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.
It wasn't just "the left" spreading these inane memes and citing examples of this or that "undeserving" entity getting in on the act. Plenty of people on right are soi-disant heroic libertarians who claim to believe that government subsidies are invariably a bad idea, and from them I learned of numerous OUTRAGEOUS! examples of corrupts progressive people and firms receiving handouts.
Tend to agree. It's easy to generate a headline that goes about like "{company people hate} got a loan for {big amount Y} and you won't believe what they did with the money {insert dumb T&E expense deep in dumb clickbait listicle}".
People had to implement this under the gun in a giant hurry under an administration that is prone to grift. Of course this was going to happen. Something something practicalities are messy.
I do think there was probably some waste in PPP. It's not just made-up examples. Large corporations did get hundreds of billions (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/CARES_Act_Sankey_Diagram.png) that I think they didn't need and probably could've done without. I think the key point is that this wrong doesn't unmake the right of the expanded UI or stimulus checks. Things can be both wrong and right about a bill, and if we focus on the wrong, we lose the chance to campaign on things that were just like the right
It wasn't just "the left" spreading these inane memes and citing examples of this or that "undeserving" entity getting in on the act. Plenty of people on right are soi-disant heroic libertarians who claim to believe that government subsidies are invariably a bad idea, and from them I learned of numerous OUTRAGEOUS! examples of corrupts progressive people and firms receiving handouts.
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.
i posted another comment about this but -- "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer is very good. despite many flaws in the book he describes this kind of psychology very astutely. he claims that mediocre artists and intellectuals, who are merely somewhat talented, are particularly prone to joining mass movements, when they are confronted by the fact that their creative efforts aren't that good.
failure and frustration in life drive people towards extreme, apocalyptic thinking -- social contacts just influence which millenarian ideology people sign up for. with a different background and friend group this person might have become a sedevacantist or militia guy instead.
as for why negativity vs. positivity -- I think that probably is just personality. Sort of a William James thing -- people who have religious awakenings, even within the same faith, can either be "sick souls" or "healthy minded" depending on their temperament.
That sounds right in the case I was thinking of. Kicked out of previous career due to anger management issues, switched to new career which they don't actually like, now much more focused on activism than on avoiding a second career wipeout, and consoled by the thought that it doesn't matter anyway because the apocalypse is coming.
So I’m basically sold on the idea that most humans have an innate negativity bias. If I understand it correctly, humans tend to need four “good” things to happen for it to balance out the effect of one “bad” thing.
But if humans have a negativity bias, how can we explain it when groups of people seem cheery?
Well, I think people need social institutions to weigh against their natural biases. I think people are highly social and that our social impulses will override some of our biases if we are put into the right group.
In short: I think we have too few social institutions which are focused on achieving good political and social ends with a smile on. I think that some faith-based organizations did this for us for a while, but the increasing secularization of the left has basically ended all of that.
As a happy atheist, I have never been more attracted to liberal denominations of Christianity. Unfortunately, those denominations are bleeding members while more rigid denominations of Christianity are actually increasing their membership....
I used to scoff at conservatives who accused progressives of Marxism but now I can see their point. I think Marxism is the end result of the nihilism, not the source of it per se, but you end up at “burn the whole thing to the ground” either way.
Hmm... I don't know if I see it that way. It seems to me that Marxism is optimistic because it guarantees that the good guys will win in the end (it's a secularized form of Christianity, in other words). I wouldn't call it a nihilistic doctrine at all. If today's progressives are nihilistic it might be because they don't have that kind of faith to support them.
Interesting perspective. I'm in the middle of "The Righteous Mind" and have been thinking a lot about motivated reasoning. The good/bad binary (and the idea that the thinker is always one of the good guys) is powerfully motivating... to the point that arming yourself or even instigating a civil war gets justified as "good."
I still scoff at them because Marxism gets thrown around as a slur in a not-particularly-careful or accurate way. But I think you're right - you can get from "the glass is half empty" to "the glass is mostly empty" to "throw it all out and start again", and "throw it all out and start again" is the pitch that conservatives are temperamentally the most allergic to.
If lefties hadn't spent eight years shitting all over everything Obama accomplished, surely it would have changed enough votes in 2016 to spare us Trump. That's how criminally irresponsible it is.
If the Obama Administration had pushed for a larger stimulus or cracked down harder on Wall Street, surely it could have changed enough votes in 2016 to spare us Trump. Some of the left's arguments do have merit.
I know someone who got laid off a while back and didn't file for unemployment. They thought it was shameful. I was like, "WTF? It's insurance. You paid the premiums and not you need to make a claim. Your theory would be like walking out and finding that a try had crushed your car and not making an insurance claim because you should have noticed that rotten limb." He was like, "Oh, I never thought about it that way."
I think universality and better marketing would go a long way toward achieving progressive goals. Keeping in mind I mean marketing that appeals to persuadable swing voters not dyed in the wool progressives.
Now I'm just imagining a world where more people correctly perceive of social benefits as insurance, but then don't use them because they assume there's a deductible...
This is framed as a feature of progressives, or the left. Is it really different than the right? You don't see the Tea Party celebrating 1/2 wins either, they go crazy making sure they get all or nothing.
Idealogues of any belief system measure policy against the ideal and find it wanting.
Not sure if I agree with this. Many stated goals of the Trump era -- build the wall, repeal Obamacare, end the deficit(?), etc. -- were clearly not accomplished and there doesn't seem to be a conservative backlash to Trump on his inability to deliver there. (Except for, like, Ann Coulter)
The right wing gives up on policy all the time - they just do it quietly. The left isn't as good at lying about their policy goals even when it'd work.
The right monetizes the glass being half empty - in "American Carnage" Tim Alberta details the deteriorating relationship between outside conservative groups that fundraise by telling their base that the house is on fire and the House Republican leadership under Baynor, which faced constant insurrection from their right flank.
