply. I’d just ask whether for “ordinary people,” “the actual grown ups in society,” all roads should necessarily lead to “burn it all down.” Because that’s all that’s on offer here. Life will be better post-Armageddon? Yeah, I don’t think so.
It's not nilhilism. Not at all. I very much believe in something real - God, family and community life, my country. I believe in my friends and real relationships, in the great Classical cultural tradition and passing it on to my children, in my local organizations and in charity work. I believe in professionals - doctors, teachers - that EARN my trust through their demonstrated wisdom and respect for my dignity as a free citizen rather than demand it via credential.
What I don't believe in anymore are our large institutions, because they have proved themselves so untrustworthy.
There is little that the classical tradition abhors more than the twin evils of anarchy and demagoguery. The US, built by people steeped in that tradition, was constructed to do the utmost to prevent both outcomes. Trump is precisely the classical political villain which Pericles and Polybius would have recognized just as much as Madison and Jefferson. They’re all spinning in their graves when people claim to be voting for Trump in the name of the Classicla tradition.
And let me emphasize- I sympathize with many of your frustrations and share them. But I have zero empathy or sympathy for the idea of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Or put simply for throwing away the liberty you were given by the blood and toil of generations because, make no mistake, that’s precisely what you’d be doing by voting for trump, and you’d rightly earn the extreme contempt and anger of all posterity if you do so.
“…throwing away the liberty you were given by the blood and toil of generations because, make no mistake, that’s precisely what you’d be doing by voting for trump…”
I’m not here to suggest that anyone vote for Trump, but this seems really overwrought. I’m sure that a second Trump Administration would implement some bad policies, and that those bad policies would be, in many ways, different from the bad policies we would get from a continuation of Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office. But I didn’t notice any diminution of my freedom as a result of Trump’s presidency; why should I expect different the second time around?
I am genuinely baffled how anyone can say that following the trump term esp Jan 6. The man literally tried to steal the elections. How is that not a diminution of your freedom? I just don’t know how to answer people who look at trump and are like “seems like a standard gop president to me”.
Well for one thing, Trump attempted to overturn the election results. He failed, but not for lack of trying. The freedom to choose your own leaders is a pretty important freedom in a democracy. He clearly has a *willingness* to take away freedoms, so if he's back in office you're betting on others successfully thwarting him, which is a pretty contingent thing to bet on.
Maybe the real reason why you don't fear Trump is that you know you are his political ally so of course he won't come after you, and you don't mind if he comes after those you disagree with.
> Maybe the real reason why you don't fear Trump is that you know you are his political ally so of course he won't come after you, and you don't mind if he comes after those you disagree with.
I might be naive, but I stopped fearing a Trump return for a few reasons. First, absent a few specific groups at a few specific points in time, life under Trump wasn't *obviously* worse than under Obama or Biden. Most people just weren't affected by his actions. Second, his attempts to overturn democracy were clumsy at best, nor can I see a real path for him to have done so even if better executed. And finally, there's really nothing I can do to stop it other than my one vote (which has never been in question). So instead of worrying myself sick as I did for a while post 2016, I'll just focus on what I can control in my own life and those around me.
I simply think Trump will be ineffective at making any of the changes you would like because his constant desire and need for self aggrandizement is greater than any policy focus or discipline.
Trump has demonstrated a total failure to enact radical change for a more free and egalitarian society in his first term, what makes you think a second term will be different? All he talks about on the campaign trail is enacting revenge on his enemies, he’s going to spend down a lot of power on petty political stuff he could be using to save the American family.
Trump just seems like a bad choice. Voting for someone like Trump because you are angry will neither assuage your anger after you step out of the voting booth or result in an elected official who will make the changes you would like to see.
I'm decidedly not on Team Burn It All Down, but at the very least I wanted Biden to grow a set and tell the progressive activists to shut up and sit the F down. They don't represent the values and beliefs of normie voters. Not by a long shot.
Anonymama is not wrong on many of the points she raised in her comment.
You do that by participating in and donating to dem primaries to help politically destroy the far left idiots and put those now pandering to them back in line. That’s how American democracy works and that’s some of the work we need to be doing right now. Fight the far left and the far right (Trump). They are the two evils endangering American democracy right now and they feed off of each other and empower each other. Both must be overcome if there is to be a future of freedom and prosperity in this country.
NGL, presuming Biden is re-elected, if Marvel brings out a first-rate Fantastic Four movie there will be discussion about repealing the 22nd Amendment.
Unfortunately even The Marvels was an echelon above Antman: Quantumania and The Flash, which were supposed to be the two big blockbuster superhero films of the year. Mediocrity abounds.
Yeah, I'm sorry I found the above comment to be increasingly ridiculous. I actually thought the initial sentiment has merit; there is clearly a declining trust in existing institutions in things like church, media and elites generally. But as soon as the commentator said "transgender", I started going "uh oh". By the time it got to the stuff about "movies and fiction publishing" I was like, yeah this is just a big Fox News watcher.
And that comment "unlike progressives, people have 'real families'" was veering into some pretty gross and untrue stereotypes. As Matt has himself alluded; it's precisely the upper middle class progressives who are most likely not to be divorced. It's actually in fact exact opposite; it's more likely downscale GOP voters who are likelier to be divorced.
Yeah the entire rant started veering into just really sneering "real America" garbage that yes I'm sorry, has had some real ugly overtones.
Oh one very important riposte. GOP has lost the popular vote 6 out 7 last Presidential elections. Remind me again which party is out of step with "real" america?
normal people may be trans-skeptical but they also do not care about it the way overly online rightists do. fox news watchers and guys who follow based accounts on twitter are a fairly tiny fraction of the american population.
if you just go and talk to random people about politics youd have to go a while before anyone brought up trans issues. people overwhelmingly care about the two years of rising price levels we have just lived through, and secondarily they care about crime.
do you believe that all of the PR catastrophes engineered by left over the past ten years were reflecting the deep engagement of the mass public? i certainly dont. i believe instead that certain companies occasionally have exposure to highly motivated and ideological consumers. but corporate america continues to broadly support trans people because the broader public does not care very much!
"Live and let live, except for reasons that I don't think are valid." Is paternalism. That's not inherently good or bad, but words have meaning. I'm any case, various election results tell me that this is a low salience issue for most people.
Being an asshole about Trans issues is not a good look and it is not going to help you convince people who don't already agree with you. You seem way too animated about this issue based on how important it is for the country.
You're not wrong about the polling/support but I think it also turned out not to matter much.
For example, transgender participation in sports mostly skews towards the conservative view but it also doesn't really seem to get voters riled up much either way (I thought this came up when Matt posted about the midterm results in his "N takeaways from the midterms"
I’m aware that conservatives are now on team feelings over facts, but can we at least ask for commenters to read *the title of the article* before positing a theory
"The Marvels" was also a lot better than I was expecting (and I was glad I saw it on the big screen rather than waiting for Disney+). I think they mismanaged the advertising for it more than anything else.
Well, yes, that goes without saying. I was just prompted to volunteer my observation about "The Marvels" because of your parenthetical comment about "Elemental" being exception to Disney's poor performance recently.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that mainstream churches have lost the faith of the masses, but that evangelical churches have not.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes, deliberately undertaken to rein in inflation without causing a recession, constitutes some type of benign disinterest in rising prices.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that a highly successful COVID vaccination initiative that brought a pandemic under control is apparently a bad thing.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that transgendered people are... a debacle?
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that tax credits for electric vehicles apparently constitute an aggressive effort that does not care its effect on people.
The sitting President has been overwhelmingly Israel-friendly, such that he is taking criticism from the left of his party.
And people to the left of the center are in fact "normal people" who work "real jobs" and have "real families."
To suggest otherwise is nothing more than bitter ranting, emblematic of the deep and profound resentment that some hold toward others.
As I have said elsewhere, people’s beliefs on what has happened have become decoupled from material reality.
Epistemological nihilism is probably the result of democratizing “truth.” It’s easier for people to lie than to know, and deferring to others’ expertise requires acknowledging one’s own inadequacies.
A reasonable person can argue that gender dysphoria is real, that medical interventions that align the physical presentation of gender to the experience of gender identity is justifiable, and that a floor on the acceptable age at which to begin certain types of medical interventions is appropriate. A blanket assertion that all things "transgender" constitute a debacle is a needless stigmatization of a subset of people largely based on either a lack of understanding of their daily experience or a ridiculous belief that by "indulging" their "fantasy" one is someone suggesting that some particular omnipotent sky-being is, in fact, capable of error.
I have to interject here--gender affirming care for minors is not banned in Western European countries, but medical orgs *have* majorly walked back their policies.
Sweden, Finland, and the UK among others have decided to restrict use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to a much smaller cohort of patients, and even then only in controlled study settings--confirming that these interventions are indeed still experimental.
"The data" can be interpreted to say any damn thing someone wants to hear. Perhaps people are unhappy post-transition because transgender people are stigmatized by those who view them as icky, weird, or unnatural. I also have no clue what you intend to accomplish by repeating the phrase "sociosexual theory" to me in your commentary. It is simply not your place to tell an adult that his or her experience of his or her own gender is wrong or bad -- full stop.
Genuinely curious, how did you end up reading Slow Boring with this kind of conspiratorial far right mindset? Have you read anything else Matt has written?
"academia to mainstream churches to cultural institutions to education to medicine to politicians and policy wonks“ are all working together to undermine "regular people" is conspiratorial nonsense, no matter how common this opinion is held on the right. We're supposed to believe that every institution (churches included!) in America that isn't a for-profit business is in collaboration to remake the country?
They aren't 'working together', they are people and groups which share a worldview, and their individual efforts produce a strong effect in that direction. Pointing out that there is a common philosophy and political direction among very powerful people is not postulating a conspiracy.
did you read the comment? its not just people are disillusioned with progressive institutions. its like full on burn it all down political nihilism, thats as far from small c conservatism as you can get.
this person is clearly a recent convert to far-right politics from the center-right, a fairly common story in my experience -- it is the mirror of normie libs falling down the prog rabbit hole and declaring "globalize the intifada"
Have you noticed what Biden’s Israel policy actually *is* ? In word and deed there never was a more pro Israel us president, coming to its aid in the clearest and most helpful way possible in its greatest time of need, even as trump was praising its enemies.
His policy seems to offer moral support after a tragedy and work to minimize the amount of human suffering. He is balancing a fine line with Netanyahu where he needs to maintain leverage but also not push Bibi to completely disregard the U.S.
I like this and mostly agree with it. The big exceptions are: I'm increasingly isolationist (don't see why I need to be involved in or think about Israel v Palestine), and I won't vote for Trump.
I am becoming increasingly anti-elitist. Perhaps it's just petty resentment. But it seems everywhere I look, I'm losing out to a quasi-meritocratic elite that has elevated their customs to virtues. This elite lords their vacuous morals over me while appropriating an outsized share of the social output. From where I stand, they are undeserving. You make three times what what someone doing real work does to be a middle-manager of a social media company? You ought to be ashamed! Instead, you're telling me I am bad for not eating local organic food that costs five times what the food I can afford costs!
I'm increasing framing all news as presented by an out-of-touch elite that is unable to understand why people are upset. Matt is doing the same thing in this post. A handful of economic indicators are supposed to refute all discontent?! It's such a jaundiced view of reality! Meanwhile I can't find childcare for love or money, my food costs 50% more, I have a great deal of uncertainty about my career or my ability to make a better life for my child, and my helthcare gets worse and more expensive every year. I read that an enormous proportion of teen girls (which my daughter will become) are desperately sad and hopeless. Should we just tell them that unemployment is down and wages are up? Maybe that will cheer them up?
“You make three times what what someone doing real work does to be a middle-manager of a social media company? You ought to be ashamed!”
This is an idea that I see frequently around here, that there is some segment of office/corporate/management work that does not constitute “real work.” Would you mind explaining why you feel that this is not real work?
My personal opinion, FWIW: I think a lot of blue collar/skilled trades offer more psychologically satisfying forms of work), but I do think middle managers and the like are creating lots of value. While I sometimes question which career path I want to take for myself, I don’t understand the perception that these white collar professionals are not doing “real work.” like it or not, that’s what a big portion of our economy consists of these days.
"This is an idea that I see frequently around here, that there is some segment of office/corporate/management work that does not constitute “real work.”
Well, there's two forms of that. One is the stereotypical useless employee who does literally nothing useful, just sitting around in his office. I feel like there used to be a lot of those back in like, the 60s but with modern productivity tools, better management practices, and making it easier to fire people, those jobs have mostly gone away.
They're "creating value," sure. But for who? The stockholders, not society. Increasingly it seems like corporations are just a parasite on society, armed with patent trolls, rent extraction, legal barriers, and marketing that borders on brainwashing.
I really liked "Bullshit Jobs." One of it's basic theses was that the societal value of your work and the compensation were inversely related. If every garbage man or policeman vanished overnight, society would be in a tough place. If every middle manager of a social media company vanished overnight, the world would go on.
I think economics would say that the garbage man is "low-skill, low-productivity" and the middle manager is "high-productivity." I think this is just an elaborate intellectual backfill to justify the status quo.
If the middle managers in waste management company disappeared, the trash would not get picked up until more management appeared. Not because the people slinging trash are idiots but because organizing humans to do tasks requires management.
The problem is that lots of socially necessary jobs are basically robotic, like trash collection and food service. They aren't highly paid because almost anyone could do them, not because they aren't valuable. It's about relative scarcity and ability to train, not social value.
It's more difficult to manage people than to use gross motor skills all day, regardless of the necessity of either task.
I have read BS Jobs, and I agree with the case Graeber makes that lots of workers (esp. in middle management type roles) feel like their job is socially useless. Some of them, in fact, probably are (Musk clearing house at Twitter with little disruption to product is a good indication of this).
But that being said, I think this phenomenon of feeling like your work is useless is basically psychological (it's not as satisfying to coordinate projects and employees as it is to actually do something physical), and I agree with Lapsed Pacifist's point below that pay is about "relative scarcity and ability to train, not social value."
"Musk clearing house at Twitter with little disruption to product is a good indication of this"
I've never really been a Twitter user, but my understanding is that in fact the product has diminished. More importantly, the company is worth less now than when Musk bought it, not just worth less than he payed, but less than a sane person would have valued it. AND it is clearly losing revenue, almost certainly losing money.
If it had a board and/or shareholders to whom it was answerable Musk would have been out already. His cleaning house seems the opposite of proving anything good.
I wish I could get my hands on some of this training. I've never worked for a company that trained. Most like to complain they can't find people while refusing to do any training. So the only way to fill the position is to set some really high bar for entry, like a prestigious degree or the performance of an unpaid internship.
Yeah part of the problem with taking the low prestige job is the lack of career progression. If you’re talented, you might still opt for the lower paying high status job if there’s a good chance you can leverage a high paying job later.
If your food costs 50% more, your helthcare [sic] gets worse and more expensive every year, and you are uncertain about your career or your ability to make a better life for your child, have you considered becoming a middle manager at a social media company? You could make 3 times more and not have to do "real work!"
Hi: I was born in the hills of West Virginia; I'm the son of a union electrician and the grandson of a union coal miner, and I don't know how to code. I *do* know that fossil fuel extraction is not the way of the future and that within the field of fossil fuels, coal is outclassed by oil and gas, which is why those do well and the coal mining industry is in slow-motion decline. This isn't 1953, and keep a dying industry on life support to honor the nobility of the ever-falling number of those virtuous people with their pickaxes (which is the iconic (although entirely obsolete) image people conjure when one says 'coal miner' is about like saying we should never learn to use an ATM for the sake of those poor unfortunate bank tellers.
I was referring to the proverbial miner, not a literal miner.
But as a former blue-collar worker that did learn to code and found quite a lot of status-reinforcing gatekeeping standing between me and a six-figure salary, I like to joke about the "just let the miners learn to code" bit.
This 'guy I'm making up' is pretty much everyone I've met over the last 3 years. All middle managers at tech companies that think my humble little town is a great deal. Usually someone in the family was rich enough to send them to a top-tier school and then bankroll their move to a big city to 'make it'. But sure, if I'm resentful it's only because I didn't achieve they way they did.
But you're right. They don't judge me for not eating organic.. Their stay-at-home wives judge me for not sending organic, sugar-free lunches. Or they would if I could send my kid to their Montessori school.
My point is that your comment is reflective of something I see all the time around here - using a hypothetical examples of liberal excess, particularly of the PMC variety, and using it as an excuse to bash Democrats. I am sure the people you describe do exist in some number, but they're not some numerically and economically dominant ruling class controlling and lording over the proles.
