This is an example of two scholars not speaking the same language. Scott is making an traditional economic utility argument: "more income = higher utility = better well-being". Oren is making a more sociological argument: "income is only one part of well being". What's comical is that Oren is the economist and Scott is the sociologist.
I watched the whole debate. I was curious to see what your reaction would be, Oren, when your ten minute rebuttal came up. I wholehearterdly agreed with you. Having watched and listened to you debate people like this over the last few years, I did not expect your reaction. You came as close as I have ever seen to being - shall I say it - angry! You even almost - ALMOST - raised your voice above its typical reasonableness.
I'm teasing just because I thought you did a great job. But, it reminded me of why I no longer give deference to 'conservative' think tanks and the like, and I'll throw National Review into that mix, when it comes to economics. I'll add in The Dispatch as well. Not too long ago, Jonah Goldberg made the coment that perhaps he got the China thing wrong. But, in typical neo-liberal fashion, he said he still holds out hope that China will end up looking the US - the jury is still out as to whether or not shipping so much meaningful work (and intellectual property) to China has been a failure, or at least, damaging to the lives of so many Americans. I can hear Jonah's condescending way of saying 'gloooooobalism' right now.
I listen to the Commentary magazine podcast, also. I was getting ready to yell at my speaker when, recently, John Podhoretz was throwing out ideas for as to why so many people were turning to Populist ideas regarding economics but he never mentioned the 2008 collapse and bailout. There are many, Winship, Goldberg, Podhoretz, et al, who still don't get it. Financial deregulation, globalism, and 'free trade' is their dogma and they just can't see around it: It is good. It must be. All the real economists agree on that. It is good. GDP keeps going up so it is good. Keep repeating it.
Well done, Oren. As an aside, I recently heard someone discussing Trump's cabinet picks and you got a shout-out. Well, sorta... They were musing just what would happen on Wall Street if 'Oren Cass' winds up on Trump's team of economic advisors. I thought that was funny.
What do they say about taking flak? You must be over the target.
Economic policy over the last forty years is often described as "neoliberal." I present a take on what neoliberal does and theory of how it functions here.
It seems crystal clear that the *objective* of neoliberalism was to create an economy that would allow those at the top to achieve a maximal degree of self-actualization at the cost of those in the lower classes being less able to advance up Maslow's pyramid.
Think of medieval times or stories like Lord of the Rings. The history or tales told are about the uppermost elites, the vast majority of the populace is just part of the environment or scenery. They don't count, just the protagonists.
The "Age of the Common Man" introduced by the New Dealers changed this briefly. For a time the ability of elites to express their self-actualization was hampered by high tax rates. The capitalist class were thrown down from their "high seats" in our civilization and reverted back to their role in the process capitalism had evolved to perform, the accumulation of productive capital that grows the economy and the tax revenues it generates.
Economic elites wanted their high seats back. They wanted to use capitalism to accumulate status or power through the accumulation of financial capital and in 1980 they go their chance. And the rest is just the result.
A great deal of confusion seems to have arisen from a misunderstanding on how to aggregate and break down economic and social data. Economists note that GDP has increased steadily and handsomely over several decades and therefore conclude that negative trends such as opioid abuse, suicide, and the withdrawal of working-age men from the labor force have no important relation to economic conditions. If we break down the data, however, we discover that sharply rising inequality has unquestionably occurred and that this development surely has a lot to do with economics. While CEO compensation and corporate profits have exploded over the past few decades, working-class wages have been flat. This essentially means that workers are not being rewarded for their hard work and contribution to the success of their organization, which is clearly antithetical to the promise of a capitalist system that is operating properly---"a rising tide lifts all boats." Defenders of the present-day corporate oligarchy do not have the courage to say that it's fine if hard work goes unrewarded, so they take cover by citing slogans and shibboleths about "free markets" and "free trade."
