I find it bizarre that the WSJ hides its opinion page behind a paywall like they don't want people to read their opinion. Thanks for summarizing the content.
The selection of Vance is hugely important for the future. The GOPe is obviously plotting to retake the party and Trump just put a big obstacle in the way. Trump's mortality got demonstrated to him in the most dramatic way possible plus he is increasingly confident of victory and wants to make something of it. It is also important as a new vision for the party which is as you say a worker/family oriented entity rather than the oligarch controlled party of Romney and Ryan.
I think the future is not a fusion of the right populists with the conventual conservative economics but with the left populists. This has not been accomplished since William Jennings Bryan but it is a possibility with Vance. Consider: (lifted from Compact)
He co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to lower the price of insulin.
He backed legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to claw back executive pay when big banks fail.
He spearheaded legislation with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to regulate the rail industry following the disaster in East Palestine.
He worked with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for drug price transparency and to promote greater credit-card competition.
He introduced a bill with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to battle corporate mergers.
This is obviously all situational but is perhaps a portent for the future.
Up until the early 1980s, real wages and labour productivity typically moved together. As the attacks on the capacity of workers to secure wage increases intensified, a gap between the two opened and widened, as wage gains were increasingly detached from producitivity growth (as had been the case under the Treaty of Detroit for the UAW).
The wage share in many countries was more or less constant for a long time during the Post Second World War period and this constancy was so marked that Nicholas Kaldor (the Cambridge economist) termed it one of the great “stylised” facts.
It meant that real wages grew in line with productivity growth which was the source of increasing living standards for workers and allowed them to maintain growth in consumption expenditure commensurate with the growing output of the economy.
The productivity growth also provided the ‘room’ in the distribution system for workers to enjoy a greater command over real production and thus higher living standards without threatening inflation.
Since the mid-1980s, the neo-liberal assault on workers’ rights (trade union attacks; deregulation; privatisation; persistently high unemployment) has broken the nexus between real wages and labour productivity growth.
So while productivity growth has proceeded, real wages have been stagnant or growing modestly.
As a result, the wage shares in most nations have been falling, which has led to GDP growing less efficiently (as more and more of GDP's gains were funnelled up to those with the highest savings propensities), and private debt growth surged, as the now struggling middle class took on more debt to sustain their living standards. All of which meant that capitalism itself worked less well which is a point that Glenn Hubbard, to his credit, acknowledges (in contrast to many other market fundamentalists)
Kindly read and, perhaps, review A Part-time Job in the Country. It explores the idea of factories in the countryside run on part-time jobs and the new kinds of communities that might develop around them. A genuinely populist manifesto, for family, neighborhood, town, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, for which I make no apologies. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
In 1972 publisher John S. Knight said that he could not vote in that year's election since both candidates, Nixon and McGovern, had critical flaws. The same is true this year, and I will not vote. Biden's troubling mental state needs no elaboration, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan probably led Putin to invade Ukraine. Trump's refusal to accept election results, and lies that go well beyond the usual political variety, are disqualifying factors in my opinion. There is another consideration, however: fiscal responsibility. I do not see how putting through major tax cuts when the economy doesn't need them, and failing to deal effectively with the huge and rising debt, is consistent with conservative economics. American Compass has said that we need to go beyond the "dog-eared" 1980s playbook of tax cuts and deregulation. Trump, however, has bragged about his tax cuts and deregulation, and has promised more of the same. In 2022 Brian Riedl wrote that "President Trump leaves a federal budget with surging debt, unprecedented peacetime deficits, and a daunting $112 trillion baseline shortfall over the next three decades." This does not represent a new paradigm. Rather than "Bye, bye, economic pie" it is actually "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." The growing costs of entitlements and the huge debt require that we institute a program as soon as possible that includes entitlement reform (yes, including cuts) AND tax increases. Cuts to entitlement programs will not have legitimacy among the working and middle classes if a tax increase on upper-income groups is not included as one part of the policy. Is there any real chance that Trump will tackle this or, with the knowledge that he will leave office in early 2029, will he respond with the great pseudoconservative standby, "Apres moi le deluge"? He had no reticence about throwing Mike Pence under the bus, so I doubt that he would hesitate to do the same with J.D. Vance, forcing Vance (if elected) to face a miserable choice of either huge entitlement cuts or massive tax increases.
