Thread by @toddntucker

"EVEN IF YOU’RE CONVINCED that unionized labor is sclerotic and expensive and an impediment to production, cutting them out creates the very real risk of losing the coalition necessary to sustain green industrial policy."
@ddayen responds to @ezraklein.
prospect.org/economy/2023-0…

I am sympathetic to Klein's wish to live in a society with more corporatist labor arrangements.
https://t.co/5jiumaovWrnytimes.com/2023/07/16/opi…

Here's a report about the corporatist ideal, along with ideas at the margin to move towards that goal.
rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/s…

More recently, @janellecj wrote an essay for @rooseveltinst looking at real world corporatist-esque experiments in California and elsewhere, and how they can fruitfully be married with industrial policy and union power.
rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/i…

There are ample reasons from scholarship to believe in corporatism's superiority in helping navigate economic transformation.

See @GardMurray here, though I'd be curious for an update post IRA.
scholar.google.com/citations?view…

The problem for Klein is that there is no magic button you can push and get served corporatism. As North, Hall and Soskice, and many development scholars have written, the institutional trajectory of the varieties of capitalism is rooted in decades if not centuries of history.

The institutional stickiness of social arrangements was also the theme of a recent brief by @rooseveltinst development scholar @Isabel_Estevez_.
rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/u…

In contrast, I know of no persuasive political economy theory that suggests that power blocs are best served by engaging in ritual coalitional fratricide, which was the critique raised in their ways by both @reihan and @ddayen.

How persuasive should we find this call to a Sister Souljah moment for the planetary emergency?

There are two citations Klein offers in his piece - a short essay by Gerrard, and a legal sketch by Ruhl & Salzman that appears to be in part a response to Klein's own columns.

Neither is nor claims to be rooted in or contributing to social science. Both acknowledge normative and political trade offs, but offer no theoretically or empirically informed guide to choosing which interests will prevail.

Here is Gerrard:

Here is Ruhl and Salzman:

Is Klein's survivor island approach to coalitions - first unions and Dems team up to vote enviros off the island, and then Dems turn on labor - more or less likely to move the needle towards corporatism?

As @GardMurray's summation of the literature suggests, actually existing corporatism tended to be under-inclusive of groups like environmentalists - one reason you had (say) German greens spin out from social democratic peak associations and generate their own political logics.

@GardMurray So, in the absence of a compelling case to the contrary, one has to assume that unilateral dismembering of the climate mover coalition is unlikely to be a net positive, in light of the substantial coalition on the other side (which @ddayen notes).

@GardMurray @ddayen For more on the coalitional dynamics underlying the IRA and Bidenomics, there are two recent podcasts that I found instructive.

One was Klein's own, with @robinsonmeyer, who explores how coalitional sausage-making enabled and constrained the IRA's shape.

https://twitter.com/robinsonmeyer/status/1677304560207929345

@GardMurray @ddayen @robinsonmeyer The second was last week's episode on Bidenomics on @thedigradio with @DanielDenvir, which featured a panel discussion with @tedfertik (of @WorkingFamilies), Tim Sahay (@70sBachchan of @GND_Network), and @DanielaGabor.
thedigradio.com/podcast/bideno…

@GardMurray @ddayen @robinsonmeyer @thedigradio @DanielDenvir @tedfertik @WorkingFamilies @70sBachchan @GND_Network @DanielaGabor Ted and Tim provide close observation of how the Green New Deal led to Build Back Better led to the IRA, the forces arrayed against it, and the forces aligned in favor of it.

@GardMurray @ddayen @robinsonmeyer @thedigradio @DanielDenvir @tedfertik @WorkingFamilies @70sBachchan @GND_Network @DanielaGabor There were some generative parallels in how Klein and Gabor benchmarked the IRA - Klein relative to a VC firm, and Gabor relative to central bank activism and a big green state that displaces private capital.
https://t.co/ZSf59dGNE0nytimes.com/2023/07/07/pod…

@GardMurray @ddayen @robinsonmeyer @thedigradio @DanielDenvir @tedfertik @WorkingFamilies @70sBachchan @GND_Network @DanielaGabor In contrast, the world that Dayen, Meyer, Fertik, and Sahay explore is much messier - as we would expect from coalitional and democratic political processes that determine who gets what when and how.

To cite just one provocative example👇

@threadreaderapp
unroll