You make me FEEL LIKE I’ve been locked out of PARADISE:
During the Cold War era, Western economies delivered broad and growing prosperity for the middle class. This nurtured a general faith in political institutions and culminated in the democratic triumphalism of the 1990s.
So begins David Brooks, who apparently slept through Watergate, and NAFTA for that matter. Democratic triumphalism? Trust in political institutions?
Seriously, did Maureen give him some of her devil weed?
If you are not earning enough money so you can feel respected, and live without desperate stress, you will begin to lose confidence and élan.
Also teeth. You will begin to lose your teeth.
And that is what’s happening today. The labor force participation rate is at its lowest in decades. Millions are in part-time or low-wage jobs that don’t come close to fulfilling their capacities. Millions more are in dysfunctional or unhealthy workplaces, but they don’t feel they can leave because they don’t think there are other jobs out there that pay the same amount.The country is palpably in the middle of some sort of emotional recession.
God damn it, this is an actual recession, not an emotional one. People are living in boxes and getting food from the food pantry, but hey, let’s talk some more about their fucking feelings and how today’s politicians are not entertaining David Brooks.
It is precisely at this moment that leaders are called upon leap past the current moment and to point the way to the sun-drenched path ahead. You may disagree with every policy they ever uttered, but Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher leapt beyond the stagnant mood of the late 1970s.
They leapt beyond the stagnant mood. People were still goddamn broke, but hey, it played better on TV. The speeches were more inspiring. The bunting was freshly laundered.
These are the important things to consider in an emotional recession.If you get outside the partisan boxes, there’s a completely obvious agenda to create more middle-class, satisfying jobs. The federal government should borrow money at current interest rates to build infrastructure, including better bus networks so workers can get to distant jobs. The fact that the federal government has not passed major infrastructure legislation is mind-boggling, considering how much support there is from both parties.
It’s not so mind-boggling when you realize the vast majority of Republicans are bugfuck insane, and would vote against a resolution approving of peanut butter if Obama was photographed eating some Skippy.
Other shifts are more fundamental, but should be the signature themes of the next political era. First, the government should reduce its generosity to people who are not working but increase its support for people who are. That means reducing health benefits for the affluent elderly. But it means, as Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute recommends, increasing wage subsidies when employers hire the long-term unemployed and issuing relocation subsidies so people in high unemployment areas can move.
Yes, nothing says “step outside partisan boxes” like boilerplate from the American Enterprise Institute, advocating cutting benefits for old people and the poor while shoveling money at business owners.
Second, the tax code could do a lot more to encourage work and investment. Ideally, we’d move to a progressive consumption tax. But at least we could have the sort of tax reform that Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee have suggested, which would simplify the code while subsidizing middle-class families.
Yeah. If we would just listen to Republicans, we could step outside our partisan boxes!
Third, the immigration system should turn into a talent recruiting system, a relentless effort to get the world’s most gifted and driven people to move to our shores.
Give them the SATs while their boats docked at Ellis Island. If they don’t pass, chuck them overboard.
This isn’t rocket science.
Certainly not for the immigrants we pre-selected based on their intelligence or possibly the circumference of their skulls.
Vast majorities support every idea I’ve mentioned here. It just takes a relentless focus on job creation, bold political leadership and a country willing to be shaken out of its fear.
Right. If we’d all just stop being so afraid of poverty just because we’re on the brink of eviction, we’d see that it’s so easy to fix years and years of shitting downstream and denying people raises and letting their towns crumble.
CLAP HARDER MOTHERFUCKERS.
A.