I am the child of a man who had both a strong moral code and a strong work ethic. He did not feel sorry for himself for having to work hard to gain affluence, he loved the reward of self satisfaction in achieving. He started with no advantages, had not the means to go to college, and was a successful businessman by the time he was in his thirties. I grew up in affluence, living in the winter on the island of Palm Beach and belonging to the two most prestigious clubs (which would not accept Mr Trump as a member for social reasons but nonetheless had members who overwhelmingly voted for him for president in 2016). I grew up in a world of privilege and live in it still thanks to my inheritance. But to my mind the quality of life has decreased significantly. Transacting everyday personal business becomes tied up in endless exchanges with machines which, all too often, lead to no resolution of one’s questions. Many times there is an electronic wall that forces you to use electronic “chat” and ends in no reasonable means of asking questions to work out a problem. On top of that, we have devolved into a culture that seems to pride itself on the achievement of projecting disrespect. In spite of material advancement we have created a kind of air pollution, an impenetrable fog of mutual distrust that tends to make us paranoid. Living in this atmosphere overwhelms what should be the pleasure of human contact and understanding. I read about the increase of road rage which spans the expression of anger through salutes with a middle finger to attacks with guns and even axes! Perhaps the accumulation of wealth has led to the kind of hubris that so many poets and teachers, from the Greek philosophers to Christ, have warned us about.
Remember the line the lower caste mother said to her children below decks as the Titanic was sinking? ‘It will all be over soon’.
When then the tech gurus put all their tech efforts into making things easier and more comfortable… hey look! I can roll my car window up and down just by pushing a button!…. and soon I won’t even have to lift my finger to do it, I’ll just ask Siri Dearie!…. instead of curing cancer, or ending poverty, it’s little surprise that we’re circling the drain.
There is no way out of this without ending the existence of the billionaire. And I don’t see that happening without a global climate change induced economic collapse. Rubbing sticks to make fire again? Bueller? Anyone?
Affluence and quality of life are relative, no? The explosion of media available to all socioeconomic classes to “measure” their “quality of life” against others provides a distorted measuring stick.
Amongst Alexander Hamilton’s contemporaries, it was said that only James Madison stood a chance to be more persuasive. I believe this is the kind of reputation that American Compass should strive for.
Very few people then or now, of course, possess Hamilton’s extraordinary memory or sheer brilliance. His method of arguing, to the contrary, is readily accessible, but it has to be extracted from his texts as he did not write philosophy.
Consider, for example, this passage from his Report on Manufacturing:
“Most general theories, however, admit of numerous exceptions, and there are few, if any, of the political kind, which do not blend a considerable portion of error, with the truths they inculcate.”
With regard to the Cass Winship debate, it is readily apparent that Hamilton’s method puts an end to the logical conundrums loitering about in unbecoming fashion.
Hamilton, himself, was fond of the British empiricists, particularly David Hume. So, I would not be surprised to find some similarities there. But you won’t find it Aristotle or Plato. But you will find it in the birth Athen’s democracy, which preceded them and against which they labored.
I'll oversimplify - affluent people are doing well, often starting on 3rd base to begin with, and don't ever get traumatized by simply trying to survive. The rest of us - the poors are a quickly growing population fighting over fewer and more expensive resources with higher expectations. It's no wonder teen suicide is epidemic. Right behind gun deaths. Eat the Rich.
This is one of the best commentaries I have read in a while and points to Pettis' arguments for global rebalancing. I find it curious that most of the policies advocated support productivity and growth which are good things in the long run, but don't address the immediate fact that we face higher unemployment, debt, or investment, with productive investment needing sustainable demand rather than debt fueled consumption. The problem of the working class is well covered by Reeves and many others, but few acknowledge Glenn Loury's statement that social capital is a prerequisite for human capital and abandon our underclass by default. I dropped this yesterday on Setser's China essay on X, but I'll repeat: @michaelxpettis occasionally references on X "former Fed Chairman (1932-48) Marriner Eccles, ... from his memoir, Beckoning Frontiers (1966): As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth – not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced – to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation’s economic machinery. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped."
