The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic

I usually like your writing John; this one not so much. While Biden may end up following the path you lay out, it’s just not clear after the Republican viciousness and lack of effective governance over the past 10 years that preemptively removing the filibuster is a mistake. If I’m not mistaken, it’s much harder to remove the filibuster if it’s not done at or near the beginning of a Congressional session. Beyond that, I’m not sure that preemptively removing the filibuster would cost Biden or the Dems any votes in the next election. Failing to deliver on campaign promises due to Republican intransigence (or for. other reasons)–that would cost votes.

It must be me but somehow I’m missing the connection between title and content of the OP.

”The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic”

What a coincidence?

We are working on a ”visual”… presentation of the Economic Consequences of the Pandemic – but NOT connected in any way to US ”Party Politics” –
Just on the ”Revolutionary Fact” –
that –

‘THE PARTY IS OVER”!

More concretely, I’d suggest starting with health care. Biden should call on the Repubs to drop their endless campaign against Obamacare, and work together on fixing the health systme.

It is likely the Republicans won’t fund a spell-checker.

There’s considerable potential for being unpleasantly surprised by election/referedum results. Like Trump getting elected the first time. Or Brexit.

So while I agree things look pretty bad for Trump at the moment, I wouldn’t be that surprised if he gets re-elected. At least, basing a book on the hypothesis that he won’t be re-elected carries the risk of being overtaken by events.

I was wondering whether to add Boris Johnson to the list of nasty surprises. But while Brexit and Trump came as a surprise to many, a big majority for Boris was a likely risk.

I am half-expecting Trump to be replaced at some point by a more competent Trumpist. The winning formula is now known, and it shouldn’t be hard to find someone smarter than Trump to take over his playbook.

It sounds like a very uplifting and engrossing work of fiction, in the wish-fulfillment genre, perhaps worthy of Heinlein at his best. Or maybe I’m way too cynical. I would like to believe in it.

My best guess at this point is that the post is a sort of April-Fool’s joke, moved to the 4th of July. Second guess: it’s a novel in non-fiction form aimed not at prognostication but at best-seller status and movie rights. (Which I think would be a success, on those terms. I would buy it and see the movie.)

there has been quite a number of people suggesting that if Trump lost he would not accept it and exit as is customary, what is the effect of that?

@8 yes I don’t understand that either. Does the OP mean Obamacare? Because that’s a non-starter.

@12 ‘If the Democrats take the White House and Congress they’ll have a very short window to get anything done.’

Yes absolutely. Even if it’s a landslide for Biden, even if the Democrats take Congress, even if (much less likely) they take the Senate…so what? Carter was swept into power with a similar revulsion against Nixon (in many ways much more sincere and widespread than the ‘revulsion’ against Trump) and…..4 years later we got the ‘Reagan Revolution’. The Republicans will do everything in their power to prevent Biden making any significant changes to anything. A huge stimulus package is not impossible, however.

@9 ‘I am half-expecting Trump to be replaced at some point by a more competent Trumpist.’

Tucker Carlson.

@14
”What seems to me to be absent from the outline is the possibility that the underlying social reality the politicians regularly try to cope with has been so churned up during the last few months that no attempt to comprehend “the economic consequences of the pandemic” can get very far”

That’s why we focus on the truly revolutionary consequences of the Pandemic and the already existing ”NEW WORLD A.V. (After the Virus) like – that currently there is around 40 to 50 percent ”less wealth creating economic activity” – and if you talk to
people who used to go ”FULL SPEED” -(in a matter of speaking) B.V. – most of them
estimate that they never will (want to) reach that level again – and they estimate that it finally will be (voluntarily) between 10 and 25 percent less –
Flying crazily around the World –
Feeling the need to Party – and/or consuming ”like Drunken Sailors” –
AND – HEY – a lot less spending for a Education you can do online!

AND so –
Our ”Cult of Less” got ”THE REVOLUTION” – we – not really asked for – BUT as it has happened – y’all need to learn enjoying the frugality of ”Swabian House Wives” – as are the ”Schwaben” don’t sell enough Porsches and Mercedeses anymore – and there is hardly a better measurement for the so called ”economical health” of the world as the ”Verkaufszahlen” of cars.

@14 — That’s what I was thinking as I read this — you have to start with the material facts ‘on the ground’ as people like to say. High-level politics and economics often seem rather fictive, but current events have blown away a lot of that, at least temporarily, and facts like the production, transportation, and consumption of real goods and services are going to matter. Even if politicians and political theorists have not caught up yet.

Also, I would certainly not assume Trump can’t win the election.

However, if he loses the election, and refuses to vacate the White House, he’ll just be removed by whatever force is necessary. He has not done the necessary work of organizing a private army or suborning the regular forces to effect a coup. Or if he has, he has done it in a miraculously secret manner. If his legal problems are as advertised, his best move would be to vacate the White House well in advance of his successor’s inauguration, and go to some country willing to provide asylum.

So called “Democrats”, especially Biden himself, and Biden entourage are sellouts to financial oligarchy. They represent defeated in 2016 wing of the US neoliberal elite — adherents to classic neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization.

To expect them to attempt anything of value other the kicking the neoliberalism can down the road is extremely naive.

In this sense Lee A. Arnold post ( 07.04.20 at 5:20 pm #12) is completely detached from reality.

Removing the filibuster on legislation (e.g. through the nuclear option) would be a declaration of war that I doubt Biden has the intestinal fortitude to embark on.

Eliminating the filibuster is a question for the Senate. So is restricting it. Biden’s attitude is irrelevant. A Senate majority can eliminate or restrict the filibuster regardless of the President, so the question is whether there will be a Senate majority with the necessary intestinal fortitude, not whether the President will exhibit same. If the Senators are determined, they can do it; if they aren’t, they won’t.

@22
”So, let’s not count chickens before they hatch”.

That’s why we – concerning ‘The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic” will firstly count the Millions of Americans – who in the coming month will be evicted from their homes –
(because they couldn’t pay their rent or mortgages anymore) –
And tracing it back to a ”Original US Sin” which was very well described in an article of the NYT with the title:

”European Workers Draw Paychecks. American Workers Scrounge for Food”.

As this article explains very well – ”US GENERAL (economical) STUPID”!

SusanC 9: At the risk of repeating myself: Trump doesn’t have a “winning formula”. He is historically unpopular for a first term president. His vote result in 2016 was barely better than McCain’s, worse than Kerry’s and Romney’s, despite the fact that he was running in a favorable environment after two Obama terms and had a lot of help- from the FBI, Facebook, Russian troll farms, and the mainstream media in general who accorded him absolutely unprecedented coverage.

I agree complacency is dangerous. The US not being a democracy, it is still possible that Trump manages again to be appointed president by an unrepresentative body after losing the election. But please let us stop the Trump mythology. Trump isn’t a winner, he’s just extremely deft at gaming the system.

Andres #18: “…the problem with constitutional amendments is that in today’s age they require bipartisanship…”

John Quiggin’s thought experiment is about what the Democratic Party ought to do if they achieve majorities in Congress which are likely to be marginal. I say: take a leaf from the Republicans, forget bipartisanship and do what you can, if only to make future campaign issues. Yes, constitutional amendments need 2/3rds majorities in both House and Senate before being sent to the statehouses for final approval by 3/4s of them. But even if they are voted down in Congress, they make good campaign issues for the future. Note that, with the exception of an end to anonymous shell corporations, enough Republicans may be forced to vote yes by their own supporters. Republicans may even consider these amendments to be a good bet, since the first thing they can do is wield them against Biden when they retake Congress.

likbez #21: “So called ‘Democrats’, especially Biden himself, and Biden entourage are sellouts to financial oligarchy. They represent defeated in 2016 wing of the US neoliberal elite — adherents to classic neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization.”

Now let’s think it further. Here is what we are up against: “Free markets promote freedom and efficiency.” There is NO other economic theory that is politically viable because nobody has provided one that is just as succinct, comprehensible, automatic. So, while some Democrats are sellouts to “neoliberalism”, the rest of them are flailing about for a simple theory that doesn’t yet exist.

Thus, all the Democrats will fall down (or mostly all) when the “financial oligarchy” makes its likeliest move: Treasury security prices go down (i.e. interest rates go up), a slow run on the dollar, and accompanying propaganda about “economic deterioration, lack of business investment, higher taxes,” etc. in the Wall St. Journal and Fox Business.

One of the ironies of the present moment is that Trump’s “nationalism” has weakened the United States and strengthened the financial globalists by alienating the EU and other friends and mounting an unwinnable trade strategy against China. This will provoke and enable the euro and renminbi currency blocs to design policies to be more attractive (even if only temporarily) to a financial oligarchy looking to punish any arousal of more progressive policies in the US.

But, how many people understand this? I wrote this scenario here years ago just after Trump was elected, and I’d like to be wrong, but only just now the same theme is being discovered in some foreign policy periodicals.

A very basic condition of the US electorate (and all electorates in general) is individual cognitive limitation. The world is getting more complex, and individuals don’t have the time or expertise to understand what is really going on. You can wait for “labor” to wake up, but it ain’t gonna happen.

In the US, the thing to do in these conditions is to rid of the filibuaster, push a few things hard while you have the chance (and where many of the legislative details are already researched, compiled, ready to go) — healthcare, infrastructure, immigration, amendments — keep it simple, and then work on your strategy for the next election.

Please don’t assume anything about the outcome of the US elections this November. If 2016 taught us anything, surely ot taught us that. Though the fact that your book might become a morbid joke before it’s even published is the least of my worries when I see folks assuming that beating Trump and taking back the Senate is a done deal.

@Hidari 07.05.20 at 7:05 am (#24 )

The white-collar realignment. It’s complete.’ By which they mean that the Democrats, traditionally, the left wing, working class party, has now become the party of educated white middle class males (and, especially, females).

Upper middle class whites in costal cities were always part of the neoliberal base. They are net beneficiaries of the neoliberalization of the USA economy (especially those who are in education, finance, IT, Big Pharma, and healthcare.) That’s why around large 300 Silicon Valley, transnational and financial companies declared their support for BLM.

I think around half of S&P500 listed companies did. At least till November ;-) . The list is pretty interesting reading by itself https://conservativeus.com/the-full-list-here-are-the-269-companies-who-are-supporting-blm-antifa-riots/

But if those whites feel the threat of riots as the threat to their well-being, then realignment can happen in opposite direction.

Question: What if neoliberal Dems overplayed “identity wedge” hand?

The underlying problem with any proposal of radical action by hypothetical full Democratic control of two branches is the leadership. Even if the radical action is no more than “wonkish incrementalism, but with slightly larger increments”, that will be too much to ask of Biden, Schumer, or Pelosi, to say nothing of all three in a sustained manner. The conservative “moderate, pragmatic centrist” leadership of the party has taken this primary season as vindication of their ideal, and their ideal is “return to business as usual”. Between this conviction and their conviction that the future of the next several electoral cycles is cementing the loyalty of suburban college-educated workers and professionals (thus finally achieving the long-sought grail of leftism without leftists), and the last thing anyone should expect is radical action, particularly radical action that undermines the prevalent corporate structure (particularly corporate influence on governance and elections, as that’s integral to the leadership’s grasp on power within the party) or political balance of power between branches. The only agenda will be milquetoast symbolic gestures meant to show all of (and only) the stakeholders that the Dem leadership considers relevant that the sensible, serious grownups are back in control.

…a party that is no longer of the working class is unlikely to pass legislation that benefits the working class.

This is an important point worth repeating again and again.

This is a zugzwang for neoliberal Dems. Without working class votes they can’t win. And those votes are lost. Clinton gambit that in Cola-Pepsi duopoly the working class has nowhere to go (because Republicans are ever worse) worked for a couple of decades but in 2016 suddenly stopped. They same happened in UK. And will soon happen in Germany as Merkel is history too: Biden without senility.

Using “identity wedge” and amplifying the current riots is a desperate move of “substituting with minorities” the lost working class votes. They want to split the country in such a way that Republicans are in minority. Probably will not work as nationalism as a platform is on upswing now and Trump’s “national neoliberalism” has some grass roots support even among the minorities, despite that his promises are all fake. Riots dramatically increased polarization and the result of this polarization are not necessary beneficial to neoliberal Dems.

We need to accept the fact that the Neoliberal Dems lost its key constituency and that limits their ability to win the political power. They can’t even select a decent leader, because Biden as a party leader is a cruel joke. The fact that “there is no alternative” no longer holds — the return (on a new level) to some form of the New Deal is clearly an alternative. The alternative that the majority of population wants. All this neoliberal fairy tales about “free market” (can it exists with multinationals in power?), “personal responsibility” (which means unlimited ability of capital to eliminate decent jobs and replace them with perma-temps, or offshore them) and that “rising tide lifts all boats” no longer works. That’s why Bezos supports BLM while paying below average to the workers in warehouses. He “feels the pain.” ;-)

IMHO 20% of upper middle class is not enough as the key constituency simply because a part of this voter block belongs to Republicans. And that essentially all what the neoliberal Dems, as “Republicans-lite” currently have.

Although in 2020 they might have a unique chance due to Trump self-disintegration. But their ability to hold into minorities votes, while selling those minorities down the river is an aberration, so in this case in 2022 they might lose all the gains.

Biden in a way symbolizes the crisis of Clinton wing of the Democratic Party really well: they have no future, only the past.

While Republicans now can play the nationalist card like in Wiemar Germany. And the recent riots play into their hands and this effect will last till November.

Now let’s think it further. Here is what we are up against: “Free markets promote freedom and efficiency.” There is NO other economic theory that is politically viable because nobody has provided one that is just as succinct, comprehensible, automatic. So, while some Democrats are sellouts to “neoliberalism”, the rest of them are flailing about for a simple theory that doesn’t yet exist.

‘Free markets promote freedom and efficiency’ is not a theory, it’s a slogan, and it’s demonstrably not the only possible effective slogan for an election campaign; for example, ‘Make America great again’ is obviously an effective slogan for an election campaign.

Come to that, I don’t recall any examples of an election campaign using ‘Free markets promote freedom and efficiency’ as its slogan. Possibly the relevant point is that no slogan denying that free markets promote freedom and efficiency is politically viable, but surely that still leaves lots of possibility?

Hidari #32: “It’s only unwinnable if you take the factor of military force out of the equation.”

Let’s put aside the fact that no one in the world really believes that a deal with Trump is worth the paper it’s written on, they all know his business history, and focus instead on the Chinese side. Please describe a scenario in which a Chinese breach of the trade deal (e.g. by not buying enough US soybeans, or by stealing another US trade partner) could be effectively, lastingly solved by the use of military force.

mainstream Democrats recognise the need for radical change, and Biden will align with the mainstream position as he always has done

You said you would leave this, your third assumption, to comments, so here is my comment.

The U.S. is in the midst of a deep legitimacy crisis and contrary to popular belief among liberals, it is not Trump particularly whose legitimacy is being called into question. Oh, sure, there have been relentless attacks on him — from partisan opponents and from much of mainstream media — but like the “anti-racism” of the recent protests — much of it is dissembling and distraction. Charges of colluding with Putin to win the 2016 election turned out to be fake news — rather obviously so from the beginning — but a big enough mob went down that path with no self-awareness. I am not saying Trump is not an egregiously bad President; he is. But, notice please, before you go assuming that mainstream Democrats are going wake up in 2021 wanting to govern in the real world 🌎, that they have not shown much inclination toward truth-telling or critical realism these last 20 years.

It is July. By January 2021, the U.S. economy will have suffered a structural collapse in multiple sectors. That is the economic consequence of the pandemic. Restaurants, shopping malls, bars, colleges, hotels, airlines, cruise lines — easily 15% of the workforce will be unemployed and another 25% seriously underemployed.

Did I mention that the U.S. is undergoing a legitimacy crisis?? Whose legitimacy is being called into question?