I think you've done a good job expressing a legitimate sentiment people have, but I also find it to be incredibly sad to see otherwise intelligent people so incapable of nuanced thought. Almost every one of the issues you identify has a small kernel of truth that you then explode outwards into absurd caricatures of reality. You've taken the statements of the strongest activist proponents of an issue (eg- "aggressive efforts to address climate change without giving AF about how it effects regular people") and then ignored the fact that the vast majority of people don't support those extreme positions. Do you really think Biden's policies on CC have been intended to lower emissions without regard to human impacts? Have the democrats in Congress really passed legislation that runs roughshod over human lives in the way that you argue? Or are we instead talking about trade offs and incredibly complicated issues where people can reasonably disagree about what is best for human beings?
The same level of analysis you're using could be flipped around to say things like "Republicans didn't care how many people died of Covid if it meant that they'd get a single additional dollar of campaign contributions" or any number of wildly over-exaggerated attacks on the right. Criticizing some of the things you raise is a good and wise endeavor, but that's different than saying that everyone supports wholeheartedly the things that you're talking about. Virtually everything you're saying is practically parroted off of Fox News and Talk Radio rantings that are almost entirely divorced from nuanced reality.
I was largely agreeing with the OP while cringing at the way it was communicated.
But whenever I try to imagine how I could convey the same points, but better, I run into a wall.
It is legitimately hard, and as another social conservative it truly seems like we are trapped in a web where every single issue is subtly (or not-so-subtly) biased against us...but it takes a whole lot of words and effort to clearly define how it is for any given issue.
Edit:
And when I think about this too much, it is really difficult not to continually find myself back at a kind of accelerationist 'why not just burn it all down' stance.
I have 4 young kids, and the thought of them growing up in our current society (especially where it seems to be heading) is legitimately terrifying. Maybe it is better to roll the dice than knowingly continue down the current path.
I'm not going to agree with the substantive point no matter what, but "the people who work real jobs, have real families, the actual grown ups in society" ticked me off (especially given the blatant hypocrisy re feeling alienated). Online social conservatives adopting the restrained messaging that Matt is always telling libs to use would go a long way!
On the one hand, the "the people who work real jobs, have real families, the actual grown ups in society" is deeply arrogant and selfish - exactly the same sort of hubris the poser accuses their enemies of.
On the other hand, it's the most warmed-over, trite drivel that has been trotted out again and again by the right at every opportunity, so it's pretty yawn-inducing.
Oh, I agree. But we aren't a cohesive group anymore (or are less cohesive than previously) and can't enforce any kind of message discipline.
The Trumpists aren't going to be restrained, and the conservatives that want them to be restrained largely can't communicate effectively with them anymore.
“And when I think about this too much, it is really difficult not to continually find myself back at a kind of accelerationist 'why not just burn it all down' stance.”
You have to understand that from where I sit, that is a legitimately terrifying sentiment.
I am not an accelerationist, FWIW. But I feel the pull. Constantly.
Mostly I'm just in a 'the system isn't stable/has been undermined and will collapse on its own, so just prepare to weather the inevitable storm' stance.
I'm not sure I understand this narcissism of the present, though. What makes the current (I presume American) system any more prone to catastrophic collapse than at any other point in history?
I'm socially conservative (albeit of the rare atheist variety), so you're not going to like or agree with my answer, but...
A lot of the prosperity of the US is based upon our position as global hegemon, and due to a combination of cultural issues, demographic issues, mass migration, and free trade/undermining of our national industrial base...I don't think we'll be able to maintain that position in the face of China and other global rivals.
I don't see our ever-more-cosmopolitan and divided populace as being willing to endure the kind of collective sacrifice that will eventually be required.
And when that becomes apparent, our decline will be rapid and pretty catastrophic.
I get that feeling, and my only response would be that it's a natural human tendency. The thing I always find fascinating is that if I switch back and forth between leftist media/sources and rightist media/sources, the fundamental complaints are always the same. People on the left think that they're trapped in a web where every single issue is subtly or not so subtly biased against them as well. And that's because (I would argue) that it's very easy to rush to extreme emotional responses, especially nowadays in our social media environments and walled-garden information systems.
The truth (IMHO) is somewhere in the middle. Virtually everyone is trying to make things better in the best way they know how, but the loudest and most polarizing voices get the most attention. It's why I find "secret congress" so instructive. When people don't have to play the public games and appeal to those loudest voices, they get serious shit done that reflects bipartisan compromise. That's how most people are. So when you're imagining the forces aligned against you, it helps (at least for me) to remember that things aren't as bad as my instincts make them out to be.
I don't know. I'm a former lefty. I used to say things like "reality has a liberal bias." And I believed it.
And then a few things in my life changed and radically altered my perspective. I now feel like the discourse of our society is defined by elites that believe that "reality has a liberal bias."
I'm out of step with both the left and right, and I feel like it's almost impossible to communicate with either. When I do, I get attacked. You get attacked enough, and you end up pushed into these extreme views. It's regrettable.
Precisely. The fact is that our views are warped by lots of things, and its helpful to remind ourselves that things aren't as bad as our emotions would tell us.
What are the extreme views that you are being pushed into due to being attacked from both sides?
Hah, that’s a real “how often do you beat your wife” sort of set up if I’ve ever seen one. Of what use would it be to go down that rabbit hole?
I hold a lot of cross-cutting beliefs weakly. What I find happening now is that I’ll mention something that seems kind of normal to me and the person I am talking to will hear a dog whistle and start unloading all kinds of wild stuff. Or I’ll ask some forum a normal but orthodoxy-challenging question and get brigaded.
>From the "let them eat cake" attitude towards inflation, to the transgender debacle, to COVID everything, to declines in our schools, to the awful state of movies and fiction publishing, to aggressive efforts to address climate change without giving AF about how it effects regular people, to the dishonesty in our media ... people are done.<
This got twenty likes? Crime is down under Biden. Covid deaths are down 99%. We've enjoyed one of the strongest job markets since WW2. The inflation spike was unpleasant but did little or nothing to real wages (they may even be up a tad, depending on your source), and in any event is over. We've had among the strongest recoveries in the world since the Covid downturn. Manufacturing seems to be making a comeback. The president has steadfastly stood behind Israel (nice to terrorists? really? REALLY?). We've finally got a government that's trying to do something about run away drug costs.
I mean, nothing's ever perfect. The mortgage spike is uncomfortable. But man, your utterly inaccurate tail of woe has...very little to do with reality.
By the way, a good way to make institutions genuinely "unsalvageable" is to hand them over to an actual dictator.
“The president has steadfastly stood behind Israel (nice to terrorists? really? REALLY?)”
One of Biden’s first official acts upon taking office was to revoke the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. What, exactly, was the point of that?
Only in the sense that people who commit politically motivated violence the US government doesn't approve of tend to get called "terrorists." They control a substantial of the country, including the former national capital, Sana'a.
I think there is a substantial grain of truth underneath what I see as some hyperbole in your comment. - I think there are a nontrivial number of people who agree with the gist and direction of your comment.
And on some of the items, I do agree as well.
But a lot of what you list are societal-level problems that the office of the President cannot solve. And these are problems that Donald Trump has no desire to address. Trump is not a reformer. Trump will only make all those problems worse as he tries to destroy our institutions for his own narcissistic and egocentric reasons.
So, in a second read I have a bit more sympathy for this. I think that if it were framed not as "global ruling class" but rather as "broad failure of elites" many here would strongly agree. My main problem is that it gives right-wing elites a pass for no good reason. Left elites have many problems, but right elites suffer from same to much greater degree. Overall I think we can characterize it with fundamental lack of seriousness, willingness to disregard norms, narcissism and at times corruption/graft. On all these points I think the right is worse which of course does not excuse the massive failures on the left which you point to. The solution however cannot be giving power to the side totally overtaken by this problem (GOP headed by Trump) at the expense of the side currently in "civil war" between the sane and basically fine (Biden, moderate dems) and the crazy/bad/narcissistic/nihilistic (the protesting masked staffers you mention, some "progressive" legislatures etc). In short, the Dem side still has at least some sane people, including the one at the very top, by sharp contrast to GOP so voting GOP makes no sense.
P.S.
A side note on the masked staffers. I think we can diagnose the problem there more precisely. These people are willing to totally disregard established norms in an unprecedented manner: while resignation in protest of admin policy is an old, admirable norm, these staffers instead "protest" in hiding, signalling (and creating) admin dysfunction while cowardly refusing to take any personal responsibility whatsoever. Worse still, when you listen to their reasoning they say things like "Israel bombards refugee camps in Gaza" a complaint that reveals total ignorance of the most elementary facts. In other words, they are willing to fundamentally break basic norms about an issue of which they are astoundingly ignorant. This reveals a lack of seriousness with regards to their job and their conduct on multiple levels. That these people are White House staffers is indeed a serious crisis suggesting very deep and broad elite failure. The key thing is however that it is their ignorance and conduct which is the really worrisome problem, not just their specific position but the ignorant way they got to it and the destructive narcissistic steps they take in its name.
I feel like if Dems moderate and command huge majorities again it will :1. keep crazy gop out of power which is a good stop gap measure 2. eventually force gop back to sanity when they tire of losing.
Right, I think you've even told me this before. So what is it about free posts that brings people out of the woodwork? Do people read the article and then decide to pay $8 to comment? If so, Elon must be jealous.
True, but I think it also goes in both directions. I consider myself a left leaning "normal person" and it's not hard for me to think that Anonymama has contempt for people like me.
The "contempt for middle America" nonsense is a straight-up Fox News talking point. Many of us in, or identifying with, Blue America, are products of Red America, where we have families we love and communities we once were members of. We may well feel sad that polarization is super-charged and even (quietly) glad that we don't live there anymore, but the idea that mainstream-D types use all their headspace hating on the heartland is just a lie promulgated by the right-wing gutter press and its social-media accomplices.
I don't think it's irrational to hate them more than the nominal dollars they cost. If they didn't reflect a combination of dishonest dealing on the part of those who promulgate them, lack of state capacity inasmuch as said promulgators are in neither the stocks nor prison, and wasted cognitive load determining their existence, they wouldn't even exist because they would be indistinguishable from the headline price -- which, to be clear, they are in all but name as per-diem costs that have no distinguishing character from the room rate.
They exist because they're a deceptive form of wealth extraction and *at their most innocuous* they waste cognitive resources and time. They're 100% a negative-sum rather than merely transfer payments and thus it's rational to despise them beyond their nominal costs.
It's so funny how in my usual early morning news browsing, I stumbled upon this article, thought about Matt's commentary on the subject before, and now it's up for discussion here again. Rage on!
I like that Airbnb now lets you just see the total amount you’ll pay for the stay when searching on the map. I don’t like that the default is still the per-night display that leaves off some of the fees.
"Jimmy Carter needs to make deregulatory supply side moves to help boost supply and bring down prices. He should deregulate the airline industry; a board setting prices has only had the effect of making air travel too expensive. Deregulation will help make air travel less expensive for regular people. Also, AT&T is a monopoly that prices gouge regular Americans. Deregulating telecommunications will reduce the cost of phone calls and call me crazy, may be just what is needed to help this nascent computer industry I hear about in California. Here there is a bunch of interesting stuff happening in garages out there and this is just the sort of measure to help a nascent industry to thrive. And also, who the heck likes watered down beer? Wouldn't it be nice to have some better options out there?"
All of above deregulatory policies was absolutely the correct decision undertaken by Jimmy Carter, had tremendous mostly positive long-term impact on the economy, along with appointing Paul Volker means that Jimmy Carter is the best friend conservative economists have had since WWII....and it meant square root of fuck all to his re-election in 1980.
Repealing the Jones Act is one of those no-brainers, it's amazing to me the constituency for this policy still has enough clout in Congress policies that should have happened years ago. And if there is one thing that likely unites all the commentators on this site, it's being supportive of land use reform. But these are all medium to long term policy changes. Election is one year out. The impact of any of the reforms Matt describes is not going to be felt for years and certainly not in time for the election. I think you're giving short shrift to Biden's "Junk fee" gambit. As you say, it's right on the merits. But it's also one of those things that regular people notice and find extraordinarily annoying and unfair. I know I do. It seems like just the sort of thing to get attention of "swing" voters.
Reality is, I've said this for and will repeat now; it's really unsatisfying to know that the future of American democracy is in the hands of the Fed. Given a divided Congress, it's really unlikely we'll see any policies passed that will make inflation worse. We may see some budget deficit measures; in principle I agree with your stance*. But reality is even a modest deficit reduction package isn't having an impact in 2023. We don't want to believe that the Fed has this much power, but reality is that Jerome Powell is probably the third post powerful human on earth. For exactly this scenario. Good news is that I think there are very good signs that CPI and PCE will continue to decline and at the very least we aren't going to see more rate hikes before the election. I can tell you that over the next year shelter inflation is going to be quite muted and this time next year likely deflationary and shelter is hugely impactful on CPI numbers.
* Though devil is in the details. I suspect more likely is Freedom Caucus and Mike Johnson are going to insist on absolutely draconian cuts to social security, Medicare and Medicaid secure in the knowledge it has no chance of passing all so they can preen for Fox and OAN
Based on my research for the last couple years several of the incumbent parties that lost had term-limited incumbents, so the new candidate lost, not the old one (altho idk if that means anything)
At a minimum, if incumbent parties are at a structural disadvantage, Dems should ditch any illusion they should “play it safe.” Swimming against a current that’s probably stronger than you is never safe!
Furthermore, if incumbent parties are unpopular, then candidates less associated with the party brand would probably perform better.
Finally, I think we both agree that Biden has very little upside. The economy is unlikely to improve materially. Victory in Ukraine won’t happen this Congress. Biden’s health is excellent for his age, if he starts acting like a normal 82 year old or even a normal 80 year old, he’s toast. Basically, Biden needs Trump to survive long enough to be the nominee or else he’s in deep trouble.
The ideas raised by Matt (Jones Act etc) won't bear low inflation fruit by next November even if they could be legislated or exec ordered, right? So, although supply side deregulation totally ought to be pursued by Democrats (and Republicans) because doing so is objectively in the national interest, in terms of the 2024 election, the impact of substantive reforms will be limited. For Biden and the Democrats, it really is all about hoping the modest inflation we're experiencing will finally be acknowledged and appreciated by voters (and the latter will drop their fixation on 2019's prices). Junk fees are a good place to start. Keep pushing on drug prices, too. I'd add tip creep to the list if it were up to me. There have to be other avenues the Biden people could focus on, too (monopolies?).
Deficit reduction to bring down interest rates, preferably via taxes on the rich. Not going to pass the GOP house, obviously. But outside chance there's a palatable deal there.
Per my understanding, significant swaths of Trump's tax cuts sunset, so simply retaining the veto pen (if nothing else) will go some way toward reducing red ink.
You could take Matt's points, which were sort of phrased as advice to Biden, and instead apply them to voters. If you, as a voter, think the economy is shit, this is what your policy preferences should be. If you, as a voter, think the economy is booming... this is ALSO what your policy preferences should be.
Now go and vote for the candidate that proposes policies that match those preferences. Which should be the Dems (if they choose to pursue these policies, which they should, because of this very argument) given that currently, the Rs don't really seem to be putting forth, well...any... policies.
As to the fact that they won't help immediately, that's never a reason not to do them. As Roosevelt said, "It will never be earlier. Tomorrow will always be later than today." (Good advice around dieting and exercise, too, by the way)
“Pure vibeologists cannot, I think, really explain why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are higher than his peers in Canada, France, the UK, Japan, and Germany.”
I’m not a pure vibeologist but this seems pretty easily explainable by the fact that leader approval in a two-party system should logically be higher than leader approval in a multi-party system.
I’ll take Canada as an example. In the last election Trudeau’s Liberals got 33% of the vote and his approval rating was 38%. But because of the way votes split among up to 6 semi-major parties contesting each seat, he won 47% of the seats.
Canada hasn’t had an election where the winning party, even in a majority, got more than 42% of the vote since 1988 (and then there were only 3 parties). So of course there are fewer people who are going to reflexively say they approve of the current prime minister, they had fewer explicit supporters to begin with.
Except that approval ratings are net of both parties. So in a two party system, a huge number of voters are inclined to disapprove of you regardless of facts on the ground.
Where as in a 3+ party system, there are many voters who, absent a specific reason to dislike a leader in another party, don't much care.
So for example in Germany if you belong to the FDP, you are probably pretty ambivalent about the leaders of other parties, because the FDP is like 10% of parliament (last I lived there anyway). It would just partner with whatever party it needed to in order to be part of the ruling coalition. Unless, of course, you feel strongly that (X) is doing something terrible that is leading the country to shit.
Whereas at any given point in the USA, 40% of the country pretty much automatically disapproves of the incumbent, and all that really matters here is how swing voters move on the pendulum.
I really don’t think it works that way. I just looked up Macron’s numbers, they are at 29% now and were at 40% when he was re-elected with 58% of the run-off vote (after getting 29% of the vote in the first round). So it’s consistent with my initial argument - people generally don’t say they approve of leaders they didn’t vote for. I’ll grant your point that they may not express disapproval just because they didn’t vote for someone, but they tend not to express affirmative approval.
you are probably right it is a bit of both. Parties only express affirmative approval for "their" person
But I think in multi-party systems express disapproval is more rare because, for instance if you are center right you may be ambivalent with the right wing and the center left, but only really disapprove of the far left.
