Largely agree with this BUT comparing Denmark and Finland to Massachusetts is a bit of an overreach. Yes, they have extensive social programs and they’re part of the EU but they largely didn’t build their social welfare systems while they were part of the EU. Those systems were built prior to participation in the Eurozone. It remains to be seen whether or for how long Scandinavian social welfare systems will weather open. EU borders. Indeed, these systems are already under tremendous budgetary and political pressure as a result of increased immigration.
To take one example of this problem- in NY, we have superior Medicaid services for the elderly compared to many other states. In fact, some elderly people move back to NY from FL because of that. It would be great for NY to boast about these extensive services. But to what end? Elderly people in need of care would be drawn to the city to take advantage of those services- and who would blame them?
Some things certainly can be improved, especially construction costs. And I have to give a shout out to NYC for universal pre-k. DeBlasio didn’t do much, but I have to give him credit for that.
I feel like the big blue places like CA, NY, MA, DC get all the hype (esp. from journalists who live there), but others are making progress. The data on where Californians are moving show a picture of blue (and purple) cities that are performing well.
Take Seattle:
- Has a $15 Minimum wage (Matt will point out this is popular policy!) which is constantly used by economists to show how more min wage /= bad economy
- Has relatively low transit costs and transit infrastructure is expanding
- Has growing transit ridership (like the only American city to have this!)
- Relatively lax about development, hence huge population growth (one billion Seattleites...loading)
- Rent is increasing, but appears to be flatlining
- Washington state will be the only with a **public option** next year!!!
- Public education isn't awful (~10-15 states have a public university ranked higher than UW-Seattle), but no match for California
- Legal weed (Matt will tell you this is also popular!)
- Carbon emissions flat (besides huge pop. growth). Washington state will experience a ~10% reduction in emissions by 2025 when they close their only coal plant (which they negotiated to do in 2011). WA is already ~10th best in carbon emissions per capita
I was a veteran of your old thinkprogress page. With the exception of 1-2 people it was actually a great forum for discussions off your posts. Glad to see it back.
The public infrastructure cost question is a fascinating and deep one. I live in Somerville MA, where a mostly above-ground subway extension project is in year 5, and I swear I've seen the same holes be dug up and filled in a dozen times. At then end of the day, it seems like our system is one where the total cost of an infrastructure project is the absolute maximum that the public could bear paying for it before there would be outright revolt. I'm not actually that surprised by that -- but why, and how, are other countries doing better? Do they just have better cultures of managerial effectiveness and interpersonal trust, so people don't feel the need to delay and grift? Is there some actual policy intervention that would improve things here, like segmenting a project by regional section and offering bonuses or prizes to meeting completion dates and quality benchmarks?
You keep comparing states in the USA to countries in the Eurozone without even mentioning the slight difference of no Federal taxes + no Federal benefits. It's a very different situation.
But mainly the problem here is what's missing: the primary planet-level emergency facing humans for the rest of this century and beyond. The #1 reason we need to increase dense urban housing and transit in coastal California, for instance, is not because it's nice but because it will be habitable - and without air conditioning mostly for a while yet. Every decision and plan and policy we make for the forseeable future has to look at climate change as a factor, out loud. Not everything that would be popular government action is a good idea when you've set your planet on fire.
"But while taxes really are higher in blue America, it’s not like .... SUNY is the most impressive public university system."
Actually, NY State does have one of the best systems of public higher education in the country. (California and Georgia also have excellent systems top to bottom.) In terms of contributing to social mobility, CUNY has five of the the top ten colleges in the country. Stony Brook is also in the top ten. So a majority of the best colleges come from NY State. CUNY and SUNY are also much more affordable than other state schools and are routinely ranked as offering the best education for the dollar.
While UNC, UT Austin, U of M, UVa are all excellent research universities, they let hardly any of their own residents in. Meanwhile, Stony Brook, Buffalo, Binghamton are all top 100 schools. Cornell has four public state colleges as well. In terms of how they serve the residents of NY, it's hard to beat CUNY and SUNY.