The test is soon upon us. Do Don and JD actually care about these issues, or the retribution, cultural grievance and anger they campaigned on? Here's hoping the self-proclaimed "very stable genius" remembers. After all, he's still publicly bragging about "acing" a dementia test-person, woman, man, camera, tv! Perhaps most telling was his famous comment "I love the poorly educated". Indeed he does.
With Vivek and Elon in charge of formulating a plan for the future of the US government, it is hard to imagine how this will spin in the direction of being pro worker.
I'm by no means an expert, but I actually feel optimistic about the role that they've been given. Putting business people in charge of cost-cutting seems like a solid fit, and I think that the necessity of Congressional approval will help to mitigate any irresponsible suggestions. Maybe I'm being naive, but I think that (given that DOGE is a blue-ribbon agency, so they won't be actively involved in deciding policy) it's actually a really smart place for the libertarian wing of the Republican party to focus.
You are probably correct in your reference to the interests of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, but it is that very wing that wants me to run in the opposite direction as fast as I can. A libertarianism unleashed will, I worry, only serve to further entrench oligarchy, empower people like Musk, Vivek, etc, and bind the rest of us further to their whim.
Exactly, plus the appointments of Bessent at Treasury (an ex Soros guy) and Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO at Commerce. I have to say, the richest man in the world having slumber parties with the most powerful man in the world at Mar-a-Lago is a little spooky. What in history does this remind one of?
Excellent summary of a fascinating debate topic. The devil is in the details… so we have to talk about winners and losers, network effects, winner-take-all technology platforms, and a bifurcated economy that serves different classes of households.
I read an article this month highlighting that all major car makers are focusing on the high end of new automobiles. Serving the low end doesn’t make economic sense when selling to the affluent pays the best ROI. Similar dynamics seem to play out in the multi-family property market where everyone wants to build for the top quartile.
This is an example of two scholars not speaking the same language. Scott is making an traditional economic utility argument: "more income = higher utility = better well-being". Oren is making a more sociological argument: "income is only one part of well being". What's comical is that Oren is the economist and Scott is the sociologist.
I watched the whole debate. I was curious to see what your reaction would be, Oren, when your ten minute rebuttal came up. I wholehearterdly agreed with you. Having watched and listened to you debate people like this over the last few years, I did not expect your reaction. You came as close as I have ever seen to being - shall I say it - angry! You even almost - ALMOST - raised your voice above its typical reasonableness.
I'm teasing just because I thought you did a great job. But, it reminded me of why I no longer give deference to 'conservative' think tanks and the like, and I'll throw National Review into that mix, when it comes to economics. I'll add in The Dispatch as well. Not too long ago, Jonah Goldberg made the coment that perhaps he got the China thing wrong. But, in typical neo-liberal fashion, he said he still holds out hope that China will end up looking the US - the jury is still out as to whether or not shipping so much meaningful work (and intellectual property) to China has been a failure, or at least, damaging to the lives of so many Americans. I can hear Jonah's condescending way of saying 'gloooooobalism' right now.
I listen to the Commentary magazine podcast, also. I was getting ready to yell at my speaker when, recently, John Podhoretz was throwing out ideas for as to why so many people were turning to Populist ideas regarding economics but he never mentioned the 2008 collapse and bailout. There are many, Winship, Goldberg, Podhoretz, et al, who still don't get it. Financial deregulation, globalism, and 'free trade' is their dogma and they just can't see around it: It is good. It must be. All the real economists agree on that. It is good. GDP keeps going up so it is good. Keep repeating it.
Well done, Oren. As an aside, I recently heard someone discussing Trump's cabinet picks and you got a shout-out. Well, sorta... They were musing just what would happen on Wall Street if 'Oren Cass' winds up on Trump's team of economic advisors. I thought that was funny.
What do they say about taking flak? You must be over the target.