I would submit that the legitimacy of the elite professional and managerial classes is being called into question, for want of performance or any sense of responsibility. The urban PMC are the core constituency of the establishment Democratic Party. The vestigial working class elements and the ideological Left are distant memories and oppressed minorities seeking social justice, mere props. I would say the Party establishment is confident they can put the re-animated corpse of Biden into the White House. And look how gleefully they welcome Republican never-Trumpers into the clubhouse! If you were one of the fools and tools who thought Obama did not want Republicans to control Congress, you are getting another chance to see how the Obama Alumni Association works with the Lincoln Project, how happy they are to deliver the kind of policy that appeals to rich, old, suburban Republican women.

The thing is, the political classes — the millionaire media pundits, the politicians, the lobbyists, the generals, the journamalists, the manipulative political operatives and propagandists, the pious policy “experts”, the highly paid executives and financial managers running monopolies into the ground and non-profits into irrelevance — they have enacted their neo-liberal agenda and it doesn’t work.

We have just watched the once highly touted CDC completely botch the great Pandemic. They could not devise a test. They screwed up the rules on who could or should be tested. They lied early on about the need to wear masks. They staged a moral panic over a need for ventilators, when ventilators are a terrible therapeutic alternative. In the new Puritanism, they shut down public beaches but they watched passively as liberal heroes like Cuomo set off a holocaust by sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes.

This in a country that cannot manufacture PPE. Or win a war. Trump, in his fumbling way, might get the U.S. out of Afganistan, but the NY Times — who brought us WMD not that long ago — reports the Russians are paying bounties on American soldiers killed. No report on the treatment of Julian Assange though. Boeing is going to get the 737 Max in the air real soon now. Citibank is borrowing at 0.03 from the Fed and lending to credit card users at 27% and may be insolvent.

So, let us assume the Democrats, after nominating an elderly sob who had a hand in the crime bill that gave the U.S. the highest incarceration rate in the world, the bankruptcy bill that saddled tens of millions with credit card and student debt that cannot be discharged, and every stupid war of the last nearly twenty years, will suddenly see the necessity of radical change. And, after making an alliance with conservative Republicans hostile to even Trump’s fake populism in order to elect Biden, seeing the light on radical reform is so likely! So plausible.

And, what’s the play? The carrot of bi-partisan cooperation coupled with the fearful stick of abolishing the filibuster someday somehow if they don’t play nice. You do realize that only Republicans are allowed to manipulate the filibuster and only in ways that favor their agenda of, say, stacking the courts? And, the strategic vision? Reinforcing the Rube Goldberg contraption which is Obamacare? You do know Biden is on record as adamantly opposed to Medicare4all? And, that Medicaid is a need-based nightmare of controlled deprivation? In a country where public health is such a shambles that a pandemic is running out of control.

You can do better.

All the attention in this thread so far has been on the political dimension of uncertainty, but it seems to me the public health dimension is also crucial and quite up in the air. What will the trajectory of the virus look like in the US over the next several months? Will infections continue to explode out of control? What will this mean for health outcomes — not only mortality but also severe illnesses and susceptibility to future diseases due to long-lasting tissue damage? (We know very little at this point about long term scarring, but enough to be concerned.) If we’ve learned nothing else about the economics of the pandemic, we should recognize that it is risk of infection, not government dictates or the relaxation of them that determines the level of output loss.

Similar questions arise for other parts of the world where the pandemic is especially virulent. Indeed, there is also uncertainty over whether countries that seem to have mostly suppressed the first wave can continue to hold the line.

I would hold off on putting the future down on paper.

Two points:

1) White collar are, by definition, working class, because they don’t own the means of production. What I see is an opposition between blue collars and white collars, that are two wings of the working class, not that democrats are going against the working class.
For some reason, the main divide in politics today is a sort of culture war, and republicans and other right wing parties managed to present the traditionalist side of the culture war as the “working class” one, and therefore the other side as the evil cosmopolitan prosecco sipping faux leftish but in reality very snobbish one, so that they pretend that they are the working class party because of their traditionalist stance.
But they aren’t: already the fact that they blame “cosmopolitans” shows that they think in terms of nationalism (like Trump and his China virus), which is a way to deflect the attention from class conflict.
So comparatively the Dems are still the working class party, and the fact that some working class guys vote for trump sows that they suffer from false consciousness, not that the Dems are too right wing (the dems ARE too right wing, but this isn’t the reason some working class guys are voting Trump).

2) Neoliberalism and free markets are not the same thing, and furthermore neoliberalism and capitalism are not the same thing; at most neoliberalism is a form of unadultered capitalism. However since neoliberalism basically means “anti new deal”, and new deal economies were still free market and still capitalist (we can call them social democratic, but in this sense social democracy is a form of controlled capitalism), it follows that the most economically succesful form of capitalism and free markets to date is not neoliberalism.

‘All the attention in this thread so far has been on the political dimension of uncertainty, but it seems to me the public health dimension is also crucial and quite up in the air. What will the trajectory of the virus look like in the US over the next several months? Will infections continue to explode out of control?’

Not just the public health, but the economic effects of the public health. As I pointed out in a previous thread, it’s not difficult to work out why Trump looked like he was going to win in January: the stock market was booming, unemployment was low, crime was low, there were no new wars…it’s not a mystery.

People vote with their wallets.

If Trump someone manages to face down the neo-liberals in his own party and arrange for a gigantic stimulus bill (bigger than the last one) and keeps ‘benefits’ going past August, he is in with a shout. If he doesn’t, and if the economy continues its path to free fall, he will lose.

People vote with their wallets. It is not difficult. You don’t need to invoke Russia and etc. to work out why Trump won in 2016 (the impact of the Obama stimulus package, which was too small, hadn’t et ‘percolated through’ to people’s bank balances at that point). And, if Trump loses in 2020, the reasons will be self-evident and nothing to do with ‘people seeing through him’ or ‘brave liberals averted a turn to fascism’. If he loses it will be because he screwed up on the ‘good’ economy.

People vote with their wallets.

@
People vote with their wallets.

Or what did a famous US Philosopher -(and Used Car Dealer) once say:
It’s the economy stupid!

BUT as the (C-19)REVOLUTION has shown ”the people” –
(at least ”most” of the people)
that – as a Famous Swiss Philosopher -(and my favourite Cheesemaker) always says:

DIE GESUNDHEIT IST DAS WICHTIGSTE!

There was a whole new mind-set distributed – which REALLY hurt the economy – where it REALLY hurts – in the Party-Stimmung.
As how many people do you guys know – who still want to Party like it’s 1999?
AND you guys MUST be aware – that Partying like it’s 1999 ALWAYS was THE thing which held the US economy tooo-gether!
Or as US economists used to say:

”Consumer spending is the single most important driving force of the U.S. economy. … These additional components of the gross domestic product aren’t as critical as consumer spending. Even a small downturn in consumer spending damages the economy”.

So – EVERYBODY? – THE question:
Concerning The (Psychological) Economic Consequences of the Pandemic?
How much ”less consumption” -(and thusly ”less wealth”) will it be?

25? – 30? or even 40 percent?

bruce wilder @45, I enjoyed your screed but would extend the legitimacy crisis further, into the comprehension skills of the US public in both parties and beyond. We can’t blame this all on the nefarious machinations of, say, neoliberalism. Also note that Russian collusion was not concluded to be fake insofar as the Mueller Report goes (and the Senate Intelligence Reports may leave you less than confident that voting booths were not really hacked). Also note that the CDC had trouble with a test rollout for COVID-19, but all of their botched decisions (including the fact that the US did not start testing much earlier with the WHO’s existing, readily available test) may have been forced upon them by confusion and misdirection of the White House, which has been making ALL of the decisions, and also put a gag order on every person and agency involved since around January.

Likbez: “This is a zugzwang for neoliberal Dems. Without working class votes they can’t win. And those votes are lost.”

Following up on Chetan, I would also want to know what definition of ‘working class’ Libkez has in mind. I too worry that it must just be excluding non-white people, which is, of course, not an acceptable definition.

MisterMr’s U-shaped hypothesis won’t save Libkez’s claim. See the bottom chart here:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/07/us/elections/house-exit-polls-analysis.html

And I don’t think we should be worried about Likbez’s claim that “Essentially rioters increase the chances of Trump re-election.”, given recent polling shows both a big increase in support for BLM and that many more people think that Biden will be better than Trump at bringing the country closer together and handling race relations, which is hardly surprising.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/06/30/publics-mood-turns-grim-trump-trails-biden-on-most-personal-traits-major-issues/

Chetan Murthy@48:

It’s helpful that you told us who you were, in so few words. 43% of the US are non-voters. The median household income of non-voters is less than half of the median income of a Clinton voter (which was higher than the overall US median, albeit by less than the Trump median was). Clinton didn’t lose in 2016 because of who voted as much as who didn’t; every serious analysis (and countless centrist screeds) since Trump’s installation has told us that. Losing the working class doesn’t require that the Republicans gain them; if the working class drops out, that shifts the electoral playing field further into the favor of politics who cater to the remaining voting blocks. Democrats playing Republican-lite while mouthing pieties about how they’re totally not the party of the rich will always fare worse in that field than Republicans playing Republicans while mouthing pieties about how they ARE the party of the rich, but also of giving everyone a chance to make themselves rich. I know it’s been de rigour for both Dems and the GOP to ignore the first half of Clinton’s deplorable quote, but it truly was just as important as the half both sides freely remember. The Democrats have become a party of C-suite diversity, and they have abandoned the working class. And when their best pick for President’s plenty bold plan for solving police violence is to encourage LEOs to shoot people in the leg instead of the chest (something that could only be said by a grifter or someone with more knowledge of Hollywood than ballistics or anatomy), the prospect of keeping the non-white portions of the working class from continuing to drop out is looking bleak.

MisterMr@49:

The traditional threading of that needle is to expand class-based analysis to more accurately reflect real-world political and economic behavior. In the past (and in some countries who updated the applicable definitions, still), the most relevant additional class was the petty bourgeoisie; in the modern US, however, the concept of the professional-managerial class is the most useful frame of reference.

And I think I forgot to mention:
Every American will become a ”Baker”.

… what happens is that conservative vote is U shaped, they get a ton of votes fom very low incomes … it is still true that in the very low incomes Reps rake up a lot of votes …

Not as many as the Democrats, though.

“…mainstream Democrats recognise the need for radical change, and Biden will align with the mainstream position as he always has done”

That is the saddest, most delusional thing I’ve read in some time.

Bernie was backstabbed, again, by the Democratic National Party (there is no Democratic National Party) precisely because mainstream Democrats will accept nothing but moderation (being totally beholden to corporate interests.)

And those running Biden & Placeholder will thwart his every (2 or 3 ) move (up to his death) toward ‘radical’ change, thus ever widening the gyre…

Orange Watch, how come the 43% of non-voters are non-voters because of the democrats? Why is everything the democrats’ fault? Could it be possible they don’t vote because the GOP isn’t right-wing enough for them? How many Republicans sat out the election because of Trump?

In every story you, likbez et al tell, it’s always the Democrats with agency. It’s never the Republicans’ fault.

Also, I have a vague memory that JQ banned likbez from his threads for going full white nationalist the last time he came around here.

Of what utility is a comment section, when imbeciles like “likebez” post tripe like comment #64? Does he not know that Obamacare was a massive redistribution downward on the income ladder? That the Obama justice department pursued consent decrees and monitoring of racist police departments? Is he unaware that the Democrats had to move rightward after losing election after election in the 70s and 80s?

It’s very tiring having to deal with this tidal wave of bullshit.

@64likbez

”He then went off the rail…”

”THEN”?

After he said:
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children…

That’s what a Famous German Philosopher wrote about Trump – when he had came out as a Birther and wanted to become US President.

Attempting to get the discussion back to the OP:

Trump is an unusually weak President in that he has found it particularly difficult to keep all the ‘wings’ of his coalition together. This didn’t really matter when things were going well, although, due to his personality and the way he presented himself, his approval rating were always low for a President (although they were also unusually stable).

But now the wheels have come off the bus, and his coalition is fracturing.

For example: Trump was elected on a promise of ‘draining the swamp’ and off seeing off neoliberal Republicans (he stated very clearly that he would never cut Medicaid, for example). But now, we see, in a pandemic, that neoliberal Republicans want to cut Obamacare, presumably because Republicans’ ‘donors’ and ‘lobbyists’ in the medical sphere want it.

(https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/14/republicans-obamacare-2020-1415313)

Whatever one thinks of Obamacare, this is simply insanity in the run up to an election, and if Trump lets it happen it’s one of the many reasons he will lose. What Trump should say is : guys this is madness! Let Obamacare stand until I get re-elected and then we can talk. But he seems to be incapable of standing up to them, something which may well doom his presidency. *

Another thing is that unemployment benefits run out in August. (https://thehill.com/policy/finance/505744-congress-gears-up-for-battle-over-expiring-unemployment-benefits)

Republicans, in yet another, ‘I’m going to shoot myself in the face for the sake of some kind of principle that I’m not even sure that I understand’ want to cut these benefits.

In the midst of possibly the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, and 3 months from an election.

This is again, completely insane, and if it happens it’s something that will help to doom Trump’s chances. If Trump were strong, he could stand up to them, but it’s not clear that he is strong. The Republican ‘mainstream’, although they are some way to being Trumpified, still don’t like Trump very much, and it seems they are willing to throw Trump to the wolves for Republican ‘principles’ (being as nasty as they wanna be, hurting the poor, just generally being scumbags).

It’s still not clear how deep Republican insanity runs (please note here I am talking about the insanity of so-called ‘mainstream’ Republicans here, not Trump), such that they are willing to essentially throw an election just purely to hurt the poor, get rid of a candidate they don’t like much, and lose power for 4 years, just for their tawdry ‘principles’.

But if so-called ‘mainstream’ Republicans get their way, the economy will crater, Trump will lose, and the American economy will be a charred post-apocalyptic wilderness by January 2021.

So, given that, I think Biden’s initial impulse will be to try and get a huge stimulus package through Congress, and work on keeping Obamacare and only then think about expanding it, although this depends on whether the Coronavirus is by the ‘a dead issue’. Due to Trump’s incompetence, maybe it will still be ongoing, who knows? In which case, medical help will be important.

But Biden, or at least his advisers, will clearly understand that he has to get the economy sorted, and quick, or he will lose Congress and then be well on the way to being a 1 term President.

*Another sign of Trump’s weakness is his completely unwillingness to stand up to his big business mates in terms of the Coronavirus, and his fear of the ‘cultural conservatives’ who for some reason, don’t want to ‘wear the mask’. Big business wants American open, even at the risk of killing off Trump’s core support . so Trump is being pushed into a position vis a vis ‘reopening’ that is going to hurt him electorally (and already has, according to the polls).

J-D #54: “… there’s no reason to suppose that what I can’t do another also can’t do.”

You are making me fear that there is plenty of reason. Let’s review:

I argued that the Democrats, if they win control of the US government, may be forced into federal budget austerity, essentially because they have no easy, simple reply to propaganda based on the theory of markets which is likely to inundate all screenways just as soon as a new economic slowdown and malaise is touted by Wall Street (my comment #31).

I wrote that comment, because I partly disagree with likbez’s comment that the Democrats are neoliberal sellouts to the financial oligarchy. I believe that would not be the case for most of them, if there were a simple opposing theory that the public would accept. The two requirements are: 1. existence of an opposing economic theory that is as easily expressed and understood, and 2. its acceptance by the public.

You replied that this is only a matter of having another slogan for the next campaign (#41).

Now, I had been writing about Democratic policymaking, in response to public discourse and polling, AFTER the election and before the next campaign: John Quiggin’s thought experiment for part of his next book. But I shifted gears and asked you what that campaign slogan would be, without an alternative theory of the economy that is simple and complete for the public to understand (#44). Because what the public is likely to be living with, at the midterms, is the same macro shit sandwich without Trump-McConnell’s phony veneer.