Whereas in our system, the partisans just always approve of their side and disapprove of the other side, which all nets out to mostly zero, and then swing voters tend to run anti-incumbent as a rule
Your argument is basically that currently full employment outweighs a little excess inflation when assessing the strength of the economy. I think this is basically correct for most people, but crucially, it’s not disproportionately not correct for people who have the most impact on the “vibes”.
It looks like white collar workers - especially journalists and tech workers - are still worse off than they were in 2020. Part of this is they’d rather structurally have low inflation than low unemployment, because they’re more exposed to interest rates and the cost of goods than the risk of being unemployed. Part of this is the job market still “feels bad” even with few unemployed people because there is now just a reasonable number of openings per job seeker rather than an absurd number of openings per job seeker in tech. Add on to this the anxiety from AI, and you’ve got a stew for a lot of anxiety for people who think up things rather than physically make or move them.
This probably contributes to the global trend you laid out, because it seems to be happening worldwide, albeit it probably is stronger in America.
One way for Biden to address this would be to make some noise about protecting workers from AI. He did an executive order on AI safetyism, so it’s not THAT crazy. There’s lots of low hanging fruit for stuff he could talk about on the policy front, from copyright law to required disclosure for commercial AI produced content.
I probably wouldn’t like many of the policy proposals he’d make, and I don’t personally think this issue is that important, but the people responsible for the vibes do, so it might be worth trying to pander to them.
My half baked hypothesis is that government policy emphasizing full employment and stimulus has created a misallocation of labor such that we have more nominal economic activity than we have actual productive growth that improves people's lives. People have cash because government has propped up surplus production of like, fast food and blogs and home decor and things*, while the production of housing and energy and groceries are still constrained by real macroeconomic conditions and regulatory burden. So people have money to spend because they're "employed" but there aren't actually enough people working to make the important stuff, so that stuff just gets more expensive and more out of reach and people are pissed about it.
*Maybe the other way around, government propped up bloggers by printing cash to give to people.
To the extent that this has any merit, which is near-zero insofar as I can tell,* ** you've reversed causality without really realizing it, except a brief flash here: “production of housing and energy and groceries are still constrained by real macroeconomic conditions and regulatory burden.”
We’ve made it hard to do many physical things more complex than manufacture cars, serve food, or cut hair, which has provoked an generations-long overinvestment in financial services and legal compliance.
So it’s hard to drive productivity fast enough to keep up with white-collar bloat.
Still, the actual observable merit of this thesis is close to nothing:
*Historically productivity-driving innovations occur fastest in societies with expensive labor that’s visibly becoming more expensive, as in the UK from 1700 or the US 1815-1970.
**Your examples of low value-added sectors which you posit have too much access to labor… are precisely the ones in which prices are increasing most rapidly as they struggle to keep workers who now have the opportunity to climb the ladder into more skilled work.
I don't really disagree with you, my examples are definitely speculative and not rigorous and there's certainly a broader organic economic trend towards less tangible modes of productivity that isn't distortion at all. However, is it not plausible that dumping massive amounts of cash into an economy where the labor costs are massively distorted by a pandemic would result in a bunch of malinvestment? It seems obvious to me that, "Stuff that was cost effective to keep making during COVID." isn't necessarily what you would want to bias many hundred of billions of dollars of government spending towards if your concern in future consumer sentiment.
It seems like you're just adding a pointless epicycle with minimal explanatory power to everything, one that contradicts a lot of evidence to boot.
I'm sure that dumping cash into the economy over COVID, and COVID itself, resulted in distortions. In concert, they *must* have. But mostly through the mechanism of drastically-but-temporarily shifting consumer preferences.
If you were correct to diagnose home decor and fast food as benefiting from overinvestment, we'd now have an oversupply and thus lower prices for fast food, home decor, etc. when in reality they (furnishings and white goods in particular) experienced the most rapid price increases through the pandemic. This whole bout of chaos has been driven by demand shifts which have required significant time to iron out.
Sure, had the government simply allowed the economy to collapse due to demand deficit in 2020 we wouldn't be dealing with any of this. But that'd be because unemployment would still be in the teens at least and no one would be buying much of anything. Helicopter money is definitely the lesser of two evils there.
Meanwhile, multi-family housing starts (and finishes, but that metric is biased due to pandemic-era delays) are at record highs, single-family construction is still ticking along, and construction materials are normalizing in price despite that.
So what the actual steelman here is, I think, is to ignore the pandemic entirely and say, "When the economy is near full employment, regulations which prevent us from efficiently filling a sizable fraction of people's physical wants and needs are much more noticeably crippling." Full stop.
Had we gotten here without the pandemic, inflation would have been lower the last two years, but housing would still be difficult to build and we'd still have a bunch of government props to demand for disability advocates, zoning lawyers, biosciences financial analysts, and environmental review firms as opposed to ramp builders or elevator installers, property developers, research scientists, and civil engineers.
Running the economy pretty hot *so* virtually everyone has money in their pocket... isn't the problem. Constraining our ability to meet consumer preferences *when* virtually everyone has money in their pocket is the problem.
We have underbuilt housing ever since the crash in 2007, and the chickens started coming home to roost about ten years later, when Gen Z started becoming of an age to fly the nest, so there was huge demand (from a lot of people, not just young people) and limited supply.
Having to pay so much for housing *is* frustrating, especially if you’re renting a shoebox from a slumlord because that is the only option out there. Trouble is, the housing crisis has been about a decade in the making and it will take considerable time to fix. It’s hard to get the idea of “this can be solved, but not immediately” to the “I want it NAAAOOOWWW! Or else!.” voting public.
>> the media, which likes to be non-partisan but is also full of very left-wing people.
Does it though ? Is there in fact a big (non niche) market for non-partisan media these days? If so we are seeing a massive market failure. A huge potential being wasted and a pile of money left on the table due to mainstream media simply failing to hire the right people (ie to intentionally diversify the politics of their reporters). But I’m not sure if this is in fact the case, rather than polarization under which media is in fact largely aligned to market incentives- huge market for unabashed right wing media and huge market for abashed left wing media whose audience wants it to be both left biased and to pretend it’s neutral (“reality is left wing”).
It seems very difficult to intentionally diversify the politics of your reporters when at least 70% of new college graduates hold liberal views (and those who pursue journalism probably even more so).
It’s a pipeline problem, I’m not sure what a media outlet is supposed to do about that.
How is that difficult? 30% is plenty! Let me be very blunt. If via AA you manage to find black reporters, far fewer than 30% of the population let alone the highly educated population (due to the problem of under representation) then you could easily find conservative and moderate reporters, and by contrast to racial aa, considering ideology is probably not even illegal !
The pipeline thing is bs. They don’t have a balanced composition because they don’t *want* one. The only question is whether that’s because they don’t understand what’s good for them or not (ie the question regarding the nature of the market I raised above).
P.S.
Journalism didn’t even used to require a college degree. If you really want to be creative, try to create out of high school recruitment programs. But honestly you can be totally lazy. Even if you recruit solely from the ivies (which, to be clear, you shouldn’t !) you probably can get more conservatives and moderates than you do now if you tried! A fortiori times one thousand of you don’t limit yourself to a handful of schools !
Bingo. MY has reported on things like judicial appointments and how the fact that overwhelming numbers of law school graduates are liberal just means that conservative lawyers from top schools have dramatically better chances of getting prestigious appointments. But it's not like people turn around and say "republicans just can't appoint conservative judges to circuit courts or SCOTUS because only 30% of law school grads are republican/conservative." The NYTimes, WaPo, etc. etc. etc., could easily have a nearly perfect bipartisan balance on their staffs if they wanted to. They just don't want to.
Getting a bipartisan balance in media outlets is likely also complicated by the goal of increasing racial/ethnic diversity. Media outlets were already under substantial pressure to hire more non-white/female/LGBTQ employees long before 2020. Because of the demographics of ideological identification, meeting those demands basically guarantees that new hires will be further to the "left" of the median American than even the median college graduate would be.
A valid point, and it speaks further to how this is a choice. Media outlets aren't lacking in ideologically diverse viewpoints because it would be hard to identify and hire people with more conservative views- they just value other things far more than ideological diversity is all.
Ok I didn’t realize you’d be ok with 30% - but then my question to you is, assuming that in fact 30% of journalism grads / journalism job seekers are in fact conservative (again this seems high), where do you think they are working? Do you think they are blackballed by NYT / WaPo and are forced to toil away for the Tulsa World or something?
Ultimately you’re going to run into the same problem Matt has noted about AA - to get its numbers up, Harvard can pull in some of the black students who by “merit” would have gone to (say) UVa; and UVa can pull in some of the black students who by “merit” would have gone to (say) James Madison, but at a certain point you’re left with whiter-than-average student bodies at mid-tier schools if blacks are 13% of the population but only 10% of those who attend college - and there’s nothing those schools can really do about it.
If there aren’t enough conservatives entering journalism, even if NYT and some other big outlets made an effort to have decent representation, there will still be plenty of outlets that don’t have enough.
I believe that in todays journalism there are far more job seekers than decent jobs. Make sure that those that get hired by say NYT are ideologically diverse (aim to get the “progressive” majority there down closer to the 8% or so of the population they actually are). That shouldn’t be a problem if NYT cared to do it. In fact they do so, to an extent , with their opinion columnists. They should just expand that to be across the board. If they don’t it’s probably because they simply don’t mind their news section being biased. Possibly they prefer it.
That’s fine and fair - basically I’m hearing that you’re not bothered by potential progressive bias at local news outlets, only national ones. I personally think that’s misguided - the combined audience for local news is much larger than for national news - but I understand the sentiment.
Local news is dying or dead. That’s not good but that’s a fact so I see no reason to worry about the food offerings on the titanic. You’re taking the college analogy too far.
I think the article agrees with you. If you criticize Dems for not being far left enough, you get to say “we criticize both parties equally (for not being left enough).” It’s non-partisan/neutral and left leaning.
My vibes explanation: it's all about the home prices. Well, not all, but a lot. Home prices are really, really high, even outside the big expensive cities. High list prices are advantageous for wealthier and institutional buyers, who can offer a larger down payment and outbid poorer ones more easily. Interest rates are up, too. It's not really possible, in most of the country, to afford to buy a home on the median income without major family help. That makes people feel trapped, like they've worked hard and there's no more "up" for them, even if they're only in their thirties. Insisting to people in that situation that this is a great economy, actually, is political malpractice.
And I think housing has a deeply emotional component to it - just about everybody has been raised with the idea that owning your own home is the American Dream, a definitive marker of success at life. If that's out of reach for most people, it feels like a fundamental failure of our society.
And the housing situation has been a long time in the making (since the 2007 meltdown, builders virtually stopped building new housing) and will be a long time in the solving even if Governors and city councils rush things through as far as possible. It blows chunks, and the problem is that people want this solved NOW NOW NOW, or else (I’m voting Trump!), and 1) it just plain cannot be solved quickly*, 2) voting for Trump would fix this how, exactly? It’s a knee-jerk throw the bums out reaction.
*unless we get another COVID-style epidemic that kills off homeowners en masse, and that’s not something any non-sociopath would wish for.
really, more than heading off the threat of sandwich monopolies, the FTC really could do a lot of good by going after car dealerships. It'd be good for the economy and strike at the GOP fundraising base. It's win/win, really.
My theory of the case for 2024 has been that Biden is a reasonable favorite so long as the current economic trends hold steady. 10 or so months from now of steady real income growth, relatively stable prices, and maybe a drop in interest rates, plus (God willing) the Israel-Gaza war being just about over for at least six or so months prior to the election should do a lot to stabilize Biden's position.
That, plus a re-orientation of the public with an every day in your face DJT should remind people why they hated him in the first place.
I have already noticed a shift in media coverage. Headline of the NYT today is another story about how radical Trump's second term can be, and I have seen more The Economy is Good, Actually stories lately, as well as the media explicitly calling out the gap between people's assessment of their own economic situation and their very negative assessment of the national economy.
All the above just takes time. This is simply the winter of Biden's discontent.
Please tell me why I am wrong
DJT has accidentally stumbled into talking about actual policy via Obama Care, the more he does that the better for Biden.
Dem oppo researchers work hard but GOP candidates work harder
Most of what Trump talks about is based on feedback he gets from his rallies. He tries out different applause lines, keeps the winners, and discards the losers. Likely his focus on Obamacare followed that process. I think that shows something Matt talks about, people want it to be 2019 again. Overthrowing Obamacare is a nostalgic call back for his followers, akin to the Rolling Stones playing Satisfaction on their latest tour.
Trump and his followers, especially his followers, really believe that a vast majority of Americans feel the way they do, and the unpopularity of this position doesn't even cross their minds.
Agree. It's a strong message Democrats know how to hammer and hammer well. Very useful to have in the messaging toolbox.
And the more that Biden (or preferably, the newly-appointed Biden Spokesperson Pete Buttigieg) goes to multiple events and contrasts Trump’s record with Biden’s EVERY DAY for the next year, the better his chances.
Has Trump publicly taken a stance on abortion policy in the 2024 cycle? Right now, he's still pulling the wool over voters' eyes with the moderate vibe, but if he is somewhat forced into adopting an unpopular position at the GOP convention, the above math will shift further into Biden's favor.
Ah, but Trump won't be forced to adopt an unpopular position at the GOP convention, because I'm willing to wager that the GOP will not adopt a platform at its convention. If it does, it will simply read "Whatever Trump wants."
It's the Democrats' job to make sure that Trump is carrying the abortion policy albatross no matter what he might say from time to time. He is his party's voice and his party's stand is perfectly clear.
Do you have any doubt that, no matter what he says, that he would sign a national ban if a Republican Congress sent one to his desk? I don't.
And that's what Dems need to make sure voters know!
Regardless of his personal opinion, he’s the architect of overturning Roe.
I think he wouldn't have it come to his desk. He might even pocket veto it and then claim the deep state did it. But he wouldn't sign it.
He acts randomly so who knows
But of course he might sign it
Why wouldn't he? Think of the coverage and the attention!
Trump has a strong ability to find the popular positions and meander there (we'll repeal ACA and pass something better, we'll make Social Security even stronger, etc). Will he do unpopular things like pass a tax cut that benefits him - sure. But would he do something unpopular that doesn't benefit him? I can't think of when he has.
Trump has no interest in policy, beyond (1) the desire to erase any evidence that Barack Obama was ever President and (2) the belief that tariffs are direct payments to the United States by foreigners. The House of Representatives has no interest in anything that doesn't get Republican members booked on FOX News. That means in a Trump Administration with a GOP Congress, the policy agenda will be driven by the senator who cares the most, and that means Mitch McConnell, and that means tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judicial appointments. Trump will sign any bill the last person to flatter him tells him to sign. All you have to do say "It's a big beautiful bill, the best bill, people who say how strong and decisive your leadership is."
In 2022 Democrats in states where reproductive rights were clearly in doubt did a great job hanging Dobbs around the necks GOP candidates. I expect they will hammer the Trump clip saying he's responsible for the end of Roe.
I agree with you. I'm done moping about having to vote for 81 year old Biden again. It's time for us all to let it go and support Biden because the alternative (any Republican, not just Trump) is so much worse.
I agree that any Republican is much worse than Biden for the years they are in office. But it seems to me that for the long run, it might be better if some non-Trumpy Republican like Haley actually wins the election, and shows Republicans they do better on that path than on the Trumpy path.
If Haley directly beats out Trump for the nomination next year, yes. But if Trump is nominated and the Dems “steal” the election again, the competition for the 2028 nomination, assuming Trump is done, will still be very Trumpy.
“And then if he sees his shadow, there will be four more years of Democratic Presidents.”
Eh, nobody likes losing. At some point, even if you believe the other side is cheating, if Trump can't over come that, you need to find someone who can. *Especially when the major selling point for Trump is that he is a fighter who won't back down! If he's a fighter who loses, you need a new fighter*
Good thing more than half the GOP base thinks Trump won in 2020, and will think the same about 2024.
Ehh, they could just lose on the Trumpy path and presumably at that point come to the same conclusion anyways.
No, at least some of them will have the conclusion that the election was “stolen by the elites, just like 2020”.
There's something here. As soon as possible for the sake of the country the current iteration of the GOP needs to collapse or change radically. Haley winning could be a path towards changing. Trump losing could be a path towards collapsing.
Sure. In four years. Maybe.
You have listed all the things that should break right. That’s an awfully low combined probability for a bunch of uncorrelated events. They can also break wrong. Plus there are as always unknown unknowns out there that would hurt the incumbent
This is a good critique. Taken separately all factors seem more likely than not to go as described (except maybe foreign events) but yeah, running the table on 5-6 factors with even a 90% chance of happening isn't great odds.