I’m actually really glad to see both Dem politicians and Trump embrace the “money printer go brrr” mentality. The more of this sort of popular welfare state expansion we get, the more ridiculous the inevitable GOP pivot to austerity will look.
This is how someone would think if they actually believed, as Matt said in a previous post, that we need a bigger social safety net. Well played, Michael S.
I do not think the $2,000 mass checks can be called "welfare."
Instead, if enacted, they will make it more difficult to do targeted, thus substantive, welfare like expanding unemployment benefits, SNAP, and earned income payments.
The $1,200 checks previously didn't stop $300 UI this week. Papers from Dems saying unemployed people in a pandemic were getting overpaid cut the check from $600 to $300. Dems not supporting a larger safety net is, however, a real issue.
It probably depends on what we are borrowing for. I would think that investing in things that grow the economy is good. What bothers me (and probably other people) about complaining about the debt is it often seems like a way for well-off people to argue that we shouldn’t help people who are struggling. As long as we are putting money into things that keep the economy afloat or help it grow, it’s probably a worthwhile investment.
No, it's not a problem. Debt servicing as a % of GDP is pretty low. A $100,000 mortgage at 20% interest is a problem; a $500,000 mortgage at 1% interest is not a problem.
Well, debt incurred now with 30 or even 10 year T bills won't be affected. Newly incurred debt will pay higher interest rates. At that point we investigate cutting spending or raising taxes.
Ten years isn’t very far down the road and that’s what bothers me about this sort of blasé thinking. Ten years ago debt held by the public was under 40% of GDP. Today it’s over 100%.
Matt doesn't believe its a problem. Krugman doesn't believe its a problem. Overweight guy from Berkeley doesn't think its a problem. Do you believe its a problem? Or is it just a problem when regular joe-schmoe is getting it? If not that, then why is it suddenly a problem worthy of bringing up Republican talking points?
Isn't every country similarly printing money at the moment? If everyone who can credibly print money at the same time does so, I don't see the issue.
Granted, it becomes who gets the most productivity out of the printed money. During a pandemic, helicoptering money to earners under 100K and helping small businesses stay afloat seems like a good short term use.
Longer term, you want the money to go into infrastructure and other things that drive productivity. And that's the rub, as it seems the US is wholly terrible at doing that now with any level of efficiency and return on capital.
Taking on debt is not printing money. And I fail to seed why we should be giving borrowed money to people just because they make less than $100K. Or any other amount if their income was not affected by the pandemic.
Here's your mental model: "huge swaths of America are already only solvent if interest rates stay near zero. Major corporations and municipalities can't roll over 10y debt at 5%. Isn't it unfair that the federal government is denied the opportunity to leverage itself the same way, when they're the only ones who can't default?"
2K to everybody doesn't make a lot of sense - true. But my impression is that Democrats in the here and now are "embracing" the concept mainly to try and help their Georgia colleagues win their Senate races.
The Democrats embrace of this strikes me as entirely tactical - Pelosi saw Trump fling poop at his own party and is just making it more difficult for them to paper over the rift.
That $75k point is about the 85th percentile of personal income. Is that the sweet spot for broad enough to count as universal, but targeted enough to not piss anyone off with benefits for the rich?
I'm fine with it. I don't think poor people are actually making that argument, however. Why would they care if someone making $200,000 gets $1,000 after tax? The point of the cap isn't to keep support with the poor but to reduce support from the upper class. My wife is pissed we don't get a check.
The argument's not for poor people, who frankly don't have that much of a voice in politics. It's for the middle class, who would see stories about Gates/Bezos/Musk/etc./etc. getting a check and be pissed off that their tax dollars were going to fund a billionaire. "Just another example of the government not knowing what it's doing", this type of voter might say. For what it's worth, *I* don't think this is something that we need to worry about a ton, but clearly a lot of people on the center-left/establishment Dems do think it is, and I'm trying to get at why they might think that way.
I'm just not sure I've heard a lot of lefties saying that the cap is critical for them to support (links would be appreciated though). The poor aren't influential in politics. But the upper middle class is and not including them reduces support for checks. Which is the actual point of having a cap.
Giving $450B in supplemental UI works out to $45K check per unemployed person. Giving it to an additional 215M Americans who aren't unemployed and therefore are far less likely to be hard up enough to spend it and stimulate the economy works out to $2K check per person. What's the better use of the money?
I was thinking the $2,000 will cost more like $600B versus $174B currently planned for stimulus checks. The $300 in UI costs $120B. Are you arguing for a $900 per week payment or are you arguing for just spending less? Why should unemployed make 3x what they were making pre-pandemic (instead of the 2x they made with $600)? Seems like if you are going to spend more that direct rebates starting with the poorest and working up is the best spend. Or do you live in NY/California and want payments to reduce your property taxes? :-)
The incremental cost of going from $600 checks to $2000 checks is the $450B ($463B is what I saw the price tag at if you're being picky) that I'm quoting. Giving a massive lump sum payment to folks who got laid off due to the pandemic seems more beneficial to the economy and human welfare than churning out slightly bigger checks to folks who kept their jobs during the pandemic. A flat payment to everyone with an arbitrary cut off at the "I'm wealthy but don't know it because my neighbors have bigger cars than me" income threshold is certainly not anywhere close to "best spend".
So, your idea is more money for UI above the $600. That’s an idea with the only problem that everyone has rejected. Support for local governments and bigger checks is also there. The question is do you want to spend more or not. You seem to be a no. This just seems contrary to what Matt has argued pretty persuasively. I agree with him that we should be spending more. Too many veto points now for state and local, but about 5 votes away from bigger checks.
