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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
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29 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Good. Glad to see welfare being framed as investment rather than as compassion.
One of America's central problems is that we don't believe in our people. We've been brainwashed to think large segments of our people are just useless trash, so we think giving people money is just a handout to people who have no other option.
If we believed in our people more, we'd understand that they have a ton of potential. Giving them money is often (though of course not always) a way of giving people a boost so they can realize that potential instead of just scrabbling for survival.
When some randomly selected families in low-income neighborhoods in Stockton, CA got $500 a month, no strings attached, they worked more full-time jobs and started to think more about their futures.

npr.org/2021/03/04/973…
A handout isn't always a hand up, but often it is. Cash helps free people from their daily struggle so that they can make something of themselves.

We just have to believe in our people. We have to believe Americans are not trash.

Because they're not.

(end)

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
31 Oct
At this point, radical online ideologies have become a consumption good, consumed by A) young people bored with video games, and B) older people who incorrectly think that things really might be totally different going forward.
One result of this is that as general popular unrest recedes and lots of people get bored or jaded or exhausted and walk quietly away, the radical ideological entrepreneurs who sprung up to take advantage of the boom are now fighting each other over a shrinking pie.
As the market size for radical online ideology decreases, we see some ideological entrepreneurs frantically trying to pivot; this explains Nazbols, Jacobin praising QAnon, tankies embracing right-wing elements, and so on.
Read 9 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
28 Oct
Jordan Weissmann is my go-to guy on the specifics of the BBB bill
Actually this is all very good news IMO. The "investment" and "redistribution" parts of the bill are the new centerpieces, while the "cost disease" parts of the bill have been de-emphasized. This is better and more focused than I expected.
I expected the bill to be a bag of stuff I wasn't enthused about, but the new proposal emphasizes the stuff I'm most enthused about.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
27 Oct
I'm not on Team Transitory or Team Persistent when it comes to inflation. I'm on Team Conditional. Whether inflation persists or not will probably be dependent on what the government does, and on how people respond to it.
In other words, Team Transitory says "The Fed doesn't ever need to tighten because inflation will go away on its own. Look, markets expect low inflation in the future."

To which I respond: "Yeah, probably because people think the Fed will tighten."
While Team Persistent says: "Inflation is spiraling out of control, the Fed needs to drop the hammer."

To which I respond: "Not yet; merely a slightly more credible commitment to dropping the hammer if things get worse will probably be enough to prevent the spiral."
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
26 Oct
A new Pew survey shows that "defund the police" is dead.

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…
In June 2020, more Black people, Democrats, and young people wanted to cut police funding than wanted to raise it.

That has now reversed. All three groups are now more in favor of increased spending on police.
In fact, Black Democrats are now more likely than White Democrats to support increased police funding.
Read 5 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
25 Oct
Wealth tax is better. Just raising the regular old capital gains tax is better. This tax (an accrual tax) will cause markets to crash, which will hurt Democrats electorally as well as hurting the economy.
And if you don't have the political capital to raise the capital gains tax rate, why do you think you have the political capital to implement a completely new kind of tax? This is highly unlikely to fly, not sure why they're trying it.
Finally, if you're worried about rich people borrowing against their unrealized gains in order to consume, just tax *that*.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
21 Oct
In some sense, today's post is my (partial) answer to popularism.

The problem with popularism is that we don't know what will prove enduringly popular, but past experience gives us some clues.

And one such clue is: National security.

noahpinion.substack.com/p/natsec-is-ho…
This is what Dems are largely missing right now. Biden needs to adopt more natsec framing for his agenda. Other Dems, and supporters in the media, need to echo that framing.
And the thing some progressives do when they CONTRAST Biden's agenda with defense spending?

No way! This is the exact wrong thing to do.

Read 4 tweets

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