You replied that, again, it is only a matter of concocting the correct winning campaign slogan (#54).

But in your first comment (#2) you justly raise the question of “why (a) you [we] expect the Democrats to have the necessary political determination to overcome obstructionism”. I think this is the main question. And I submit once again that the answer is directly tied to having an alternate economic theory of the case that the public will understand and trust, which can be put into sloganeering that can withstand the coming movement into financial retrenchment.

Yet the evidence of your comments so far is that you think it is not germane. So I’ll ask it in a different way: How and why would the Democrats muster that political determination? What is your political economic theory of their case?

@ Lee A. Arnold and JimV re: Mueller Report not proving a negative

clinging to shreds is leading you to miss the larger point, which is that the manipulative “leadership” of the so-called Resistance to Trump chose to focus its opposition on made-up issues of no importance.

Trump, in terms of the policy agenda(s) of his crony-infested Administration and of his own dubious business history, is presumably a target-rich environment. The Democrats and their allies in the Media, the Foreign Policy Blobâ„¢ and so-called Intelligence Community either do not actually oppose Trump’s agenda in detail or (and this is important!) do not want to openly advocate for their own reprehensible agenda(s). Charges of collusion with Russia are convenient misdirection. Half of Americans are so stupid and ignorant that they do not even fully grasp that Russia has not been our Communist enemy for going on thirty years. And, it suits the interests of some of these factional elements to aggravate the relationship with Russia, a nuclear power, while other elements simply do not care; none of them want to oppose, for example, the self-destructive policy of perpetual pointless and fabulously expensive war in the greater Middle East. So, Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin never attract much opposition despite their open promotion of authoritarian corruption — and they are the relatively salient crooks.

And, yes, Mueller chose not to clear much of anyone. Let’s also note that, if the Russians did, as Mueller claimed, play an instrumental role in disclosing emails from the Podesta and/or the DNC, those emails were genuine and revealed the truth of the Clinton campaign’s deliberate circumvention of campaign finance laws, a circumvention that weakened the Party’s institutional integrity as well as its efforts at State and local levels to win down-ballot races. I should not have to keep reminding people of that aspect of the 2016 election.

and by the way, Julian Assange is being tortured in a British prison at the behest of American authorities and that does not seem to trouble much of anyone in the American political establishment, of either Party.

I’m not sure how many will take the time to read this, but anyone interested in US trade policy and COVID might be interested in this piece by Robert Lighthizer https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-06-09/how-make-trade-work-workers

The comments have been excellent, which is normally the sign of a good OP. If others believe that a magical door number 3 exists, I’d be keen to hear about it. We don’t get to choose our change agent. The only person willing to dismantle the trade deals which have screwed workers in the west is the current occupant of the WH.

It’s that, or we turn all power over to the hands of the very few. He’s surrounded by globalists in both parties, and it’s something of a miracle he’s managed to survive the non-stop onslaught. But he’s right – they’re not coming for him, they’re coming for us.

The rioting and looting in the streets is elite rage at ordinary folks who decided they’d had enough screwing from both parties. If Trump wins in November, elites may take even more radical steps to dismantle rejection of the globalist order. Read the link and decide if there’s a better alternative. Biden is the globalist’s last, best hope.

Let’s hope he goes down in flames.

likbez #64: “…the part of his analysis reproduced above looks pretty prescient.”

The provision of an entire kooky narrative to “analyze” events that are happening for other reasons is not exactly “prescient”.

From TAP, Biden a” blank slate, uncurious, no sense of history…” a 450 k per annum sinecure from U Penn which involves no teaching. Here’s your return to normal:
https://prospect.org/world/how-biden-foreign-policy-team-got-rich/ And that’s absent the uglier story Biden’s family profiting off the Iraq war reconstruction and his VP gig.

Very much looking forward to learning how lower-wages, outsourcing jobs to China, and enriching the elites will improve the lives of all Americans.

It’s very tiring having to deal with this tidal wave of bullshit.

You don’t have to deal with it. Nobody is forcing you to read likbez’s comments.

I’ve been reading The Hidden Injuries of Class which leads me to believe that the prospects for Trump are better than many of you think they are. However, the future of a further Trump administration seems direly unpredictable, whereas Biden-Rice (my guess) will try to bring back the good old days — didn’t B. say ‘nothing will change’? In the spirit of looking for my keys under the streetlight where I can see, rather than in the dark where I probably dropped them, I’ve been trying to think about the trajectory of this very conservative team in the midst of what I think will turn out to be a fairly catastrophic, fairly rapid set of changes. Some things that seem to be evading a lot of people’s calculus here are Biden-Rice’s continued devotion to warmongering and imperialism, which I think might actually have consequences even if it’s intended only as political claptrap; I expect as well the continued production of funny money to inflate asset prices — these impinge on the poor through rents. When the poor are evicted, where will they go? Into the streets. There are some unanswered questions here for students of Biden and Company.

fn@63:

If you want to invoke comforting half-truths like Murc’s Law, go ahead and do so by name. I’ll note, however, that it is a half-truth, and you’re showing exactly how it’s a half-truth by attacking me for suggesting the Democrats is losing the working class as a whole to non-voting, but not sparing a peep for people upthread who suggested the GOP was actively stealing the working class from the Dems. It’s grand hypocrisy to complain that your interlocutors only assign agency to Democrats when you yourself never assign agency to (good, serious, centrist) Democrats – only their opponents. The Democrats and the GOP both actively and passively fail the working class. My prior comment should have made very clear.

…relatedly…

Lee A. Arnold@82:

If all the Democrats have in response to hostile actors on Wall Street trying to influence voters with fiscal scare mongering is criticisms of the center coming from their left wing, that’s an extremely damning indictment of a silent, passive, unresponsive center that’s afraid to be judged by who they are and what they plan rather than who they aren’t. Just like in 2016.

”Even if he was ”the last best hope” of everybody who loves Golden Toilets”.

and – please don’t take me wrong – as I love the Golden Toilet (called ”America”) by Maurizio Cattelan – too.

BUT @79 – you probably read that ”America” was stolen – just before 5 a.m. on Sept. 14, out of Blenheim Castle – the Castle Queen Anne built for her ”Favourite.”

AND there has been no trace of it since.

AND the police are still looking for the missing john – ”but, so far, they remain empty-handed. A spokesman for the force carrying out the investigation, Thames Valley Police, declined to discuss the case, except to confirm that six people had been arrested in connection with the theft, only to be released later without charge.
The police may not know what has happened to the toilet, but residents of Woodstock, a town near the palace, have plenty of theories – the utmost believable one – that the toilet was stolen by a ”Trumper” – who had America –

MELTED DOWN.
(if you know what we mean?)

Like in the bad old days of 2016, this thread has degenerated to a feast of Trumpist propaganda, both from the part of the fascists and indirectly from the part delusional leftists who don’t know any history. It is a depressing spectacle to behold, more so since „the economic consequences of the pandemic“ would have been a very important topic for constructive debate. That neither the OP nor a single one of the comments is more than remotely related to the title of the thread must, I have to say, be blamed on you John. If you really want to talk about your chosen topic, you’ll have to start a fresh thread and write something about, er, economic consequences of the pandemic. I for one would be very much appreciate your thoughts.

Attempts at political prophesy are, imho, as helpful as a hole in the head. Whether Biden will win, what he can accomplish if he wins, whether he can win and keep control of Congress, how the Right will regroup, and so on, all of this isn’t some predetermined fate but it depends on the agency of American citizens, and if I were American, I would invest my energy into action that might make the outcomes I prefer more likely. As it stands, I am just one among the 7 billion people who cannot vote in the election but will be heavily affected by its outcome, and most of these 7 billion people pray for the Trump nightmare to end.
(I’ve been telling this to American friends on the left who,when Sanders didn’t win the nomination, started talking about another third party vote. Believe me I’m frightened, and I can tell you if these assholes pull it off one more time to help a fascist win against a liberal because “what’s the difference really” and “we’ve had enough of lesser-evilism”, history’s judgment will not be kind.)

Orange Watch 59: the observation that a large part of the low income population doesn’t vote in US elections is correct, in part because young voters sadly are far less likely to care to vote than seniors. But electoral turnout has been trending upward, not downward, in recent elections. It may be tempting to construct a narrative along the lines: „the Democratic Party used to have the support of the working class but since they turned neoliberal, more and more people feel there is no meaningful choice anyway and so they don’t bother to vote.“ But the data clearly contradict that narrative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections

@ph 83 and others who blame outsourching jobs to China

“Very much looking forward to learning how lower-wages, outsourcing jobs to China, and enriching the elites will improve the lives of all Americans.”

Employment/population ratio in the USA, 2018: slightly above 60%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO

Employment/population ratio in China, 2018: 65.6%, clearly falling since the nineties
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLEMPTOTLSPZSCHN

Employment/population ratio in Germany, 2018: 58.8%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLEMPTOTLSPZSDEU

Employment/population ratio in Italy, 2018: 44.4%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLEMPTOTLSPZSITA

So, the USA is a huge net importer, but has an higher employment/population ratio than Italy (a net exporter) and Germany (a huge net exporter). It is lower than China’s, but China’s employment/population ratio is in free fall since the 90s so I assume that this is caused by demographic factors in China (more old people) rather than by globalisation.

People take for granted that the fact that the USA is a net importer is bad for jobs in the USA, but this is far from certain. It probably shifts jobs from the tradable sector to the local consumption sector, but that’s it. (peak employment/population ratio for the USA was at 64.4% in 2000, when globalisation was already well in place).

I think people in the USA blame outsourcing way more than what is realistic, because they have a very optimistic view of what are the normal employment levels in an exporting country.

Still waiting to hear about the magical door number 3.

I’m pleased, however, to read that the record levels of employment among minorities and new jobs going to women never happened and/or is not a net good. All such reports of economic improvement in the last four years are lies. OK.

Still, discussion of the economics of the current administration over explanations which depend on ‘Russia is controlling our President.’ Evidently, every single witness who testified under oath in closed-door sessions before Congress that they had seen zero evidence of collusion with Russia by any American citizen confirms the opposite. Yes, that level of denial still exists among some in 2020.

And no wonder, when facing facts is the alternative. The current administration has delivered less than promised, but far, far more than expected/predicted by pretty much every detractor, including many or most here.. Markets that would ‘never’ recover quickly did. Or, perhaps market recovery never occurred either.

Discussions about COVID and its economic impact are essential. Hating people we’ve never met, and attempting to discern motive even among those we know, is a dubious practice at any time, as is believing the worst about others. I suspect JQ’s open dis-affection for Trump will not interfere with his assessment of the data. The less able will likely resort to levelling charges of propaganda, or ‘white nationalism,’ than addressing the questions raised in the OP and in the more sensible comments.

Will the US surrender to neoliberalism (see BW and others), or turn the wheel over once more to a political amateur bent on ending trade deals which flat-lined American wages for those without a college degree for the last 30 years? How will COVID shape economic and political outcomes in the US?

If door number three actually exists, please point us to it. Like others, I suspect that most voters in November will not return to the illusion of security offered by the Democratic nominee, especially in light of COVID.

J-D #88: “you have not made clear…what kind of actions are the actions which you think Democratic politicians are constrained”

The constraint: I wrote at #12 that macro events would “frighten many (or most) of the Democrats into austerity measures to reduce the budget deficit,” because (writing further at #31) they have no alternate theory of the case to put up against “Free markets promote freedom and efficiency.” (I wrote #31 in response to an objection to my #12 that is expressed by a commenter in #21.) I wrongly supposed that you, in your comment #41 criticizing my #31, were following the logic in this tortuous subthread — and so, you have a slogan for them to use.

Anyway, again this leads right back to your general challenge in #2 as to whether Democrats will have “the necessary political determination to overcome obstructionism.”

I invite you or anyone to comment on my thesis that one of the main problems that the best and most well-meaning of the Democrats have, is that there is no alternative economic theory that is succinct, comprehensible, automatic — and believed by the public. Because anyone’s complaint that the Democrats will not do something radically different, always raises the question of what that thing really is, and how it can be maintained against the opposition.

steven t johnson@98:

There are a great many unstated assumptions baked into this comment, but I’ll take a shot at a foundational one. You suggest PMC is a distinction without difference vis a vis middle class appears to suggest that you’ve bought into a commonly accepted “truth” that can’t withstand close scrutiny, and your claim that economic status is not a useful distinguisher only further drives it home. What is the cutoff between middle class and rich? I’ve seen far too many well-educated idiots with professional degrees make ridiculous claims like $150k household income representing a solidly middle-class income. That’s in the upper 15% of national incomes, but it’s being called middle class. 240% of the national median household income, but it’s “middle class”. And to pre-empt cost-of-living arguments, it’s 175% of the median household income in Manhattan. So when you say PMC is not a useful concept, and that income is not a useful class distinction, I need to ask you where you draw your lines, or if you’re asserting that class has no economic aspect at all. If you’re arguing that households in the upper quintile and bottom quintile don’t have different concerns, outlooks, values, and lifestyles – that someone in either could be working class or middle class (but I assume not upper class? Arguments like what yours appears to be typically don’t start the upper class anywhere below the 1%…) is hard to treat as serious. If that is an assertion you’d stand by, what that tells me is that you’re using private definitions of working and middle class, and they’re essentially unintelligible.

I’ve been reading The Hidden Injuries of Class which leads me to believe that the prospects for Trump are better than many of you think they are. However, the future of a further Trump administration seems direly unpredictable, whereas Biden-Rice (my guess) will try to bring back the good old days — didn’t B. say ‘nothing will change’?

My estimate of the chance of Trump being re-elected is ‘non-negligible, but less than the chance of his being defeated’, based solely on the polls, because every other basis for estimating the chances is more unreliable than the polls (I know nothing of the book you’ve been reading, and therefore nothing of its merits, but I’m sure it’s not a more reliable basis than the polls for estimating the chances of this year’s election results).

I see no basis for concluding that the effects of a first term for President Biden are more predictable than the effects of a second term for President Trump. I wouldn’t attempt to predict either. However, I think the evidence of more than a century is a reasonable basis for concluding that a Democratic Presidency is to be preferred to a Republican Presidency.

“The only person willing to dismantle the trade deals which have screwed workers in the west is the current occupant of the WH.”

The relevant question now is not ‘What words come out of Donald Trump’s mouth?’ and also not ‘What goes on in Donald Trump’s mind?’ but rather ‘Has President Donald Trump improved life for workers in the USA?’ If he has not done so in his first term, it would be folly to expect him to do so in a second.

@95
”If you really want to talk about your chosen topic, you’ll have to start a fresh thread and write something about, er, economic consequences of the pandemic”.

OR we ALL finally list the economic consequences – from each commenters perspective?-
And as I had started a while ago with some consequences which should be especially interesting for this blog?

”EDUCATION” or the NYT in an article about:
”For $30,000 a Semester, Online Classes Need to Get a Lot Better.
College Courses Online Are Disappointing. Here’s How to Fix Them”.

And as I also read these posts – here – how NOT only somebody like ”Harry” struggles with A.V. – aren’t you (teaching) guys worried that one of the major economical consequences for all kind of teachers – will be – that in the future education HAS to be FREE -(at least the way its is in most European Countries?)

I’m really curios about that – and as already mentioned before – about the economical consequences for everybody who is working in Service and Entertainment -(as my homeland the US was/is so ”entertaining”)

So – wht’yall think:

IS THE PARTY FINALLY OVER?
(or will it ALL come roaring back – with just 20 to 30 percent less?)

@MisterMr
White collar are, by definition, working class, because they don’t own the means of production

That’s not the definition. For example: despite not owning any means of production, lumpenproletariat is not part of the working class.