Economic policy over the last forty years is often described as "neoliberal." I present a take on what neoliberal does and theory of how it functions here.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/what-is-neoliberalism-an-empirical
It seems crystal clear that the *objective* of neoliberalism was to create an economy that would allow those at the top to achieve a maximal degree of self-actualization at the cost of those in the lower classes being less able to advance up Maslow's pyramid.
Think of medieval times or stories like Lord of the Rings. The history or tales told are about the uppermost elites, the vast majority of the populace is just part of the environment or scenery. They don't count, just the protagonists.
The "Age of the Common Man" introduced by the New Dealers changed this briefly. For a time the ability of elites to express their self-actualization was hampered by high tax rates. The capitalist class were thrown down from their "high seats" in our civilization and reverted back to their role in the process capitalism had evolved to perform, the accumulation of productive capital that grows the economy and the tax revenues it generates.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-take-on-how-the-scientific-revolution
Economic elites wanted their high seats back. They wanted to use capitalism to accumulate status or power through the accumulation of financial capital and in 1980 they go their chance. And the rest is just the result.
A great deal of confusion seems to have arisen from a misunderstanding on how to aggregate and break down economic and social data. Economists note that GDP has increased steadily and handsomely over several decades and therefore conclude that negative trends such as opioid abuse, suicide, and the withdrawal of working-age men from the labor force have no important relation to economic conditions. If we break down the data, however, we discover that sharply rising inequality has unquestionably occurred and that this development surely has a lot to do with economics. While CEO compensation and corporate profits have exploded over the past few decades, working-class wages have been flat. This essentially means that workers are not being rewarded for their hard work and contribution to the success of their organization, which is clearly antithetical to the promise of a capitalist system that is operating properly---"a rising tide lifts all boats." Defenders of the present-day corporate oligarchy do not have the courage to say that it's fine if hard work goes unrewarded, so they take cover by citing slogans and shibboleths about "free markets" and "free trade."
I am the child of a man who had both a strong moral code and a strong work ethic. He did not feel sorry for himself for having to work hard to gain affluence, he loved the reward of self satisfaction in achieving. He started with no advantages, had not the means to go to college, and was a successful businessman by the time he was in his thirties. I grew up in affluence, living in the winter on the island of Palm Beach and belonging to the two most prestigious clubs (which would not accept Mr Trump as a member for social reasons but nonetheless had members who overwhelmingly voted for him for president in 2016). I grew up in a world of privilege and live in it still thanks to my inheritance. But to my mind the quality of life has decreased significantly. Transacting everyday personal business becomes tied up in endless exchanges with machines which, all too often, lead to no resolution of one’s questions. Many times there is an electronic wall that forces you to use electronic “chat” and ends in no reasonable means of asking questions to work out a problem. On top of that, we have devolved into a culture that seems to pride itself on the achievement of projecting disrespect. In spite of material advancement we have created a kind of air pollution, an impenetrable fog of mutual distrust that tends to make us paranoid. Living in this atmosphere overwhelms what should be the pleasure of human contact and understanding. I read about the increase of road rage which spans the expression of anger through salutes with a middle finger to attacks with guns and even axes! Perhaps the accumulation of wealth has led to the kind of hubris that so many poets and teachers, from the Greek philosophers to Christ, have warned us about.
Remember the line the lower caste mother said to her children below decks as the Titanic was sinking? ‘It will all be over soon’.
When then the tech gurus put all their tech efforts into making things easier and more comfortable… hey look! I can roll my car window up and down just by pushing a button!…. and soon I won’t even have to lift my finger to do it, I’ll just ask Siri Dearie!…. instead of curing cancer, or ending poverty, it’s little surprise that we’re circling the drain.
There is no way out of this without ending the existence of the billionaire. And I don’t see that happening without a global climate change induced economic collapse. Rubbing sticks to make fire again? Bueller? Anyone?
Affluence and quality of life are relative, no? The explosion of media available to all socioeconomic classes to “measure” their “quality of life” against others provides a distorted measuring stick.
Amongst Alexander Hamilton’s contemporaries, it was said that only James Madison stood a chance to be more persuasive. I believe this is the kind of reputation that American Compass should strive for.