I think that's a fairly non-creative way to view policy proposals that are actively being debated (as opposed to cheerleading already implemented but imperfect policy wins that Matt discusses above). The conversation of this thread is in relation to how spending an additional $450B on a non-targeted fiscal stimulus effort is likely to reduce the pot of money that a Biden administration could potentially extract out of Congress for better (as in decent, not perfect) policy by a good amount. I agree with Dave's point on this matter and I assume you don't.
Genuine question: What's to stop Dems from pivoting to focusing on emphasizing the UI benefits once Biden is in charge and trying to get things done? True, you can't force rose twitter ppl to do this, but you could probably get someone like Ilhan Omar (quoted in the article) to tweet about how great some proposed UI change is.
I think the $2,000 could make some swing voters justifiably nervous that a Democratic majority might be dangerous. As much as I dislike the two R GA candidates, it makes me nervous.
And there will be payback, by the Republicans, regardless, because the Democrats put the Republicans in a very uncomfortable position by endorsing Trump's proposal.
The 'deal" may be that McConnell allows some selected Republicans to vote for the $2,000 and in return there is a promise of absolute solidarity going forward.
The 2k debate could be good for Dems. It could put Loeffler and Perdue in an awkward position where some of their voters want the checks and others think it would be hypocritical for an R to vote for it. If they vote against it, it perpetuates the corruption narrative, where they are only trying to help themselves. If they vote for it, then there’s no difference between D’s and R’s and the Dems for in favor of more gov’t assistance all along anyway. Obviously, we don’t really know but it’s possible this is positive for Warnock and Ossoff.
Were McConnell and the Republicans going to play nice and cooperate with the Democrats if they hadn't pushed for the $2k? I don't think Mitch really thinks he owes them any favors ever, and is always going to push as hard of a line as he can, so why not jam him up a bit when you have the chance?
Isn't this what Republicans always say about tax cuts? It's framed as "we'll make sure the government doesn't take money out of your pocket", but substantively it's the same thing. I guess the substance maybe doesn't matter as much as the framing here, though?
How many voters *at the margins* are worried about inflationary risk vs. would like to put $2000 in their pockets and will punish Perdue/Loeffler if they vote against it? (I really don't know the answer.)
As for payback for putting McConnell in an uncomfortable position, I think you're gaming it out too far. Future Republican intransigence will not be predicated on what happens now.
Except, it's Trump who started this with "not big enough, $2000" - without that I'd agree 100% that the Democrats throwing out bigger numbers makes the Republican campaign tactic of 'if they get the Senate then they'll go nuts" seem a little more real. But with Trump saying yes to more and the Senate saying no, I don't know where a Georgia voter ends up?
It’s most likely to be remembered as about Trump since he’s the president, the most visible proponent, and the guy who will put his name on the checks.
First, and trivially, Konczal's point is silly. It's hard for Democrats/ the Left to run on legislation that was passed by a Republican Senate and signed into law by a Republican President.
More importantly, and in the context of Matt's point, I fear that the underlying problem is that the Democrats/the Left suffer from too much empathy, especially from an electoral point of view. Empathy is a *great* thing from a governing point of view! But I'm afraid it leads to Democrats sending mixed messages to the voting public.
I don't think Democrats could ever run a Reaganesque "Morning in America" campaign, no matter how much good Democratic governing does. It's instinctual for Democrats to *always* remember and note that no matter how much good we've done, some people continue to suffer and others are in danger of being left behind. How many times have we heard Democratic politicians say "Under us, unemployment is down! . . . . However . . . millions continue to worry about how to pay their bills, get enough food to eat etc etc etc."
This empathy is noble and in fact undergirds the Left's ameliorative drive in their policy making, in a way that would never occur to the Right. But I think not acknowledging clear successes without hemming and hawing and adding caveats hurts electorally. Most people don't pay too much attention to politics and tend to follow well-worn grooves in voting. You have to blast a message loudly and clearly for it to get through and change people's minds. I think that's why "Morning in America" approaches really work well, if they're not absurdly out of synch with reality. It's a lesson Democrats need to learn.
I'm not sure your first point is trivial. It strikes me as highly unlikely that the GOP will fight claims of "ownership" over the CARES act and the average voter isn't enough of a political maven to have a clear view of the process steps involved, democratic achievements even as a single branch of govt still count.
Not big on twitter. Who thinks Dems are the ones capping it at $600? Seems like David Perdue and the stock market lady to me. Now Dems probably would act different if Perdue and the stock market lady voted yes, but that's not where we are currently at. Trump is definitely squeezing them pretty hard to say yes, but they haven't to date.
I would be happy for people on the left to rediscover the virtues of incrementalism. If we get a public option for the ACA then we can see how efficient it is and judge whether it is outperforming the private market. We can also get a sense of whether it becomes a way to politicize medical care (I think one of the potential pitfalls of MFA that is not talked about is how it might lead to efforts for social conservatives to try and exclude care like gender affirmative care or abortion that are currently covered in many states under employer plans). I guess that I am officially old because I am pretty weary of hearing from young people that only major structural change can improve things. I think that what we learned from the enhanced UI was that a lot of people just don't earn enough from work to get by and if we boosted wages for workers we would all be more secure.
I agree completely that incrementalism is usually the way to go. We couldn't even predict the consequences of the ACA! And that's a 1000-page law; M4A would need to be at least a few multiples of that.
Being around young people from time to time, one thing I think that I have noticed is that their agitation is in part because they think they have nothing to lose from major structural change. Whereas us olds who already get insurance through our employers and have a growing retirement account are too invested in the system as it exists (from their perspective).
I think Hoffer's "The True Believer" is a key text for understanding why politics is the way it is these days. A lot of people are frustrated and unhappy, and feel a sense of dread and hopelessness in their personal lives, and they cope by externalizing it into politics. Then they dream of a millenarian movement that will solve the political problem, and also somehow solve their personal problems too.
It feels like we were already hitting a peak of this behavior and then pandemic isolation just completely blew things up.
