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Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

5 May

@jonathanchait

I liked this @jonathanchait piece on how the Congress's rules force the Congressional Budget Office to ignore the revenue from better IRS enforcement. But I'm also always caught on one thing here: nymag.com/intelligencer/…

As EVERYONE AT THE CBO WILL TELL YOU, they do not hold any ultimate power. They release reports. The reports are important exactly to the extent Congress listens to them. And this doesn't strike me as an example of a case where the CBO is the powerful actor.

Congress often ignores these reports. Lots of Republicans pretended to believe, or actually believed, the Trump tax cuts would pay for themselves.

Or Congress ignores the rule to offset spending. The Rescue Plan wasn't paid for, and the Jobs Plan pays for itself over 15 years.

Read 10 tweets

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

5 May

Facebook's Oversight Board seems to me like an attempt to solve the problem of legitimacy without solving the problems of representation and voice.

But representation and voice are what give governmental decisions broad legitimacy!

This is hard to do well even in democratic systems, and our system, for instance, is constantly at war with itself over whether it really is representative (it isn't), and why some voices carry so much further than others.

But Zuckerberg is still the ultimate power at Facebook. The Board is still a Facebook creation. I take seriously that they take it seriously, and it may be an interesting model to insulate corporate decisionmaking from certain pressures.

Read 7 tweets

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

3 May

https://twitter.com/JoeYonan/status/1389289672627609601

So earlier today, in a thread about why it's great that Eleven Madison Park is going plant-based, I said being vegan comes at a cost in the food you eat.

That made some people I like mad, but I think it's important, and I want to defend it.

So: 🧵

https://twitter.com/JoeYonan/status/1389289672627609601

Let me first be clear about where I’m coming from: I’ve been vegetarian for more than a decade, vegan (with a bit of cheese here and there) for about 7 years.

Reducing animal suffering is one of my core political commitments. I write and podcast about it all the time.

That’s why I was excited to see Eleven Madison Park going plant-based, which is the context for that tweet. The more restaurants and chefs and companies working on plant-based food, the better plant-based food will get.

Read 23 tweets

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

3 May

I love this. It'll be so powerful for a restaurant like Eleven Madison Park to show what they can do with plants. And it's a constraint that'll lead to such wild creativity, too. nytimes.com/2021/05/03/din…

There is no doubt that being veg is less delicious. People who argue otherwise are kidding themselves. But a lot of that is because there are fewer options on menus, so much less money driving creativity. The more plant-based eaters and chefs there are, the tastier it'll get.

My one weird take in this space — which doesn't apply to Eleven Madison Park, as they're operating as a status symbol and a unique experience — is I think it's better for restaurants to go 80% plant-based than to eliminate meat entirely.

Read 7 tweets

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

30 Apr

The key part of this conversation with Chuck Schumer, to me, is the way his thinking on the median voter has changed. nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opi…

He used to think they were skeptical of big government, resentful that they paid taxes and it helped everyone but them.

That pushed Democrats to target programs tightly, and keep price tags down. Clinton era reflects this.

Now he thinks these voters, "Joe and Eileen Bailey," just want government to help them, and they don't care who else it helps. And so the political path for Democrats is to do anything and everything so these voters feeling helped by the government, right now.

Read 4 tweets

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

26 Apr

I think the path followed by electric cars over the past decade are a good way of thinking about this stupid debate about meat, and about the policy that will get us to a good outcome here.

Biden isn't going to ban meat.

He's so not going to ban meat and will be so afraid of being caricatured otherwise that I worry Democrats will err on the wrong side of this and ignore all emissions from animal agriculture, which would be devastating for climate goals.

So let's talk about electric cars. Go back a decade and there's a similar culture war. Real 'Muricans drive Hummers and weeny liberals drive Priuses and Volts and if Democrats win they're going to take your cool cars.

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