If you think this a solid take wait until you hear my political solution to make One Billion Americans feasible. Streamline all House and Senate Committees to mirror Cabinet agencies, move all Cabinet agencies that do not touch on defense and diplomacy to cities on a feasible high speed rail track (https://i.insider.com/511262026bb3f78e28000006), triple the size of the House of Representatives, send the Reps to the cities where their Cabinet agency is to do all of their work in committee, remote voting for the full House for bills passed out of Committees and only Senators remain in DC and have the ability to sit on multiple committees.
Also included in tripling the size of the house would be multi member districts with rank choice voting to allow for true formations of additional parties.
One suggestion for blue states: invest in high quality and affordable state Universities. I moved to Florida last year and am thrilled to have a top 10 public university (UFL) and a solid backup option (FSU) for my kids. Plus the tuition is under $10K/year and can be less thanks to generous state scholarship programs (Bright Futures). Compared to the mess we left in Illinois, this is a huge benefit to families in FL. Too bad it was Jeb's idea...
“Frank Zeidler’s ass sat in that seat” was a common refrain from my dad when I was growing up. Apparently he graced our family minivan with his presence when my dad offered him a ride home from some event once. He was still active in Milwaukee and I got to interact with him briefly while I was an undergrad just before he died.
This is where my heads been after about Nov 5th. We flipped the state legislature here in VA in 2017 and have made some inspired improvements in the lives of my fellow members of the Commonwealth. Medicare expansion, LGTBQ protections, fair(non gerrymandered) redistricting. Some culture stuff too like giving localities a process for removing confederate monuments. But we can do more. Need some common-sense gun reform (and I’m an avid shooter). Marijuana reform is now on the table.
Personally leaning in to some relatively small progressive causes like unionizing healthcare workers (wife is a nurse). No one is stopping us from making progress like that here in the Old Dominion.
I would love to see the Dems set up a "forward capital" in a battleground state. Wouldn't it be interesting if more of the party's intellectual energy and staff were focused in Milwaukee or Phoenix or El Paso? You could also try some of these ideas there. If we're talking about moving government agencies around, then why not the DNC?
The #1 scarcity on the west coast, and in the entire western half of the U.S., is water. There are insufficient water resources for the current population, and climate change is making that worse. The Sierra snowpack is trending smaller, and melting earlier in the dry season.
You cannot have more people where there isn't enough water. And taking it away from agriculture means not enough food, unless everyone goes vegan -- as animal agriculture is the biggest waste of water.
The upper Midwest and New England have the best water resources in the country. That is the logical place to build new housing. In California, and throughout the west, any new housing would have to be abandoned before the end of its otherwise useful life.
Lots of western agriculture irrigation is pretty low value. The largest user of irrigation in California is alfalfa for cattle. Arizona irrigates to grow cotton. Also, while not cheap, there are more intensive water solutions. Both Orange County and San Diego have large scale projects underway to recycle waste water for drinking water. A large desalinization plant opened a couple of years ago in San Diego County, and Northern California has plenty of water from natural sources. California has water to support a much larger population than it currently has.
I am so excited for this blog. Would you please consider using footnotes instead of hyperlinks? Hyperlinks distract me. They make me pause in my reading to think "should I click on this thing?" Plus, footnotes are more boring.
footnotes are way less convenient. hyperlinks are specifically useful *because* you can click them. there are chrome extensions available if you would like to disable hyperlinks and/or view them as plain text.
Carly: Thank you for pointing out the Chrome extension. I am going to look for it. I agree that hyperlinks are more convenient, which is why I don't like them. I like my reading to be slow and boring, not convenient.
I thought that this was a fantastic read and it's been very thought provoking scrolling through the comments, but most of this has been discussing states like, New York, Massachusetts, and California, where there have certainly been failures of Democratic governance, but they pale in comparison to the failures in my home state, Illinois. The path forward is a lot less clear, particularly since the budget constraints here are far more drastic, and the long term outlook is a lot worse. Obviously you can start on the right track by doing things require little to no additional spending, like liberalizing land-use regulations and accomplishing public projects efficiently, but it's hard to see even that happening given the state of the Democratic party in Illinois (at the state level at least).