(It's not just politics either -- politics is really common but the same psychological pressures can be vented into stuff like k-pop or Star Wars fandom too... it's pretty obvious when you see how politically radical teenagers treat esoteric Marxist ideologies as identity markers alongside their favorite media properties.)
My guess is that people who subscribe to this newsletter are way less prone than average to be true believers. They probably have more professional success, and are more able to be contented with modest achievements, and have an easier time with interpersonal relationships than, say, your average Chapo Trap House listener.
Of course the historical analysis in Hoffer's book is pretty terrible. Much of it is either based on inaccurate sources or just obviously wrong. But he really did grasp something about the desperate psychology of frustrated people (I think possibly from personal experience).
I think politics in the US will remain completely insane until this tendency abates. People need community involvement and useful, mundane work they can be proud of -- I think when you give this to someone, political extremism dissipates really quickly. A less tractable problem is that social media amplifies frustrated individuals, simply because they are more willing and have more time to sit and post all day.
Contemporary rhetoric on the left spends SO much time on intra-elite debates. Thus, you could imagine the biggest result of looking at CARES was that it was followed by increased inequality, as opposed to helping people who are impoverished or would've been. The focus on the rich is fine as a means of taxation, but it does seem to get to obsession level and blurs the goalposts.
On the note of catastrophism as politics: I think the right has a bit to blame for this. They use this technique, and it works with their reactionary voters. The amount of time my conservatives family spends talking about AOC is alarming, you would think she was actually president! Turning up the volume normalizes that, and I think a lot of progressives react in-kind. It's different, because it's issues based, but it's still a kind of thinking that exhausts energy in completely unproductive ways.
I agree that there is probably a personality type among progressives that insists that everything is awful, but I think there is probably a strategic consideration at play as well. To admit that things got better might undermine the case for additional action. To admit that the CARES act didn’t consist of one $1200 check undermines your standing to fight for $2000 this time, by this measure. In this case it’s probably a bad tactic- the current fight is essentially to continue a successful program that ended too soon- but I think the impulse to never declare victory is embedded in the strategy of preparing for the next battle.
The problem with this strategy in politics - *especially* digital politicking on social media - is that there is no fog of war. Everybody of every political stripe can see the facts and then see your rhetoric.
People who don't consume activism all day notice the gap between reality and rhetoric and just assume you are lying because you are either crazy, an idiot, or a brazen liar.
Do people really know? I think most casual observers assume that all of the money was wasted because everyone keeps say so. This is probably a good strategy for the right who wants to undermine the ability of government to ever do anything but it seems like a trap for the left.
This sounds like the most plausible narrative of how all this cashes out. Progressives who don’t tout victories make their own policies look terrible. “Congress spent $2 trillion and all I got was” is the start of a conservative t-shirt. No matter how you finish it, you’re still adding to the ubiquity of their rhetoric.
The result is that conservative case looks like consensus because even the proponents of progressive policy agree that we spent a lot of money to achieve nothing. “Why would we spend more or let these admitted failures make policy” is the question progressive kvetching sets up.
If non-progressive Dems weren't terrified of progressive Dems, maybe they could argue for their policies on the merits. But they are terrified, because they know voters are increasingly unsatisfied, and in the one-dimensional frame, that means you either get replaced by a Republican or a progressive.
If we hadn't spent so long boiling all politics down to a one-dimensional left-right spectrum despite its inadequacies, maybe we'd have communication strategies that escape this trap.
People know about enhanced UI if they know anybody who is unemployed right now. Casual observers who don't even know anybody who lost their job in the pandemic don't really have skin in the game anyway and IMO are probably treating their left-wing politics as a sports team to support.
I'm unemployed right now and people who know me don't necessarily know about enhanced UI because I don't talk about it – for a middle-aged professional there's more stigma around being unemployed.
(Also, thanks to the cap on UI I have been taking home 1/4 of my pre-layoff salary, though with the CARES act it surged to 1/2. But I had a good salary in 2019, so no $1200 checks for me!)
That's a fair and interesting point. I'll simply note that in a low-trust society, we can't expect politics to reflect our circumstances if we can't honestly discuss with our peers how policy impacts our circumstances. This challenges other aspects of policymaking (eg. sexual assault).
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.
It wasn't just "the left" spreading these inane memes and citing examples of this or that "undeserving" entity getting in on the act. Plenty of people on right are soi-disant heroic libertarians who claim to believe that government subsidies are invariably a bad idea, and from them I learned of numerous OUTRAGEOUS! examples of corrupts progressive people and firms receiving handouts.
They still crow about Solyndra today.
Good point. And Government Motors!
Tend to agree. It's easy to generate a headline that goes about like "{company people hate} got a loan for {big amount Y} and you won't believe what they did with the money {insert dumb T&E expense deep in dumb clickbait listicle}".
People had to implement this under the gun in a giant hurry under an administration that is prone to grift. Of course this was going to happen. Something something practicalities are messy.
I do think there was probably some waste in PPP. It's not just made-up examples. Large corporations did get hundreds of billions (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/CARES_Act_Sankey_Diagram.png) that I think they didn't need and probably could've done without. I think the key point is that this wrong doesn't unmake the right of the expanded UI or stimulus checks. Things can be both wrong and right about a bill, and if we focus on the wrong, we lose the chance to campaign on things that were just like the right
It wasn't just "the left" spreading these inane memes and citing examples of this or that "undeserving" entity getting in on the act. Plenty of people on right are soi-disant heroic libertarians who claim to believe that government subsidies are invariably a bad idea, and from them I learned of numerous OUTRAGEOUS! examples of corrupts progressive people and firms receiving handouts.