What I see is an opposition between blue collars and white collars, that are two wings of the working class

If this is the way you feel, that’s fine. It is, however, a controversial view. An alternative (and quite convincing, imo) view is that “white collars” belong to the ‘professional-managerial class’, with entirely different interests.

Anyhow, a bourgeois democracy (aka ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’) does not and can not represent interests of the working class; this is indeed “by definition”. Any benefits encountered by the working class are coincidental.

And in the current circumstance, the struggle between the remains of domestic bourgeoisie and global finance capitalism, the former faction is definitely – obviously – better aligned with interests of the domestic working class.

China’s last, best hope hoping to rebrand as an America First populist – Trump Lite: https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-looks-to-curb-covid-19-economic-damage-with-buy-american-plan-11594287005

The reality: Biden discussing “his new pose, proposal? er I’m taking up too much time…” July 8th. https://youtu.be/l9yXP9lTnuQ

I can’t see Biden surviving another 3 months of these gaffes, even with the media covering for him. Will we see an intervention?

If one believes, like Hidari, that people vote exclusicely “with their wallets”, one has little choice but to deny the relevance or even existence of fascism. Why does Trump’s entire campaign strategy consist in whipping up hate against minorities, hate that will neither feed his supporters nor make them any richer, if all voters care about is money? And why do his supporters applaud him for putting immigrant children in cages while they couldn’t care less about that promised grand infrastructure plan that never materializes, when it’s all about “the economy”? This vulgar materialist narrative is seriously outdated – which of course doesn’t mean economic interests are any less important to understand politics; but to deny the potency of ideology is a sure way to misjudge reality.

I have no desire to follow Hidari’s trollish invitation to discuss whether Johnson is “essentially identical” to Trump. Perhaps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had no right to decry Trump’s “fascist presidency” without adding a ceterum censeo concerning Johnson? (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/trump-and-the-rhetoric-of-fascism.html) Such sophistry won’t let Trump’s useful idiots the antiliberal lefties off the hook.

Hidari: “Because if it’s a ‘helping a fascist to win against a socialist’, we know precisely where the liberals stand, in that particular context.”

Just one data point: Not long ago, the CDU chief of Thuringia was forced to resign because he had collaborated with the fascist AFD against the Linkspartei, which is the strongest party in the state but doesn’t have a majority. The CDU then helped elect the leader of the Linkspartei as premier. Merkel herself had strongly pushed for that solution. Yes Hidari, you wouldn’t believe some of the things that happen. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regierungskrise_in_Th%C3%BCringen_2020)

tm@95: “Like in the bad old days of 2016, this thread has degenerated to a feast of Trumpist propaganda, both from the part of the fascists and indirectly from the part delusional leftists who don’t know any history. It is a depressing spectacle to behold, more so since „the economic consequences of the pandemic“ would have been a very important topic for constructive debate. That neither the OP nor a single one of the comments is more than remotely related to the title of the thread must, I have to say, be blamed on you John. If you really want to talk about your chosen topic, you’ll have to start a fresh thread and write something about, er, economic consequences of the pandemic. I for one would be very much appreciate your thoughts.”

sigh Er, no. The only potential Trumpist I see here is Gorgonzola Petrovna (a very stinky cheese indeed) who can be ignored. Your optical illusion might be that you identify all critics of the Democratic leadership as either Trumpist or delusional leftists, forgetting first that Trumpists have their own echo chambers and that leftist and liberal delusions are in the eye of the beholder.

The real culprit is not John’s fault, but the dissociative collective personality of the Democratic voting base: liberal social democrats who are fully committed to Obama/HRC/Biden vs. left wing socialists who vote Democratic only as the lesser evil (and who imo, have understandable reasons for calling the Dems the lesser evil; except for the willingness to sacrifice the lives of U.S. soldiers, little else in the party leadership has changed substantially since Viet Nam). If there were ranked choice voting or parliamentary governance in the U.S., this discordance wouldn’t happen as often since there would be a stronger tendency for the two to separate into different blogs. As it is, the presence of the two sides in the same comments section is like spilled gasoline that can be ignited by the slightest spark. That’s also a large part of the reason why the CT moderators have a truly thankless job.

That said, it is impossible to write only about the economic consequences of the pandemic without first knowing the outcome of November 2020, and that simple fact provided the spark for the past 100+ posts. A Trump victory would likely see a continuation of the social breakdown triggered by an increasingly white supremacist party supporting police violence and exacerbated by the pandemic; you are no longer talking about an economic crisis but a political one as well; the economy might continue to tank as protests spread. And even a Democratic victory might not avoid political breakdown if Biden goes on some ill-advised foreign policy adventure (e.g., doubling down on the attempted overthrow of Syria or getting provoked into a war with Iran) or if Biden and Congress fail to effectively reform U.S. policing. But even assuming that both disasters are avoided there is definitely still room for pessimism:

After a treatment/vaccine for COVID-19 is implemented there will still be a general level of caution due to reduced income and spending and due to companies wishing to reduce future pandemic exposure. Unless something is done, the office/hotel/big box retail CRE markets will be in the doldrums for years and will have corresponding downward multiplier effects in core metropolitan neighborhoods.
Because of 1, there will also be a slower job market recovery in the absence of further fiscal stimulus and also slower household formation.
And assuming that Biden and the Democratic leadership hold true to the Obama template, we will likely see a repeat of 2009-2016, including (a) a post-COVID19 fiscal stimulus that is enough to avert economic disaster but insufficient to lead to a faster recovery, (b) a renewed healthcare reform that increases coverage but does little to address the underlying cost-inefficiency of the system (c) stagnant real incomes for the bottom 80% of the income distribution, and possibly a decline for the median and lower (d) policing reforms that might reduce the frequency of fatalities but do not fundamentally change the quasi-racist, siege-mentality outlook of too much of the police force, (e) increased Republican gains in state and local elections as the electorate perceives that little has changed economically under Biden and company.

It is thus likely that there will be a handoff to the new Clownstick (Cotton or Cruz or some other beautiful person) in 2024 or 2028 at the latest, at the same time that wildfires, droughts, hurricanes and possibly new pandemics punctuate the politics, and as social stratification is unchanged or worsens and the economies of the small and mid-tier metro areas continue to deteriorate, and lastly as continued interference in the Middle East spoils much of the improvement there may have been in the world’s perception of the U.S. Fun.

Utterly pessimistic, yes, so I can only add that I desperately hope the Democratic party leadership proves me wrong. The focal point of the tragedy over the past 12 years has been those voters (not all white, and possibly not even majority white) who voted for Obama in 2008 and either (a) didn’t vote or (b) voted third party or (c) voted Trump, in 2016. My question to the Democratic leadership (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their financers) is: what are you going to do to avoid such defections in the coming eight years? Keep me posted.

Just one data point: Not long ago, the CDU chief of Thuringia was forced to resign because he had collaborated with the fascist AFD against the Linkspartei, which is the strongest party in the state but doesn’t have a majority. The CDU then helped elect the leader of the Linkspartei as premier. Merkel herself had strongly pushed for that solution. Yes Hidari, you wouldn’t believe some of the things that happen. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regierungskrise_in_Th%C3%BCringen_2020)

For those like me who have little or no German, there is a corresponding page in the English-language Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Thuringian_government_crisis

@ 119, Andres, I wanted to thank you for the best short summary of Keynes etc. I’ve read, on the other thread. Your clear explication of the strengths and weaknesses of JQ’s points is, imho, an excellent example of an expert at work.

We can, of course, see the past more clearly and easily through a variety of rubrics. We process the present through emotions, however. So, it’s quite understandable you would so badly mis-understand a significant subset of Trump supporters, his appeal, and his agenda.

I’m an open Trump supporter, former HRC supporter, and active supporter of various socialist politicians and parties. Other Trump supporters I know are academics and entrepreneurs from New Zealand, the US, and the UK. Some own guns, some don’t. Some are people of faith, others aren’t.

As right as you appear to be about your area of expertise, you’re quite wrong about our desire to see police beating people in the streets, or ‘white supremacy.’ We do support free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. We believe in due process, which is why MAGA people are not running riot in the streets despite the attempts by corrupt individuals (both Republican and Democrat) in America’s security and intelligence establishment, their peers in other countries, and various special interests, to overturn the 2016 election. Indeed, we’re still waiting (four years after the fact) for the results of investigations into this affair to arrive. Contrast our patience with cancel culture and the various rushes to judgement over the Covington kids, Hands Up, etc. etc. etc. Not the least of which is the winner of the 2016 election is an agent of a foreign power.

I’m precisely the sort of person who supported Democrats right up to 2006, when Pelosi decided impeaching Bush might reveal just how similar the two parties are, especially in terms of bombing the hell out of people in the Middle East. The rancid behavior of both the Clinton and the Obama campaigns during the primaries, and after, drove me into neutral ground. The corruption of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton’s Libya and Ukraine debacles, and the bankers bailouts, all blessed by a pliant and fawning media, removed all scales from my eyes.

I didn’t know a thing about Trump until Lee A. Arnold posted a link to one of Trump’s speeches. He was saying things I agree with – ordinary people are ignored and treated with contempt (see White van man), by our ‘leaders;’ the rich and well-educated sneer at flags, religion, patriotism and love of country.

In my experience, elites treat people of faith as fools. Many ‘smart politicians’ believe significant numbers of the people they serve are, in fact, surplus to national requirements. Nobody is speaking for ordinary people and the problems we face. The educated left hates and fears the working class.

Academia is as corrupt as every other institution. I’ve been teaching 16 ninety minute classes a week for nearly three decades and have seen my real income decline, and my work load increase, while administrators invest in new buildings and computers. Those who do the actual teaching are treated as temporary labor by many fulltime faculty.

So, yes, I absolutely believe the warped Orange Monster is the only person who might change the status quo and marginally improve my lot and those of my peers. And I’ll continue to support him until a better alternative shows up. Like you, I pray that Dems finally start to take the needs of ordinary people seriously. The fact that only Bernie Sanders (not a Dem) could generate enthusiasm, should explain exactly how people like me could end up supporting Trump. It’s both a question of who pretends to care more, and who has a clearer record of messing up. Biden represents the absolute worst of the old Democratic party. He’s not as openly contemptuous of the law as HRC is/was. I expect corruption and dishonesty from our leaders. But if Trump can continue to redo the trade deals and wind down the war Afghanistan, and fight cancel culture, I’ll feel he’s done a good job.

Bad me.

One has to be wilfully blind to history to deny the obvious parallels between Trumpism and other brands of fascism. Here are some (the list could go on) ideological characteristics common to most fascist movements both in the 20th and 21st century, including Trumpism:
– “Make the nation great again”
– The enemy within threatens the nation and we will fight them.
The enemy within are racial, religious and sexual minorities, socialists, unions, the social justice movement, liberal cosmopolitans.
– Critical journalists/intellectuals are the enemy of the people.
– The nation is victim of an internationalist/globalist conspiracy, led by a liberal elite.
– A propaganda strategy consisting of large scale gaslighting, subverting public discourse by constant lying, creating an alternative reality in the minds of supporters and immunizing them against empirical reality and critical interrogation.

The Trump apologists from the antiliberal left are deluding themselves into thinking that fascism either “can’t happen here” (thank you American exceptionalism), won’t affect them (thank you White Privilege), or is a thing of the past. 21st century fascism won’t repeat the exact same playbook as its historic predecessors. But doesn’t it give you pause that contemporaries of Hitler also downplayed the potential threat with very similar arguments – he won’t last long, he won’t get much done anyway, he isn’t that different from his predecessors? (Many of those who made such predictions ended up murdered or in exile).

And the best argument Trump apologists have on offer – the fact that in his first four years in power he hasn’t started a major war – would also have applied to Hitler. How reassuring is that?!

[Can you discard the earlier comment – unclosed tag, sorry]

J-D #120: “It’s harder to understand why people believe that Democrats are more prone to deficit spending than Republicans, given that in recent decades Republicans have done much more to increase budget deficits than Democrats have.”

It’s because Republicans do not increase deficits by spending. They increase deficits by tax cuts. These tax cuts will “pay for themselves”, i.e. erase the deficits they cause. How and why? Because free markets promote freedom and efficiency, and government does not.

This syllogism is as far as economic understanding goes, for almost everyone. It is the essence of Milton Friedman’s popular message. It has been expressed in countless op-eds by the conservative middlebrow intelligentsia, Hayekians and Chicago economists, until it has filtered down into the taverns and gyms. Some Republican Senator will remind everybody about it, tomorrow. I watched one of them repeat it to the cameras last month.

Of course tax cuts and spending are both expansionary fiscal policy. The Senator may even secretly know that, but tax cuts are better because they “pay for themselves” and “it’s your money.” Efficiency and freedom.

In reality these tax cuts have never paid for themselves. After a cyclical spurt, their effects on business investment and long-term growth are negligible. But the voters don’t follow the technical outcome. Always the pressure has been on the succeeding Democratic presidents to bring down those deficits.

So when you write, “…if you think that the reason people believe that deficits are bad is because they believe that free markets promote efficiency, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, as no connection is evident,” I assume that you have not been studying political-economic rhetoric in the United States for the last 40 years (and no one will blame you). It is the basic theory, quick short and connected, and the Democrats have never had an effective answer to it. What would you do about it?

Arnold:Of course tax cuts and [deficit] spending are both expansionary fiscal policy.

And, as seen above, I disagree with this, at least for the intermediate and long term. Kalecki 1943 deals with the deficit spending part, financing gov’t by selling bonds just gives creditors, oligarchs, and capital political power over policy. Ask Greece about this.

Tax cuts for worker consumption, that theoretically high-multiplier action, will always be countered by inflation favoring capitalists unless there is popular pricing power (ohh, rent control, public housing, mortgage support for examples). To me, this is just common sense, if a landlord reads that her tenants will all be receiving a bonus check she will immediately raise rents. Why shouldn’t she. And this is what we have been seeing for fifty years, tax cuts including for workers and middle class, price increases for health care education and housing, the concentration of wealth and immiseration of the lower classes. This is not coincidental.

I am on balance MMT favorable without understanding (but I definitely trust Kelton, Tcherneva, Wray etc more than many of their peers) it partly on this basis, that it doesn’t borrow and is a little vague maybe indifferent to taxation. Just print til they make us stop.

ph 123

The educated left hates and fears the working class. … The fact that only Bernie Sanders (not a Dem) could generate enthusiasm….

The actual members of the “working class” tended to prefer Hillary to Sanders, and Biden to Sanders. The “educated left” tended to prefer Sanders.

Does ph make an effort to explain why both the “educated” and the “uneducated” Democrat voters tend to vote for the “wrong” candidate (the one opposing their interests) each time? Or acknowledge this small problem in his analysis? No.

123 But if Trump can continue to redo the trade deals….

Back in 79 ph references a piece which argues (dishonestly and poorly, but still) that we should reduce the trade deficit. Trump’s policies have of course made the trade deficit larger. Does ph acknowledge this small problem in his analysis? No.

“…which combines”

ph #123: “I didn’t know a thing about Trump until Lee A. Arnold posted a link to one of Trump’s speeches.”

I didn’t mean to mislead you. …

I wouldn’t worry yourself about it. There is no good reason to believe that ph’s statement is accurate.

J-D 07.09.20 at 1:11 am @ 107
‘…. I see no basis for concluding that the effects of a first term for President Biden are more predictable than the effects of a second term for President Trump.’