Also just made me think of a couple things that could go sideways - a high profile border surge beyond what we even see today, some kind of spectacular terrorist attack, another ill-timed SVB style financial event.
Makes kind of obvious what Biden should do to shore up his position - some kind of high profile border security maneuver, plus jamming all the buttons to get prices to go down wherever he can.
Thanks! Good add.
> running the table on 5-6 factors with even a 90% chance of happening isn't great odds.
We're really over-quantifying things here, but just to be clear, a 90% chance for five independent events still gives 59% overall and 53% if it's six. Being above 50% a year out seems pretty good, particularly if there are things one can do to increase these odds even more.
>All the above just takes time. This is simply the winter of Biden's discontent.<
My take, too. I keep getting the vibe that the last 3-4 years have more or less been one, long, vivid illustration of the strong penchant for impatience evinced by homo sapiens. It's an attribute that mostly has served our species well, mind you. But it ain't fun to be a politician on the receiving end of it.
I don't blame voters for being royally pissed by inflation, even if their purchasing power hasn't declined (or not much at any rate). It was a shocking, near-unprecedented event. It takes a while to get over your fear that it will happen again.
Give us ten more months of very moderate inflation and I believe people's fears will decline and inflation will be far less of an incendiary issue.
I also think that, even if Biden ends up running below replacement for the Dems, the GOP is likely also going to run a below replacement candidate in Donald Trump, so we have to see how the rematch is going to go relative to each of them.
I'd tell you why you're wrong except you're not. Well said. Too much political journalism has the feel of "the election is today! or if it's not, there's no way anything will change! or if it changes, we journalists are not capable to conveying to the reader that today's snapshot means far less than our stories pound home."
We truly live in an era of journalistic goldfish memory.
There needs to be a tremendous amount of the economy is good, actually, type articles because people kind of want to believe it is bad, economics are confusing, and a progressive habit is to promote the need for making things better in part by highlighting what is bad, including the economy. Couple that with the republicans also wanting to promote that things are bad to blame Biden, and their huge more conservative loyal information distribution network, and it is tough to counter.
My hope is that the herd mentality of the press corps leads to their becoming bored with "despite the numbers, people feel they're suffering" trope and will start moving en masse to "we may be seeing another 'Morning in America."
The most important thing about journalism is "the story always has to change -- that's why they call it 'news.'"
I don’t think you are wrong per se, but it would help if the passage of time were coupled with some visible deregulation efforts that will quickly or slowly reduce inflation. Biden needs to be seen working on this, at Matt argues.
I'd put money on it that any deregulatory action Biden could take at the executive level would have an 0.1% chance of affecting inflation in a way that voters would notice over the next year.
Other than opening the taps of the SPR and bringing the cost of gas way down.
I think you're generally correct, but would like to use your comment to drill a bit deeper.
I think many are making a mistake by focusing on national averaged statistics and then poo-pooing anyone who thinks the economy is bad. The thing with averaged statistics is that they are averages and hide a lot of variability.
So while it's true that the economy is - so far - recovering well when looking at it from a high level, once you drill down there are still a non-trivial number of people who are not doing as well as 2019. They may be a minority, but are still somewhere around 30-40% according to polling. As a matter of promoting Biden's reelection, I think it isn't smart to shove averaged national statistics in their face and tell them, in essence, they are ignorant or stupid. It's like telling someone who is going through a nasty divorce how wonderful it is that the divorce rate has gone down.
Additionally, the most important trends are what's happening in the swing states. How does the averaged national picture compare to what's going on in these states? What demographics are not doing well in those swing states? What can Biden and his allies do or say to address those demographics?
That would be useful to know but there seems to be a surprising amount of incuriosity on this point.
My advice to Democrats and the Biden campaign would be to stop sending the message that the economy is good and anyone who complains doesn't know what's going on. This presumes - incorrectly in my view - that the principle problem is just convincing ignorant people that the economy is better than they think.
The problem, of course, is that the economy is not better for everyone, and so it's critical to understand who is not doing well and then do what FDR did and mention - yes - that things have improved and trend lines are positive, but focus on those who've been left behind and are at the bottom end of those averaged national statistics. This is especially the case if those people are among critical demographics in swing states.
In an absolute sense, the economy is always bad for some part of the population. What we have to understand is how the public's perception of the economy compares to how they felt in the past under different conditions. Things are out of kilter now compared to earlier both good times and bad times, and the question is why. My belief is that it is a hangover from a truly unusual event (the inflation spike) and that may self-correct over time to bring public perceptions more in line with economic realities.
I think there are two things to consider - one is what you state here, and I tend to agree that perceptions take time to change.
The other thing is the effort to improve Biden's chance for reelection. That is more what my comment is about. Yes, it's true that the economy is always bad for some people. But in this case, a strong majority blame Biden. That's a problem, and telling people for whom the economy is bad - whose votes Biden likely needs to win - that they don't understand how good the economy is and it's just about misconception and the vibes, is not a constructive message to get them to vote for Biden - quite the opposite IMO.
I'm not sure about Biden being the favorite.
The Republican/MAGA coalition is more ideologically/culturally homogenous. The Democratic/Anti-MAGA coalition is larger, but it's also more fragmented and diverse. You have everyone from the AOC wing to NeverTrump Republicans, you have moderates who think Biden has been too left-wing and progressives who don't think he has been left wing enough.
In 2020, Biden was able to mobilize the democratic coalition on the strength of being not Trump. In 2024, he'll have a record to defend and some people won't be happy- you can see now that Arab/Muslim voters are threatening to abandon Biden, which could really hurt in Michigan. You risk a situation like in 2016, where Trump wins with a plurality after many democratic voters stay home or vote third party.
The hope has to be that as Trump becomes the nominee and gets more attention, that it reminds enough people why they couldn't stand Trump and the Democratic coalition turns out despite misgivings about Biden.
Say more? I suspect Gaza will be less of an issue in November 2024 or other events will overwhelm any lingering dismay among those particular Michigan voters, but how do you see it as being overhyped? They do seem very mad and/or concerned.
Kagan’s piece was an exceptionally persuasive and well-described Trump scenario that hopefully helps tilt things your way https://wapo.st/3R61yZ0
Let's hope the winter of Biden's discontent is not made inglorious summer by the son of New York.
I've already given a good bunch of money to the Biden re-elect and am trusting his professional team knows how to run a campaign. I'm not sure what the ordinary Democrat should do and how this "apparent complacency" manifests itself. You can react with alarm right now, and you can also burn yourself out months before the actual election.
What should Democrats be doing right now instead of being complacent?
I grudgingly accept that Haley as the R nominee would be much better for the country, even if it hugely increases the chance of the Republicans winning. But I think the chances of that are pretty close to zero and in any case, it's not something that Democrats can really affect.
My own preference is for Haley to consolidate the non-Trump wing and for she and Trump to rip each other apart so savagely over the next five months that the ultimate winner is a bleeding carcass just ripe for a Biden coup de grace.
Except I know that Trump is going to win the nomination easily.
Oh God, you again.
I'm snagging your quote re: Caesar for my English class this afternoon. We're reading Shakespeare's Caesar right now, and this lil' nugget of a juicy quote will do well to show how the subject of Caesar and the concerns bound up within his story crop up time and again. Thanks!
>Until last night, I really couldn't understand the apparent complacency of Democrats in the looming face of Trump<
We must be living on different planets. Complacency? Most Democrats I know are well aware Trump could very conceivably be our next president. He might even be a modest favorite.
One implication of this is that Trump is an enormous albatross around the GOP's neck. Starmer and Poilievre are on track for landslide victories and Trump is tied with Biden. If Haley or some backbench senator was likely to be the Republican nominee, 2024 would not be close.
I'm not sure about "not be close." Haley would still be running on an agenda that would repeal the ACA and a six week abortion ban. Voters don't like that stuff!
Yeah but look at her polling lead https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/us/politics/trump-biden-times-siena-poll.html.
true, Haley is definitely a bigger messaging lift for Democrats. Not impossible though
I think Haley is a seen as a "generic Republican" who isn't Trump. That would change if she became the actual nominee.
You’re being imprecise Ben. She said she would have signed a six week abortion ban. I know you’re a Democrat and want to shout that from the mountain top (just like the White House) but that doesn’t mean it’s her preferred position or she’s “running” on it.
She actually signed a 20 week ban in South Carolina. That’s aligned with where many people are at. I’m not sure of her preferred position.
My party registration is Slow Boring Editorial Assistant!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/us/politics/nikki-haley-abortion-six-weeks.html
Title is “as Governor.” What she said in the debate is that she is pro-life, but would let states decide barring 60 senators agreeing, which she said won’t happen. Saying that practically it is up to the states is a GOP candidate testing how to moderate messaging and avoid the issue without losing the base.
Here she takes the extreme ban at 6 weeks position "as Governor" for the base, but what she'll say in a general election is the same thing she said in the debate, which is that the only thing that matters federally is what 60 senators can agree on and that ain't much. That line has the virtue of actually being true, which allows a candidate in a GOP primary to say look I'm true believer just like you, but unfortunately we will never have all the votes general election voters who want abortion to be legal.
Yes I believe she has.
People complain about the errors Democrats make all the time, some forced and some unforced, but the GOP has committed a series of own goals on their own side as well.
Remember, only Democrats have agency. The GOP dousing themselves with gasoline and then jumping into a volcano is apparently our fault because we didn’t stop them.
I earnestly believe that the "cool" and "serious" opinion in this comment section is not that indistinguishable from the above. The Dems do have a lot of issues and we should examine them and recommend course corrections. That shouldn't blind us to the fact that there is no reasonable opposition. Nominating Haley would certainly be a step in the right direction, but it would still be a party untethered to reality in terms of rhetoric and policy.
I hate that the response to this is then "ugh, all these weirdos believe in 'no enemies to the left' or 'no punching left.'" No, that's not it. You can punch left and have enemies to the left but punch left in a way that tries to persuade them to adjust their tactics to lead to better outcomes.
Wokeism is very damaging and annoying. Progressives can also be very annoying. But I think Derek Thompson said it best on his podcast a month or so ago that "I refuse to make the fact that the left can be really f***ing annoying the centerpiece of my political perspective" I almost drove off the road when he said that because it's so spot on to what I believe but could never properly articulate!
Murc's Law!
I'm seething over the fact that a critical mass of my fellow conservatives really do seem to want Trump to be the nominee.
We have two decent alternatives just sitting there, but they still want to force a choice between Biden and gottdamnTrump.
And while Trump may be the root of the problem, he's not the only problem: GOP primaries went to way too many below replacement clowns like Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, and on and on. I'll be curious if they still have problems with this downballot in 2024.
You have the GOP always double down and then go on fidelity/purity purges with ever more bizarre and deranged litmus tests. This is why the pool of competent people willing to run in GOP primaries is drying up.
They have lost my fiancé! He was initially hoping to convince our state GOP to support the young economically-conservative pro-LGBT cohort, but that hope has utterly withered. Genuinely a loss for them: I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t like my fiancé. He has so much charisma and a solid head for policy too.
Trump appeared to finally fire a shotgun at the head of zombie Reaganism, but when it comes to governing, most Republicans are still coming from that place.
There was an interview with Tim Walz, who was just elected chair of the Democratic Governors’ Association, where he said, with delightfully subtle Midwestern shade, “These guys are weird.” These guys = Republican candidates or incumbents.
Outside of very red states, the only candidate who can get away with acting like Trump is, well, Trump. In Georgia, Herschel Walker, a weirdo in the Trumpian mold, lost, but Brian Kemp, who presented as a boring normie Mitt Romney-type Republican, won. In Arizona, Blake “Norman Bates” Masters and Kari the Lake Mess Monster lost, but treasurer Kimberly Yee, a strait-laced McCain Republican, cleaned up. (In the 2022 midterms.)
And George Santos, who managed to out-weird Trump and the late James Traficant put together, did get expelled…though he seems to still be milking his weirdo schtick for all it’s worth.
I think you are right that Trump is going to steal all the Republican thunder, and the wanna-be Trumplets will run behind the normies of both parties.
Who do you consider your fellow conservatives? I'm not sure most of the Republican voter base could pass a screening test for "conservative." They could certainly easily be considered anti-progressive or just anti-democratic party, but what I understood to be the core values of conservatism through most of my life are no longer the driving force in the Republican party or what passes for the conservative movement. Most disturbing is the tact taken by the evangelical movement. I've always disagreed with them on almost all issues, include their theological interpretations of the Bible. But today they seem to have gone off the deep end in ways that truly frighten me, because they now believe in some faith that I find wholly unreconcilable with Christianity.
"Critical mass" seems to be around 60% or so. If not more. I.e., a dominant majority. But I feel your pain.
In a two party system his pain is all of our pain…
I miss the days when there were Republicans that I would be ok voting for.
I’m sure that’s true to some extent, but I think the GOP elites - politicians and conservative media - really drove the base to their present location of Crazytown. The rank and file kept a lot of “forbidden” thoughts to themselves until Fox and Trump gave them license to air racist, anti-democratic, xenophobic, etc. ideas.
No, because it took Trump and media to activate and direct their anger. Otherwise we would have heard the majority of Republicans talk that way 20 years earlier.
I agree. I also cannot decide on the exact moment the GOP jumped the shark. There are so many moments you can point to and say this was the point of no return.
That's true, but one shouldn't plan on winning by hoping an opponent makes enough errors to lose.
Agreed, control what you can control.
There’s much less Democrat fatigue than there is Tory or Liberal fatigue in the countries they’ve been running for many years.
True. Biden's current low numbers with Democrats strikes me as their venting of frustrations prior to next year's hard work of consolidating the coalition and taking it to Trump and the Republicans. I have to believe that next year when faced with the reality of the Trumpist return they'll come home except for the fringe voters who yearn for Jill Stein or Cornel West.
"Tied" in national level polling. Biden is at a significant deficit in 6 of 7 swing states, which will likely decide the election.
I really think Democrats need to start focusing in on those states and figuring out what they need to do to improve the numbers there.
Agreed but my point still holds: he’s behind by less than other incumbents
Ok, but also the other incumbent parties cited in the article have been in power longer than Biden, so it’s not particularly surprising. Justin Trudeau has won three consecutive elections already and the UK Conservatives have been in power for over 13 years. Anti incumbency bias is bound to take a toll on them at this point.
Haley would win easily if the election were today. It's not today, so we'll see.
Would going after the hugely lucrative car dealership sector be a popular move?
Musk is a dick but cutting out dealerships and offering transparent pricing is great for consumers in my book, and if other manufacturers were free to do the same nationwide it would be a good thing.
I have no idea how legally feasible it might be. Would it be a political win?
I yield to nobody in my disdain for the cartel-like behavior of car dealerships. Other than perhaps a novel anti-trust theory, though, I don't know how the federal government intervenes on state-level regulations. Like all sorts of regulatory capture situations, the solution lies in the states.
I'd love to be wrong on this. Car dealers, Realtors, hairdressers all deserve to have their power knocked down.
Unfortunately, I agree. And has been noted in many times, car dealership owners are sort of secretly the most powerful lobbying force in America; forget congressional districts, there isn't a state legislative district that doesn't have a car dealership in it. As powerful as oil and finance are, the big players are still centered in a handful of places. Creates perfect stew to help influence and block state level policy.
Two perhaps hopeful avenues. First, could a case be made that car dealerships are engaged in cartel/monopolistic behavior? Could a consumer bring a suit arguing the cost of their car was overpriced due to cartel behavior? Not a lawyer, but I would love to see a commentator who is one tell me how feasible or not feasible this is.
The other more fruitful avenue is precisely the fact this is a state level issue. While car dealership owners definitely lobby and give donations to both parties, I think I'm safe in saying this a right leaning constituency. Point being, I think the gambit is to find a state with a blue trifecta that doesn't have their head up their own asses (so definitely not New York, my home state) and try to organize a campaign to deregulate car selling. I'd say right now Minnesota seems like a good place to try to start organizing and lobbying; government there has seemed more willing lately to be forward thinking then almost any other state with a blue trifecta.
"car dealership owners are sort of secretly the most powerful lobbying force in America"
I would have guessed lawyers since for somewhat obvious reasons they tend to be massively overrepresented in the different layers of government.
Not necessarily. Law has no shortage of more or less nakedly protectionist restrictions and rent-seeking aspects to it (e.g, unauthorized practice of law vagaries that don't even make nominal sense for people practicing federal law, pro hac fees for individual federal courts) but by now they're all pretty long in the tooth (and the absolute worst ones were actually gotten rid of because they were antitrust violations masquerading as ethics rules in a way so naked as not to even have a fig leaf of cover). But the overall goal of the bar is to self-regulate enough to avoid having formal legislative oversight make practice harder, so there's something of an emphasis on minimizing rather than maximizing the legislative footprint of the profession.
Can you tell me a single protectionist thing that car dealerships do that lawyers don't do more of?