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.
i posted another comment about this but -- "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer is very good. despite many flaws in the book he describes this kind of psychology very astutely. he claims that mediocre artists and intellectuals, who are merely somewhat talented, are particularly prone to joining mass movements, when they are confronted by the fact that their creative efforts aren't that good.
failure and frustration in life drive people towards extreme, apocalyptic thinking -- social contacts just influence which millenarian ideology people sign up for. with a different background and friend group this person might have become a sedevacantist or militia guy instead.
as for why negativity vs. positivity -- I think that probably is just personality. Sort of a William James thing -- people who have religious awakenings, even within the same faith, can either be "sick souls" or "healthy minded" depending on their temperament.
That sounds right in the case I was thinking of. Kicked out of previous career due to anger management issues, switched to new career which they don't actually like, now much more focused on activism than on avoiding a second career wipeout, and consoled by the thought that it doesn't matter anyway because the apocalypse is coming.
So I’m basically sold on the idea that most humans have an innate negativity bias. If I understand it correctly, humans tend to need four “good” things to happen for it to balance out the effect of one “bad” thing.
But if humans have a negativity bias, how can we explain it when groups of people seem cheery?
Well, I think people need social institutions to weigh against their natural biases. I think people are highly social and that our social impulses will override some of our biases if we are put into the right group.
In short: I think we have too few social institutions which are focused on achieving good political and social ends with a smile on. I think that some faith-based organizations did this for us for a while, but the increasing secularization of the left has basically ended all of that.
As a happy atheist, I have never been more attracted to liberal denominations of Christianity. Unfortunately, those denominations are bleeding members while more rigid denominations of Christianity are actually increasing their membership....
I used to scoff at conservatives who accused progressives of Marxism but now I can see their point. I think Marxism is the end result of the nihilism, not the source of it per se, but you end up at “burn the whole thing to the ground” either way.
Hmm... I don't know if I see it that way. It seems to me that Marxism is optimistic because it guarantees that the good guys will win in the end (it's a secularized form of Christianity, in other words). I wouldn't call it a nihilistic doctrine at all. If today's progressives are nihilistic it might be because they don't have that kind of faith to support them.
Interesting perspective. I'm in the middle of "The Righteous Mind" and have been thinking a lot about motivated reasoning. The good/bad binary (and the idea that the thinker is always one of the good guys) is powerfully motivating... to the point that arming yourself or even instigating a civil war gets justified as "good."
I still scoff at them because Marxism gets thrown around as a slur in a not-particularly-careful or accurate way. But I think you're right - you can get from "the glass is half empty" to "the glass is mostly empty" to "throw it all out and start again", and "throw it all out and start again" is the pitch that conservatives are temperamentally the most allergic to.
If lefties hadn't spent eight years shitting all over everything Obama accomplished, surely it would have changed enough votes in 2016 to spare us Trump. That's how criminally irresponsible it is.
If the Obama Administration had pushed for a larger stimulus or cracked down harder on Wall Street, surely it could have changed enough votes in 2016 to spare us Trump. Some of the left's arguments do have merit.
This seems a bit unfair, no? I don't think swing voters are the type to say "ah, Obamacare wasn't enough, so I ain't voting for Hillary!"
I know someone who got laid off a while back and didn't file for unemployment. They thought it was shameful. I was like, "WTF? It's insurance. You paid the premiums and not you need to make a claim. Your theory would be like walking out and finding that a try had crushed your car and not making an insurance claim because you should have noticed that rotten limb." He was like, "Oh, I never thought about it that way."
I think universality and better marketing would go a long way toward achieving progressive goals. Keeping in mind I mean marketing that appeals to persuadable swing voters not dyed in the wool progressives.
Now I'm just imagining a world where more people correctly perceive of social benefits as insurance, but then don't use them because they assume there's a deductible...
This is framed as a feature of progressives, or the left. Is it really different than the right? You don't see the Tea Party celebrating 1/2 wins either, they go crazy making sure they get all or nothing.
Idealogues of any belief system measure policy against the ideal and find it wanting.
Not sure if I agree with this. Many stated goals of the Trump era -- build the wall, repeal Obamacare, end the deficit(?), etc. -- were clearly not accomplished and there doesn't seem to be a conservative backlash to Trump on his inability to deliver there. (Except for, like, Ann Coulter)
The right wing gives up on policy all the time - they just do it quietly. The left isn't as good at lying about their policy goals even when it'd work.
The right monetizes the glass being half empty - in "American Carnage" Tim Alberta details the deteriorating relationship between outside conservative groups that fundraise by telling their base that the house is on fire and the House Republican leadership under Baynor, which faced constant insurrection from their right flank.
True. But why would one want to emulate the tactical decisions of the Tea Party if one isn't an idealogue that intends to always claim defeat?
Excellent post, especially at a time when so many voices are misrepresenting the current debate over$2,000 for almost everyone.
I predict that the Democrats' embrace of this misguided (because non-targeted) measure will make it that much tougher for Biden to get things done.
I’m actually really glad to see both Dem politicians and Trump embrace the “money printer go brrr” mentality. The more of this sort of popular welfare state expansion we get, the more ridiculous the inevitable GOP pivot to austerity will look.
This is how someone would think if they actually believed, as Matt said in a previous post, that we need a bigger social safety net. Well played, Michael S.
I do not think the $2,000 mass checks can be called "welfare."
Instead, if enacted, they will make it more difficult to do targeted, thus substantive, welfare like expanding unemployment benefits, SNAP, and earned income payments.
The $1,200 checks previously didn't stop $300 UI this week. Papers from Dems saying unemployed people in a pandemic were getting overpaid cut the check from $600 to $300. Dems not supporting a larger safety net is, however, a real issue.
Do you for some reason believe the national debt is not a problem?
It probably depends on what we are borrowing for. I would think that investing in things that grow the economy is good. What bothers me (and probably other people) about complaining about the debt is it often seems like a way for well-off people to argue that we shouldn’t help people who are struggling. As long as we are putting money into things that keep the economy afloat or help it grow, it’s probably a worthwhile investment.
