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JP McC's avatar

You are absolutely correct that the Cares Act (and, from my standpoint as a lawyer that advises employers, in particular the PPP) was an absolute success story. What gravels me on the left is the drumbeat of stories saying "I can't believe that Betsy DeVos's sister's company got PPP loan forgiveness!!" (made up example). Stop naming and shaming. Unless these companies committed actual fraud (an defamatory accusation that should not be thrown around lightly), they had their loan forgiven because they actually retained and paid their employees through the worst parts of the pandemic. Whether they work for an employer you like or hate, that is a very good thing, and I know personally of scores of employers that only stayed open and kept paying workers because of this help. When coupled with the expanded UI, it was a godsend that saved our economy. Good news.

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Jeff Rigsby's avatar

So if Matt is naturally dyspeptic but doesn't share the general progressive tendency to see the glass as half-empty, it must not be a question of personality types. In that case, where does the tendency come from?

As it happens I know one of the people who trashed Matt on Twitter for pointing out that the macroeconomy was in good shape after the CARES Act. In a previous life this person was a blogger and though very progressive, also quite empirically minded. After some personal trauma/drama they've now decided to immerse themselves in far-left activism and their political writing has been reduced to drive-by snark on social media. I wouldn't have said they were sunny before, but now their negativity is so intense that they've changed their position on gun control (because radicals need to arm themselves for the coming civil war).

What motivates people to change this way? I'm guessing that in this case it's a desire to conform to a new group of friends and social contacts who share the negative outlook... but I don't think this kind of negativity was always expected on the left. From what little I know about socialist and communist movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they produced optimism in their members: maybe because the movements were inspired by Marxism and Marxism promises that the workers will win in the end. I don't think the decline of Marxism has been generally bad for progressives, but it does seem possible that it's allowed the left's affect to become more gloomy.

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