I was thinking more of the way in which a Biden administration would be likely to unfold, if I may use that word. While we don’t know what reality will do to it afterward, we can guess at some of its early development because of its ideology and composition. For example, soon after the anointment of Mr. Biden, the abominable Larry Summers came snuffling around, and seems to have been made welcome. Given Mr. Summers’s history and activities, this gives us an idea, does it not? Moreover Mr. Biden, or his handlers, have been emitting hostile noises about Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and so on, to the extent of baiting Mr. Trump about his not being as warlike as they. This suggests a certain kind of foreign and military policy, a certain fondness for imperial illusions. I believe they have even signed on to the latest Russia fable. By chance I caught some 10 seconds of Rachel Maddow ranting about this on YouTube, and it is not an experience I want to repeat any time soon. These seem like important matters and yet they’re just slipping by while people talk about Mr. Biden’s curious vocal productions. Like, what if a lot of the American people don’t want further wars in the Middle East? If Mr. Trump runs to Mr. Biden’s left, where’s Mr. Biden going to go? There is not a whole lot of room in the other direction.

@130 “Clinton was a bad political candidate — but there is no excuse for supporting Trump this time around. He hasn’t fixed a thing. A leader needs intellectual connective tissue between the ears. Trump is obviously, dangerously short-sighted. Anybody else would be better.”

Amen googolplex.

Trump pardons war criminals and cronies–Stone just today (the late Friday scheme to try to minimize the news cycle–ho-hum)–and even Barr, who argued the stricter sentences for felonies were too harsh–still maintained the integrity of the prosecution itself. Barr! The saint of sycophants!

And that is just a latest sampling of Trump’s incompetent criminal behavior.

And for the record about my own background as to this “elite” crap–my parents never saw a high school classroom, and neither did either of their parents’ parents’ parents and on back as subsistence farmers in the South who as my own father (and white) often sharecropped just to have a place to live. As a kid I picked cotton with my mom during “cotton-picking vacation”–yes–a real thing in the Fall when I grew up in the 60s that released school to do that chore–in rural Tennessee. Only sheer luck in life gave me a decent education that led to a PhD and a career as a professor, and I bless my lucky stars–not any fundamental credit to me, because I’m basically no more gifted or talented than most people I’ve met in life–for it. But never, never accuse me of not knowing what it is to share bathwater after your brother has used it or having cornbread and milk as your special dessert. Yeah my parents provided for me as best they could, and thank god for that because I never went hungry. But there are plenty like me who know we are not “elite”–we just have seen both sides of the tracks and know the Trump types who don’t care about us except as some kind of cheerleaders to be manipulated (or else ignored) when we’re on the side of the tracks he’s never ever seen or understood. And to hell with him for that.

Here’s the difference between Trump and Biden by an intuitive test: say that both read my previous paragraph (a real hypothesis for Trump’s reading attention span)–which of the two would genuinely understand and relate in some real degree to what I’ve said?

@
”Here’s the difference between Trump and Biden by an intuitive test: say that both read my previous paragraph (a real hypothesis for Trump’s reading attention span)–which of the two would genuinely understand and relate in some real degree to what I’ve said”?

and if we could add that question to our very simple test in order to identify a Trumper?

How about:

Do you support BLM?
Do you support wearing a mask?
Do you genuinely understand the two questions above and relate in some real degree to what I’ve said?

@MisterMr,
I wrote a reply but it hasn’t survived moderation. Shorter version:
Working class simply sell their labor, man-hours.
And accountants provide loyal service. It’s a career, intertwined with the fortunes of the company.

‘Here’s the difference between Trump and Biden by an intuitive test: say that both read my previous paragraph (a real hypothesis for Trump’s reading attention span)–which of the two would genuinely understand and relate in some real degree to what I’ve said?’

Here’s a literal word for word transcription of a Biden speech.

‘“And so I was saying that, and what they turned around and said, Joe Biden said, in effect, they said, that Joe Biden said that what he was told, that what, that what the white supremacists argue, that we have no problem, that our, our, our basic English jurisprudential system is not the problem. The problem is those countries like Africa and Asia and those places, they’re the reason why we have all these problems. So they turn it around to make it sound like that, and by the way, the title of the article is, was, is the Washington Post ‘The Deceptively (indecipherable) of Joe Biden Singles, Signals What Is Coming’ and that is that’s a whole bunch of lies. The generic point I’m making here is that, what has happened is that, I know we’re going to get in to, whomever the nominee is of the Democratic Party, is going to have a plethora of lies told about him or her, and misrepresentations and this went on the internet, this edited article, it got retweeted by some press people and then they realized it was edited to make it look like something not… white supremacists, see, Biden’s acknowledging that the problem here is that that all those folks, all those minority folks are the problem. And so, in essence. And so they corrected, they corrected. You’re going to see a lot more of it. You’re going to see a lot more of not only my statements being taken out of context, and lied about, or altered, you’re going to see whomever the Democratic nominee is because that’s how this guy operates. Now. Whether or not I can win?’

So yeah. Trump has also, of course, been accused of having dementia, probably with some reason, so this is not a pro-Trump point. But remember that Biden will have access to the nuclear codes.

So the word ‘understand’ in a sentence about Biden, is not an easy ‘match’.

Just to reiterate, for the millionth time, I don’t care who anyone votes for. I’m not an American. Vote for who you want to. But whoever you vote for, don’t tell yourself you’re a hero for doing it, or that this is some kind of epoch-shatteringly important election on which the fate of the so-called ‘free world’ depends. The Republic is not ‘tottering’. American democracy, such as it is, does not stand on the brink. You are not being a rebel in voting for who the DNC tells you to vote for.

(Unless you are talking about climate change. But, of course, no one is).

Also remember that if Tulsi Gabbard was the Democratic nominee, there would be a very very different tone in elite discourse, and we would be hearing a lot less about ‘the lesser of two evils’ and the evils of the left for not doing their patriotic duty, and ‘Vote Blue, no matter who!’.

@130 & @139 — Mr. Trump’s incompetence, however, seems to limit the effects of his malevolence, whereas I don’t see a similarly limiting factor in Mr. Biden (or the people who run him, if such is the case). So far.

steven t. johnson@128:

Suggesting that wealth is clearly a better class distinction than income suggests that class boundaries are a purely rational affair, and carefully elides the complex role debt plays in most of the economy. The fact that there are people in the upper income quintile living paycheck to paycheck does not mean that they suddenly have the same class identity as people in the bottom quintile living paycheck to paycheck. You do not cease to think, act, and identify with a particular stratum of society simply because you’re only able to live in it by living above your means – especially when living above your means allows your children to be raised within that stratum and accrue some – even if not all – of the benefits that stratum enjoys.

Biden does not seem to me to be a credible “alternative” to Trump along any substantive dimension. He is just another stupid, authoritarian crypto-racist sob fronting for the greed of giant corporations and billionaires and flirting with dementia in his old age. Doesn’t the Democratic candidate have to be different from the Republican to make the argument for “lesser” evil somewhat plausible?

Biden might be able to “relate” to Alan White’s life experience — at least he has a reputation for being able to project that “caring” on teevee — but is that a genuine difference? I know people who supported Trump in 2016 because they caught him saying something colorably truthful during one of his incoherent stream-of-consciousness rants while they could not penetrate Clinton’s carefully coded but empty rhetoric. Neither one of them mean it when they do their schtick or show much sign of a political will to govern intelligently on behalf of the interests of the great majority. The political reality of Biden’s empathy for the working class is that he put it to work for MBNA, that he pushed harsh crime bills and oppressive bankruptcy legislation and free trade and perpetual war.

Trump was able to triumph over the Republican elite establishment in 2016, because of a vast gap that had opened up between the desiderata of the elite and the interests and desires of the Republican electoral base. What he was willing and able to do for the Republican electoral base, who are not the most politically discerning people in their attitudes, is not much in total. That cannot be the issue as Biden makes clear he, too, is committed to the billionaires uber alles.

And, the Dems do not even care that there is no substantive difference. The absurd impeachment over Ukraine just highlighted the ways in which Biden and Trump mirror each other, as Biden doing the same damn thing as Trump was at the center of the whole affair. The sameness is a feature, as reprehensible Republicans migrate to the Democratic Party and are praised in this strange political afterlife for principles they never honored in power. (David Frum, anti-Trumpist, can be no argument that Biden is any less evil.)

The argument of the OP that the consequences of the pandemic turn on the outcome of the November election fails on the horrid realization that the essential safety valve of rotation in office has already been pre-emptively thwarted. The electorate can have the satisfaction of throwing Trump-the-Bum out, but the neoliberal counterrevolution has secured power for itself in an election that will be a meaningless coin-flip.

It is a good day when other commenters can bring about a change in one’s world view. ph corrects my assertion on the number of Trumpers in this thread and in the process writes a coherent and consistent (though still very wrong, imo) defense of his support for the Clownstick, in the process also correcting the misconception that all Trumpers are racist know-nothings. And Tm, a committed Democrat (which I share with him in voting though not in political outlook), writes a screed that reminds me of some of Dipper’s worst rants against the EU. Actually, scratch that, Dipper’s posts were more eloquent whereas Tm reads like what Trump would sound like if he were a die-hard Democrat.

For starters, very little of what he says is true. There may well be an anti-liberal left (though my position is that the Democratic leadership is not liberal and has never been liberal since FDR’s time), but the one thing it is not is apologist for Trump. Read any “anti-liberal left” website like Jacobin or Shadowproof and it will be instantly clear that they hate the Trumpstick more than anyone, though whether they do so enough to urge their readers to vote Democratic is another issue (I definitely think they should, btw, and fully agree that voting for third parties or not voting has been and would now be an act of almost criminal stupidity). In Tm’s fevered imagination, criticism of the Democratic leadership is the same thing as apologia for Trump.

It is true that those fools who consciously decide to vote third party or not vote rather than vote Democratic are unwittingly helping Trump, but to then label them as Trump apologists is to apply a Fox News-like perversion of the actual situation.

In case anyone is interested (probably not, but hope never fades), here is a quick take on my own political outlook. John, I know this is flying off way on a tangent, so feel free to not post. Still, it is unavoidable that any discussion of the U.S. near-term political economic-outlook is going to head off into such tangents/derailments.

Reading through Tm’s laundry list of fascist tropes, it never seems to strike him that this list is in fact a transformed version of the socialist left’s criticism of the U.S. oligarchy and U.S. history in general, but with the perverted Fox News re-twisting intended to make working class voters, or at least white working class voters, vote for reactionaries instead of socialists or even liberal progressives. There are good reasons for a wise observer of late 19th century Germany asserting that anti-semitism is the socialism of fools; today’s Fox News is a fool-generation factory, but with xenophobia, law-and-orderism, and anti-islamism taking the place of anti-semitism. The fact that these fascist tropes have metastasized over the past 30 years indicates how unsustainable the existing oligarchic set of political-economic institutions is becoming.

Namely:

– “Make the nation great again”

The socialist left outlook is that with some infrequent exceptions (1865, 1920, 1941-45, 1965 as landmarks; though maybe 1941-45 shouldn’t count as any country can be a great country when faced with an overt threat to its existence) the U.S. has mostly not been a great country though it has aspired to greatness, with the retrospectively tragic preambles to the Declaration and the Constitution being the most succinct statements of this aspiration. Most working-class Americans are unconsciously aware of this situation, but of course are misled by one-line platitude slogans.

“– The enemy within threatens the nation and we will fight them. The enemy within are racial, religious and sexual minorities, socialists, unions, the social justice movement, liberal cosmopolitans.”

There is an enemy within, but it is the corporate elites who finance both parties and who wish to preserve the U.S. as a corporate oligarchy rather than a democracy. Whether or not racism/xenophobia/homophobia/fascist rhetoric is used as a tool to help maintain the oligarchy is one of the few substantive differences between the leaderships of the Ds (no) and Rs (yes).

“– Critical journalists/intellectuals are the enemy of the people.”

It is not critical journalists/intellectuals who are the “enemies of the people” (a.k.a. the defenders of oligarchic government), but the individuals who write their paychecks with the aim of eliminating their “criticality”. Thanks to a complex system of occasional censorship, more frequent self-censoring, pre-determined news area focus, and careful selection of prominent journalists, the role of the news media has mostly been to either manufacture consent (Chomsky’s term, I think) for the oligarchic system and policies (i.e., CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, BBC, etc.) or to act as propaganda for neo-fascist ideology (e.g., all of Rupert Murdoch’s UK and US megaphones). Journalists who still manage to remain critical within this network are few and far between.

“– The nation is victim of an internationalist/globalist conspiracy, led by a liberal elite.”

The correct version is that the world economy is the victim of an emergent policy process led by an anti-liberal corporate elite. There are many ways to describe this emergent policy process; Phil Mirowski’s work on neoliberalism, though it has flaws, is as good as any description of the process.

– A propaganda strategy consisting of large scale gaslighting, subverting public discourse by constant lying, creating an alternative reality in the minds of supporters and immunizing them against empirical reality and critical interrogation.

The difference between this and the Dem. leadership, as well as the pre-Fox News Republican leadership is one of degree, not kind. Both leaderships want the public to believe that the U.S. is a liberal democracy; many of them have even deceived themselves into believing it. But true liberal democracies do not allow the wholesale rewriting of history as happened with the Lost Cause from 1876 to 1964, approximately; true liberal democracies do not have news organs that feed racist rhetoric under the table. If you’re going to feed a narrow set of broad lies to the U.S. public, why not go whole hog with an army of specific lies?

Before anyone accuses me of being a cynic, I still harbor the hope that pressure from the ground up will eventually (a) lead to the political defeat of Fox-style neo-fascism, and (b) either make the Democratic party irrelevant or convert it into the true progressive/liberal party it should have been since the 1950’s at least. Occupy, BLM, and demonstration feminism are specific instances of a broader, spontaneous backlash that might yet transform the country, though I fear that things will have to get much worse before that can happen.

ph @123: As I mentioned in a previous post, I think your reasoning is more consistent and coherent than tm’s (and that’s the only reason I’m bothering to reply), but unfortunately he doesn’t set a very high bar. A few points regarding your statements:

“In my experience, elites treat people of faith as fools. Many ‘smart politicians’ believe significant numbers of the people they serve are, in fact, surplus to national requirements. Nobody is speaking for ordinary people and the problems we face. The educated left hates and fears the working class.”

Fools come in all sorts of religious belief flavors. The disasters of atheist communism, the catholic Crusades, modern Islamic jihadism, protestant-perpetrated massacres in Ireland, etc. should teach you that if when people are utterly dogmatic and gullible, they will commit crimes no matter what their faith or lack of faith is.

I don’t suffer the delusion that the Biden wing of the Democratic party respects me as an individual even though I vote for it in general elections; neither should you delude yourself into thinking that the agenda setters at Fox News, nor the Trumpstick, have any respect for you.

Sorry for flirting with Godwin’s Law violation, but the idea that the educated left hates and fears the working class is a classic dolchstosslegend lie that has been peddled at least since Wagner and the Protocols, and you need to wake up to that. The fact that the Democratic leadership has played into that lie by its continually Wall Street-friendly economic policy is absolutely not an excuse for voting for the opposition that peddles this lie. It is the educated left that is criticizing the Democratic leadership from the left, and which has blasted the economic policies that led to the decline of small and mid-tier metro areas across the U.S.

“Academia is as corrupt as every other institution. I’ve been teaching 16 ninety minute classes a week for nearly three decades and have seen my real income decline, and my work load increase, while administrators invest in new buildings and computers. Those who do the actual teaching are treated as temporary labor by many fulltime faculty.”

Either you have your terminology wrong or you must have gone through a different academic universe than I did. The extreme inequality in academia is a different problem altogether than corruption. As a graduate student TA and then lecturer, it was the university administration that treated me like crap, not the professors I worked for, and all of them came by their beliefs and their teaching the old fashioned way, no one bought them. If you really want to see an example of corruption in academia, try the Mercatus Center, but that is an exception rather than the rule.

