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The recovery legislation includes very substantial, but temporary, increases in the size of the welfare state. Biden is gambling that the GOP won’t have the nerve to let them expire in two years. Will it work?

The obvious precedent is the Bush tax cuts. The Democrats used the upper end tax cuts as leverage for other priorities. Look for the GOP to link the expiration of the upper end Trump tax cuts to the Biden safety net expenditures in the same way.

That’s the way it works in America today: the two parties are only capable of reaching agreements that further blow up the deficit.

It’s Ron Johnson. There can be no debate on this one.

The pandemic shut America down a year ago. It is appropriate to use the anniversary as a milestone, and to consider how we’ve adapted, what we’ve lost, and where we’re going. But do we really need to relive the whole experience? Does that really do anyone any good?

I have my doubts.

Imagine that you are a modern day James Madison. You fear the capriciousness of mobs. You want to create a political system that protects property and the best elements of society from the tyranny of the majority. How do you do it?

You would start by giving a disproportionate amount of voting power to property owners and people with education, of course.

Many members of the current GOP openly support minority rule. The problem with the classical defense of creating obstacles to majorities, however, is that the plan I have just described would give control of the country to the left-leaning, cosmopolitan business and intellectual elites the GOP despises. How about them apples?

The GOP scheme isn’t actually to somehow implement anti-democratic opinions of the Founding Fathers; it is to limit the franchise to “real Americans,” which of course means predominantly poorly-educated, white working and lower middle class Christians. They aren’t the successors to some sort of enlightened 18th century planter aristocracy. They’re average America in action.

Marco Rubio, always a reliable GOP weathervane, claims that he supports the efforts of Amazon employees in Alabama to unionize. Is this a sign that the GOP is becoming more pro-labor and less capitalist?

Of course not! Rubio doesn’t care a fig for the Amazon workers. His objectives are to: show solidarity with Trump supporters who, like the man on golf cart, have a grudge against Amazon; take a shot at allegedly “woke” companies, even though Amazon doesn’t strike me as being particularly “woke;” and pretend to be sympathetic to unions, when he isn’t. Just watch how he reacts to the pro-union bill that the House just passed if you need any evidence of his real intentions.

Pigs will fly when the GOP actually supports unions. The party loves individual reactionary union members, who frequently respond as requested to Mr. Potato Head politics, but unions themselves–not so much. They just get in the way of the donor class.

The Biden COVID recovery bill apparently included a formula which allocates some funds to states based on unemployment levels. This obviously makes sense in a piece of legislation that is focused on addressing the impacts of the virus, which include increased unemployment.

Ron DeSantis sees it differently. In his view, the formula is unfair, because it punishes states that have done a good job of minimizing unemployment.

But the GOP as a whole insists that the principal fault of the bill is that it goes way beyond the need to address COVID impacts. How can this be squared with the DeSantis objection?

It can’t, of course.

I posted many years ago about the shrewd ambiguity behind the MAGA slogan. When was America last great? Some very exacting reactionaries would say it was 1912, before Woodrow Wilson took office. Some would argue for 1932; it was the New Deal that destroyed American freedom. A few would probably clamor for the Reagan era. But most would say it was the fifties: a time of steady economic growth, American industrial primacy, substantial equality, and relative cultural unity.

And, of course, it was a time in which black Americans had no political power. It is becoming increasingly clear from the innumerable vote suppression efforts that this is the part of the fifties the GOP most wants to recreate, under the guise of preventing nonexistent “fraud.”

Hey, it could be worse. At least they aren’t trying to bring back de jure segregation. That was part of the fifties, too.

Florida’s tax revenues have predictably plunged during the pandemic. There is a large hole in the state’s budget. Ron DeSantis opted to make heroic assumptions about recovering revenues in the apparent hope that the federal government would fill in the hole. He won; today, he’s in the best possible position, because he can whine about the unfairness of the recovery bill while pocketing its proceeds and cutting taxes instead of spending. Biden has, effectively, bailed him out.

Rick Scott, on the other hand, was elected initially in 2010, and still misses the glory days of the Tea Party. He is calling on the states, including Florida, to send the Biden money back and tighten their belts. Expansionary austerity! Doesn’t that bring back lots of warm memories?

Scott undoubtedly thinks that the GOP can be united around budget cutting, just as it was in 2010. I suspect he has completely misread the room, particularly after the huge deficits in the Trump years. He won’t be able to portray most of the Biden spending–most notably, the $1,400 checks–as “welfare” for lazy minorities. But what choice does he have, realistically? Hating government and slashing budgets is his brand. It’s his way of distinguishing himself from DeSantis and Rubio. He will live or die with it in 2024.

The Biden rescue bill, which was signed today, is overwhelmingly popular with the public, which presents the GOP with a major public relations problem. So far, the responses have been:

1. Change the subject to what Americans really care about–not their jobs and income, but Mr. Potato Head.
2. Complain that the bill isn’t really COVID legislation at all; it’s a wasteful liberal wish list in the guise of a COVID bill.

Unusually for the GOP, the latter statement is actually partly true. Unfortunately, the liberal wish list is not bad policy on its face, and it has the support of the public. So what do you do now?

Stick to Mr. Potato Head, of course. Or, in a pinch, you can always lie and suggest that you and the rest of the GOP actually supported the bill, notwithstanding the unanimous vote against it.

Capitalism is a force for instability; it churns out new winners and losers every day. How should the government respond to this, particularly if you are a conservative, and therefore dislike change?

There are three broad options:

1. America was built by winners. If you subsidize losers, you just get more losers. If you keep the economy free, the strong will thrive, and everyone will gain in the long run. Ignore the short term pain for the weak and inefficient.
2. Embrace the destruction process, but build and operate a welfare state that guarantees the losers a decent way of life.
3. Stop the destruction process altogether with tariffs, subsidies, and regulations.

