Photo via Wall Street Journal.
It's internationally renowned comparative economist David F. Brooks, and he's perceived something in comparative economics ("The American Renaissance Is Already at Hand"): apparently the US is doing better than China at the moment!
Well, of course, so has literally everybody else in the world, as you could have read in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago (Brooks cites Bloomberg Economics as his main source), but Brooks has a notion that it could be the US doing something right alongside China doing something wrong, with a couple of points you wouldn't have expected him to make:
As the Chinese economy deflates, American industry is looking less hollow. America has had a net gain of 530,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2017. The manufacturing boom has been torrid of late. Since late 2021, investment in the construction of manufacturing facilities has more than doubled....
Bidenomics is working — big time. President Biden promised to help America outcompete authoritarian China and to heal some of the economic divides at home. Both those goals are being achieved.
According to the Treasury Department, over 80 percent of the investment made through the Inflation Reduction Act is going to counties with college graduation rates lower than the national average. Nearly 90 percent of investments are being made in counties with below-average weekly wages.
I know many of you think Biden is too old, but I’d vote for a 100-year-old who could keep delivering results like that.
The weird thing is, not only is this actually true, but I think it’s exactly the right way to address the “age issue” in the presidential campaign. Not that Brooks himself is actually addressing it—he’s totally forgotten Biden by the time he reaches his conclusion two paragraphs later, that the US is just mysteriously superior to China, even though all American politicians left and right are so bad (“American politics is dysfunctional, and our social fabric is in tatters, but somehow our economy is among the strongest in the world”), maybe out of some dumb luck exceptionalism.
But really, that is the way we should be talking about Biden’s age. The way Lincoln supposedly talked about General Grant’s whiskey consumption:
After the failure of his first experimental explorations around Vicksburg, a committee of abolition war managers waited upon the President and demanded the General’s removal, on the false charge that he was a whiskey drinker, and little better than a common drunkard. “Ah!” exclaimed Honest Old Abe, “you surprise me, gentlemen. But can you tell me where he gets his whiskey?” “We cannot, Mr. President. But why do you desire to know?” “Because, if I can only find out, I will send a barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army.” (New York Herald, September 18 1863, via Quote Investigator)
If Biden’s an example of the dangers of an octogenarian president, maybe we should have more of them.
I mean, he’s been fulfilling the most deeply held Democratic priorities with an energy and commitment younger politicians haven’t been able to show any time in the last 60 years, in
the American Rescue Plan, which not only spent billions on bringing COVID under control with vaccine distribution and school reopening (people somehow can’t remember that it was under the Trump administration that all the school closings took place) but devoted much of its $2 trillion to those $1400 stimulus checks and the (unfortunately temporary) expansion of the Child Tax Credit that cut child poverty in our country by 50%;
the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act bringing $550 billion in new spending on everything from the nation’s waterways and transit systems to its airports and electric grid, electric vehicle charging stations, and zero- and low-emissions buses and ferries (far from the original proposal of $3.4 trillion, but try finding something to compare it to that actually did happen over the last generation or two); the first serious gun control legislation in decades (toughening requirements for the youngest gun buyers, keeping firearms out of the hands of more domestic abusers and helping states implement “red flag” laws, along with funding for mental health and violence intervention programs and school safety initiatives);
the Chips & Science Act spending $280 billion to fund expanding the nation’s semicoductor industry to help keep pace with Chinese competition and scientific research in areas like artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing, with “regional innovation and technology hubs” bringing jobs and economic growth to the most distressed parts of the country (that’s the bit that so amazed Brooks, who’s always moaning about the Rust Belt but never thought of anything that could be done about it);
and the “Inflation Reduction Act” making our largest ever investment in combating climate change—putting the US on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, together with investments in environmental justice, conservation and resiliency programs, plus allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare, something we’ve been screaming for forever, extending federal health insurance subsidies, and capping out-of-pocket costs for insulin at no more than $35 per month for Medicare beneficiaries, which is even contributing to the reduction of inflation! and
TAXING THE RICH with new taxes on big corporations, setting a minimum corporate tax of 15%, and new funding for the Internal Revenue Service in an effort to crack down on tax evasion, reducing the federal budget deficit by about $300 billion over 10 years.
And another term, especially with a more enthusiastic Congress, will mean more progress on civil rights and voting rights for racial and sexual minorities, codification of abortion rights and marriage equality, more Supreme Court justices like Ketanji Brown Jackson, more action on comprehensive immigration reform, and more protection for communities hit by the ravages of climate change.
I mean, you might say Senator Bernard Sanders would have aimed higher, but keep in mind that he’s even older than Biden is!
I don't think you can overstate, in addition to all the things you've mentioned, the great increase in the enthusiasm and optimism level on the left. the feeling that despite all the talk of Armageddon from the right and, lamentably, the media, (but I repeat myself), there is a sense of a shift toward decency, for lack of a better word, in the national attitude. it reminds me of the feeling of the possibility of a better world that I held so dear in the late 60s and early 70s, when we hippies stoned ourselves into thinking it actually could happen, even in the face of the assassinations and police actions against minorities, and the poor, and anyone not of the rigid, conservative 50s mindset.
sorry about the run-on sentences.
"our social fabric is in tatters"
What the fuck is this mysterious "social fabric" that Allan Bloom and Brooks and all of them have been clucking over and scolding us about for decades? What the fuck are those words supposed to mean?
When I look at America today I see a lot of angry right-wingers and a lot of beleagured left-wingers but beyond that I see a fully functioning society with jobs and schools and doctors and highways and movie theaters and jazz clubs and NASCAR races and ball games, all interacting very smoothly, with people helping each other change their tires on the roadside and subscribing to magazines and giving blood — where exactly is this "tattered fabric"?
Of course it's RELIGIOUS, what they're talking about: it's the absence of the infinitely soothing Sunday morning scene where everyone gathers in their somber coats and presses their hands earnestly into their neighbors'; it's a Norman Rockwell painting or a Reagan movie. It's Disney. It's this stupid "missing element" that's supposed to make a hands-off society perfect, as long as everyone remembers their manners. I can't express how sick I am of this idea.