Lastly, while I acquit you of a white supremacist desire to see the police beating the crap out of black people or even shooting them as a way of maintaining law and order, you need to do a serious reckoning. Orange Dude has:

–Called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers.
–Encouraged the treatment of Muslims as potential terrorists.
–Encouraged the presence of white supremacist counter-demonstrators at anti-racism and BLM demonstrations.
–Blasted the pulling down of Confederate statues as a re-writing of history, even though those statues only exist because history was re-written before him.
–Boasted that Andrew Jackson, the only U.S. president arguably guilty of wholesale ethnic cleansing, was his main inspiration as President.

Your first question: if you don’t think of yourself as a white supremacist, how do you look at yourself in the mirror when voting for such a candidate?

Second question: Getting to your last sentence, after four years of Orange Dude, there is no end to the war in Afghanistan, continued threats and a near war against Iran, the re-negotiated trade deals with China are as no-change cosmetic as the re-negotiated NAFTA, and further police brutality has caused cancel culture/de-funding demands now become a major factor in political outcomes. So will you finally admit that you have been conned? Think about it.

@130 & @139 — Mr. Trump’s incompetence, however, seems to limit the effects of his malevolence, whereas I don’t see a similarly limiting factor in Mr. Biden (or the people who run him, if such is the case). So far.

For people who are interested in a comparative evaluation of Donald Trump and Joe Biden as candidates for the Presidency in this year’s election, it is impossible to conduct it by comparing the records of the two as holders of that office, because only one of them has such a record.

Personally I feel that it’s possible to conduct an adequate comparative evaluation on the basis of the fact that one will be the Republican nominee and the other the Democratic nominee, and the record of Republican and Democratic presidencies over the last century or more.

Andres 07.11.20 at 8:00 pm @ 156:
… the Democratic leadership is … not militarist….

They have been baiting Trump about not dealing with Russia, China, Venezuela and all ‘our’ other so-numerous enemies aggressively, so if they’re not actual militarists, they’re fake militarists, which seems even worse, like fake racists. Recent Democrats in high leadership positions have also been very enthusiastic about interventions in general. I am sure I need not name them. It is true they do not have Trump’s offensively infantile style. But otherwise they seem pretty militaristic, no? Especially if Trump is as crazy as claimed.

@157
”So will you finally admit that you have been conned”?

If Ph won’t – and commenters like Bruce Wilder or Anarcissie neither –
I will – I have been ”conned” – ”BIGLY” as the Clownstick would say – BUT not by Trump -(as I’m NOT STUPID enough to get ”conned” by such an obvious ”Cheater”)

I got conned by: ”The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic” – and as the topic of this thread is:
”The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic” —
REMEMBER GUYS!!
I never thought – that I actually couldn’t return to ”my homeland” (the US) for now – how long???!
And what am I saying? – as I actually could fly back – BUT who could be ”conned” to fly back to a country – where ”THE VIRUS AND THE STUPID” rules to such a degree – that
there are STILL some of my fellow Americans – who think there is no difference between a Science Denying Racist and the Opposite.

And about:
Bruce Wilders: ”Doesn’t the Democratic candidate have to be different from the Republican to make the argument for “lesser” evil somewhat plausible? and/0r
Anarcissie: Mr. Trump’s incompetence, however, seems to limit the effects of his malevolence, whereas I don’t see a similarly limiting factor in Mr. Biden.

THAT IS WHY –
MY (OUR) CANDIDATE IS ”QUEEN ANNE”
and as she definitely is ”different” from Trump AND from Biden – AND as her incompetence, definitely also limits the effects of her malevolence – I very much hope that Mr. Wilder AND Anarcissie -(if they are currently residing in the homeland) will support Anne’s Candidacy – AS – coming back to the ”The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic” – WE had planned a HUUUGE Rally in Philadelphia as kind of a ”October Surprise” –
(If y’all know what we mean) –
AND we were sure – that we got enough ”Wilder-Type-Or-Anarcissie-Voters” – who would make Queen Anne our next President) – BUT as the Virus now completely rules America NONE of our ”Human” Campaign Organisations can effort to go ”over there” –
NOT because of the ”travelling costs” BUT because of the ”economical HUMAN cost”
-(if y’all know what we mean?)

And so – Moderation – PLEASE would you do US the favour and pass this comment?
(even if it seems to be more ”personal” than some of the comments already passed?)
BUT we REALLY need HELP in ”the homeland” – to welcome the Queen – when we send her back (ALONE) end of September! –
(after the Facelift she currently had received in London)

And please listen very carefully to TC 2:26 of
https://youtu.be/RzpP8F5ELS0

AND we even can promise some ”very positive economic consequences” for everybody who is willing to help US – to organise a ”Virtual October Surprise” for the erection of the !!!!
NEW AMERICAN QUEEN!

@Gorgonzola Petrovna 143

I don’t really understand your point. Teachers and accountants also sell their labor (I’m assuming that they are employees) in man-hours.
The difference I think is in the level of labour specialisation, but even there most blue collars nowadays perform specialised labor of sorts.
I can see a difference between credntialed and non credentialed, and I can see a difference between management and non-management, however not all white collars are management.

Now in a situation, like it was in Marx’s times, where very few people have a degree (for example), it makes sense to say that people who have a degree face radically different careers than others, who mostly have middlw school or lower education, and so they are a different class. But in our society more and more people have a degree, and most people have an high school diploma (and in reality the cultural difference between an high school diploma and a degree are not as big as those between middle school and high school), I don’t think the difference is still that big.

Now there are certainly some differences, and I think that the most important difference is self identification (and this is what actually drives votes), but in practical economic terms I think the big divide is still between asset owners and non asset owners, moreso than credentialed VS non credentialed.
In fact my view is that the populist right uses the cultural self-identification divide between credentialed and non credentialed to pull non credentialed workers towards the right, while in pratice the right makes pro asset owner policies that they paint as if these policies were against the credentialed, hence my opinion that this distinction is based on false consciousness (of perceiving the credentialed VS non credentialed divide instead of the asset owner VS non asset owner divide).

Andres – Thank you, I’m extremely pleased by your reply. I’ll happily acknowledge that Trump is a cynical, vulgar, race-baiting buffoon entirely willing to exploit racial tensions and divisions to further his own political ends.

As such, I see him as no different from any other politician, other than the fact that’s his messaging and willingness to play the race card was exceptionally effective in controlling the news cycle from his announcement up to the present.

Your list of ‘what I need to do and think about’ is an implicit and explicit assertion that I haven’t (enough) thought about any of Trump’s speech code violations, promises kept, and unkept, and that somehow wandered into my current position for reasons unknown.

You present hearsay and opinion as fact, and substantive facts at that. What he says? I prefer to focus on what people do, what Democrats did 2008-2016, and what they’re certain to do again, in some form or another, should they win in 2020.

Obama destroyed Libya, a nation which represented no threat to the US on any level, and did so on a whim. Upon later reflection Obama described the decision as a ‘mistake.’ Only an American president could call the destruction of a nation ‘a mistake.’ Sorry! Shouldn’t have done that! Gosh, if only I’d thought more carefully before destroying that country.

And Libya wasn’t a one-off. Democrats and their doofus Republican allies also organized a coup in the Ukraine, choosing as their allies active anti-semites who erect statues to real WWII Nazis. For real. Obama’s botched attempt to finesse Russia ended up ceding the Crimea to Russia. What about ISIS? Shrug; they’re ‘jv’ no worries, leading to the creation of a 7th-century mini Cambodia, replete with slavery (see Libya!) and the destruction of ethnic peoples living in the region, all funded by billions in oil. The US ‘helped’ in Syria, too. How? Hillary Clinton and her neocon pals did their best to prolong the Syrian civil, with the blessing of John McCain and scores of Republican a-holes. Bipartisanship at work!

So, yes, Andres. I certainly will consider whether I’m happy with my support for Trump. I’ll consider it whenever I see Biden trying to remember his name. I doubt very much, however, that I’ll forget Hillary Clinton laughing on camera: “We came, we saw, he died” when describing the US destruction of Libya, or the race-bating and tactical deployment of the race card by all US politicians when it suits them, or the cynicism of ‘I feel your pain’ politicians. There’s an active thread detailing how Americans of both parties (many of whom wouldn’t dream of using a ‘bad’ word) strive to ensure their kids don’t end up in predominantly black public schools. But ‘Trump’s words!’

Nice to know what you think I need to think twice about. I will! And your explicit absolution on charges of ‘white supremacy.’

Wow, that’s big of you. Didn’t realize that was your job, but thanks! I couldn’t have slept.

Orange Watch #148: “…not an act of ‘capitulation’… You’re denying all agency to the center; things ‘just happen’ to them…”

You are right, “capitulation” is a bad word. But I disagree that they are fine with the reigning theory of how the system is supposed to work. They are worried, they are flummoxed, they care a little more about the poor and disadvantaged, they are not telling people to suck it up and stop complaining, they are Democrats.

I think it is because there is no other economic theory that fits on a postcard, or in contemporary terms, a tweet.

On why people believe the political-economic rhetoric that “Republicans do not increase deficits by spending,” and not the facts about government spending, I responded in #152 above.

Andres 153: Claiming telepathic insight into my imagination is a bit unconvincing. If you wish to take issue with my actual arguments, try to offer a rebuttal.

Here’s my ballot.

🗹 Queen Anne

She can be her own cabinet — very efficient! and very handsome, too.

Nastywoman, if by QUEEN ANNE you mean anne the commenter (on Economists’s View and other blogs) then you really are a softie :-) . But I don’t think you will be doing her any favors.

And while Picasso-prose seems to be your forte, don’t forget about the foresight part. John Q. Pandora starts a thread titled “The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic”, which subject is impossible to write about without (a) making assumptions about who wins in November and (b) making assumptions about the character of the cabal that will lead us after November. Are you really surprised then that the crap starts to fly at high speeds in all directions? As soon as I saw the VIRUS-like exponentiation of comments, I knew that John had a Chernobyl on his hands.

Speaking of which COVID19 is not the only pandemic. The other pandemic gripping the U.S. for a long time now is the yuuuge number of voters in love with Clownstick or at least favorably disposed to him; I get post-apocalyptic nightmares about being pursued by mobs of drooling gibbering cannibalistic MAGA hat-wearing zombies (no ph, you’re not one of them). Since the Democratic cabal was in charge of the white house in 2009-2016 when this first pandemic was really spreading, they were as incompetent in controlling it as Clownstick is in controlling COVID19. The VIRUS is a symptom of the STUPID, don’t forget.

145 Hidari

But whoever you vote for, don’t tell yourself you’re a hero for doing it, or that this is some kind of epoch-shatteringly important election on which the fate of the so-called ‘free world’ depends.

Hidari is wrong. This is obviously an important election. For Trump to win one term was bad enough – not just for what it said about “the right” but almost as much for what it said about “the left.” If you can’t beat someone as unpopular as Trump once, that’s one (amazing) thing, but twice?

There’s just too many ways in which having a person like Trump as president simply damages the country – not in the sense of “the left doesn’t get everything it wants,” which is I think the main concern of progressives, but in the way it fuels division and stupidity all around. Trump is unpopular for all kinds of good reasons.

151 bruce wilder

[Biden] is just another stupid, authoritarian crypto-racist sob fronting for the greed of giant corporations and billionaires….

Here’s how bad things are on the left: Bruce Wilder, who used to be somewhat poetic in his odd musings, is now writing the same sort of mindless crap that any idiot could write.

Biden isn’t stupid, isn’t “crypto-racist,” and I don’t think it’s that obvious that his percentile rank for “sob-ness” for the category of “elderly Democratic politicians” isn’t somewhere around P50, so who cares about that?

If Vegas had an over/under on “the number of CT commenters who actually voted for Biden in a thread lasting 163 (the current number) comments,” it would probably be 0.5. (And thanks to me, you should bet the over!).

The political reality of Biden’s empathy for the working class is that he put it to work for MBNA, that he pushed harsh crime bills and oppressive bankruptcy legislation and free trade and perpetual war.

Well, in my view the relationship between the interests of the “working class” – however defined – and credit issues and crime and free trade is actually much more complicated than this suggests. Biden was re-elected to the US Senate six times, each time with between 58% and 65% of the vote, and four of those times while the other Senator was a Republican, so not in the bluest state in the country, maybe. Maybe the Republicans always ran bad candidates, or maybe actual “working class” voters view things somewhat differently than the typical CT commenter. This of course leads me to ph….

123 ph

In my experience, elites treat people of faith as fools. Many ‘smart politicians’ believe significant numbers of the people they serve are, in fact, surplus to national requirements. Nobody is speaking for ordinary people and the problems we face. The educated left hates and fears the working class.

ph, the champion of the ordinary man! He loves Trump and Bernie! He hates hates hates Obama and Biden.

Yet the “ordinary man,” when going to the polling place, for some reason disagrees with him. Upper middle class white progressives voted heavily for Warren and Sanders, but somehow Biden won. How did that happen?

And could you imagine Obama vs. Trump in 2020 if only people from the bottom half of the income distribution were allowed to vote? Trump wouldn’t even bother campaigning! It would be slaughter.

136 ph

Biden’s America First economic nationalism is getting some traction in the press, whether it’s ‘borrowed from Bernie, or Trump Lite. I saw two pieces on this yesterday. If America First economic nationalism is a major feature of the coming debates, discussions on China-US relations (economic and otherwise) are going to play a major role. ….. Trump is already open suggesting China ‘may have’ lied about COVID to hurt him electorally. The electorate is primed for a wave of anti-Sino bigotry which both candidates will have to negotiate.

At the end of 136 ph links to a Financial Times piece entitled “Joe Biden is the last, best hope for globalists.”

This is of course ridiculous, as globalization is both good, overall, and not going away, but forgot about that – what someone needs to write is a piece entitled “China is the last, best hope for pro-Trump kooks.”

As if it isn’t bad enough that we have Peter Navarro (author of Death By China) in the White House “prim[ing]” “anti-Sino bigotry” and Tucker Carlson on Fox News doing it and poorly-educated conservative “intellectuals” like Rod Dreher lapping it up, here on CT we get exposed to this wonderful and nuanced outlook via ph.

ph doesn’t want to move to America and work as a low-skill manufacturing worker, but he (and Navarro and Tucker and all the rest) fervently believes that (1) lots of Americans desire this kind of employment; and (2) there are these “America First” policies that will have a positive and significant effect on the number of such jobs.

We can’t wind the clock back to the 1960’s, when monetary policy was more employment-focused and the rest of the world hadn’t caught up yet, nor should we want to. Both (1) and (2) are basically false and shallow notions.

There’s all this talk of “racism” in America today, and half the time it’s not really about racism at all, it’s just white vs. white status gaming (e.g. white guy BW calling white guy JB “crypto-racist,” see above), and nothing illustrates the true disinterest on the left in actual racism issues than the casualness with which “globalization” and “neoliberalism” are thought of as evils – as if the “great uplift” in China and India just happened out of nowhere. The Trumpist worldview isn’t just evil and stupid on immigration, it’s evil and stupid on trade as well. And nothing could possibly be more evil and stupid than concocting an “enemy” out of China. That ph can push this sort of nonsense without stronger pushback from “progressives” is ridiculous.

BW 77: “The Democrats and their allies in the Media, the Foreign Policy Blobâ„¢ and so-called Intelligence Community either do not actually oppose Trump’s agenda in detail”…

Oh really. Can you name two or three examples of the Democrats “not actually opposing” Trump’s nefarious agenda? Like when they didn’t actually oppose that Trillion dollar tax cut, except by voting unanimously against?

“So, Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin never attract much opposition despite their open promotion of authoritarian corruption — and they are the relatively salient crooks.”

They “never attract much opposition”, wonderful. Care to name a single project of theirs that hasn’t attracted opposition? Of course, in matters under the executive jurisdiction of these corrupt crooks, there isn’t much the opposition can do. Oh, here’s a thought: the most effective opposition would have consisted in voting Democratic in 2016 to prevent the crooks from taking power in the first place! Need I mention that Wilder represents precisely the fraction that helped Trump and his cabinet of horrors gain power on the theory that the Dems aren’t any better?