"It probably depends on what we are borrowing for. I would think that investing in things that grow the economy is good."
Borrowing in order to give me a $2,000 check is not growing anything other than my bank account.
"...the debt is it often seems like a way for well-off people to argue that we shouldn’t help people who are struggling."
I think borrowing in order to deal with the economic disruptions caused by COVID is necessary. Borrowing to create helicopter money is not.
What if w deal with the economic disruptions caused by COVID by creating helicopter money?
That would be wasteful and unwise.
No, it's not a problem. Debt servicing as a % of GDP is pretty low. A $100,000 mortgage at 20% interest is a problem; a $500,000 mortgage at 1% interest is not a problem.
See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S
And what happens to that Fred chart when interest rates go way up?
Well, debt incurred now with 30 or even 10 year T bills won't be affected. Newly incurred debt will pay higher interest rates. At that point we investigate cutting spending or raising taxes.
Ten years isn’t very far down the road and that’s what bothers me about this sort of blasé thinking. Ten years ago debt held by the public was under 40% of GDP. Today it’s over 100%.
Everybody is betting on the Fed keeping interest rates low indefinitely. Which do you think is more likely:
- Congress changes the Federal Reserve Act to empower the Fed to keep rates low, or
- Fed intentionally triggers mass insolvencies (including EM sovereign borrowers) by raising rates.
"Everybody is betting on the Fed keeping interest rates low indefinitely."
Exactly: They're gambling and assuming there will be a bailout if the bet goes sideways.
"Congress changes the Federal Reserve Act to empower the Fed to keep rates low"
Congress does not have the power to set the rate of inflation. All they can do is pretend.
Matt doesn't believe its a problem. Krugman doesn't believe its a problem. Overweight guy from Berkeley doesn't think its a problem. Do you believe its a problem? Or is it just a problem when regular joe-schmoe is getting it? If not that, then why is it suddenly a problem worthy of bringing up Republican talking points?
I'm sort of disappointed no one came to the overweight guy's defense. Only guy to ever IP block me.
Krugman has literally said that the size of the national debt cannot be a problem no matter how large it gets and no matter what interest rates are?
Isn't every country similarly printing money at the moment? If everyone who can credibly print money at the same time does so, I don't see the issue.
Granted, it becomes who gets the most productivity out of the printed money. During a pandemic, helicoptering money to earners under 100K and helping small businesses stay afloat seems like a good short term use.
Longer term, you want the money to go into infrastructure and other things that drive productivity. And that's the rub, as it seems the US is wholly terrible at doing that now with any level of efficiency and return on capital.
Taking on debt is not printing money. And I fail to seed why we should be giving borrowed money to people just because they make less than $100K. Or any other amount if their income was not affected by the pandemic.
Well, that part about interest rates answers your question, right? Interest rates are extremely low right now.
Right now, yes. What about when that changes?
Here's your mental model: "huge swaths of America are already only solvent if interest rates stay near zero. Major corporations and municipalities can't roll over 10y debt at 5%. Isn't it unfair that the federal government is denied the opportunity to leverage itself the same way, when they're the only ones who can't default?"
2K to everybody doesn't make a lot of sense - true. But my impression is that Democrats in the here and now are "embracing" the concept mainly to try and help their Georgia colleagues win their Senate races.
The Democrats embrace of this strikes me as entirely tactical - Pelosi saw Trump fling poop at his own party and is just making it more difficult for them to paper over the rift.
Why is $2,000 misguided? Not targeted? It's capped at $75,000. I guess you just don't believe in a larger safety net.
That $75k point is about the 85th percentile of personal income. Is that the sweet spot for broad enough to count as universal, but targeted enough to not piss anyone off with benefits for the rich?
I'm fine with it. I don't think poor people are actually making that argument, however. Why would they care if someone making $200,000 gets $1,000 after tax? The point of the cap isn't to keep support with the poor but to reduce support from the upper class. My wife is pissed we don't get a check.
The argument's not for poor people, who frankly don't have that much of a voice in politics. It's for the middle class, who would see stories about Gates/Bezos/Musk/etc./etc. getting a check and be pissed off that their tax dollars were going to fund a billionaire. "Just another example of the government not knowing what it's doing", this type of voter might say. For what it's worth, *I* don't think this is something that we need to worry about a ton, but clearly a lot of people on the center-left/establishment Dems do think it is, and I'm trying to get at why they might think that way.
I'm just not sure I've heard a lot of lefties saying that the cap is critical for them to support (links would be appreciated though). The poor aren't influential in politics. But the upper middle class is and not including them reduces support for checks. Which is the actual point of having a cap.
Giving $450B in supplemental UI works out to $45K check per unemployed person. Giving it to an additional 215M Americans who aren't unemployed and therefore are far less likely to be hard up enough to spend it and stimulate the economy works out to $2K check per person. What's the better use of the money?
I was thinking the $2,000 will cost more like $600B versus $174B currently planned for stimulus checks. The $300 in UI costs $120B. Are you arguing for a $900 per week payment or are you arguing for just spending less? Why should unemployed make 3x what they were making pre-pandemic (instead of the 2x they made with $600)? Seems like if you are going to spend more that direct rebates starting with the poorest and working up is the best spend. Or do you live in NY/California and want payments to reduce your property taxes? :-)
The incremental cost of going from $600 checks to $2000 checks is the $450B ($463B is what I saw the price tag at if you're being picky) that I'm quoting. Giving a massive lump sum payment to folks who got laid off due to the pandemic seems more beneficial to the economy and human welfare than churning out slightly bigger checks to folks who kept their jobs during the pandemic. A flat payment to everyone with an arbitrary cut off at the "I'm wealthy but don't know it because my neighbors have bigger cars than me" income threshold is certainly not anywhere close to "best spend".