Very few people then or now, of course, possess Hamilton’s extraordinary memory or sheer brilliance. His method of arguing, to the contrary, is readily accessible, but it has to be extracted from his texts as he did not write philosophy.
Consider, for example, this passage from his Report on Manufacturing:
“Most general theories, however, admit of numerous exceptions, and there are few, if any, of the political kind, which do not blend a considerable portion of error, with the truths they inculcate.”
With regard to the Cass Winship debate, it is readily apparent that Hamilton’s method puts an end to the logical conundrums loitering about in unbecoming fashion.
Hamilton, himself, was fond of the British empiricists, particularly David Hume. So, I would not be surprised to find some similarities there. But you won’t find it Aristotle or Plato. But you will find it in the birth Athen’s democracy, which preceded them and against which they labored.
You folks need to go get real jobs. Maybe volunteer for Big Brother/Big Sister. Merry Christmas.
I'll oversimplify - affluent people are doing well, often starting on 3rd base to begin with, and don't ever get traumatized by simply trying to survive. The rest of us - the poors are a quickly growing population fighting over fewer and more expensive resources with higher expectations. It's no wonder teen suicide is epidemic. Right behind gun deaths. Eat the Rich.
This is one of the best commentaries I have read in a while and points to Pettis' arguments for global rebalancing. I find it curious that most of the policies advocated support productivity and growth which are good things in the long run, but don't address the immediate fact that we face higher unemployment, debt, or investment, with productive investment needing sustainable demand rather than debt fueled consumption. The problem of the working class is well covered by Reeves and many others, but few acknowledge Glenn Loury's statement that social capital is a prerequisite for human capital and abandon our underclass by default. I dropped this yesterday on Setser's China essay on X, but I'll repeat: @michaelxpettis occasionally references on X "former Fed Chairman (1932-48) Marriner Eccles, ... from his memoir, Beckoning Frontiers (1966): As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth – not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced – to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation’s economic machinery. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped."
The test is soon upon us. Do Don and JD actually care about these issues, or the retribution, cultural grievance and anger they campaigned on? Here's hoping the self-proclaimed "very stable genius" remembers. After all, he's still publicly bragging about "acing" a dementia test-person, woman, man, camera, tv! Perhaps most telling was his famous comment "I love the poorly educated". Indeed he does.
With Vivek and Elon in charge of formulating a plan for the future of the US government, it is hard to imagine how this will spin in the direction of being pro worker.
I'm by no means an expert, but I actually feel optimistic about the role that they've been given. Putting business people in charge of cost-cutting seems like a solid fit, and I think that the necessity of Congressional approval will help to mitigate any irresponsible suggestions. Maybe I'm being naive, but I think that (given that DOGE is a blue-ribbon agency, so they won't be actively involved in deciding policy) it's actually a really smart place for the libertarian wing of the Republican party to focus.
You are probably correct in your reference to the interests of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, but it is that very wing that wants me to run in the opposite direction as fast as I can. A libertarianism unleashed will, I worry, only serve to further entrench oligarchy, empower people like Musk, Vivek, etc, and bind the rest of us further to their whim.
Exactly, plus the appointments of Bessent at Treasury (an ex Soros guy) and Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO at Commerce. I have to say, the richest man in the world having slumber parties with the most powerful man in the world at Mar-a-Lago is a little spooky. What in history does this remind one of?
Excellent summary of a fascinating debate topic. The devil is in the details… so we have to talk about winners and losers, network effects, winner-take-all technology platforms, and a bifurcated economy that serves different classes of households.
I read an article this month highlighting that all major car makers are focusing on the high end of new automobiles. Serving the low end doesn’t make economic sense when selling to the affluent pays the best ROI. Similar dynamics seem to play out in the multi-family property market where everyone wants to build for the top quartile.
I hope the debate leads to new perspectives!
There is no politics but class politics. When enough people get the memo, and act on it, you’ll get your new perspectives.
“For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!”