I find it bizarre that the WSJ hides its opinion page behind a paywall like they don't want people to read their opinion. Thanks for summarizing the content.
The selection of Vance is hugely important for the future. The GOPe is obviously plotting to retake the party and Trump just put a big obstacle in the way. Trump's mortality got demonstrated to him in the most dramatic way possible plus he is increasingly confident of victory and wants to make something of it. It is also important as a new vision for the party which is as you say a worker/family oriented entity rather than the oligarch controlled party of Romney and Ryan.
I think the future is not a fusion of the right populists with the conventual conservative economics but with the left populists. This has not been accomplished since William Jennings Bryan but it is a possibility with Vance. Consider: (lifted from Compact)
He co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to lower the price of insulin.
He backed legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to claw back executive pay when big banks fail.
He spearheaded legislation with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to regulate the rail industry following the disaster in East Palestine.
He worked with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for drug price transparency and to promote greater credit-card competition.
He introduced a bill with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to battle corporate mergers.
This is obviously all situational but is perhaps a portent for the future.
Up until the early 1980s, real wages and labour productivity typically moved together. As the attacks on the capacity of workers to secure wage increases intensified, a gap between the two opened and widened, as wage gains were increasingly detached from producitivity growth (as had been the case under the Treaty of Detroit for the UAW).
The wage share in many countries was more or less constant for a long time during the Post Second World War period and this constancy was so marked that Nicholas Kaldor (the Cambridge economist) termed it one of the great “stylised” facts.
It meant that real wages grew in line with productivity growth which was the source of increasing living standards for workers and allowed them to maintain growth in consumption expenditure commensurate with the growing output of the economy.
The productivity growth also provided the ‘room’ in the distribution system for workers to enjoy a greater command over real production and thus higher living standards without threatening inflation.
Since the mid-1980s, the neo-liberal assault on workers’ rights (trade union attacks; deregulation; privatisation; persistently high unemployment) has broken the nexus between real wages and labour productivity growth.
So while productivity growth has proceeded, real wages have been stagnant or growing modestly.
As a result, the wage shares in most nations have been falling, which has led to GDP growing less efficiently (as more and more of GDP's gains were funnelled up to those with the highest savings propensities), and private debt growth surged, as the now struggling middle class took on more debt to sustain their living standards. All of which meant that capitalism itself worked less well which is a point that Glenn Hubbard, to his credit, acknowledges (in contrast to many other market fundamentalists)
Kindly read and, perhaps, review A Part-time Job in the Country. It explores the idea of factories in the countryside run on part-time jobs and the new kinds of communities that might develop around them. A genuinely populist manifesto, for family, neighborhood, town, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, for which I make no apologies. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
[Ignore the typos, I am working by myself.]
In 1972 publisher John S. Knight said that he could not vote in that year's election since both candidates, Nixon and McGovern, had critical flaws. The same is true this year, and I will not vote. Biden's troubling mental state needs no elaboration, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan probably led Putin to invade Ukraine. Trump's refusal to accept election results, and lies that go well beyond the usual political variety, are disqualifying factors in my opinion. There is another consideration, however: fiscal responsibility. I do not see how putting through major tax cuts when the economy doesn't need them, and failing to deal effectively with the huge and rising debt, is consistent with conservative economics. American Compass has said that we need to go beyond the "dog-eared" 1980s playbook of tax cuts and deregulation. Trump, however, has bragged about his tax cuts and deregulation, and has promised more of the same. In 2022 Brian Riedl wrote that "President Trump leaves a federal budget with surging debt, unprecedented peacetime deficits, and a daunting $112 trillion baseline shortfall over the next three decades." This does not represent a new paradigm. Rather than "Bye, bye, economic pie" it is actually "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." The growing costs of entitlements and the huge debt require that we institute a program as soon as possible that includes entitlement reform (yes, including cuts) AND tax increases. Cuts to entitlement programs will not have legitimacy among the working and middle classes if a tax increase on upper-income groups is not included as one part of the policy. Is there any real chance that Trump will tackle this or, with the knowledge that he will leave office in early 2029, will he respond with the great pseudoconservative standby, "Apres moi le deluge"? He had no reticence about throwing Mike Pence under the bus, so I doubt that he would hesitate to do the same with J.D. Vance, forcing Vance (if elected) to face a miserable choice of either huge entitlement cuts or massive tax increases.
I love that Pettis is an advisor for Compass. That’s what really hooked me in.