The first alternative is associated with the CL and PBP factions of the GOP. The second opinion is held by CDs and most of the left. The third is the Reactionary position.

Trump moved the GOP away from #1 and towards #3. Will that trend continue, as Reactionaries amass more and more power within the party? That is a known unknown for 2024.

Americans typically view Mrs. Thatcher as an uncompromising enemy of the British welfare state, but that isn’t true; her impacts on public spending were relatively minimal. Her legacy really revolved around a massive campaign of privatization and the crushing of the unions. The former was a mixed bag, but the latter, regardless of how you feel about Thatcher and the workers she humbled, was necessary. Unions had the UK over a barrel in 1979, and refused to use their power for good. Something had to be done, and she did it.

In a similar vein, Reagan sent a message to American workers by obliterating the air traffic controllers’ union in the 80s. Unions have been on a downhill slide in the US ever since. Not coincidentally, so have wages, relative to inflation and productivity.

Biden is clearly all-in for unions. His pro-labor legislation isn’t going to get through the Senate. But what if it did? Would that be a good thing for America?

Unions have a history in this country of being corrupt and socially reactionary. They also drive up costs–sometimes unnecessarily–and frequently drive employers to replace American workers with machines or foreigners. Since the economy has changed, any new unions would probably be dominated by women and people of color instead of bull walruses smoking cigars, which would be an improvement. The rest of the union package, however, would stay pretty much the same.

Personally, I would rather use government to create a truly effective welfare state than to re-energize unions as a mechanism to help struggling workers. However, given the GOP’s continuing interest in wrecking, rather than improving, government, I can understand why giving more power to unions might look like a better and more stable way to drive up the incomes of employees in the long run. Budget increases and cuts come and go with elections; union power, once established, is unlikely to disappear.

The other question, of course, is whether white male workers will reward the Democrats for their advocacy of unions at the polls. Based on recent history, I have my doubts. For most people, Mr. Potato Head rules in this country, not economic self-interest.

So the covid relief bill is done.

With support from the left save for one.

Will rampant inflation

Soon threaten the nation?

Well, for now, celebrate what’s been won.

Mitt Romney probably thought he had a winner. Providing more money for families with children would be popular with social conservatives. Making the program nearly universal eliminates any possible stench of “welfare” for lazy minorities. Finally, the program was to be funded by the elimination of overlapping subsidies and the SALT deduction, much used and loved in blue states. From the reactionary perspective, it looked like he had hit the trifecta.

But Romney didn’t reckon with the GOP’s Victorian side. The program was portrayed by Lee and Rubio, along with their allies, purely as an anti-poverty mechanism. It was then rejected on the basis that the recipients of the aid weren’t required to work. Only paying work, it seems, can really lift people out of poverty.

Romney had the better of the argument. The program was not purely an anti-poverty scheme; it was designed to help middle class people take better care of their children (and possibly have more), as well. And some of the premises of Rubio/Lee on the anti-poverty issue are definitely debatable. What if times are hard, and there are no minimum wage jobs to be had? And would the combination of a minimum wage job and a Rubio/Lee benefit really make the recipient of the benefit better off than a stay-at-home parent, after considering the substantial added cost of child care? I have my doubts.

When it is all said and done, I suspect the real problem with this program is the identity of the author. Romney is a pariah among the GOP. Anything he proposes is automatically suspect with the base and his more ambitious colleagues.

I don’t usually devote any of my bandwidth to something as trivial as the royals, but the Harry and Meghan interview is roiling the world, so here are my thoughts:

1. As anyone who watches “The Crown” knows, members of the royal family enjoy privileged lives, but do not possess freedoms that the rest of us take for granted. As a result, all of them rebel at some point in time. In the end, some of them embrace the terms of the deal (it’s easier if you’re the monarch); some struggle against it, but are ultimately crushed by the machine and surrender; and some of them cross the line by demanding too much freedom, and are cast into darkness. Harry is now in the last category, along with his mother and the Duke of Windsor.
2. There are obvious similarities between Harry and the Duke. The differences are: Harry is not the heir to the throne; the Duke’s mother didn’t die under controversial circumstances when he was young; and Harry never hung out with Nazis. On the whole, the differences are more compelling than the similarities.
3. “The Crown” tells us both that the Duke was treated harshly by the rest of the family, and that he was a bit of a grifter. Since Harry has celebrity, but no obvious talents, he may wind up resorting to a similar kind of lifestyle as the Duke–only with the opportunities provided in the internet age.
4. Potential conflicts between the American actress and the royals should have been obvious to everyone from the beginning. This situation was a disaster waiting to happen. One wonders if Harry saw that from the beginning and used his wife to make a point that he had been dying to make for years, given his bitterness about his mother’s fate.
5. My advice to both sides would be to just shut up and move on. Nobody wins by continuing the conflict.

Trump’s responses to the challenges presented by climate change and the Chinese were to completely deny the former and to use bluster and tariffs on the latter. Neither approach, of course, had any success at all. The GOP will have to come up with something better, even though it will require unwelcome government intervention in the economy. What should they do to avoid spoiling their brand?

In the case of climate change, the clear winner is a carbon tax. Sure, the GOP hates taxes, but this one could be offset by reductions in the income tax. The carbon tax would be the most minimal intervention in the economy possible. It does not require subsidies and regulations. Just establish the price and let the market do its magic!

In the case of China, the broad choices are to beat them or join them. Joining them means adopting Chinese interventionist economic approaches, including tariffs, regulations, and subsidies. Beating them means relying on your existing strengths, which include luring talented people to your country from overseas. Change the immigration system to make the US more attractive to tech investors and inventors. That’s less intrusive than regulations and subsidies.