I think a much more likely sequence of events is a series of shocks, each one followed by an aggressive kleptocratic harvesting of wealth for the already wealthy under the label “Emergency Measures”, and successive K-shaped temporary recoveries. Any big crash will not provoke a populist uprising, it will be met by the rich pulling up their draw bridges around their harvested wealth and telling the poor people to fuck off and die. We’ve already had two of these events - the 2008 financial crisis and COVID both were met with K-shaped recoveries supported by government policy. The system is not designed to respond to a crisis with egalitarianism.
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There is literally never going to be a risk free opportunity to secure a big progressive victory… and we have at most five years to turn this thing around. It’s going to take 3-5 years to turn it around if we go full speed starting today. We are quite literally doing a two minute drill for democracy. This is no time for nittery.
Collapse is preferable to just passing the infrastructure bill and kicking the can down the road past 2024. At least that’s change of some sort. The kind of change that might make the currently middle class less accepting of the status quo.
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Nuking the filibuster isn’t a realistic option until after the midterms, given the current composition of the Senate. You have to come up with a way forward that doesn’t include that.
What’s realistic when someone has a gun to their head is different than what’s realistic when they don’t. Ironically Mitch may have done the country a huge favor by killing the debt ceiling hike and putting collapse on the table. The amount of pressure on Manchin and Sinema is going to be crazy. Pressure from the rich people we already know they listen to.
Oh yeah, I agree. What I am highly skeptical of is that a material financial crisis layered on the tail end of a pandemic is going to suddenly awaken this desire to pass a Green New Deal that wasn’t there before. I will say that for any plan to work that involves allowing a catastrophic debt market failure to happen will REQUIRE the Dems to own the messaging about how this is all the Rs fault and make that case clearly and effectively to the public, probably with a hostile main stream media opposing that effort. This will require an immediate dramatic change in the way establishment Dems can and do handle this stuff. I’m not super enthusiastic.
I don’t think blowing up the economy when the Dems have the Presidency, the House, and (theoretically) the Senate is going to work politically. The Rs will successfully hang ALL of that on the Dems. They’d be better off minting a trillion dollar coin, or even just telling the Treasury to go ahead and issue new debt even though it’s theoretically illegal. Fuck you, that’s why.
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They don’t have to blow up the country. It really will be all the eDem’s fault. They could instead blow up the filibuster.
I’m serious, Mitch has no actual power in this situation. If the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised it will 100% be self inflicted and will do enormous political damage to the Democratic establishment. Which would very much be a good thing.
The eDems are as big a problem as the GOP. They’re totally corrupt and deserve the situation they’ve gotten themselves into. I don’t think there’s any way to make them do anything but force tbqh and that’s where we are. They’re going to get dragged kicking and screaming to the right thing if we play our cards right.
They can do the right thing or they can commit political suicide. Shouldn’t be that hard of a choice.
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The New Deal
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Right, agreed. But I am assuming this won’t happen. Honestly I think the best way to deal with this situation would be for Treasury to just go ahead and issue new debt and have Janet Yellen tell everyone that she’s not going to kill the recovery because Republics are dumbasses that don’t know shit. Are they really going to drag Yellen out of the Treasury building in handcuffs for the grave crime of issuing debts that everyone wants issued?
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That’s an option too. It definitely weakens the nations institutions, which is also for the best. At this point they’ve been totally captured, so them getting weaker isn’t a negative outcome.
There was no Facebook in 1933. It’s not the same world.
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That will not be how it’s presented in the media.
No one trusts the media at this point but fucking Boomers.
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Meh, I think the Treasury performing it’s basic function in the face of clearly inappropriate political gamesmanship probably strengthens the Federal Government as an institution.
At this point I support a full takeover of the entire federal government by the executive branch tbh. It’s been trending that way for a long time and I can’t think of a single good thing that has happened through the SC or the legislature in a generation. Even legalizing gay marriage and abortion was just conservatives taking pressure off themselves electorally by legalizing things that were growing in popularity and could be used to drive voters to the polls for their opponents. Both issues would have been better served by politicians winning elections and passing laws that did those things.
This is really the point. In the poker strategy thread, people accuse me of being a nit, but this is not the time to be a nit. We’re looking at pressing low-probability scenarios because there are no high-probability scenarios. Waiting until we are we are a favorite to win is folly. The poker analogy is that we need to pick a hand and go all-in before the blinds get too big.
I don’t really see as path to getting to where we want to be without people (mostly at the bottom) getting hurt. I had hoped the pandemic would have been enough, but it clearly isn’t and the enemy needs to be broken rather than reasoned with. An economic collapse looks bad, but maybe it’s preferably to an actual shooting civil war, which for a long time I have thought might be necessary.
This spot is actually pretty good thanks to Mitch blocking the debt ceiling. That adds a real risk of pain for the upper middle class voters the Democrats are counting on for 2022 and 2024. I don’t think they let the country default which means the progressives can tell them how it’s going to be.
I actually think Mitch gives in here at the last minute if the Democrats decide to let it all go.
Things are really weird with the economy right now. The supply chain shortages are all over the place and causing real disruptions. Rich people are desperately trying to shift production back to the US to fortify their supply lines, and are getting forced to negotiate for labor at the highest prices they’ve seen in decades. Combine that with a global pandemic and I don’t think anyone in a position of real power wants to rock the boat any harder with it gyrating wildly. They’re also grossly overleveraged and do not need borrowing costs to go up.
It’s the best time to get a win since 2008. These windows don’t open every day. The progressives should never ever fold, and thankfully it doesn’t look like they plan to.
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The fact that it’s not exactly the same world doesn’t seem that compelling to me. Radio was the Facebook of its day. About one quarter of the country tuned into some anti-New Deal Nazi (seriously) radio host’s weekly show in the 1930s. He eventually got canceled (!) by FDR. That’s what you do with an AOC / whoever in charge, plus Zuckerborg is a human rights violator so even easier to lock him up.
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The counterpoint would be that we have a system propped up because the professional class have pretty comfortable life and, when push comes to shove, side with the billionaires and the status quo. If the professional class was no longer comfortable, maybe that equation changes.
But would be high risk, most of the time we just end up with naked facism.
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We are sort of talking about two different things. I dont think progressives are talking about taking the debt ceiling hostage to pass BBB. Maybe that should be an option, but they are going to vote yes pretty much unanimously on a clean debt ceiling bill today.
Im talking about whether to do a substantive BBB that doesnt address climate changes but has a lot of meaningful good policy in it. To me, a tougher call, but I certainly see the merits in your take decades into being hamstrung by the moderates into doing zero. Your point about 2008 is certainly valid
I would be fine with a bill that didn’t address climate change as much but did raise taxes on the wealthy and strengthened the well being of American workers… that’s a big progressive win that can be leveraged into more wins and thus represents starting to turn things around.
Also I think every year from here on out is meaningfully worse wrt climate change stuff, so that will be bipartisan soon enough.
The key thing is to not get stuck with the status quo + a mediocre infrastructure deal and punting this opportunity to extract meaningful concessions from the oligarchs.
I also firmly believe that when people aren’t getting absolutely waffle crushed and live in fear of not being able to pay rent it’s a lot easier to get them to give a fuck about the long term future.
If there’s anything the rich have taught us since 1970 it’s that wins snowball. We need to start winning now though.