I have learned an awful lot from and have a great deal of respect for Robert Kuttner. America owes him a great deal—much more than it knows. But. This—rarely for 1/
him—is stupid.
First of all, it is written as if Biden has it in the bag, and Trump will be a bad dream as of January 21, 2021. Lots and lots of people in the fall of 2016 thought that HRC had it in the bag, and so started to nibble away to undermine her in order to position 2/
themselves more advantageously for 2017. Here is Kuttner doing the same thing for 2021. It's a bad, immoral thing to do. Stop it. Biden does not have it in the bag.
Second, everybody whom Biden appoints will be to the left of the governing coalition in the Senate, which is 3/
the veto point here. Thus whether Biden's appointees make Robert Kuttner happy in meetings and when he contemplates their influence does not matter. What does matter is whether Biden's appointees execute so that things get up to the Senate, and whether they are able via 4/
popular mobilization and clever framing and legislative tactics to move the governing coalition to the left. I understand that Kuttner does not like Jennifer Hillman and Miriam Sapiro. I understand that Kuttner does not like Steve Ricchetti and Anita Dunn. I understand that 5/
Robert Kuttner does not like Sergio Aguirre and Nitin Chadda and Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken. In a different day, with a different Senate, I could be persuaded that some of all of them would be bad choices for a Biden administration. But not today. That Kuttner does not 6/
like them is at best orthogonal to whether Biden should pick them 7/END
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@terry_renaud@DylanRileyNLR Speaking as a slightly repentant left-neoliberal, much of the Marxist cultural turn was an attempt to build an orrery to explain why Engels's predictions about how the steampower mode of production would educate humanity for socialism went wrong. But, in my view, much of... 1/
@terry_renaud@DylanRileyNLR ...the orrery was unnecessary. The bifurcated world of mass steampower factories growing larger and larger as the ruling and middle classes grew smaller and smaller would have brought Engels's hopes of revolution rich countries much closer. (Whether those revolutions would... 2/
@terry_renaud@DylanRileyNLR ...have had the desired beneficial consequences is a deep issue.) But technology advanced, the mode of production moved on. The Second-Industrial-Revolution mode of production was not the Steampower one. Fordism was not Second-Industrial-Revolution. Global Value-Chain was... 3/
@postdiscipline Yes, the changing technology-driven forces-of-production hardware of society greatly constrain and shape the relations-of-production and superstructural econo-politico-socio-cultural software of society that puts the forces-of-production to work and does the distribution... 1/
@postdiscipline ...and utilization of our common and collective wealth.
Yes, feudal-era forces- and relations-of-production teach people that society is static, hierarchical, with who you are chosen for you by the role ascribed to you; that production is small-scale, handicraft, and... 2/
@postdiscipline ...individually autonomous; and that those who work owe rent to those who protect them and tithes to those who guide them to salvation. Hence the feudal mode-of-production requires that we write feudal-society software to run on top of it.
Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality: It Is Harmful to My Psychological Health for Me to Read David Brooks, & BRIEFLY NOTED for 2023-01-13 Fr braddelong.substack.com/p/it-is-harmfu…
...Do you think that maybe doing your job required telling your readers back at the time, in the early 2000s, that neoliberal supply-side conservatism was played out? Do you think that maybe doing your job required telling your readers back at the time, in the early 2000s... 2/
...that “compassionate conservatism” was very weak and unsatisfactory tea? What conception of “doing your job” do you have that does not include doing those two things in the early 2000s?
Do you think that maybe doing your job required telling your readers back at the... 3/
I think the easiest way to conceptualize what I think of as the major point is to set up a model in which… 1/
…1. The central bank has a target rate of inflation.
2. The rate of inflation is a constant markdown applied to the rate of nominal wage increase.
3. The rate of increase of nominal wages that workers are able to demand, and enforce, is a declining function of the… 2/
...unemployment rate and of the real wage.
In this model, there is a warranted rate of nominal wage increase: the central bank’s inflation target, plus the wedge between price inflation and nominal wage increase. In this model, the natural rate of unemployment is the… 3/
Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality: In Which Long-Time Netizen & Programmer-at-Arms Dave Winer Records a Podcast for Me, Personally braddelong.substack.com/p/in-which-lon…
...“The Fall of the Blogosphere”, by Stable Diffusion, via NightCafe
But since I have a Gutenberg-Galaxy brain, I feed it to text-recognition software <otter.ai>, and then edit the transcript.
But let me first link to a subsequent piece in which Dave muses… 2/
The way I thought of this ten years ago, during the decline and fall, was that it all should work in the way that network communication worked in Vernor Vinge’s amazing mindbending science-fiction space-opera… 3/
I volunteered to write an introduction to the reissue of three of my favorite alternate-history novels: Jo Walton’s “Small Change” series <amazon.com/dp/B08L9GHPDC>
* "Farthing": Publishers Weekly: Starred: “World Fantasy Award–winner Walton (Tooth and Claw) crosses genres… 2/
...without missing a beat with this stunningly powerful alternative history set in 1949…
* Ha’Penny: Publishers Weekly: “This provocative sequel to acclaimed alternate history Farthing (2006) delves deeper into the intrigue and paranoia of 1940s fascist Great Britain… 3/