Largely agree with this BUT comparing Denmark and Finland to Massachusetts is a bit of an overreach. Yes, they have extensive social programs and they’re part of the EU but they largely didn’t build their social welfare systems while they were part of the EU. Those systems were built prior to participation in the Eurozone. It remains to be seen whether or for how long Scandinavian social welfare systems will weather open. EU borders. Indeed, these systems are already under tremendous budgetary and political pressure as a result of increased immigration.
To take one example of this problem- in NY, we have superior Medicaid services for the elderly compared to many other states. In fact, some elderly people move back to NY from FL because of that. It would be great for NY to boast about these extensive services. But to what end? Elderly people in need of care would be drawn to the city to take advantage of those services- and who would blame them?
Some things certainly can be improved, especially construction costs. And I have to give a shout out to NYC for universal pre-k. DeBlasio didn’t do much, but I have to give him credit for that.
I feel like the big blue places like CA, NY, MA, DC get all the hype (esp. from journalists who live there), but others are making progress. The data on where Californians are moving show a picture of blue (and purple) cities that are performing well.
Take Seattle:
- Has a $15 Minimum wage (Matt will point out this is popular policy!) which is constantly used by economists to show how more min wage /= bad economy
- Has relatively low transit costs and transit infrastructure is expanding
- Has growing transit ridership (like the only American city to have this!)
- Relatively lax about development, hence huge population growth (one billion Seattleites...loading)
- Rent is increasing, but appears to be flatlining
- Washington state will be the only with a **public option** next year!!!
- Public education isn't awful (~10-15 states have a public university ranked higher than UW-Seattle), but no match for California
- Legal weed (Matt will tell you this is also popular!)
- Carbon emissions flat (besides huge pop. growth). Washington state will experience a ~10% reduction in emissions by 2025 when they close their only coal plant (which they negotiated to do in 2011). WA is already ~10th best in carbon emissions per capita
I was a veteran of your old thinkprogress page. With the exception of 1-2 people it was actually a great forum for discussions off your posts. Glad to see it back.
The public infrastructure cost question is a fascinating and deep one. I live in Somerville MA, where a mostly above-ground subway extension project is in year 5, and I swear I've seen the same holes be dug up and filled in a dozen times. At then end of the day, it seems like our system is one where the total cost of an infrastructure project is the absolute maximum that the public could bear paying for it before there would be outright revolt. I'm not actually that surprised by that -- but why, and how, are other countries doing better? Do they just have better cultures of managerial effectiveness and interpersonal trust, so people don't feel the need to delay and grift? Is there some actual policy intervention that would improve things here, like segmenting a project by regional section and offering bonuses or prizes to meeting completion dates and quality benchmarks?
You keep comparing states in the USA to countries in the Eurozone without even mentioning the slight difference of no Federal taxes + no Federal benefits. It's a very different situation.
But mainly the problem here is what's missing: the primary planet-level emergency facing humans for the rest of this century and beyond. The #1 reason we need to increase dense urban housing and transit in coastal California, for instance, is not because it's nice but because it will be habitable - and without air conditioning mostly for a while yet. Every decision and plan and policy we make for the forseeable future has to look at climate change as a factor, out loud. Not everything that would be popular government action is a good idea when you've set your planet on fire.
"But while taxes really are higher in blue America, it’s not like .... SUNY is the most impressive public university system."
Actually, NY State does have one of the best systems of public higher education in the country. (California and Georgia also have excellent systems top to bottom.) In terms of contributing to social mobility, CUNY has five of the the top ten colleges in the country. Stony Brook is also in the top ten. So a majority of the best colleges come from NY State. CUNY and SUNY are also much more affordable than other state schools and are routinely ranked as offering the best education for the dollar.
While UNC, UT Austin, U of M, UVa are all excellent research universities, they let hardly any of their own residents in. Meanwhile, Stony Brook, Buffalo, Binghamton are all top 100 schools. Cornell has four public state colleges as well. In terms of how they serve the residents of NY, it's hard to beat CUNY and SUNY.
Great column, we should really pay Governors and big city Mayors lower Fortune 500 CEO type wages.