I think you're interpreting me to be arguing a point I'm not actually trying to make. I'm specifically just claiming that lawyers don't as a class do a ton of profession-specific lobbying.
This is just straightforward price-matching, though. Cravath (or occasionally Milbank or some other top firm) announces a raise, and everyone else just jumps on the bandwagon to stay competitive in recruiting, because the salaries paid are public information. These top-level lawyers are 100% not all getting in a room together to violated antitrust law by coordinating some kind of price fixing. It's the salary-raise version of Target or whoever doing price matching.
Also, because these associates make bank, frankly no one's complaining that much...
Twenty law firms met in a room to set prices?
I dunno, man.
No, but the most perfect place in America to be turned into an apartment complex was recently turned into a Lexus dealership near where I live.
Not joking about this. There was an old abandoned art deco building sitting on about half an acre of dirt (not a park. Dirt) right next to the Freeport, NY Long Island railroad stop. No worries about ripping up trees. No displaced low income renters. Not a nice park families like to use. Dirt. They paved potential paradise and put up something worse than a parking lot.
Just re- the first avenue ... Consumers would have to show harm and all prior analysis indicates the brand-aligned franchise dealer maps are narrowly enough defined to create liquid competition. Said differently your town might have a single Honda or Ford dealer but an average consumer's shopping radius includes like 2.5 brand aligned dealerships (NOTE: I don't remember the real number and can't find it right now).
Right. Even rural areas, even if there is only one car dealership in your town, you can drive your beat up Honda (I'm giving that example because I'm assuming you're buying a car for a reason) to car dealerships in towns 10, 20, 30 miles away that affiliated with other car companies, which means there is enough competition for your dollar.
I guess then what would be needed is some sort of leaked emails or texts where the car dealership owners all agreed to tack on a "finder's fee" and all agree not to waive so they can all benefit from this "rent seeking" fee. In that case, you would have clear evidence of collusion to keep a price artificially high. Do I have this right?
I can't really follow the second part -- but just to share my experience working with different franchise dealerships groups (e.g., Group 1, Sonic, Bob Rohrman, Pohanka, etc.). They all fucking HATE each other. I mean -- they're selling the exact same product. Their only point of differentiation is service. It's a nightmare business. Nothing is being kept artificially high.
If someone wants to the really help consumers ... they need to go after the Buy Here Pay Here (BHPH) segment. That's an all out scam. I've seen $2000 vehicles "sold" for > $10k. Sucks.
At least in Florida, yes they compete. But they ALL charge a document fee that is either $999 or $1099 per car. Every dealer does it. It beggars belief that this isn't due to collusion. Add to that the fact they successfully block direct-to-consumer sales by requiring a service network (I.e, dealer network) and I conclude that they are competitive, but only within a narrow (and very profitable for all) band.
Right, so well functioning markets are ones where the various competitors probably should hate each other. Feel like that's exactly the scenario to help the consumer.
To maybe clarify my point I was trying to make. If you found out Group 1, Sonic, Bob Rohrman, Pohanka had emails leaked that showed they agreed to keep some fee or price artificially high, that's where grounds for anti-trust case could be made.
I guess, the real takeaway is that the legal avenue is probably not particularly feasible which is probably why it hasn't happened and real solution is to just reform state laws so that car manufactures can legally directly sell you vehicles.
I put 310k on my last one.
“…could a case be made that car dealerships are engaged in cartel/monopolistic behavior?”
Of course, but it’s not *illegal* behavior.
Just to be clear here ... Franchise dealers make 50% of gross profits from their parts and service department. The rest is split between new vehicle sales, financing, used vehicle sales, and used vehicle wholesale. Agree of the consolidation point tho ... it would be a terrible outcome for consumers.
Right. The average net profit margin for a franchise dealer is 1-2%. It's a tough business. There's no shot the OEMs could run a better model direct.
Re-auctions ... you probably went to Manheim but ADESA is / was the other major player and ADESA bought the company I started back in 2017 - so I worked for them for like a year. Sadly, that's also a tough business now.
The dealers make money selling the cars too but often it's not big gross profit relative to purchase price -- there is some of that but often less than consumers think (at least before pandemic "market adjustment" mark ups made things weird due to restricted supply). Instead AIUI the manufacturer (which *is* making meaningful gross profit on unit sales, since that's their primary business) will indirectly split some of the new car unit-sale profits with the dealership in the form of volume incentives to move X units of Y car in Z time period.
(Plus financing / captive finance arm stuff which AIUI is also largely volume- based at the level of dealer incentives.)
“Car dealers make money on financing…”
And on extended warranties, and dealer-installed options, and on service that they push at frequencies much shorter than is recommended in the manufacturers’ manuals. And they make a boatload of money on trade-ins.
Congress could just write a law preempting state law. Supremacy Clause, baby!
What are the hairdressers doing?! Occupational licensing?
Ridiculous and unnecessary occupational licensing.
For those with more basic hairstyling goals I recommend a pair of clippers. Stand up to Big Hairdresser!
It doesn't require 1500 hours of training, though. That is 18 months at 20 hours/week. And 1500 hours is the average across the country.
https://occupationallicensing.com/occupation/cosmetologist/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAjrarBhAWEiwA2qWdCMjImdXcxWsD9sOHydKUxOuwUValHMbA2H1BNjH3A6IVRpC1HMsl7xoCfmYQAvD_BwE
In many states, hair stylists are required to have more hours of training than EMTs.
I say this is a former hairstylist who was incensed by the entire process of schooling and board certification.
I think it makes more sense to have very strong licensing requirements for things like bleach and color and curl and other chemical treatments, where you really need to understand a lot about how these things work and interact.
But there should be legal room for low-requirement or even fully unlicensed braids and extensions and probably cuts too.
“…very strong licensing requirements for things like bleach and color and curl and other chemical treatments…”
You mean the stuff you can buy in CVS?
Licensing by merit can be fine, as long as everyone has a fair and equal chance to gain it. Licensing by quota is always bad, and it can often turn into that.
I'm a "registered florist." 🤣
Update, I lied, and have now been cited for unauthorized practice of floristry.
Franchise dealers only "power" here is a set of negotiated franchise agreements. No different any other commercial agreement. The incremental state level regulations only came about after the OEMs attempted to break the agreements. I can't imagine a scenario where the federal government could individually target franchise car dealers without putting ~ all other franchise agreements at risk.
I think dealerships are a fun combination of super unpopular among consumers, but very well connected at the state GOP level. Here in CT we can't even change state law to allow direct sale of Teslas to consumers because of the dealership lobby.
I really can't think of a more fully GOP constituency and they donate lots to state level candidates.
I'm not sure about this. It might be like one of those situations where everyone hates Congress but loves their own congressmembers. Car dealerships in general have a bad reputation, but then everyone knows the one dealership who sponsored your kid's little league team, and if that one starts telling sob stories on the local news, watch out.
I think there's a lot of truth to this, but it's also easy to get sour on the actual purchase of a car if they make the experience too miserable.
What's so interesting is how effective CarMax's branding has been. They pay the absolutely lowest offer on trade-ins because they operate trade-ins as a separate wholesale channel rather than a sourcing model for their retail inventory and people absolutely *pay* for the convivence of selling to CarMax - just with much lower offer prices.
Very good point.
It's lower salience but I think the Jones Act is the right play here assuming you were to pick only one of two oxen to gore. People hate car dealership bullshit but as Colin observes they're actually an electorally-powerful constituency that's well-connected and widely dispersed across the United States and in various Congressional Districts. Conversely, AFAICT and especially outside of Hawaii, the absolute number of people enjoying Jones Act pork is objectively tiny--like, not even just relative to the number bearing costs rather than enjoying benefits, there literally just are not even many direct beneficiaries of the Jones Act, period.
Does it actually provide electoral benefit? Outside of PR(which doesn't get a vote) and Hawaii - which voters actually suffer much from it?
How much would it lower lower-48 shipping costs since we have so much freight rail anyway?
"There is currently no Jones Act compliant LNG tanker, and therefore, no LNG tanker can move LNG between U.S. terminals—for example from the Gulf region, where many LNG plants are located, to regions where there is a need for LNG, such as Puerto Rico or New England."
https://www.shiplawlog.com/2023/11/30/new-cbp-jones-act-ruling-prevents-release-of-vapor-from-lng-loaded-at-1st-u-s-port-during-loading-at-2nd-u-s-port/
This raises the cost heating in the NE significantly. Its also bad for the environment in case that matters.
Alaskans! Do some deregulation that helps a very libertarian state and hope for the best in future senate elections
That's not a bad idea. Plus, I've always gathered car dealerships are one of the most Republican-leaning constituencies under the sun, so probably not a lot of lost votes by picking this particular fight. I strongly suspect if addressing out-of-control car prices is the issue, a big part of any real solution is importing some of shit-ton of EV capacity being produced by the Chinese. But for obvious reasons neither party is going there any time soon.
To be fair, the current overlap between the EVs produced in China, and the cars Americans buy, is not as great as you might hope. I mean, the BYD Seal and the MG4 are both reportedly excellent, but one is the size of a VW Golf and the other is the size of a Model 3.
Giant SUVs and pickups are almost exclusively an American phenomenon. Yes, the rest of the world drives SUVs now too, but they tend to be much smaller.
I'm a huge Tesla fan. I follow the company very closely. I have an older Model S that continues to require a lot of service - so I get a lot of up close experience. I just think we have to acknowledge that Tesla deciding not have a franchise dealer network -- while offering a lower cost structure -- is a tradeoff for services and capabilities. Their dealership network has been much slower to build out otherwise. Their authorized repair network is still 2-3 years behind the demand curve. They don't know how to value a used car and trading in a vehicle is a huge pain point. I know Tesla's two prior GMs of pre-owned pretty well ... it's just not a focus for the company and Elon specifically. They will eventually have to solve this.
That's so interesting to me. My folks have traded in 2 Teslas in the past 10 years for newer versions and have reported the experience to be super straightforward and pain free. They also LOVE the maintenance experience (the ability to schedule a repair on the app and have them show up at your house seems to be especially pleasant to them). I actually kind of roll my eyes at how much they fanboy a car company, and their love of the maintenance process seems disproportionate to the actual experience (an aside- my Dad once GUSHED over how amazing it was that Tesla was able to change out his spare tire in only like 4 hours while he waited in their shop. In my experience, getting one tire changed can frequently be done in about an hour, so taking 4x that didn't seem like the salutary experience my Dad made it out to be ;)). It's interesting to hear your perspective of the issue.
Just two quick points here ...
(1) They have absolutely innovated on the service side. Their app and remote repair options are the clear market leaders. It's the total type of first principles innovation that their known for (e.g., unibody castings, modular software). Their pricing is shockingly transparent and fair. For example, I just had to replace the low voltage battery. They charged me straight list price and like $35 to come out and change it. It was an awesome experience. Any other dealer would have marked up the part price and rounded up the 10 minute repair to 1 hour of labor.
(2) The trade-in process - can sometimes work if you're trading in a Tesla ... but even then they're offering below market prices. Where it really breaks down is on brand-misaligned cars (e.g., Honda, Ford). They have to wholesale them so they're not at all price competitive with their offer.
I think most of the regulations are state law rather than federal. Now, obviously, it's under the interstate commerce clause, so they could override that, but that would very definitely need an Act of Congress, and there's no way to get through a Republican House.
Maybe the issue is to "get caught trying,"
I of course agree with you, but sadly agree with all the replies to you below as to how futile it is, which just gets me more sour about state governments as a whole.
Seems to me that the grand majority of those jobs would just shift to being offered directly by the manufacturer.
Should we bring back horses and carriages too? Those people are out of work. How rude of you if you don’t agree.
Please stop exaggerating for effect and avoiding a real discussion. Going after monopolies and rent-seeking is proper and has nothing to do with "uprooting" the poor. (lol)
But as we see in this subthread, entrenching that capital and ownership into car dealers that end up highly influential in state and local affairs has its own problems.
They only do that charity to ingratiate themselves in the community and insulate them from people asking why their cars cost 20% more than they should.
Comcast does the same thing. Hm, I wonder why.
Those are fine desires, but they shouldn't be ones that are mandated by government policy.
This is a comically stupid take and trivializes the actual genocide of Ukrainians carried about by Soviets. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Dude. Car dealerships need government protection to stay in business. It’s a jobs program. They aren’t necessary and make cars more expensive for the middle class (the people you pretend the care about)
Needlessly acerbic; you can and should make your points more politely.
Comparing companies that build cars to dealers which.... move a car from one place and then sell it is ... rich.
Are you a troll account? This has literally nothing to do with left/right champ. It's called rent seeking, look it up.
You are really going “geraffes are so dumb” on this hill?
This is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Banks are highly regulated; whenever the government tries to limit overdraft fees or crack down on predatory lending, they scream bloody murder. Lawyers are subject to strict ethical standards and can lose their license for anything that brings the profession into disrepute; that's a sword of Damocles over their heads. Car dealers are everywhere and, like any group, seek to maximize their own profit at the expense of people who buy cars. Wanting to pay less when buying a car has nothing to do with having it out to get noncollege people.
Literally nobody is saying these things because of who works at dealers. In fact, you have no evidence that dealers employ the people you are supposedly advocating for. And nobody here wants to hate on non-college educated people. You want that to be the case because...reasons?
Hint: the only conspiracy is the massive lobbying effort the dealers do to protect their millions. Not a conspiracy with all liberals hating on someone selling an F-150 at a 20% markup.
Again, this has to be a parody account. Right?
I disagree pretty strongly with Graham on this subject, but he is not a parody account, and he gives us good challenges from a different point of view.
Eh, he's not arguing in good faith in this exchange. The attacks and exaggerations are distracting.
I have been saying for years that expectations have become decoupled from material reality in our abundant society. We live in an era of post-material politics, where people will assert material conditions are worsening while their standards of living increase. So many people dismiss political actions that bring material improvements in the quality of people's lives and assert nothing is being done.
I think this is part of the nihilistic contrarian loop where people get validation from victim narratives or opposing the current "bad thing." Lying has always been easier than knowing.
I think people care more about their relative socio-economic rank against others, moreso than their absolute level of economic wellbeing. And there are lots of people who see themselves as relatively worse off than before.
"... reality influences how the media covers things."
I love this line. So reassuring to know there's a correlation of some sort.
I feel like you are getting close but still missing the larger point, which is this: the global ruling class, by which I mean everyone from academia to mainstream churches to cultural institutions to education to medicine to politicians and policy wonks, has just utterly lost the trust and confidence of ordinary people.
From the "let them eat cake" attitude towards inflation, to the transgender debacle, to COVID everything, to declines in our schools, to the awful state of movies and fiction publishing, to aggressive efforts to address climate change without giving AF about how it effects regular people, to the dishonesty in our media ... people are done.
It doesn't matter if the economy improves, or that schools have reopened, or anything else
What matters is that the chattering class openly didn't give a sh*t when it was bad.
There is just a wide spread sense right now that all our institutions are just bullsh*t run by self serving bullsh*ters and posting a bunch of stats and graphs at this point just gets eye rolls as more bullsh*t.
And I think the situation in the Middle East is the last straw for a lot of people.
Polls show that overwhelming majorities of ordinary people support Israel and are horrified by Hamas. We have zero illusions about who the good guys and bad guys are here. People understandably feel threatened by the mass immigration of other people from a culture whose literal foundations are the brutal murder and conquest of everyone else in the name of God.
And yet our media carefully crafts narratives to not make Palestinians look bad, the UN can't bring themselves to codemn a terrorist group, and the elite crows about "global pressure on Israel" because of "protests", as if a bunch of child radicals hostile to civilization represent - or have ever represented - an actual mass movement.
Most people aren't "progressive activists" but we - the people who work real jobs, have real families, the actual grown ups in society - are constantly held hostage culturally and politically by a bunch of juvenile activists and their ridiculous, anti social posturing.
And then we are told to pony up to pay off their college loans.
Institutions have become so unresponsive to normal people that we have lost all investment in them, and the only way to make ourselves heard above the noise of the chattering classes is to vote for whoever promises to burn it all down.
Which is probably why the establishment is so keen to cast opposition as being vaguely "against democracy" as an excuse to exclude it from democracy.
No, populism is democracy. It's democracy striking back.
This is what is happening. Yes, it is scary. I didn't vote for Trump either time, because I was unnerved by the 'burn it all down" mentality. I voted for Biden as the "return to normal" candidate.
Instead he empowered the worst of the left to just carry on.
When people inside our president's own administration are protesting that the president isn't nice enough to TERRORISTS who are still holding children hostage and torturing them, I'm done.
The rot is so deep.
I will probably vote for Trump this time. Our institutions appear unsalvageable.
When you’re this far into nihilism there’s really no effective reply. I’d just ask whether for “ordinary people,” “the actual grown ups in society,” all roads should necessarily lead to “burn it all down.” Because that’s all that’s on offer here. Life will be better post-Armageddon? Yeah, I don’t think so.