So, your idea is more money for UI above the $600. That’s an idea with the only problem that everyone has rejected. Support for local governments and bigger checks is also there. The question is do you want to spend more or not. You seem to be a no. This just seems contrary to what Matt has argued pretty persuasively. I agree with him that we should be spending more. Too many veto points now for state and local, but about 5 votes away from bigger checks.
I think that's a fairly non-creative way to view policy proposals that are actively being debated (as opposed to cheerleading already implemented but imperfect policy wins that Matt discusses above). The conversation of this thread is in relation to how spending an additional $450B on a non-targeted fiscal stimulus effort is likely to reduce the pot of money that a Biden administration could potentially extract out of Congress for better (as in decent, not perfect) policy by a good amount. I agree with Dave's point on this matter and I assume you don't.
Good point, Matt!
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1343978830697013250
Genuine question: What's to stop Dems from pivoting to focusing on emphasizing the UI benefits once Biden is in charge and trying to get things done? True, you can't force rose twitter ppl to do this, but you could probably get someone like Ilhan Omar (quoted in the article) to tweet about how great some proposed UI change is.
I think the $2,000 could make some swing voters justifiably nervous that a Democratic majority might be dangerous. As much as I dislike the two R GA candidates, it makes me nervous.
And there will be payback, by the Republicans, regardless, because the Democrats put the Republicans in a very uncomfortable position by endorsing Trump's proposal.
The 'deal" may be that McConnell allows some selected Republicans to vote for the $2,000 and in return there is a promise of absolute solidarity going forward.
The 2k debate could be good for Dems. It could put Loeffler and Perdue in an awkward position where some of their voters want the checks and others think it would be hypocritical for an R to vote for it. If they vote against it, it perpetuates the corruption narrative, where they are only trying to help themselves. If they vote for it, then there’s no difference between D’s and R’s and the Dems for in favor of more gov’t assistance all along anyway. Obviously, we don’t really know but it’s possible this is positive for Warnock and Ossoff.
Were McConnell and the Republicans going to play nice and cooperate with the Democrats if they hadn't pushed for the $2k? I don't think Mitch really thinks he owes them any favors ever, and is always going to push as hard of a line as he can, so why not jam him up a bit when you have the chance?
You may be right about that.
Comments like below (from the NYT today) increase my nervousness about the Democrats.
“You send me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate and we will put money in your pocket,” Mr. Ossoff said.
Isn't this what Republicans always say about tax cuts? It's framed as "we'll make sure the government doesn't take money out of your pocket", but substantively it's the same thing. I guess the substance maybe doesn't matter as much as the framing here, though?
How many voters *at the margins* are worried about inflationary risk vs. would like to put $2000 in their pockets and will punish Perdue/Loeffler if they vote against it? (I really don't know the answer.)
As for payback for putting McConnell in an uncomfortable position, I think you're gaming it out too far. Future Republican intransigence will not be predicated on what happens now.
Except, it's Trump who started this with "not big enough, $2000" - without that I'd agree 100% that the Democrats throwing out bigger numbers makes the Republican campaign tactic of 'if they get the Senate then they'll go nuts" seem a little more real. But with Trump saying yes to more and the Senate saying no, I don't know where a Georgia voter ends up?
I assume people think this will increase the chances of winning the GA senate races.
I think it helps Dems if the 2 sitting R Senators vote naye.
I doubt it.
It’s most likely to be remembered as about Trump since he’s the president, the most visible proponent, and the guy who will put his name on the checks.
First, and trivially, Konczal's point is silly. It's hard for Democrats/ the Left to run on legislation that was passed by a Republican Senate and signed into law by a Republican President.
More importantly, and in the context of Matt's point, I fear that the underlying problem is that the Democrats/the Left suffer from too much empathy, especially from an electoral point of view. Empathy is a *great* thing from a governing point of view! But I'm afraid it leads to Democrats sending mixed messages to the voting public.
I don't think Democrats could ever run a Reaganesque "Morning in America" campaign, no matter how much good Democratic governing does. It's instinctual for Democrats to *always* remember and note that no matter how much good we've done, some people continue to suffer and others are in danger of being left behind. How many times have we heard Democratic politicians say "Under us, unemployment is down! . . . . However . . . millions continue to worry about how to pay their bills, get enough food to eat etc etc etc."
This empathy is noble and in fact undergirds the Left's ameliorative drive in their policy making, in a way that would never occur to the Right. But I think not acknowledging clear successes without hemming and hawing and adding caveats hurts electorally. Most people don't pay too much attention to politics and tend to follow well-worn grooves in voting. You have to blast a message loudly and clearly for it to get through and change people's minds. I think that's why "Morning in America" approaches really work well, if they're not absurdly out of synch with reality. It's a lesson Democrats need to learn.
I'm not sure your first point is trivial. It strikes me as highly unlikely that the GOP will fight claims of "ownership" over the CARES act and the average voter isn't enough of a political maven to have a clear view of the process steps involved, democratic achievements even as a single branch of govt still count.
Spot on that the Republicans trying to keep ownership of an expensive bill that grew the welfare state temporarily is...unlikely.
And you can also just take credit for something you went along with that wasn't your idea - see also Bill Clinton and "welfare reform". :-)
I expect to see the following post combination roughly 100 times on Twitter today:
1. Of course more unemployment is good, Matt is such a hack for saying obvious things.
2. Can't believe we're only gonna get $600 Democrats are the worst.
Not big on twitter. Who thinks Dems are the ones capping it at $600? Seems like David Perdue and the stock market lady to me. Now Dems probably would act different if Perdue and the stock market lady voted yes, but that's not where we are currently at. Trump is definitely squeezing them pretty hard to say yes, but they haven't to date.
