I've always been amused by lefties whining about funding after they've lost the substantive argument, but I guess we'll have get used to it from Conservative Inc. too. nationalreview.com/2021/08/does-a…
There are no coherent arguments about policy here, just lame formulations underscoring the lack of an actual point ("raises questions," "raises concerns," "Is that what is going on?").
At @AmerCompass, we've laid out a comprehensive case for the importance of labor to a well-functioning economy, limited government, and stronger civic institutions. If @MichaelWatsonDC disagrees, I'd of course welcome his counterarguments. americancompass.org/in-focus/seat-…
If you're interested in the contours of the sectoral bargaining debate, I recommend this dialogue I had with @davidmrolf, in which I say: "legal reforms that would strengthen [labor as a partisan political force] are non-starters for the right-of-center." americancompass.org/discussions/th…
At the end of the day, @AmerCompass has great confidence in the marketplace of ideas, where ours are performing rather better than the stale orthodoxy. You can read my essay on why American Needs a Conservative Labor Movement at the Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/articles/ameri…
For @AmerCompass's full coverage of labor issues, see our Seat at the Table collection, featuring a statement signed by everyone from @marcorubio and Jeff Sessions to @jdvance1 and Yuval Levin, as well as top conservative experts on labor law. americancompass.org/essays/conserv…
And now seems a good time to mention that next month we're releasing a new labor collection, A Better Bargain, featuring concrete policy proposals and an expansive survey of worker attitudes, with focus on the problem of progressive politics distorting labor. Stay tuned. [end]
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🚨🧵🚨 New survey from @AmerCompass, "Not What They Bargained For," paints a fascinating portrait of an American labor movement that has totally alienated the workers it purports to represent, thanks to its focus on political activism. Let's dive in... americancompass.org/essays/not-wha…
@AmerCompass 2/ Lower- and working-class Americans are much less likely than their middle- and upper-class counterparts to want politicians to speak favorably about labor unions. Not that they want to hear them speaking unfavorably. Most just don't care, or don't want to hear about it.
3/ Zoom in on the core that we call "potential union members" -- people working 30+ hours per week at a for-profit company -- and only 35% say they would vote for a union. They're almost as likely to say they would be undecided, or to say they would be opposed.
2/ The latest @AmerCompass Atlas takes a spin through the data on what private equity is up to. It's very good at offering the highest salaries and attracting the top business talent (who could otherwise be doing something more productive). americancompass.org/a-guide-to-pri…
3/ Private equity is not so good, unfortunately, at investing. 20 years ago, when it could acquire small companies at big discounts, it made money buying low and selling high. But once the discounts vanished, so did the returns. Big PE firms now make most of their money in fees.
If you want to understand the state of the market-fundamentalist right, I highly, highly recommend this short essay from Anne Rathbone Bradley in the new @ISI@ModAgeJournal symposium on the humane economy. isi.org/modern-age/hum…
Bradley's definition of a "humane economy" focuses on "greater output" and "greater choices, not just in coffee tables but for all goods and services that we need and want."
She acknowledges that "male wages did begin to decline in 1973," which she attributes in large part to women entering the labor force, and says, "this is a good thing for families" that "allows them greater choices."
And by the way, cutting taxes when they raise only 16% of GDP, while we spend more than 20%, just isn't going to happen. Shouldn't happen. Can't happen. Money's not free.
So if you're focused on tax cuts, that's really just a way of staying you're focused on nothing. Not great.
The new @AmerCompass collection begins from a simple premise: the information revolution of the past 30 years has brought about the most consequential technological transformation since the industrial revolution 200 years ago. 🧵
2/ An important thing to understand about the industrial revolution is that it actually made people pretty miserable for a pretty long time -- decades of stagnant to declining wages, declining health and life expectancy, people literally got shorter!
3/ Eventually, policymakers caught up, recognizing that the state needed to play a different role in an industrial economy than it had in an agrarian one. Indentured children in factories and mines were not the same as children working on the family farm.
I appreciate @DonFSchneider taking the time to reply to my recent essay, We're Just Speculating Here... The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment. But I'm not persuaded by his "no investment decline" thesis. Two points in particular:
1. I do see "much weakness in equipment" in his chart -- at least the last ten straight years of data below his long-run average. Here's net investment as % of GDP by decade:
1960s, 1.7%
1970s, 1.9%
1980s, 1.4%
1990s, 1.5%
2000s, 1.3%
2010s, 1.2%
2. Using the GDP deflator for private nonresidential fixed investment to get "real net investment" is facially untenable. He provides the chart. It basically shows no inflation for 40 years. Companies get about as much for $100 in 2020 as they did in 1980.