It's not nilhilism. Not at all. I very much believe in something real - God, family and community life, my country. I believe in my friends and real relationships, in the great Classical cultural tradition and passing it on to my children, in my local organizations and in charity work. I believe in professionals - doctors, teachers - that EARN my trust through their demonstrated wisdom and respect for my dignity as a free citizen rather than demand it via credential.
What I don't believe in anymore are our large institutions, because they have proved themselves so untrustworthy.
What I am experiencing is not nihilism.
It's disgust.
And that disgust is widely shared right now.
There is little that the classical tradition abhors more than the twin evils of anarchy and demagoguery. The US, built by people steeped in that tradition, was constructed to do the utmost to prevent both outcomes. Trump is precisely the classical political villain which Pericles and Polybius would have recognized just as much as Madison and Jefferson. They’re all spinning in their graves when people claim to be voting for Trump in the name of the Classicla tradition.
And let me emphasize- I sympathize with many of your frustrations and share them. But I have zero empathy or sympathy for the idea of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Or put simply for throwing away the liberty you were given by the blood and toil of generations because, make no mistake, that’s precisely what you’d be doing by voting for trump, and you’d rightly earn the extreme contempt and anger of all posterity if you do so.
“…throwing away the liberty you were given by the blood and toil of generations because, make no mistake, that’s precisely what you’d be doing by voting for trump…”
I’m not here to suggest that anyone vote for Trump, but this seems really overwrought. I’m sure that a second Trump Administration would implement some bad policies, and that those bad policies would be, in many ways, different from the bad policies we would get from a continuation of Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office. But I didn’t notice any diminution of my freedom as a result of Trump’s presidency; why should I expect different the second time around?
I am genuinely baffled how anyone can say that following the trump term esp Jan 6. The man literally tried to steal the elections. How is that not a diminution of your freedom? I just don’t know how to answer people who look at trump and are like “seems like a standard gop president to me”.
“The man literally tried to steal the elections. How is that not a diminution of your freedom?”
How is it? My life is no different now than it was on January 5th, 2021.
Well for one thing, Trump attempted to overturn the election results. He failed, but not for lack of trying. The freedom to choose your own leaders is a pretty important freedom in a democracy. He clearly has a *willingness* to take away freedoms, so if he's back in office you're betting on others successfully thwarting him, which is a pretty contingent thing to bet on.
Maybe the real reason why you don't fear Trump is that you know you are his political ally so of course he won't come after you, and you don't mind if he comes after those you disagree with.
> Maybe the real reason why you don't fear Trump is that you know you are his political ally so of course he won't come after you, and you don't mind if he comes after those you disagree with.
I might be naive, but I stopped fearing a Trump return for a few reasons. First, absent a few specific groups at a few specific points in time, life under Trump wasn't *obviously* worse than under Obama or Biden. Most people just weren't affected by his actions. Second, his attempts to overturn democracy were clumsy at best, nor can I see a real path for him to have done so even if better executed. And finally, there's really nothing I can do to stop it other than my one vote (which has never been in question). So instead of worrying myself sick as I did for a while post 2016, I'll just focus on what I can control in my own life and those around me.
“He failed, but not for lack of trying”
Right: He failed because the president is subordinate to the law.
“Maybe the real reason why you don't fear Trump is that you know you are his political ally so of course he won't come after you…”
Sure, sure. I never voted for Trump, won’t vote for him next year, but I am “his political ally.”
You and I can accurately say that our freedoms didn't materially decrease as a result of the Trump presidency, but millions of women can't say that.
Oh? How did Trump enslave millions of women?
I simply think Trump will be ineffective at making any of the changes you would like because his constant desire and need for self aggrandizement is greater than any policy focus or discipline.
Trump has demonstrated a total failure to enact radical change for a more free and egalitarian society in his first term, what makes you think a second term will be different? All he talks about on the campaign trail is enacting revenge on his enemies, he’s going to spend down a lot of power on petty political stuff he could be using to save the American family.
Trump just seems like a bad choice. Voting for someone like Trump because you are angry will neither assuage your anger after you step out of the voting booth or result in an elected official who will make the changes you would like to see.
Me nodding my head and tapping the sign that says, "Trump's style of authoritarianism is sultanism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanism
I'm decidedly not on Team Burn It All Down, but at the very least I wanted Biden to grow a set and tell the progressive activists to shut up and sit the F down. They don't represent the values and beliefs of normie voters. Not by a long shot.
Anonymama is not wrong on many of the points she raised in her comment.
You do that by participating in and donating to dem primaries to help politically destroy the far left idiots and put those now pandering to them back in line. That’s how American democracy works and that’s some of the work we need to be doing right now. Fight the far left and the far right (Trump). They are the two evils endangering American democracy right now and they feed off of each other and empower each other. Both must be overcome if there is to be a future of freedom and prosperity in this country.
> to the awful state of movies
Finally, someone who gets it: the MCU fall-off under Biden is the cause of his political woes.
NGL, presuming Biden is re-elected, if Marvel brings out a first-rate Fantastic Four movie there will be discussion about repealing the 22nd Amendment.
The last guy who even implicitly dissed my taste in MCU movies got banned within 24 hours, so don't test me, sticky fingers. ;-P
MMGA...make MCU great again!
(In all honesty though I'd rather Disney et al just abandon ship and start trying to make new creative output.)
You should write on this topic Milan. I saw The Marvels over Thanksgiving and was so disappointed
Unfortunately even The Marvels was an echelon above Antman: Quantumania and The Flash, which were supposed to be the two big blockbuster superhero films of the year. Mediocrity abounds.
Matt: the UK is about to elect a labor government because voters dislike almost all incumbents.
Comment: the backlash is about movies and fiction publishing(!). Also unlike progressives other people have “real families”(??)
Yeah, I'm sorry I found the above comment to be increasingly ridiculous. I actually thought the initial sentiment has merit; there is clearly a declining trust in existing institutions in things like church, media and elites generally. But as soon as the commentator said "transgender", I started going "uh oh". By the time it got to the stuff about "movies and fiction publishing" I was like, yeah this is just a big Fox News watcher.
And that comment "unlike progressives, people have 'real families'" was veering into some pretty gross and untrue stereotypes. As Matt has himself alluded; it's precisely the upper middle class progressives who are most likely not to be divorced. It's actually in fact exact opposite; it's more likely downscale GOP voters who are likelier to be divorced.
Yeah the entire rant started veering into just really sneering "real America" garbage that yes I'm sorry, has had some real ugly overtones.
Oh one very important riposte. GOP has lost the popular vote 6 out 7 last Presidential elections. Remind me again which party is out of step with "real" america?
I stopped at "global ruling class." That is, shall we say, a tell.
I have to assume the reason it got any upvotes at all is because most people stoped reading and assumed it *didn’t* go in that gross direction
normal people may be trans-skeptical but they also do not care about it the way overly online rightists do. fox news watchers and guys who follow based accounts on twitter are a fairly tiny fraction of the american population.
if you just go and talk to random people about politics youd have to go a while before anyone brought up trans issues. people overwhelmingly care about the two years of rising price levels we have just lived through, and secondarily they care about crime.
do you believe that all of the PR catastrophes engineered by left over the past ten years were reflecting the deep engagement of the mass public? i certainly dont. i believe instead that certain companies occasionally have exposure to highly motivated and ideological consumers. but corporate america continues to broadly support trans people because the broader public does not care very much!
The Bud Lite one seemed to have just been that adult trans people exist.
Isn’t the mainstream Republican view now “no gender-affirming care for minors”? How is that “live and let live”?
"Live and let live, except for reasons that I don't think are valid." Is paternalism. That's not inherently good or bad, but words have meaning. I'm any case, various election results tell me that this is a low salience issue for most people.
Being an asshole about Trans issues is not a good look and it is not going to help you convince people who don't already agree with you. You seem way too animated about this issue based on how important it is for the country.
You're not wrong about the polling/support but I think it also turned out not to matter much.
For example, transgender participation in sports mostly skews towards the conservative view but it also doesn't really seem to get voters riled up much either way (I thought this came up when Matt posted about the midterm results in his "N takeaways from the midterms"
That's not what I meant, I just don't think it's explanatory for this election cycle.
And knowing what _is_ explanatory is helpful for where to focus reelection efforts.
This comment is why your preferred candidates poll so low. Listen to what he is trying to tell you, even if you don't agree with it.
I’m aware that conservatives are now on team feelings over facts, but can we at least ask for commenters to read *the title of the article* before positing a theory
I chuckled at that, but it’s just a rhetorical flourish for complaining about kids these days, hell in a hand basket, get off my lawn.
“The kids are killing themselves…”
All of them?
What has it got to do with politics?
I mean Disney kind of has shit the bed a lot recently. They might need to see a doctor.
(Elemental was good, and I cannot understand why they marketed it so poorly.)
"The Marvels" was also a lot better than I was expecting (and I was glad I saw it on the big screen rather than waiting for Disney+). I think they mismanaged the advertising for it more than anything else.
I think Disney really mismanaged Lucas IP. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Willow….
Well, yes, that goes without saying. I was just prompted to volunteer my observation about "The Marvels" because of your parenthetical comment about "Elemental" being exception to Disney's poor performance recently.
"Global ruling class" is the tell, here.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that mainstream churches have lost the faith of the masses, but that evangelical churches have not.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes, deliberately undertaken to rein in inflation without causing a recession, constitutes some type of benign disinterest in rising prices.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that a highly successful COVID vaccination initiative that brought a pandemic under control is apparently a bad thing.
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that transgendered people are... a debacle?
I find it interesting, in this narrative, that tax credits for electric vehicles apparently constitute an aggressive effort that does not care its effect on people.
The sitting President has been overwhelmingly Israel-friendly, such that he is taking criticism from the left of his party.
And people to the left of the center are in fact "normal people" who work "real jobs" and have "real families."
To suggest otherwise is nothing more than bitter ranting, emblematic of the deep and profound resentment that some hold toward others.
It really is quite deplorable.
As I have said elsewhere, people’s beliefs on what has happened have become decoupled from material reality.
Epistemological nihilism is probably the result of democratizing “truth.” It’s easier for people to lie than to know, and deferring to others’ expertise requires acknowledging one’s own inadequacies.
A reasonable person can argue that gender dysphoria is real, that medical interventions that align the physical presentation of gender to the experience of gender identity is justifiable, and that a floor on the acceptable age at which to begin certain types of medical interventions is appropriate. A blanket assertion that all things "transgender" constitute a debacle is a needless stigmatization of a subset of people largely based on either a lack of understanding of their daily experience or a ridiculous belief that by "indulging" their "fantasy" one is someone suggesting that some particular omnipotent sky-being is, in fact, capable of error.
I have to interject here--gender affirming care for minors is not banned in Western European countries, but medical orgs *have* majorly walked back their policies.
Sweden, Finland, and the UK among others have decided to restrict use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to a much smaller cohort of patients, and even then only in controlled study settings--confirming that these interventions are indeed still experimental.
But they haven’t been banned there.
"The data" can be interpreted to say any damn thing someone wants to hear. Perhaps people are unhappy post-transition because transgender people are stigmatized by those who view them as icky, weird, or unnatural. I also have no clue what you intend to accomplish by repeating the phrase "sociosexual theory" to me in your commentary. It is simply not your place to tell an adult that his or her experience of his or her own gender is wrong or bad -- full stop.
"European countries have banned these practices."
For adults? {{Citation needed}}
This is incorrect, and I just added a comment further down about what’s actually happening in Western Europe.
Genuinely curious, how did you end up reading Slow Boring with this kind of conspiratorial far right mindset? Have you read anything else Matt has written?
"academia to mainstream churches to cultural institutions to education to medicine to politicians and policy wonks“ are all working together to undermine "regular people" is conspiratorial nonsense, no matter how common this opinion is held on the right. We're supposed to believe that every institution (churches included!) in America that isn't a for-profit business is in collaboration to remake the country?
They aren't 'working together', they are people and groups which share a worldview, and their individual efforts produce a strong effect in that direction. Pointing out that there is a common philosophy and political direction among very powerful people is not postulating a conspiracy.
I initially took issues with your description of "far" as being a measure of popularity, but the more I think of it, I'm not so sure.
Here's my brief and inconclusive conversation with ChatGPT on the subject.
https://chat.openai.com/share/022a183d-de52-4a56-83a3-b5fe83fa3232
did you read the comment? its not just people are disillusioned with progressive institutions. its like full on burn it all down political nihilism, thats as far from small c conservatism as you can get.
this person is clearly a recent convert to far-right politics from the center-right, a fairly common story in my experience -- it is the mirror of normie libs falling down the prog rabbit hole and declaring "globalize the intifada"
Have you noticed what Biden’s Israel policy actually *is* ? In word and deed there never was a more pro Israel us president, coming to its aid in the clearest and most helpful way possible in its greatest time of need, even as trump was praising its enemies.
His policy seems to offer moral support after a tragedy and work to minimize the amount of human suffering. He is balancing a fine line with Netanyahu where he needs to maintain leverage but also not push Bibi to completely disregard the U.S.
I like this and mostly agree with it. The big exceptions are: I'm increasingly isolationist (don't see why I need to be involved in or think about Israel v Palestine), and I won't vote for Trump.
I am becoming increasingly anti-elitist. Perhaps it's just petty resentment. But it seems everywhere I look, I'm losing out to a quasi-meritocratic elite that has elevated their customs to virtues. This elite lords their vacuous morals over me while appropriating an outsized share of the social output. From where I stand, they are undeserving. You make three times what what someone doing real work does to be a middle-manager of a social media company? You ought to be ashamed! Instead, you're telling me I am bad for not eating local organic food that costs five times what the food I can afford costs!
I'm increasing framing all news as presented by an out-of-touch elite that is unable to understand why people are upset. Matt is doing the same thing in this post. A handful of economic indicators are supposed to refute all discontent?! It's such a jaundiced view of reality! Meanwhile I can't find childcare for love or money, my food costs 50% more, I have a great deal of uncertainty about my career or my ability to make a better life for my child, and my helthcare gets worse and more expensive every year. I read that an enormous proportion of teen girls (which my daughter will become) are desperately sad and hopeless. Should we just tell them that unemployment is down and wages are up? Maybe that will cheer them up?
“You make three times what what someone doing real work does to be a middle-manager of a social media company? You ought to be ashamed!”
This is an idea that I see frequently around here, that there is some segment of office/corporate/management work that does not constitute “real work.” Would you mind explaining why you feel that this is not real work?
My personal opinion, FWIW: I think a lot of blue collar/skilled trades offer more psychologically satisfying forms of work), but I do think middle managers and the like are creating lots of value. While I sometimes question which career path I want to take for myself, I don’t understand the perception that these white collar professionals are not doing “real work.” like it or not, that’s what a big portion of our economy consists of these days.
"This is an idea that I see frequently around here, that there is some segment of office/corporate/management work that does not constitute “real work.”
Well, there's two forms of that. One is the stereotypical useless employee who does literally nothing useful, just sitting around in his office. I feel like there used to be a lot of those back in like, the 60s but with modern productivity tools, better management practices, and making it easier to fire people, those jobs have mostly gone away.
They're "creating value," sure. But for who? The stockholders, not society. Increasingly it seems like corporations are just a parasite on society, armed with patent trolls, rent extraction, legal barriers, and marketing that borders on brainwashing.
I really liked "Bullshit Jobs." One of it's basic theses was that the societal value of your work and the compensation were inversely related. If every garbage man or policeman vanished overnight, society would be in a tough place. If every middle manager of a social media company vanished overnight, the world would go on.
I think economics would say that the garbage man is "low-skill, low-productivity" and the middle manager is "high-productivity." I think this is just an elaborate intellectual backfill to justify the status quo.
If the middle managers in waste management company disappeared, the trash would not get picked up until more management appeared. Not because the people slinging trash are idiots but because organizing humans to do tasks requires management.
The problem is that lots of socially necessary jobs are basically robotic, like trash collection and food service. They aren't highly paid because almost anyone could do them, not because they aren't valuable. It's about relative scarcity and ability to train, not social value.
It's more difficult to manage people than to use gross motor skills all day, regardless of the necessity of either task.
I have read BS Jobs, and I agree with the case Graeber makes that lots of workers (esp. in middle management type roles) feel like their job is socially useless. Some of them, in fact, probably are (Musk clearing house at Twitter with little disruption to product is a good indication of this).
But that being said, I think this phenomenon of feeling like your work is useless is basically psychological (it's not as satisfying to coordinate projects and employees as it is to actually do something physical), and I agree with Lapsed Pacifist's point below that pay is about "relative scarcity and ability to train, not social value."
"Musk clearing house at Twitter with little disruption to product is a good indication of this"
I've never really been a Twitter user, but my understanding is that in fact the product has diminished. More importantly, the company is worth less now than when Musk bought it, not just worth less than he payed, but less than a sane person would have valued it. AND it is clearly losing revenue, almost certainly losing money.