If you think this a solid take wait until you hear my political solution to make One Billion Americans feasible. Streamline all House and Senate Committees to mirror Cabinet agencies, move all Cabinet agencies that do not touch on defense and diplomacy to cities on a feasible high speed rail track (https://i.insider.com/511262026bb3f78e28000006), triple the size of the House of Representatives, send the Reps to the cities where their Cabinet agency is to do all of their work in committee, remote voting for the full House for bills passed out of Committees and only Senators remain in DC and have the ability to sit on multiple committees.
Also included in tripling the size of the house would be multi member districts with rank choice voting to allow for true formations of additional parties.
One suggestion for blue states: invest in high quality and affordable state Universities. I moved to Florida last year and am thrilled to have a top 10 public university (UFL) and a solid backup option (FSU) for my kids. Plus the tuition is under $10K/year and can be less thanks to generous state scholarship programs (Bright Futures). Compared to the mess we left in Illinois, this is a huge benefit to families in FL. Too bad it was Jeb's idea...
“Frank Zeidler’s ass sat in that seat” was a common refrain from my dad when I was growing up. Apparently he graced our family minivan with his presence when my dad offered him a ride home from some event once. He was still active in Milwaukee and I got to interact with him briefly while I was an undergrad just before he died.
This is where my heads been after about Nov 5th. We flipped the state legislature here in VA in 2017 and have made some inspired improvements in the lives of my fellow members of the Commonwealth. Medicare expansion, LGTBQ protections, fair(non gerrymandered) redistricting. Some culture stuff too like giving localities a process for removing confederate monuments. But we can do more. Need some common-sense gun reform (and I’m an avid shooter). Marijuana reform is now on the table.
Personally leaning in to some relatively small progressive causes like unionizing healthcare workers (wife is a nurse). No one is stopping us from making progress like that here in the Old Dominion.
Just the kind of content I came here for, basing nimbyism, some transit geekery, feel good stories about Massachusetts!
Great post! Reminds me of T. R. Reid's healthcare book - outlining the need to prove Medicare and NHS locally before it became national.
I would love to see the Dems set up a "forward capital" in a battleground state. Wouldn't it be interesting if more of the party's intellectual energy and staff were focused in Milwaukee or Phoenix or El Paso? You could also try some of these ideas there. If we're talking about moving government agencies around, then why not the DNC?
"housing scarcity in coastal cities"
The #1 scarcity on the west coast, and in the entire western half of the U.S., is water. There are insufficient water resources for the current population, and climate change is making that worse. The Sierra snowpack is trending smaller, and melting earlier in the dry season.
You cannot have more people where there isn't enough water. And taking it away from agriculture means not enough food, unless everyone goes vegan -- as animal agriculture is the biggest waste of water.
The upper Midwest and New England have the best water resources in the country. That is the logical place to build new housing. In California, and throughout the west, any new housing would have to be abandoned before the end of its otherwise useful life.
Lots of western agriculture irrigation is pretty low value. The largest user of irrigation in California is alfalfa for cattle. Arizona irrigates to grow cotton. Also, while not cheap, there are more intensive water solutions. Both Orange County and San Diego have large scale projects underway to recycle waste water for drinking water. A large desalinization plant opened a couple of years ago in San Diego County, and Northern California has plenty of water from natural sources. California has water to support a much larger population than it currently has.
I am so excited for this blog. Would you please consider using footnotes instead of hyperlinks? Hyperlinks distract me. They make me pause in my reading to think "should I click on this thing?" Plus, footnotes are more boring.
footnotes are way less convenient. hyperlinks are specifically useful *because* you can click them. there are chrome extensions available if you would like to disable hyperlinks and/or view them as plain text.
Carly: Thank you for pointing out the Chrome extension. I am going to look for it. I agree that hyperlinks are more convenient, which is why I don't like them. I like my reading to be slow and boring, not convenient.
I thought that this was a fantastic read and it's been very thought provoking scrolling through the comments, but most of this has been discussing states like, New York, Massachusetts, and California, where there have certainly been failures of Democratic governance, but they pale in comparison to the failures in my home state, Illinois. The path forward is a lot less clear, particularly since the budget constraints here are far more drastic, and the long term outlook is a lot worse. Obviously you can start on the right track by doing things require little to no additional spending, like liberalizing land-use regulations and accomplishing public projects efficiently, but it's hard to see even that happening given the state of the Democratic party in Illinois (at the state level at least).