That's why so much of the modern populist left is cargo-culting the New Deal.

Neobrandeis and degrowth grifters don't understand that you need at least a plurality of the country's main economic decision-makers in your corner to build a winning political coalition.

The New Deal is best understood as trading legally-protected profit margins for firms in exchange for welfare state expansion & labor protections for workers.

Unit banking, the Bell monopoly, MIC, the ICC, etc were just as fundamental to the era as the Wagner Act

The average Brit hasn't experienced American healthcare at all, which is why you compare the actual experience of using the NHS rather than their nebulous biases.

Majority of Americans not on Medicare/Medicaid have great employer plans, which is why single payer struggles with mass appeal.

The reason is 1) progs are mostly downwardly mobile college grads who assume everyone shares their experience and 2) they're including Veblen goods in CPI

Progressives should ask the average Brit about their experience with the NHS recently and compare that with going to an urgent care here

Healthcare is vastly overstated as a factor because most millennials have indexed to aughts/early 2010s when healthcare as a share of GDP was rocketing up.

Americans spend more on HC b/c of exogenous factors (obesity, gun violence, etc) + b/c we're consuming more/better HC than our peers.

An understated factor among the zoomers is that college amenities are utterly insane now. The whiplash from that to living in a studio on an entry level salary is radicalizing.

The ask should've been to end the tariffs (to ensure there is no deal and the filibuster gets nuked)

Also the New Deal was more pro-business than is commonly understood. The FDR era is best described as corporatist, with a lot of rent-seeking by incumbent firms & labor. It's the only reason FDR got away with his agenda!

The DSA left that hates economic growth & thinks business is icky has no shot.

Also the New Deal era coincided with insanely high growth due to monopolizing postwar manufacturing & a lot of lucky breaks in scientific progress. Inefficient policy was nbd.

But when you try New Deal policy in a low growth/profitability world it tends to not work out well (see: 1970s)

The biggest unknown is whether enhanced geothermal will be economically viable.

Dispatchable carbon-free energy that can reuse O&G boreholes & horizontal drilling rigs and can be sited in areas that aren't great for solar/wind seems like it should be a bigger deal.

I guess I don't see how "this stance on IP law is motivated by a disgust reaction and not consistent principles" is a nonsense critique then? Seems like a pretty fair critique!

The true reason the left is making these IP arguments about AI is that when the conflict is torrenter vs RIAA/MPAA the torrenter is more sympathetic as "the little guy" and when it's freelance artists vs big tech it's the freelancers.

This isn't coming from a thoughtful approach to IP law lol

The (historically left-of-center) argument against strong IP protections is that it hinders the development of derivative works.

AI output is more of a derivative work than a copy so that analogy doesn't really hold. In practice any restriction on AI training data use will restrict fair use too.

The reality is that blue collar workers don't give a shit about "reducing inequality". They care about CoL.

The left can't credibly promise welfare expansion w/out broad-based tax increases so this niche of punitively taxing the wealthy w/out welfare expansion is the path of least resistance.

People need to understand that normies view public policy questions the same way they view social etiquette disputes.

They are not looking at patent law as an impersonal rule-based system. They evaluate every policy question case-by-case on how sympathetic each party seems.

Instead of all these proxy battles about messaging, centrists should just be upfront and say that leftist governance is really toxic even if it can occasionally win an election.

If Bernie had won in 2020 we would currently be staring down a filibuster-proof GOP Senate

If we achieve "good enough" outcomes on housing, healthcare, and public service efficiency, as well as sufficiently manage climate change with energy reforms, will legislatures just devolve into 100% culture war thunderdomes as wonks futilely plead for marginal efficiency improvements?

Underrated reason for our current political discontent is that the neoliberal turn was so successful at delivering material prosperity that the culture war is just mechanically a bigger share of politics now.

Abundos should be wary about actually solving the lingering CoL issues too quickly lol

The DLC strategy of courting low capital intensity, white collar service industries is probably not replicable in 2025 but the loss of the 90s/00s business allies definitely stings

Contra the socialists, voters actually do value business support since their outlook is more corporatist than populist

It's doubly annoying because in living memory Dems forged alliances with new industries & it did a lot for their brand.

Capitalism needs political representation for new, disruptive firms/industries, and the GOP's low trust culture and bias for incumbent firms make them a terrible fit.

A not insignificant component of the "eww capitalism" sentiment comes from downwardly mobile college ed voters who think their lower standard of living vs their parents is a universal experience. That segment of the population is small but tends to have a lot of cultural capital

I think deep down they realize there's less surplus to expropriate & the politics on taxes is impossible, which is why they've shifted their focus to punitive taxation of the uber-wealthy.

But blue collar workers largely don't care about inequality, which is why the Bernie program is DOA

If the Senate permitting and housing bills make it through and the new FERC interconnection order has teeth, there could be a reverse-Carter scenario where Dems reap the benefits in 2029-2032 while Trump eats the recession lol

I'm convinced the music will stop on the AI boom in the second half of Trump's term and "Dems win on business cycle recession" eternal return will continue as it always has.

The long run impact of AI will be breaking logjams at FERC for interconnection/transmission & that won't bear fruit for years

The world where the 2021-22 trifecta nukes NEPA, passes comprehensive immigration reform, unwinds Trump 1's protectionism, and uses every lever at HUD to coerce cities into upzoning is one where Trump enjoys a higher baseline economic approval rating at the start of his second term.

There's also a severe time lag with supply-side policy interventions to contain inflation.

Carter did pretty much everything economic theory would recommend for uncorking supply but couldn't reap the benefits before 1980. Reagan's do-nothing ass got all the credit!

Also blows my mind how incurious college educated people can be about basic "how does business/industry work" questions.

The kneejerk suspicion of anything vaguely related to commerce by high info Dems is not much better than MAGA idiots fearing the flu shot out of fear & ignorance tbh

Lowbrow misinfo is often "D student in HS" shit like chemtrail conspiracies and denying germ theory.

Highbrow misinfo is based in ignorance of social science domains where ground truths shift & you need to constantly reexamine priors (vs merely passing AP Bio 15 years ago)

Tbf a major factor in GOP gains in the south post-CRA was manufacturers relocating out of the Rust Belt. Absent that the realignment likely wouldn't have been as clean.

Dems also kept their one-party junta in the House until 1994, but that was mostly downballot lag.