Everybody who follows the news should be aware that DeVos and Mnuchin are awful. E. g. the NYT has really paid them a lot of attention. One always wishes for more attention to their misdeeds but frankly, this is an administration completely corrupt in every bone, and every single act coming out of it has been nefarious, intentionally designed to burn the planet, hurt workers, students, teachers, increase inequality and enrich the cronies, and on and on, to the extent that it is impossible to keep track of every one of them. And frankly, people like myself have warned four years ago that this is what would happen if Trump gets into the WH. But these warnings have been dismissed by the antiliberal left, and once again they invest enormous energy denying and downplaying the damage caused by Trump and the threat he poses, as demonstrated by the sad spectacle of this comment thread. It is the very definition of chutzpah when Wilder of all people now complains there isn’t enough opposition to Trump.

Ha. I have reached CT’s equivalent of flashing lights, sirens, and money pouring out of the dispenser opening. There ought to be a named law for the following: no matter how radical you are, if post on comment threads long enough someone like steven t johnson will (crawl out from under a rock and) call you a reactionary. The idea that only a socialist democracy can be a liberal democracy seems to elude him. C’est la vie.

AND so Her Majesty agrees with –
@178 who thinks:
”I think the world economy is in yet another capitalist crisis”
and Her Majesty thinks it’s even ”worst” as the Virus has very effectively OVERTHROWN Capitalism in violent and deadly REVOLUTION which made even the
German Government ”socialising” the proud ”Bird” of German Capitalism ”Die Lufthansa”.

AND that a self-described ”Socialist” like ”steven t johnson” missed ”The Socialistic Revolution” in such a ”BIGLY” way only CAN MEAN that he wants to join OUR movement too –

Right? ”Steven”? –
and can WE call you ”Steven”? –
AS we would like to make YOU!!! –
”Her Majesty’s Pandemicminister” –
as you ”still think the economic consequences are not due to the pandemic, but triggered by the pandemic” AND you don’t understand how anyone can claim to think otherwise while ruling out a V-shaped recovery.”
EVEN if some of the commenters here would come to the conclusion that such ”understanding” means – that there is no difference between YOU and Trump!

WE know that there… ”IS” – as there ALWAYS is a difference between a ”Racist Science Denier” and his Opposite!

Right?

AND the following HAS to be said here too:

I think I echo many Americans, and people of the world in general, when I say that I’m having a hard time fully grappling with the gravity of this moment.

It is still hard to absorb that a virus has reshaped world behavior, halted or altered travel, strained the economy and completely reshaped the nature of public spaces and human interaction.

It is also hard to absorb that this may not be a quickly passing phase, an inconvenience for a season, but something that the world is forced to live with for years, even assuming that a vaccine is soon found.

There’s this notion that things could turn on a dime, not because of a human action, but rather because humans are under attack.

The idea that years of planning for graduations and weddings, home purchases and retirement, might all come to a screeching halt is humbling and disorienting. The confusion over how and when children can safely return to school and adults can safely return to work is frustrating because it leaves people’s lives in the lurch.

The idea that face coverings and elbow bumps may be the new normal is a shock to the system.

It seems that on multiple levels, society is being tested, and often failing.

People are rebelling against isolation, and against science and public health. They want the old world back, the pre-Covid-19 world back, but it cannot be had. The virus doesn’t feel frustration or react to it. It’s not aware of your children or your job or your vacation plans. It’s not aware of our politics.

The virus is a virus, mindless, and in this case, incredibly efficient and effective. It will pass from person to person for as long as that is possible. The political debate over mask wearing is a human concern, one that works to the virus’s benefit.

And it is these politics, particularly as articulated by Donald Trump, that are allowing the virus to ravage this nation and steal tens of thousands of lives that should not have been stolen”.

@MisterMr
Teachers and accountants also sell their labor (I’m assuming that they are employees) in man-hours.

No, imo they don’t sell their labor. Like I said, they’re making careers. “Accountant” is a step on the career ladder, towards management positions, ultimately the CFO.

Also, professionals don’t work hours. Or do they, in Italy? I’d be surprised. The places I’ve seen, they work for as long as necessary, with no overtime pay. They serve.

…the populist right…to pull non credentialed workers towards the right…

I can’t really discern the traditional left-right spectrum in the 21st century politics. Who’s left? Who’s right? No, there’s something else going on. Global communications and containerization changed the mode of production. We need to adjust our analysis accordingly.

I do feel that the education level is an important factor in the class structure. As it always has been. Somewhat similar to aristocracy in the old days, I suppose. With no assets you’re still nobility; you sell your personal service…

Hidari @186, There is no preventing the rise of China, either economically or militarily. I doubt that anyone in the US foreign policy, military and intelligence communities believes it is possible. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a useless futile war — the US’s failure to revitalize its own economy for the challenges of the 21st century, alongside Trump’s unproductive distractions about the trade deficit, could create enough frustration to whoop-up the American jingoists into a hot war as soon as somebody sets off a bomb somewhere. Forbes’ review of the parts of John Bolton’s book dealing specifically with Trump’s China “policy” is instructive.
forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2020/06/26/john-bolton-tells-us-why-china-is-eating-trumps-lunch/#777974801ea6
Where did you get the idea that Trump has treated Putin with contempt? All of the evidence is to the contrary. Far from being highly agressive against Russia, Trump was forced into sanctions against Russia by his own Senate party. He wants to build a hotel in Moscow.

@186
”Anyway, interesting times”!

Yes?…
And how… interesting? – that on a thread about:
‘The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic” – somebody manages to completely ignore ”the economic Consequences” OR – even totally and absolutely ”THE PANDEMIC” – and writes all of these… ”things” – as if the Virus never have… happened?

How is that… possible?!
AND how… how… ”interesting”? – that right before comment 186 there is/was comment 185 with all these quotes from somebody who wrote -(in the NYT)

”I think I echo many Americans, and people of the world in general, when I say that I’m having a hard time fully grappling with the gravity of this moment.

It is still hard to absorb that a virus has reshaped world behavior, halted or altered travel, strained the economy and completely reshaped the nature of public spaces and human interaction.

So do you guys think that all these guys on the Internet who still write ”stuff” as if ”the REVOLUTION” – never would have happened – will wake up one day and go:

WOW – there is this Virus out there?!

”the Virus was/is changing… EVERYTHING”?

meaning – does it really STILL make sense:
”Without going into the long and ignoble history of American imperialism, anti-Chinese racism and the desire to control China has been a long standing tradition in American foreign policy – if WE even don’t know if such ”issues” are still ”relevant” A.V.
(after the Virus)

I mean if – THE REVOLUTION – turns both – America and China into – two –
pretty much ”isolated countries” –
there is no reason to worry about America and China anymore.

It will be just like now – if being in Germany right now – there is just ”Germany” -(or perhaps some of the other EU countries who seem to have the Virus under control)
while ALL of my friends and family in the US -(and even in Australis) –
just live on a completely different planet!

@Gorgonzola Petrovna 187

“No, imo they don’t sell their labor. Like I said, they’re making careers. “Accountant” is a step on the career ladder, towards management positions, ultimately the CFO.”

Since “careers” are set up as pyramids, most accountants in an office will stay at the lower level (and they work hours), otherwise the world would be full of CFOs.

“Also, professionals don’t work hours. Or do they, in Italy? I’d be surprised. The places I’ve seen, they work for as long as necessary, with no overtime pay. They serve.”

Schoolteachers certainly work hours in Italy (though they work shorter ours than others, at least in public schools). I assume that in the rest of the world schoolteachers also generally have weekly hours, or how could the schools orgainze lessons?

“I can’t really discern the traditional left-right spectrum in the 21st century politics. Who’s left? Who’s right? No, there’s something else going on. Global communications and containerization changed the mode of production. We need to adjust our analysis accordingly.”

At least in my experience, nationalists are almost always on the right, because they generally are cultural traditionalists.
This is not necessarily true in all cases, though.

“I do feel that the education level is an important factor in the class structure. As it always has been. Somewhat similar to aristocracy in the old days, I suppose. With no assets you’re still nobility; you sell your personal service…”

I think that educational levels are less important today than, say, 100 years ago (simply because people have on average higer educational levels today), however as there are much more people with high educational levels today than there were 100 years ago the split is perhaps more evident.

Gorgo 187: “Also, professionals don’t work hours. … The places I’ve seen, they work for as long as necessary, with no overtime pay. They serve.”

How I envy the professional class the privilege of working overtime without pay!

Fun Fact I: in the US, salaried workers are not entitled to overtime pay if they make $355,680 a year. Oops little mistake, the figure is all of (tadam) … $35,568!.

Fun Fact II: Obama mischievously tried to deny millions of workers the privilege of working for free by raising the threshold to $47,476. Fortunately, a right-wing judge and the Trump administration intervened to prevent that historic injustice!

Gorgonzola or Gorgo Medusa or whatever his name, is he really that ignorant or extremely cynical? Or is it safe to assume it’s both?

Or to put it another way, if only ‘we’ were to hand over control of all our political institutions to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and other figures of the ‘left’ then everything would be fine.

Since I do not know the minds of all CT commentators, I cannot perfectly vouch that none of them believe this, but what I can say is that no plain, or even non-plain reading of this thread can support this inference. I have no idea who thinks that Zuckerberg or Musk are figures of “the left” but I see no evidence that anyone in this thread believes this.

And if you disagree that everything would be better if all American institutions were firmly under the control of white, (Harvard, Yale) educated, middle-class males (although they are all terribly ‘woke’ of course), not like that dreadful Trump man, who is such an oik, but cultured ones with class and taste, you are an antisemite and a Nazi.

Again, this is a completely absurd reading of anything anyone has said here. While this is a thing that some people believe, probably, it does not appear to be a thing that anyone actually engaged in this discussion believes.

@189

I glanced at that Forbes piece but any article that starts with a presupposition of anything other than that John Bolton is the anti-Christ who belongs in jail (or Hell) is worthless. Trump’s China policy has been bad enough: goading him with the lie that he has been too soft on China (a viewpoint which is genuinely insane, like Bolton) is extraordinarily dangerous.

Trump’s Russia policy has also been dangerous and provocative and it’s again endlessly depressing that so many liberals have persuaded themselves of the opposite. Obviously if you read a propaganda rag like the NYT then that’s an inference you might draw, but nobody sane would do something like that. Here’s a list of 25 times that Trump was dangerously hawkish to Russia, a nuclear power.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/19/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia/

Biden, on paper, is not really all that bad (don’t get me wrong, he’s terrible, but that’s only because he’s a centrist Democrat). What genuinely worries me is the people who surround him and who propagandise for him, many of whom are objectively and obviously crazier than Trump, and who are given prime-time access on pro-Democratic Party media outlets (MSNBC and others). As Chomsky has tirelessly pointed out, Trump’s reckless and aggressive policy towards China and Russia has been one of the worst features of his reign and it’s depressing that so many liberals either think that his aggression has not gone far enough or else (in the case of Russia) simply ignored it and chosen to live in a fairy tale world in which Trump is Putin’s puppet and similar nonsense. Outside of the fantasy world of liberals, the Union of Concerned Scientists (who actually, unlike NYT journalists, know what they are talking about) moved their Doomsday Clock to the closest to midnight it has ever been and this was explicitly because of Trump’s aggression to China and Russia, risking nuclear war, and his global warming denialism (that battle is probably lost by the way, no matter who wins in November).

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

To quote actual scientists: ‘, the United States (i.e. Trump) has adopted a bullying and derisive tone toward its Chinese and Russian competitors.’

It’s really not enough to persuade ourselves that Trump is awful: this is something that we can all agree on. It’s: will Biden be better.

Some questions might be relevant here.

When has Biden openly condemned Trump’s aggression on Russia, for example ,withdrawing from strategic arms limitation treaties, and his ‘bullying and derisive’ tone to Russia/Putin?

When has Biden openly condemned Trump’s aggression on China, not limited to whipping up racist hatred of Chinese nationals, but also dangerous brinksmanship in the South China Sea?

The ‘joker in the pack’ is of course climate change, where it is obvious that Biden is better than Trump, although whether his ‘Green New Deal’ (or what’s left of it after the Republicans get through with it) will be enough is very much a moot point.

Finally: ‘ There is no preventing the rise of China, either economically or militarily.’

There is if you bomb it.

‘I doubt that anyone in the US foreign policy, military and intelligence communities believes it is possible’.

You have a great deal more faith in the intelligence and sanity of people in the ‘intelligence’ and ‘military’ ‘communities’ than I have. May I suggest that now might be a good time to lose that faith.

@
”I was hoping this thread would actually discuss the economic consequences of the Pandemic, which I do think might be possible to some extent without knowing results of the upcoming election”.

But didn’t I already present the major economic consequences?

Ups? –
I think I forgot the following one:
”This Recession Is a Bigger Housing Crisis Than 2008
by Eric Levitz

The wealthiest country in human history has trouble keeping its people housed, even in good times. In 2017, the United States boasted one of the strongest economies in the world, and nearly half of its tenants were rent burdened. A majority of households in the bottom quintile of our nation’s income distribution give more than 40 percent of their disposable income to landlords each month. Only three other developed countries force their poor to shoulder heavier housing costs.

In times of crisis, the unaffordability of American housing is exacerbated by our “just in time” socioeconomic model: Steady GDP growth is the duct tape holding together this jerry-rigged social order in which low-income Americans have little to no emergency savings, many basic welfare benefits are contingent on employment, and the threadbare safety is patchy by design. This top-heavy, gold-plated jalopy of a political economy can pass as road safe in fair weather; try to ride it through a once-in-a-century epidemiological storm and it starts to break apart.

Between 2006 and 2014, about 10 million Americans lost their homes to the foreclosure crisis. Today, upwards of 20 million U.S. renters are poised to be evicted between now and September, according to Emily Benfer, the chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force Committee on Eviction.

At present, the impending flood of evictions is partially dammed by a federal moratorium that covers one-fourth of all renters, the $600 federal unemployment insurance bonus, and the recent dispersion of $1,200 coronavirus relief checks. But even with these protections, a great many renters are being washed out of their homes while millions more accrue onerous debts. Roughly one-third of U.S. households have not made their full housing payments for July, according to a survey by the online retail platform Apartment List. In New York City, one-quarter of all renters haven’t paid their landlords since March.

This is in part because fiscal aid has not reached everyone in need (many state unemployment insurance systems have failed to keep pace with applications; many workers do not qualify for federal unemployment benefits; and others were reliant on informal work), and the federal moratorium on evictions does not cover most renters. But it is also because the federal moratorium doesn’t actually have an enforcement mechanism. Fifteen states have passed legislation requiring landlords to verify that their buildings aren’t covered by the federal ban before seeking to remove their tenants. In all other states, the obligation lies with the tenant, which is to say a renter must verify that their building is covered by the moratorium and prove it in court…

Just duckduckgo the whole article!
It’s very…
”interesting”…

‘Incidentally, I was hoping this thread would actually discuss the economic consequences of the Pandemic, which I do think might be possible to some extent without knowing results of the upcoming election.’

I think, given Trump’s incompetence (at least at public messaging, if nothing else), it’s safe to say that the effect on the American economy of the pandemic will be apocalyptic. At some point you have to wonder when this changes from accident to design, and if the idea isn’t to tank the economy such that Biden inherits a new Great Depression, which then cripples him, and ensures he is a one term President.

Certainly, unless Trump pulls something out of the bag, and quick, it does increasingly look as if he is toast in November, and that, therefore, just burning everything to the ground and then blaming the Democrats might not be the best policy.

Or perhaps I’m being too cynical.

