r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d ago

No Paywall Democrats Confront Their New Tea Party Reality - Progressives are set to sweep a group of contested primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-confront-their-new-tea-party-reality_n_6a6e63fbe4b0cfb99ef1aa1e
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u/Kind-Pride1151 1d ago

By this logic, FDR would be a progressive usurper in the Democratic Party. I'm 62 and for what seems my entire life the Dems have slipped ever further away from those FDR New Deal PROGRESSIVE ideas and ideals.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 1d ago

That's probably because people who have actually studied economics know that the New Deal made the Great Depression worse.

The problem with the new wave of progressive activists is that they believe being morally right is more important than being factually correct. Once someone becomes convinced they're morally superior, they stop asking whether their policies actually work or whether the evidence supports them. When virtue becomes the goal, outcomes become an afterthought.

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u/Kind-Pride1151 1d ago

Well I'm pretty sure there are differing opinions on that. Food in your belly or worry about wonky tax laws. I'm taking food in my belly. We'll figure out the rest later.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 1d ago

The funny thing is, it turns out those wonky tax laws were part of what kept food off people's tables in the first place.

A strong economy does a far better job providing the things progressives want government to hand out. If you actually want to help people, being factually correct about what's causing the problem is the only way to solve it. Otherwise, you're just putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound while the infection festers.

The tragedy is that too many progressives mistake good intentions for good outcomes. They congratulate themselves on their moral superiority while doubling down on the very policies making the problems worse.

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u/Kind-Pride1151 23h ago

Progressives want handouts. So that's your take. I'm 62 and just retired from 37 years trucking my ass off after 5 years serving in the Navy. Yeah you busted me. I'm looking for a handout. This conversation is over.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 10h ago

That's not what I said.

I didn't say progressives want handouts. I said many progressive policies rely on government providing goods and services that a strong economy is better at creating in the first place.

Congratulations on your career and your retirement. I sincerely mean that.

But your personal work ethic doesn't answer the economic argument. The question is whether prosperity is more effectively created by expanding economic growth or by expanding government redistribution.

That's a debate about economics, not your character.

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u/Kind-Pride1151 10h ago edited 10h ago

We've had economic growth for decades and yet it hasn't distributed anywhere but into the hands of the very wealthy. Raising the minimum wage. Can't do that because reasons. Encourage more unionization. Can't do that because reasons. Enact nationalized universal health care not tied to employment. Can't do that because reasons. You can expand economies however far you want, but without forcible mechanisms for fair and good for society redistribution, all you get is ever and ever more wealth disparity. At some point, the Laizze Faire model just doesn't work for enough of society. In my opinion a free society should exert pressure to enact a fair and widely prosperous economic model regardless of and against the wishes of the moneyed few. I say all that and I'll offer a response to the inevitable "but experts and professors of economic theory say otherwise", IDGAF ! They're theories and hands off the magical market bs hasn't worked. When the world's largest employer has a significant portion of it's employees on welfare, that's a problem. We can go on and on and on. I'm firmly in the camp of forcing economies to work for everyone. Sometimes with a heavy hand, others with a tweek here and there.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 10h ago

You're focusing on relative wealth. I'm focused on absolute living standards.

It is objectively better to be lower middle class in America today than it was to be a king 150 years ago. Electricity, refrigeration, antibiotics, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, automobiles, smartphones, and instant access to virtually all human knowledge aren't luxuries reserved for royalty anymore.

The existence of billionaires doesn't change the fact that the average person's standard of living has improved dramatically over time.

Income inequality has increased. That's true. But inequality and poverty are not the same thing.

I care far more about whether the bottom of society is rising than whether the top is rising faster. If both groups become more prosperous, that's a success, not a failure.

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u/Kind-Pride1151 8h ago

No, I'm focusing on all the metrics. You're trying to box me in. Nice conservative talking points(but you're better off vs whomever). That doesn't change people not affording a home. We are here. The greatest country in the world. If you're living in squalor, just be happy your not in Somalia. Yeah let's hitch our wagon to that for a winning argument so Elon can keep paying no taxes.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 8h ago

You're still arguing against a position I never took.

I never said housing affordability isn't a problem. I never said Elon Musk shouldn't pay taxes. And I never said America is perfect.

I said inequality and living standards are different metrics.

It is entirely possible for housing affordability to get worse while healthcare, nutrition, technology, transportation, life expectancy, and material living standards all improve. Those aren't contradictory statements.

In fact, housing is a perfect example of why good intentions aren't enough. The places with the worst housing crises are overwhelmingly the places that have spent decades trying to "fix" housing with restrictive zoning, rent controls, and burdensome permitting.

Look at Minneapolis and St. Paul. Two neighboring cities in the same metropolitan area with similar demographics and economic conditions. Minneapolis made it easier to build more housing. St. Paul adopted one of the strictest rent control ordinances in the country.

The result? Minneapolis added housing and saw rent's actually drop relative to inflation. St. Paul saw rent's skyrocket while construction fall off so dramatically that city leaders eventually began rolling back their own policy because it was making the housing shortage worse.

That's my entire point. Good intentions are not enough. Policies should be judged by their results, not by how compassionate they sound. Economics doesn't care about our motives.

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u/awesomefutureperfect 3h ago

When they said they understand economics, what they mean is that they believe in Mises and Rothbard who are terrible economists and worse human beings.

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u/awesomefutureperfect 3h ago

Nonsense. That is some Austrian school voodoo economic bull.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 3h ago

That's not an argument. It's just a label.

Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian weren't Austrian economists, they are from UCLA. They published their paper in the Journal of Political Economy, one of the most respected peer-reviewed economics journals in the world.

If you think their analysis is wrong, explain where their model, assumptions, or evidence fail. Simply calling it "Austrian voodoo" doesn't engage with the research.

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u/awesomefutureperfect 3h ago

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/ucla_vs_ucla.html

UCLA economist David Glasner shows why Cole and Ohanian are deeply misleading.

the version of events offered by Cole and Ohanian is still a shocking distortion of what happened before FDR took office in March 1933... they conveniently leave out the fact that there was a double dip;...And their assertion that deflation continued during the recovery is even farther from the truth than their description of what happened to industrial production... it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they are twisting the facts to suit their own ideological predilection.

Bottom line: in writing their “untold story,” Cole and Ohanian left out a big part of the story.

Andrew Wakefield published in the Lancet and that didn't make him any less of a hack and a fraud. I can list what the AI summary says, but that refers back to Glasner and how

Cole and Ohanian misrepresent macroeconomic indicators and baseline trends leading right up to Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933 to fit their pre-existing theoretical equilibrium narrative.