Interesting.
https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/house-approval-of-2000-stimulus-veto-override-sets-up-tough-day-for-loeffler-perdue/HYSEBHKSW5AMNGNREKMZM7745Q/
I would be happy for people on the left to rediscover the virtues of incrementalism. If we get a public option for the ACA then we can see how efficient it is and judge whether it is outperforming the private market. We can also get a sense of whether it becomes a way to politicize medical care (I think one of the potential pitfalls of MFA that is not talked about is how it might lead to efforts for social conservatives to try and exclude care like gender affirmative care or abortion that are currently covered in many states under employer plans). I guess that I am officially old because I am pretty weary of hearing from young people that only major structural change can improve things. I think that what we learned from the enhanced UI was that a lot of people just don't earn enough from work to get by and if we boosted wages for workers we would all be more secure.
I agree completely that incrementalism is usually the way to go. We couldn't even predict the consequences of the ACA! And that's a 1000-page law; M4A would need to be at least a few multiples of that.
Being around young people from time to time, one thing I think that I have noticed is that their agitation is in part because they think they have nothing to lose from major structural change. Whereas us olds who already get insurance through our employers and have a growing retirement account are too invested in the system as it exists (from their perspective).
I think Hoffer's "The True Believer" is a key text for understanding why politics is the way it is these days. A lot of people are frustrated and unhappy, and feel a sense of dread and hopelessness in their personal lives, and they cope by externalizing it into politics. Then they dream of a millenarian movement that will solve the political problem, and also somehow solve their personal problems too.
It feels like we were already hitting a peak of this behavior and then pandemic isolation just completely blew things up.
(It's not just politics either -- politics is really common but the same psychological pressures can be vented into stuff like k-pop or Star Wars fandom too... it's pretty obvious when you see how politically radical teenagers treat esoteric Marxist ideologies as identity markers alongside their favorite media properties.)
My guess is that people who subscribe to this newsletter are way less prone than average to be true believers. They probably have more professional success, and are more able to be contented with modest achievements, and have an easier time with interpersonal relationships than, say, your average Chapo Trap House listener.
Of course the historical analysis in Hoffer's book is pretty terrible. Much of it is either based on inaccurate sources or just obviously wrong. But he really did grasp something about the desperate psychology of frustrated people (I think possibly from personal experience).
I think politics in the US will remain completely insane until this tendency abates. People need community involvement and useful, mundane work they can be proud of -- I think when you give this to someone, political extremism dissipates really quickly. A less tractable problem is that social media amplifies frustrated individuals, simply because they are more willing and have more time to sit and post all day.
Contemporary rhetoric on the left spends SO much time on intra-elite debates. Thus, you could imagine the biggest result of looking at CARES was that it was followed by increased inequality, as opposed to helping people who are impoverished or would've been. The focus on the rich is fine as a means of taxation, but it does seem to get to obsession level and blurs the goalposts.
On the note of catastrophism as politics: I think the right has a bit to blame for this. They use this technique, and it works with their reactionary voters. The amount of time my conservatives family spends talking about AOC is alarming, you would think she was actually president! Turning up the volume normalizes that, and I think a lot of progressives react in-kind. It's different, because it's issues based, but it's still a kind of thinking that exhausts energy in completely unproductive ways.
I agree that there is probably a personality type among progressives that insists that everything is awful, but I think there is probably a strategic consideration at play as well. To admit that things got better might undermine the case for additional action. To admit that the CARES act didn’t consist of one $1200 check undermines your standing to fight for $2000 this time, by this measure. In this case it’s probably a bad tactic- the current fight is essentially to continue a successful program that ended too soon- but I think the impulse to never declare victory is embedded in the strategy of preparing for the next battle.
The problem with this strategy in politics - *especially* digital politicking on social media - is that there is no fog of war. Everybody of every political stripe can see the facts and then see your rhetoric.
People who don't consume activism all day notice the gap between reality and rhetoric and just assume you are lying because you are either crazy, an idiot, or a brazen liar.
Do people really know? I think most casual observers assume that all of the money was wasted because everyone keeps say so. This is probably a good strategy for the right who wants to undermine the ability of government to ever do anything but it seems like a trap for the left.
This sounds like the most plausible narrative of how all this cashes out. Progressives who don’t tout victories make their own policies look terrible. “Congress spent $2 trillion and all I got was” is the start of a conservative t-shirt. No matter how you finish it, you’re still adding to the ubiquity of their rhetoric.
The result is that conservative case looks like consensus because even the proponents of progressive policy agree that we spent a lot of money to achieve nothing. “Why would we spend more or let these admitted failures make policy” is the question progressive kvetching sets up.
If non-progressive Dems weren't terrified of progressive Dems, maybe they could argue for their policies on the merits. But they are terrified, because they know voters are increasingly unsatisfied, and in the one-dimensional frame, that means you either get replaced by a Republican or a progressive.
If we hadn't spent so long boiling all politics down to a one-dimensional left-right spectrum despite its inadequacies, maybe we'd have communication strategies that escape this trap.
This is so well said!
People know about enhanced UI if they know anybody who is unemployed right now. Casual observers who don't even know anybody who lost their job in the pandemic don't really have skin in the game anyway and IMO are probably treating their left-wing politics as a sports team to support.
I'm unemployed right now and people who know me don't necessarily know about enhanced UI because I don't talk about it – for a middle-aged professional there's more stigma around being unemployed.
(Also, thanks to the cap on UI I have been taking home 1/4 of my pre-layoff salary, though with the CARES act it surged to 1/2. But I had a good salary in 2019, so no $1200 checks for me!)
That's a fair and interesting point. I'll simply note that in a low-trust society, we can't expect politics to reflect our circumstances if we can't honestly discuss with our peers how policy impacts our circumstances. This challenges other aspects of policymaking (eg. sexual assault).
being dismissive of enhanced UI is infuriating, being in the restaurant business, I know dozens of people for whom the enhanced UI was a life saver