AND If I may correct ”tm” –

when he wrote: ”this thread has degenerated to a feast of Trumpist propaganda, both from the part of the fascists and indirectly from the part delusional leftists who don’t know any history. It is a depressing spectacle to behold, more so since „the economic consequences of the pandemic“ would have been a very important topic for constructive debate”.

It is NOT ”depressing” AT ALL!
It is one of the utmost ”BEAUTIFUL” -(as the Clownstick would call it) – threads of CT –
in the spirit of the GREAT British Philosopher Sir Monty Python – about:

AND now to something completely different!

AND you guys might have noticed – that we are producing all of these videos -(remember the TRUTH – https://youtu.be/BnzXMRkBjMY) –
in order to mirror the complete confusion in my homeland (the US)…
BUT we never really succeeded in TOTALLY talking -(or writing) – about something completely different as the promised issue or topic – in such a BEAUTIFUL way as this thread.

AND NOW!
let’s start to discuss
”The economic consequences of the Pandemic”

AND isn’t the HUUUGEST Economic Consequence – that ”the market” never ever will be able to help US ALL – as only ”governments” have the means and money to do so?

So –
WELCOME GUYS – to WORLD WIDE –
”Denmark”!

When I wrote @128 “mortgage interest deduction,” I was writing about mortgages, which is debt. So much for the false claim I didn’t.

When I wrote @98 “Generally a professional is a small businessman. A clergyman may not be able to sell his practice but a doctor or a lawyer can,” I am noting a difference between a young physician still paying student debt and someone who has a job, rather than a career.

Orange Watch@198 continues the defense of nonsense about the PMC by writing “Their income is a far better indicator of their economic allegiances than their wealth, as it indicates the social stratum that society – particularly the monied portions who grant or deny credit – perceive them to belong in.” Skipping over the repeated assumption that only short-run interests are taken into account, the claim here is that “class” is a mental phenomenon, a perception by an abstraction called society. I don’t know whether to reject this as arrant superstition or as a grotesque falsification of what “society” perceives—-which is that everyone is “middle class!” I suppose we could have Richard Dawson survey his audience for us, to determine the true factoid!

But when Orange Watch@198 writes “economics are irrelevant; class is a state of mind based on socio-political goodthink about how humble and enlightened you are, or badthink about how you’re a self-appointed elite who’s superior to everyone you disagree with” (as a malicious pseudo-quote put in my mouth) Orange Watch is the one who in the sentence right before (!) explained that class was “society’s” perception of a stratum. It’s still not clear what a stratum is.

PMC is still not a useful concept, income-generating property is still a better objective measure of class status, class interests are still not defined for families by today’s income. Nothing Orange Watch has written forms a coherent argument against such simple generalizations.

The real animus is captured in the phrase “neo-tankie.” I think Orange Watch is endorsing imperialism which is really lacing politics with reactionary attitudes. But then, I would think that, wouldn’t I? Yet it has nothing to do with the invalid nonsense of PMC, or the economic consequences of the pandemic.

And the real political issue—confused with the economic consequences of the pandemic, somehow—is encapsulated in the declaration “…so the only way to vote against him is to vote for the lesser evil, no matter how unserious and self-interested that evil might be. You go to the polls with the electoral system you have, not the electoral system you want.” There is no voting against. That is a fact, not an opinion. T

The OP is devoted largely to attacking MMT. If Orange Watch were genuinely interested in supporting MMT, Orange Watch should defend it. There’s a kind of MMT going on right now, where the Fed supports the stock market and banks with trillions of dollars of fiat money and corporate debt soars….but the political issues of government spending, which strictly speaking is what MMT means to address, are barely discussed, much less defended. When I mentioned the hostility to MMT, it was meant to be a step back to comment on the OP and the thread as a whole. It was not meant as a response to Orange Watch’s comments defending MMT, which I don’t remember.

Two points on Anarcissie@200. First, the imperialism of the US and the ferocious bloodlust in pursuing it, long predated WWII. There are a lot of SF fans here, so they might recall Heinlein’s references to Little Brown Brother in Glory Road. This was a coy reference to murderous assaults on the peoples of the Philippines.

Second, the point about the economic consequences being discussed is good in a way, except that the OP tied this very much to the political consequences. I think that the deliberate efforts to prevent parties by the Framers met with great success, which is exactly why elections so rarely change anything. I believe that the decision by the owners to let people die as God wills it and reopen the economy has been made and despite whatever temporary roadblocks are erected by pesky issues of the mass of people not being onboard (aka the problem with majority rule, which is widely deemed to be tyranny itself,) will not matter very long.

The thing is, those who believe it’s the “pandemic” that’s causing the economic crisis should conclude there will be a V-shaped recovery, though it is entirely unclear why they would expect the V to be symmetrical. But I think the root problem is simply another crisis of capitalism, an inherently unstable and irrational system whose gyrations will confront states with insurmountable challenges in defending the wealth of their owners. And that ultimately, as in the days of the Great (Class)*War, when there was no Bolshevism, the system will collapse politically, into war.

*Thanks to Jacques R. Pauwels.

nastywoman 07.14.20 at 12:38 pm@202, 203 — The reason Denmark seems less warlike is that other states, to which it submits, have done and are doing its warring for it. Currently it is part of the EU, which, although restless, is still pretty much a satellite of the US. Thus, token Danish forces supported the US invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and other targets. In any case, ‘focus’ may be ambiguous. Recall the enhanced Welfare state of Bismarck, which was focused on keeping the home front quiet in support of imperial expansion abroad.

Tm: ‘Anybody who thinks that 21st century fascism must look exactly like its historic predecessors….’

I was speaking of the sort of fascist I imagine Trump wants to be. No doubt more advanced models have been developed. We cannot expect mature tastes in fascism or anything else from such an infantile personality.

steven t. johnson@205:

I’m done bothering responding to your bad-faith trolling. I should have known better than to respond in the first place. My mistake, for which I apologize to the thread at large.

Tm@190:
CPAs lean Republican whereas accounting clerks lean Democratic. In case this comes asa surprise to anybody, the statistics do not support the idea of a coherent “professional class” identity.

Ah, but even though those statistics you vaguely reference don’t meaningfully support the idea of a coherent professional class identity, they don’t in any way refute the idea of a coherent professional class identity either – not unless you’d be surprised to learn that the leaders of the Democratic Party are not bomb-throwing anarchists. There’s absolutely nothing distinguishing about two different types of professionals tending to support two different political parties when both parties have the same fundamental economic agenda (oligarchical corporate capitalism upholding the existing financial system with only minor tweaks).

White supremacist curator forced out for? SFA. https://reason.com/2020/07/14/gary-garrels-san-francisco-museum-modern-art-racism/

I’m indifferent to the white supremacy charge and being maligned as such by my intellectual and moral superiors. Guilty until proven innocent, whether it’s Russia or white supremacy, is the new liberal normal.

Andrew Sullivan just quit NYM, Bari Weiss just left the NYT citing a toxic climate of bullying and worse. Chomsky signed the Harper’s letter, and when challenged about the pushback, replied – that’s only half of it – ‘I’ve had an equal number of email from leftists horrified at the toxic culture, but too scared of getting the Weiss treatment.

So, take a bow all those who believe Trump supporters have to ‘prove’ to ? that we’re not ‘guilty of something.’ Given time, we’re sure you’ll find something to hang us for.

Parking tickets? I’ll still collect art from white men?

Wonder what the voters make of all the goodness on display.

Politics, politics. Ok, I’ll make one final effort to make nastywoman happy, and make no mention of HeWhoMustNotBeNamed, nor the policing brouhaha, nor any of the Denizens of the CT Aquarium. I claim no expertise here as I do not follow the nuts and bolts of federal fiscal policy in detail, and these are critical to the outlook.

The standard appraisal of the economic situation seems fairly straightforward on the surface but relies on some pretty strong surface assumptions.

About the only factor that will not change regardless of the November outcome is the slow recovery of the CRE sector, especially offices, hotels, and probably also big box retail. Even once a vaccine is in wide distribution, corporates will physically decentralize in order to reduce future pandemic exposure, and this will mean less office demand, less commuting, and negative spending multiplier effects on large office-dense urban areas. All of which will drag on urban space demand, with resulting side effects on job growth. That’s as far as I previously got talking economics before the shiny lights of the Aquarium led me astray.

Let’s assume that the Swedish Chef is president in January, and being more interested in slaughtering defenseless muppet animals on camera, he does not enact any COVID19-related executive orders. Statler and Waldorf at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue are too busy laughing at him or impeaching him, so that no new Pandemic Relief Bill is passed. We are then in deep **** because jobs will still not be close to their pre-pandemic level, state unemployment comp. will ebb as will CARES Act paychecks, evictions will restart unless state governments take action, and mortgage, student loan, and other consumer debt will start to deteriorate in performance. And drag down jobs and spending; and through it, state and local revenues. In short: Inaction is not an option.

Fortunately, baseline forecasts assume less colorful and more policy oriented leadership in the White House and Congress. One typical baseline forecast assumes a Pandemic Relief Bill of $1.4 trillion in various measures, something close to half of which will be direct aid to state governments so as to allow them to at least keep up the pretense of balanced budgets without mass state employee layoffs. The rest is various forms of direct aid to state individuals.

Whether $1.4 trillion will be enough is anyone’s guess; it may well not be if infections in the Sun Belt states continue to trend upward and are still high by the end of this year, so that re-shutdown measures are still in effect. Also, a Relief Bill of this size assumes either that McConnell’s whining against blue state bailouts was an act or that he is not re-elected and/or the Rs lose their senate majority and fail to regain the House. Also, such a Relief Bill assumes that the question mark in the white house gives enough of a damn about his legacy or about the economy (not the stock market, of course) to not veto it and not sabotage it before or after it is signed. Er, which party’s presidential nominee fits this description? Ok, don’t go there.

Anyway, with a Pandemic Relief Act a baseline assumption, it is still likely that recovery will be a slow 2010-2016 affair in part because of hysteresis effects: part of the structure of the economy will have been permanently altered. e.g., large retail will have an even harder time coming back now that most U.S. households have gotten used to ordering stuff; CRE-related jobs will be slow to recover, and supply chain problems will still be an issue unless there is a complete reversal on trade with China. Reduced personal income growth and new pandemic caution will also lead to reduced travel demand; energy prices will stay subdued and the airlines may need to go into something like conservatorship in a way similar to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the housing crisis.

One thing which is still open is to what extent the individual assistance in the Relief Bill helps tenants. I worry that the additional help will be insufficient to help tenants service their other debts and pay back accumulated rent arrears. Either a haphazard gaggle of state legislation or federal tenant relief either in the Relief Bill itself or a separate bill will be needed to prevent a spike in evictions.

All in all, I see slow job and income growth during the next presidential term, plus a shortage of structure or equipment investment, plus an increased likelihood of an eviction wave, which will spell trouble for the incumbent party in 2024.

Ok, that’s as much as I can scrape off my brain with a spoon late at night without doing further research. But except for the questions on the character of the Congressional or POTUS leadership, it is all so straightforward and boring; laughing at steven t johnson is much more fun. But that can wait for another comment thread.

AND –
Wait! –
Just to let everybody know – when I wrote:
”As I saw it, the state is Party” –
that was NOT the type of statement Anarcissie made when he wrote:
”As I see it, the state is war” –
that was more the type of statement the Famous British Philosopher Sir Monty Python made when he said:
“Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government!”
OR/AND
”Denmark is NOT a satellite of US”
AS
Island is NOT for sale – even if Anarcissie might think so…

if God is a hypothesis that is “not even wrong” in the sense of being not subject to any empirical proof (there being no fully agreed on definition of god, for starters), it follows that the assertion of his non-existence is just a much an act of faith as the assertion of his non-existence, right?

Nope. It is sufficiently clear what religious believers mean when they say that there is a God, and the assertion they are making is therefore susceptible of testing by comparison with the empirical evidence, a test which it fails. It is precisely for this reason that theologians obfuscate the subject. Theology offers the possibility of reconciling continued nominal adherence to a religion with recognition that belief in its tenets is not rationally sustainable, but this doesn’t affect what it is that ordinary adherents believe.

Specifically, the existence of a wise and good creator and ruler of the universe is incompatible with the facts of suffering (this is not, of course, a new argument: it’s an extremely old one, which is why believers have so much practice in evading it, as I did myself when I was a believer). Theologians may talk about how God is not a wise and good creator and ruler of the universe but rather a predicate or a process or some other such rot, but you know as well as I do that when ordinary believers talk about God, they do mean a wise and good creator and ruler of the universe. Either there is a wise and good creator and ruler of the universe or there isn’t. Well, there isn’t.

[OP: this is a bit of a tangent, so please feel free to delete as it may be a bit of a derail]

Andres @ 216

With apologies to both you and the OP, I would like to offer a (relatively minor) thought for your consideration. With respect to:

“I imply that atheism is a type of faith; if God is a hypothesis that is “not even wrong” in the sense of being not subject to any empirical proof (there being no fully agreed on definition of god, for starters), it follows that the assertion of his non-existence is just a much an act of faith as the assertion of his non-existence, right?”

It all depends a lot on how you are using the terms. I don´t say this to say you are wrong, but rather as a note of caution that not everyone would use those terms in the same way you do (and typically I would not).

Atheism is often defined as “disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods”. So, if you ask Person X “do you believe one or more god(s) exist?” and they answer “no”, then they are an atheist. However, this does not mean they are asserting the counterpositive – you could ask Person X “do you believe no god exists” and the answer could still be “no”. Think of it a bit like a court case – if you say the defendant is “not guilty” you do not necessarily accept the claim that the defendant is innocent (that would be another claim). In the same way, you can be in the position where you do not accept the claim that god(s) exists, but this does not necessarily mean you accept the claim no god(s) exist.

The assertion “no god exists” is not necessarily atheism – it is often typically referred to as “hard atheism”, “strong atheism”, or “positive atheism” to make that distinction. One does not need to make that claim to be an atheist, and many atheists do not necessarily claim “no god exists” but more something like “I reject the assertion a god exists as I have yet to see sufficient evidence to warrant accepting that claim”.

This is a minor point, but I only bring it up because you might end up inadvertently annoying some atheists (by asserting they are claiming something which they may in fact not be claiming).

Andres 216: “tm accuses all left-wing critics of the Democratic party (aka “anti-liberal leftists”) of being apologists for Trump.”

That is nonsense. Pseudo-leftist apologists for Trump are easy to tell apart from real leftists. I’ll name just a few obvious signs:
– Claiming there is no meaningful difference between the parties etc.
– Denying or downplaying Trump’s racism
– Denying or downplaying the damage already caused by the Trump administration
– Attacking the Democratic party dishonestly, e. g. with claims they don’t really oppose Trump’s agenda (I discussed a comment of Wilder above at 179; Wilder is not misinformed or ignorant, he’s just blatantly lying).
– Falsely attributing Democratic identity to right wing people like Musk, falsely claiming that the Democrats are the party of financial capital
– Falsely attributing responsibility for right-wing policies to the Democratic party or exaggerating the party’s agency
– Reproducing anti-education, anti-intellectual, anti-cosmopolitan propaganda directly out of the right wing echo chamber
– …

Examples of all of these, and more, are easily identifiable in this very comment thread. I’ll leave it there. If you, Andres, are interested in a meaningful exchange, it’s up to you to come up with actual arguments. You have several times attacked my with unfounded accusations. I already challenged you in 171 to come up with rebuttals if you wish to take issue with my arguments. So far, nothing. Again, it’s up to you.

As a slightly more on point thought, I have to wonder how on point any detailed discussion of the Economic Consequences of the Pandemic will be once it goes beyond the general. After all, we would still appear to be in the middle of the pandemic (and potentially some countries, such as the US, may still be closer to the beginning), so specifics will be somewhat affected by ongoing events.

No doubt I’ll be corrected if wrong, but it would seem to me that a discussion along the lines of that of JQ’s OP would be more-or-less the best we can do…