If it had a board and/or shareholders to whom it was answerable Musk would have been out already. His cleaning house seems the opposite of proving anything good.
I wish I could get my hands on some of this training. I've never worked for a company that trained. Most like to complain they can't find people while refusing to do any training. So the only way to fill the position is to set some really high bar for entry, like a prestigious degree or the performance of an unpaid internship.
Yeah part of the problem with taking the low prestige job is the lack of career progression. If you’re talented, you might still opt for the lower paying high status job if there’s a good chance you can leverage a high paying job later.
I looked it up, and it seems like their base pay is still pretty low ($19 an hour: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Garbage-Collector-Salary-in-New-York-City,NY) theres just a few who worked crazy long hours and got a lot of OT pay
If your food costs 50% more, your helthcare [sic] gets worse and more expensive every year, and you are uncertain about your career or your ability to make a better life for your child, have you considered becoming a middle manager at a social media company? You could make 3 times more and not have to do "real work!"
I hadn't thought of that. That's good advice! All the miners should just learn to code!
Hi: I was born in the hills of West Virginia; I'm the son of a union electrician and the grandson of a union coal miner, and I don't know how to code. I *do* know that fossil fuel extraction is not the way of the future and that within the field of fossil fuels, coal is outclassed by oil and gas, which is why those do well and the coal mining industry is in slow-motion decline. This isn't 1953, and keep a dying industry on life support to honor the nobility of the ever-falling number of those virtuous people with their pickaxes (which is the iconic (although entirely obsolete) image people conjure when one says 'coal miner' is about like saying we should never learn to use an ATM for the sake of those poor unfortunate bank tellers.
I was referring to the proverbial miner, not a literal miner.
But as a former blue-collar worker that did learn to code and found quite a lot of status-reinforcing gatekeeping standing between me and a six-figure salary, I like to joke about the "just let the miners learn to code" bit.
You do realize that you're just making up a guy to get mad at, right? In the real world, nobody actually cares if you buy organic.
This 'guy I'm making up' is pretty much everyone I've met over the last 3 years. All middle managers at tech companies that think my humble little town is a great deal. Usually someone in the family was rich enough to send them to a top-tier school and then bankroll their move to a big city to 'make it'. But sure, if I'm resentful it's only because I didn't achieve they way they did.
But you're right. They don't judge me for not eating organic.. Their stay-at-home wives judge me for not sending organic, sugar-free lunches. Or they would if I could send my kid to their Montessori school.
Ok - so, has anyone, directly to your face, insulted you for not eating organic?
Stop being patronizing.
My point is that your comment is reflective of something I see all the time around here - using a hypothetical examples of liberal excess, particularly of the PMC variety, and using it as an excuse to bash Democrats. I am sure the people you describe do exist in some number, but they're not some numerically and economically dominant ruling class controlling and lording over the proles.
Mostly agree, but who's pushing local organic food on you?
I, for one, do not approve of stealing from my local grocery store.
Whole Foods is for plebs. The real virtue is found at the tailgate market!
I think you've done a good job expressing a legitimate sentiment people have, but I also find it to be incredibly sad to see otherwise intelligent people so incapable of nuanced thought. Almost every one of the issues you identify has a small kernel of truth that you then explode outwards into absurd caricatures of reality. You've taken the statements of the strongest activist proponents of an issue (eg- "aggressive efforts to address climate change without giving AF about how it effects regular people") and then ignored the fact that the vast majority of people don't support those extreme positions. Do you really think Biden's policies on CC have been intended to lower emissions without regard to human impacts? Have the democrats in Congress really passed legislation that runs roughshod over human lives in the way that you argue? Or are we instead talking about trade offs and incredibly complicated issues where people can reasonably disagree about what is best for human beings?
The same level of analysis you're using could be flipped around to say things like "Republicans didn't care how many people died of Covid if it meant that they'd get a single additional dollar of campaign contributions" or any number of wildly over-exaggerated attacks on the right. Criticizing some of the things you raise is a good and wise endeavor, but that's different than saying that everyone supports wholeheartedly the things that you're talking about. Virtually everything you're saying is practically parroted off of Fox News and Talk Radio rantings that are almost entirely divorced from nuanced reality.
I was largely agreeing with the OP while cringing at the way it was communicated.
But whenever I try to imagine how I could convey the same points, but better, I run into a wall.
It is legitimately hard, and as another social conservative it truly seems like we are trapped in a web where every single issue is subtly (or not-so-subtly) biased against us...but it takes a whole lot of words and effort to clearly define how it is for any given issue.
Edit:
And when I think about this too much, it is really difficult not to continually find myself back at a kind of accelerationist 'why not just burn it all down' stance.
I have 4 young kids, and the thought of them growing up in our current society (especially where it seems to be heading) is legitimately terrifying. Maybe it is better to roll the dice than knowingly continue down the current path.
I'm not going to agree with the substantive point no matter what, but "the people who work real jobs, have real families, the actual grown ups in society" ticked me off (especially given the blatant hypocrisy re feeling alienated). Online social conservatives adopting the restrained messaging that Matt is always telling libs to use would go a long way!
On the one hand, the "the people who work real jobs, have real families, the actual grown ups in society" is deeply arrogant and selfish - exactly the same sort of hubris the poser accuses their enemies of.
On the other hand, it's the most warmed-over, trite drivel that has been trotted out again and again by the right at every opportunity, so it's pretty yawn-inducing.
Oh, I agree. But we aren't a cohesive group anymore (or are less cohesive than previously) and can't enforce any kind of message discipline.
The Trumpists aren't going to be restrained, and the conservatives that want them to be restrained largely can't communicate effectively with them anymore.
“And when I think about this too much, it is really difficult not to continually find myself back at a kind of accelerationist 'why not just burn it all down' stance.”
You have to understand that from where I sit, that is a legitimately terrifying sentiment.
I am not an accelerationist, FWIW. But I feel the pull. Constantly.
Mostly I'm just in a 'the system isn't stable/has been undermined and will collapse on its own, so just prepare to weather the inevitable storm' stance.
I guess that's better...?
I'm not sure I understand this narcissism of the present, though. What makes the current (I presume American) system any more prone to catastrophic collapse than at any other point in history?
I'm socially conservative (albeit of the rare atheist variety), so you're not going to like or agree with my answer, but...
A lot of the prosperity of the US is based upon our position as global hegemon, and due to a combination of cultural issues, demographic issues, mass migration, and free trade/undermining of our national industrial base...I don't think we'll be able to maintain that position in the face of China and other global rivals.
I don't see our ever-more-cosmopolitan and divided populace as being willing to endure the kind of collective sacrifice that will eventually be required.
And when that becomes apparent, our decline will be rapid and pretty catastrophic.
Social conservatives thought the same thing about "liberal" (for the tme) views even a reactionary like you have in 2023.
It's never going to be 1963. Hell's it never going back to 1993. That's how time works.
That's nice, Jesse. Keep beating on that straw.
I get that feeling, and my only response would be that it's a natural human tendency. The thing I always find fascinating is that if I switch back and forth between leftist media/sources and rightist media/sources, the fundamental complaints are always the same. People on the left think that they're trapped in a web where every single issue is subtly or not so subtly biased against them as well. And that's because (I would argue) that it's very easy to rush to extreme emotional responses, especially nowadays in our social media environments and walled-garden information systems.
The truth (IMHO) is somewhere in the middle. Virtually everyone is trying to make things better in the best way they know how, but the loudest and most polarizing voices get the most attention. It's why I find "secret congress" so instructive. When people don't have to play the public games and appeal to those loudest voices, they get serious shit done that reflects bipartisan compromise. That's how most people are. So when you're imagining the forces aligned against you, it helps (at least for me) to remember that things aren't as bad as my instincts make them out to be.
I don't know. I'm a former lefty. I used to say things like "reality has a liberal bias." And I believed it.
And then a few things in my life changed and radically altered my perspective. I now feel like the discourse of our society is defined by elites that believe that "reality has a liberal bias."
I'm out of step with both the left and right, and I feel like it's almost impossible to communicate with either. When I do, I get attacked. You get attacked enough, and you end up pushed into these extreme views. It's regrettable.
Precisely. The fact is that our views are warped by lots of things, and its helpful to remind ourselves that things aren't as bad as our emotions would tell us.
What are the extreme views that you are being pushed into due to being attacked from both sides?
Hah, that’s a real “how often do you beat your wife” sort of set up if I’ve ever seen one. Of what use would it be to go down that rabbit hole?
I hold a lot of cross-cutting beliefs weakly. What I find happening now is that I’ll mention something that seems kind of normal to me and the person I am talking to will hear a dog whistle and start unloading all kinds of wild stuff. Or I’ll ask some forum a normal but orthodoxy-challenging question and get brigaded.
>From the "let them eat cake" attitude towards inflation, to the transgender debacle, to COVID everything, to declines in our schools, to the awful state of movies and fiction publishing, to aggressive efforts to address climate change without giving AF about how it effects regular people, to the dishonesty in our media ... people are done.<
This got twenty likes? Crime is down under Biden. Covid deaths are down 99%. We've enjoyed one of the strongest job markets since WW2. The inflation spike was unpleasant but did little or nothing to real wages (they may even be up a tad, depending on your source), and in any event is over. We've had among the strongest recoveries in the world since the Covid downturn. Manufacturing seems to be making a comeback. The president has steadfastly stood behind Israel (nice to terrorists? really? REALLY?). We've finally got a government that's trying to do something about run away drug costs.
I mean, nothing's ever perfect. The mortgage spike is uncomfortable. But man, your utterly inaccurate tail of woe has...very little to do with reality.
By the way, a good way to make institutions genuinely "unsalvageable" is to hand them over to an actual dictator.
“The president has steadfastly stood behind Israel (nice to terrorists? really? REALLY?)”
One of Biden’s first official acts upon taking office was to revoke the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. What, exactly, was the point of that?
Wasn't that designation put into place the day before the inauguration? And wasn't it removed to allow for humanitarian aid to get to Yemen?
Aren’t they terrorists?
Only in the sense that people who commit politically motivated violence the US government doesn't approve of tend to get called "terrorists." They control a substantial of the country, including the former national capital, Sana'a.
They apparently tried to attack a couple commercial ships with drones yesterday. I don't think they were gaming the markets.
I am not an expert in the classification system, soooo...maybe? Probably? But I think you may have been missing the point of my comment.
Perhaps. Perhaps you missed the point of my comment.
I think there is a substantial grain of truth underneath what I see as some hyperbole in your comment. - I think there are a nontrivial number of people who agree with the gist and direction of your comment.
And on some of the items, I do agree as well.
But a lot of what you list are societal-level problems that the office of the President cannot solve. And these are problems that Donald Trump has no desire to address. Trump is not a reformer. Trump will only make all those problems worse as he tries to destroy our institutions for his own narcissistic and egocentric reasons.
I’m pretty sure that if I put “write me an anti-woke, anti-elite rant full of right-wing clichés” into ChatGPT, this is roughly what I’d get.
So, in a second read I have a bit more sympathy for this. I think that if it were framed not as "global ruling class" but rather as "broad failure of elites" many here would strongly agree. My main problem is that it gives right-wing elites a pass for no good reason. Left elites have many problems, but right elites suffer from same to much greater degree. Overall I think we can characterize it with fundamental lack of seriousness, willingness to disregard norms, narcissism and at times corruption/graft. On all these points I think the right is worse which of course does not excuse the massive failures on the left which you point to. The solution however cannot be giving power to the side totally overtaken by this problem (GOP headed by Trump) at the expense of the side currently in "civil war" between the sane and basically fine (Biden, moderate dems) and the crazy/bad/narcissistic/nihilistic (the protesting masked staffers you mention, some "progressive" legislatures etc). In short, the Dem side still has at least some sane people, including the one at the very top, by sharp contrast to GOP so voting GOP makes no sense.
P.S.
A side note on the masked staffers. I think we can diagnose the problem there more precisely. These people are willing to totally disregard established norms in an unprecedented manner: while resignation in protest of admin policy is an old, admirable norm, these staffers instead "protest" in hiding, signalling (and creating) admin dysfunction while cowardly refusing to take any personal responsibility whatsoever. Worse still, when you listen to their reasoning they say things like "Israel bombards refugee camps in Gaza" a complaint that reveals total ignorance of the most elementary facts. In other words, they are willing to fundamentally break basic norms about an issue of which they are astoundingly ignorant. This reveals a lack of seriousness with regards to their job and their conduct on multiple levels. That these people are White House staffers is indeed a serious crisis suggesting very deep and broad elite failure. The key thing is however that it is their ignorance and conduct which is the really worrisome problem, not just their specific position but the ignorant way they got to it and the destructive narcissistic steps they take in its name.
I feel like if Dems moderate and command huge majorities again it will :1. keep crazy gop out of power which is a good stop gap measure 2. eventually force gop back to sanity when they tire of losing.
Thank you for making me realize that today's post was not subscribers only.
People have to subscribe to comment, though.
They can do so for free tho, correct?
No. I've tested this before. Everyone commenting has paid.
Right, I think you've even told me this before. So what is it about free posts that brings people out of the woodwork? Do people read the article and then decide to pay $8 to comment? If so, Elon must be jealous.
Still a sick burn though!
True, but I think it also goes in both directions. I consider myself a left leaning "normal person" and it's not hard for me to think that Anonymama has contempt for people like me.
It's important for Ds to tailor their messaging to win the votes of people who think we don't have "real families", but I don't have to like it!
Exactly
The "contempt for middle America" nonsense is a straight-up Fox News talking point. Many of us in, or identifying with, Blue America, are products of Red America, where we have families we love and communities we once were members of. We may well feel sad that polarization is super-charged and even (quietly) glad that we don't live there anymore, but the idea that mainstream-D types use all their headspace hating on the heartland is just a lie promulgated by the right-wing gutter press and its social-media accomplices.
>. Which means actually focusing on things that — unlike the junk fee crackdown
Sure, but, if I may...
'Resort fees' suck and I hate them. And I hate them irrationally more than just the extra dollars they cost.
I don't think it's irrational to hate them more than the nominal dollars they cost. If they didn't reflect a combination of dishonest dealing on the part of those who promulgate them, lack of state capacity inasmuch as said promulgators are in neither the stocks nor prison, and wasted cognitive load determining their existence, they wouldn't even exist because they would be indistinguishable from the headline price -- which, to be clear, they are in all but name as per-diem costs that have no distinguishing character from the room rate.
They exist because they're a deceptive form of wealth extraction and *at their most innocuous* they waste cognitive resources and time. They're 100% a negative-sum rather than merely transfer payments and thus it's rational to despise them beyond their nominal costs.
Worst of all they apply even when you book on points!
Policies that appeal to irrational voters might be just what's needed now.
Yep. The same people who vote on hair style.
Voting on hair style is not irrational. If great hair gives me more pleasure than Jones Act repeal, that makes me normal.
Normal != rational.
This effect obviously helped James Traficant.
Or on the inflation rate!
But they don't vote on the inflation rate. That's the tough part. The vote on the non-return of 2019's nominal prices!
It's so funny how in my usual early morning news browsing, I stumbled upon this article, thought about Matt's commentary on the subject before, and now it's up for discussion here again. Rage on!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/12/01/resort-fees-hotels-deposits/
I like that Airbnb now lets you just see the total amount you’ll pay for the stay when searching on the map. I don’t like that the default is still the per-night display that leaves off some of the fees.
"Jimmy Carter needs to make deregulatory supply side moves to help boost supply and bring down prices. He should deregulate the airline industry; a board setting prices has only had the effect of making air travel too expensive. Deregulation will help make air travel less expensive for regular people. Also, AT&T is a monopoly that prices gouge regular Americans. Deregulating telecommunications will reduce the cost of phone calls and call me crazy, may be just what is needed to help this nascent computer industry I hear about in California. Here there is a bunch of interesting stuff happening in garages out there and this is just the sort of measure to help a nascent industry to thrive. And also, who the heck likes watered down beer? Wouldn't it be nice to have some better options out there?"
All of above deregulatory policies was absolutely the correct decision undertaken by Jimmy Carter, had tremendous mostly positive long-term impact on the economy, along with appointing Paul Volker means that Jimmy Carter is the best friend conservative economists have had since WWII....and it meant square root of fuck all to his re-election in 1980.
Repealing the Jones Act is one of those no-brainers, it's amazing to me the constituency for this policy still has enough clout in Congress policies that should have happened years ago. And if there is one thing that likely unites all the commentators on this site, it's being supportive of land use reform. But these are all medium to long term policy changes. Election is one year out. The impact of any of the reforms Matt describes is not going to be felt for years and certainly not in time for the election. I think you're giving short shrift to Biden's "Junk fee" gambit. As you say, it's right on the merits. But it's also one of those things that regular people notice and find extraordinarily annoying and unfair. I know I do. It seems like just the sort of thing to get attention of "swing" voters.
Reality is, I've said this for and will repeat now; it's really unsatisfying to know that the future of American democracy is in the hands of the Fed. Given a divided Congress, it's really unlikely we'll see any policies passed that will make inflation worse. We may see some budget deficit measures; in principle I agree with your stance*. But reality is even a modest deficit reduction package isn't having an impact in 2023. We don't want to believe that the Fed has this much power, but reality is that Jerome Powell is probably the third post powerful human on earth. For exactly this scenario. Good news is that I think there are very good signs that CPI and PCE will continue to decline and at the very least we aren't going to see more rate hikes before the election. I can tell you that over the next year shelter inflation is going to be quite muted and this time next year likely deflationary and shelter is hugely impactful on CPI numbers.
* Though devil is in the details. I suspect more likely is Freedom Caucus and Mike Johnson are going to insist on absolutely draconian cuts to social security, Medicare and Medicaid secure in the knowledge it has no chance of passing all so they can preen for Fox and OAN
If incumbents are at a structural, medium-term disadvantage, Dems should run new candidates in key races.
Problem is incumbent parties more than incumbent politicians; New Zealand Labour swapped PMs before the election and it was still clips.
UK Tories swapped leader 2-4 times depending on how you count and are as far behind as ever
Based on my research for the last couple years several of the incumbent parties that lost had term-limited incumbents, so the new candidate lost, not the old one (altho idk if that means anything)
At a minimum, if incumbent parties are at a structural disadvantage, Dems should ditch any illusion they should “play it safe.” Swimming against a current that’s probably stronger than you is never safe!
Furthermore, if incumbent parties are unpopular, then candidates less associated with the party brand would probably perform better.
Finally, I think we both agree that Biden has very little upside. The economy is unlikely to improve materially. Victory in Ukraine won’t happen this Congress. Biden’s health is excellent for his age, if he starts acting like a normal 82 year old or even a normal 80 year old, he’s toast. Basically, Biden needs Trump to survive long enough to be the nominee or else he’s in deep trouble.
The ideas raised by Matt (Jones Act etc) won't bear low inflation fruit by next November even if they could be legislated or exec ordered, right? So, although supply side deregulation totally ought to be pursued by Democrats (and Republicans) because doing so is objectively in the national interest, in terms of the 2024 election, the impact of substantive reforms will be limited. For Biden and the Democrats, it really is all about hoping the modest inflation we're experiencing will finally be acknowledged and appreciated by voters (and the latter will drop their fixation on 2019's prices). Junk fees are a good place to start. Keep pushing on drug prices, too. I'd add tip creep to the list if it were up to me. There have to be other avenues the Biden people could focus on, too (monopolies?).
Deficit reduction to bring down interest rates, preferably via taxes on the rich. Not going to pass the GOP house, obviously. But outside chance there's a palatable deal there.
Per my understanding, significant swaths of Trump's tax cuts sunset, so simply retaining the veto pen (if nothing else) will go some way toward reducing red ink.
You could take Matt's points, which were sort of phrased as advice to Biden, and instead apply them to voters. If you, as a voter, think the economy is shit, this is what your policy preferences should be. If you, as a voter, think the economy is booming... this is ALSO what your policy preferences should be.
Now go and vote for the candidate that proposes policies that match those preferences. Which should be the Dems (if they choose to pursue these policies, which they should, because of this very argument) given that currently, the Rs don't really seem to be putting forth, well...any... policies.
As to the fact that they won't help immediately, that's never a reason not to do them. As Roosevelt said, "It will never be earlier. Tomorrow will always be later than today." (Good advice around dieting and exercise, too, by the way)
“Pure vibeologists cannot, I think, really explain why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are higher than his peers in Canada, France, the UK, Japan, and Germany.”
I’m not a pure vibeologist but this seems pretty easily explainable by the fact that leader approval in a two-party system should logically be higher than leader approval in a multi-party system.
I’ll take Canada as an example. In the last election Trudeau’s Liberals got 33% of the vote and his approval rating was 38%. But because of the way votes split among up to 6 semi-major parties contesting each seat, he won 47% of the seats.
Canada hasn’t had an election where the winning party, even in a majority, got more than 42% of the vote since 1988 (and then there were only 3 parties). So of course there are fewer people who are going to reflexively say they approve of the current prime minister, they had fewer explicit supporters to begin with.
Except that approval ratings are net of both parties. So in a two party system, a huge number of voters are inclined to disapprove of you regardless of facts on the ground.
Where as in a 3+ party system, there are many voters who, absent a specific reason to dislike a leader in another party, don't much care.
So for example in Germany if you belong to the FDP, you are probably pretty ambivalent about the leaders of other parties, because the FDP is like 10% of parliament (last I lived there anyway). It would just partner with whatever party it needed to in order to be part of the ruling coalition. Unless, of course, you feel strongly that (X) is doing something terrible that is leading the country to shit.
Whereas at any given point in the USA, 40% of the country pretty much automatically disapproves of the incumbent, and all that really matters here is how swing voters move on the pendulum.
I really don’t think it works that way. I just looked up Macron’s numbers, they are at 29% now and were at 40% when he was re-elected with 58% of the run-off vote (after getting 29% of the vote in the first round). So it’s consistent with my initial argument - people generally don’t say they approve of leaders they didn’t vote for. I’ll grant your point that they may not express disapproval just because they didn’t vote for someone, but they tend not to express affirmative approval.
you are probably right it is a bit of both. Parties only express affirmative approval for "their" person
But I think in multi-party systems express disapproval is more rare because, for instance if you are center right you may be ambivalent with the right wing and the center left, but only really disapprove of the far left.
Whereas in our system, the partisans just always approve of their side and disapprove of the other side, which all nets out to mostly zero, and then swing voters tend to run anti-incumbent as a rule
Your argument is basically that currently full employment outweighs a little excess inflation when assessing the strength of the economy. I think this is basically correct for most people, but crucially, it’s not disproportionately not correct for people who have the most impact on the “vibes”.
It looks like white collar workers - especially journalists and tech workers - are still worse off than they were in 2020. Part of this is they’d rather structurally have low inflation than low unemployment, because they’re more exposed to interest rates and the cost of goods than the risk of being unemployed. Part of this is the job market still “feels bad” even with few unemployed people because there is now just a reasonable number of openings per job seeker rather than an absurd number of openings per job seeker in tech. Add on to this the anxiety from AI, and you’ve got a stew for a lot of anxiety for people who think up things rather than physically make or move them.
This probably contributes to the global trend you laid out, because it seems to be happening worldwide, albeit it probably is stronger in America.
One way for Biden to address this would be to make some noise about protecting workers from AI. He did an executive order on AI safetyism, so it’s not THAT crazy. There’s lots of low hanging fruit for stuff he could talk about on the policy front, from copyright law to required disclosure for commercial AI produced content.
I probably wouldn’t like many of the policy proposals he’d make, and I don’t personally think this issue is that important, but the people responsible for the vibes do, so it might be worth trying to pander to them.
My half baked hypothesis is that government policy emphasizing full employment and stimulus has created a misallocation of labor such that we have more nominal economic activity than we have actual productive growth that improves people's lives. People have cash because government has propped up surplus production of like, fast food and blogs and home decor and things*, while the production of housing and energy and groceries are still constrained by real macroeconomic conditions and regulatory burden. So people have money to spend because they're "employed" but there aren't actually enough people working to make the important stuff, so that stuff just gets more expensive and more out of reach and people are pissed about it.
*Maybe the other way around, government propped up bloggers by printing cash to give to people.
To the extent that this has any merit, which is near-zero insofar as I can tell,* ** you've reversed causality without really realizing it, except a brief flash here: “production of housing and energy and groceries are still constrained by real macroeconomic conditions and regulatory burden.”
We’ve made it hard to do many physical things more complex than manufacture cars, serve food, or cut hair, which has provoked an generations-long overinvestment in financial services and legal compliance.
So it’s hard to drive productivity fast enough to keep up with white-collar bloat.
Still, the actual observable merit of this thesis is close to nothing:
*Historically productivity-driving innovations occur fastest in societies with expensive labor that’s visibly becoming more expensive, as in the UK from 1700 or the US 1815-1970.
**Your examples of low value-added sectors which you posit have too much access to labor… are precisely the ones in which prices are increasing most rapidly as they struggle to keep workers who now have the opportunity to climb the ladder into more skilled work.
I don't really disagree with you, my examples are definitely speculative and not rigorous and there's certainly a broader organic economic trend towards less tangible modes of productivity that isn't distortion at all. However, is it not plausible that dumping massive amounts of cash into an economy where the labor costs are massively distorted by a pandemic would result in a bunch of malinvestment? It seems obvious to me that, "Stuff that was cost effective to keep making during COVID." isn't necessarily what you would want to bias many hundred of billions of dollars of government spending towards if your concern in future consumer sentiment.
It seems like you're just adding a pointless epicycle with minimal explanatory power to everything, one that contradicts a lot of evidence to boot.
I'm sure that dumping cash into the economy over COVID, and COVID itself, resulted in distortions. In concert, they *must* have. But mostly through the mechanism of drastically-but-temporarily shifting consumer preferences.
If you were correct to diagnose home decor and fast food as benefiting from overinvestment, we'd now have an oversupply and thus lower prices for fast food, home decor, etc. when in reality they (furnishings and white goods in particular) experienced the most rapid price increases through the pandemic. This whole bout of chaos has been driven by demand shifts which have required significant time to iron out.
Sure, had the government simply allowed the economy to collapse due to demand deficit in 2020 we wouldn't be dealing with any of this. But that'd be because unemployment would still be in the teens at least and no one would be buying much of anything. Helicopter money is definitely the lesser of two evils there.
Meanwhile, multi-family housing starts (and finishes, but that metric is biased due to pandemic-era delays) are at record highs, single-family construction is still ticking along, and construction materials are normalizing in price despite that.
So what the actual steelman here is, I think, is to ignore the pandemic entirely and say, "When the economy is near full employment, regulations which prevent us from efficiently filling a sizable fraction of people's physical wants and needs are much more noticeably crippling." Full stop.
Had we gotten here without the pandemic, inflation would have been lower the last two years, but housing would still be difficult to build and we'd still have a bunch of government props to demand for disability advocates, zoning lawyers, biosciences financial analysts, and environmental review firms as opposed to ramp builders or elevator installers, property developers, research scientists, and civil engineers.
Running the economy pretty hot *so* virtually everyone has money in their pocket... isn't the problem. Constraining our ability to meet consumer preferences *when* virtually everyone has money in their pocket is the problem.
We have underbuilt housing ever since the crash in 2007, and the chickens started coming home to roost about ten years later, when Gen Z started becoming of an age to fly the nest, so there was huge demand (from a lot of people, not just young people) and limited supply.
Having to pay so much for housing *is* frustrating, especially if you’re renting a shoebox from a slumlord because that is the only option out there. Trouble is, the housing crisis has been about a decade in the making and it will take considerable time to fix. It’s hard to get the idea of “this can be solved, but not immediately” to the “I want it NAAAOOOWWW! Or else!.” voting public.
>> the media, which likes to be non-partisan but is also full of very left-wing people.
Does it though ? Is there in fact a big (non niche) market for non-partisan media these days? If so we are seeing a massive market failure. A huge potential being wasted and a pile of money left on the table due to mainstream media simply failing to hire the right people (ie to intentionally diversify the politics of their reporters). But I’m not sure if this is in fact the case, rather than polarization under which media is in fact largely aligned to market incentives- huge market for unabashed right wing media and huge market for abashed left wing media whose audience wants it to be both left biased and to pretend it’s neutral (“reality is left wing”).
It seems very difficult to intentionally diversify the politics of your reporters when at least 70% of new college graduates hold liberal views (and those who pursue journalism probably even more so).
It’s a pipeline problem, I’m not sure what a media outlet is supposed to do about that.
How is that difficult? 30% is plenty! Let me be very blunt. If via AA you manage to find black reporters, far fewer than 30% of the population let alone the highly educated population (due to the problem of under representation) then you could easily find conservative and moderate reporters, and by contrast to racial aa, considering ideology is probably not even illegal !
The pipeline thing is bs. They don’t have a balanced composition because they don’t *want* one. The only question is whether that’s because they don’t understand what’s good for them or not (ie the question regarding the nature of the market I raised above).
P.S.
Journalism didn’t even used to require a college degree. If you really want to be creative, try to create out of high school recruitment programs. But honestly you can be totally lazy. Even if you recruit solely from the ivies (which, to be clear, you shouldn’t !) you probably can get more conservatives and moderates than you do now if you tried! A fortiori times one thousand of you don’t limit yourself to a handful of schools !
Bingo. MY has reported on things like judicial appointments and how the fact that overwhelming numbers of law school graduates are liberal just means that conservative lawyers from top schools have dramatically better chances of getting prestigious appointments. But it's not like people turn around and say "republicans just can't appoint conservative judges to circuit courts or SCOTUS because only 30% of law school grads are republican/conservative." The NYTimes, WaPo, etc. etc. etc., could easily have a nearly perfect bipartisan balance on their staffs if they wanted to. They just don't want to.
Getting a bipartisan balance in media outlets is likely also complicated by the goal of increasing racial/ethnic diversity. Media outlets were already under substantial pressure to hire more non-white/female/LGBTQ employees long before 2020. Because of the demographics of ideological identification, meeting those demands basically guarantees that new hires will be further to the "left" of the median American than even the median college graduate would be.
A valid point, and it speaks further to how this is a choice. Media outlets aren't lacking in ideologically diverse viewpoints because it would be hard to identify and hire people with more conservative views- they just value other things far more than ideological diversity is all.
I just don't see any justification for race/sex based diversity goals. Do you?
Ok I didn’t realize you’d be ok with 30% - but then my question to you is, assuming that in fact 30% of journalism grads / journalism job seekers are in fact conservative (again this seems high), where do you think they are working? Do you think they are blackballed by NYT / WaPo and are forced to toil away for the Tulsa World or something?
Ultimately you’re going to run into the same problem Matt has noted about AA - to get its numbers up, Harvard can pull in some of the black students who by “merit” would have gone to (say) UVa; and UVa can pull in some of the black students who by “merit” would have gone to (say) James Madison, but at a certain point you’re left with whiter-than-average student bodies at mid-tier schools if blacks are 13% of the population but only 10% of those who attend college - and there’s nothing those schools can really do about it.
If there aren’t enough conservatives entering journalism, even if NYT and some other big outlets made an effort to have decent representation, there will still be plenty of outlets that don’t have enough.
I believe that in todays journalism there are far more job seekers than decent jobs. Make sure that those that get hired by say NYT are ideologically diverse (aim to get the “progressive” majority there down closer to the 8% or so of the population they actually are). That shouldn’t be a problem if NYT cared to do it. In fact they do so, to an extent , with their opinion columnists. They should just expand that to be across the board. If they don’t it’s probably because they simply don’t mind their news section being biased. Possibly they prefer it.
That’s fine and fair - basically I’m hearing that you’re not bothered by potential progressive bias at local news outlets, only national ones. I personally think that’s misguided - the combined audience for local news is much larger than for national news - but I understand the sentiment.
Local news is dying or dead. That’s not good but that’s a fact so I see no reason to worry about the food offerings on the titanic. You’re taking the college analogy too far.
> both left biased and to pretend it’s neutral
I think the article agrees with you. If you criticize Dems for not being far left enough, you get to say “we criticize both parties equally (for not being left enough).” It’s non-partisan/neutral and left leaning.
My vibes explanation: it's all about the home prices. Well, not all, but a lot. Home prices are really, really high, even outside the big expensive cities. High list prices are advantageous for wealthier and institutional buyers, who can offer a larger down payment and outbid poorer ones more easily. Interest rates are up, too. It's not really possible, in most of the country, to afford to buy a home on the median income without major family help. That makes people feel trapped, like they've worked hard and there's no more "up" for them, even if they're only in their thirties. Insisting to people in that situation that this is a great economy, actually, is political malpractice.
And I think housing has a deeply emotional component to it - just about everybody has been raised with the idea that owning your own home is the American Dream, a definitive marker of success at life. If that's out of reach for most people, it feels like a fundamental failure of our society.
And the housing situation has been a long time in the making (since the 2007 meltdown, builders virtually stopped building new housing) and will be a long time in the solving even if Governors and city councils rush things through as far as possible. It blows chunks, and the problem is that people want this solved NOW NOW NOW, or else (I’m voting Trump!), and 1) it just plain cannot be solved quickly*, 2) voting for Trump would fix this how, exactly? It’s a knee-jerk throw the bums out reaction.
*unless we get another COVID-style epidemic that kills off homeowners en masse, and that’s not something any non-sociopath would wish for.
really, more than heading off the threat of sandwich monopolies, the FTC really could do a lot of good by going after car dealerships. It'd be good for the economy and strike at the GOP fundraising base. It's win/win, really.
But yes, also the energy reform thing.