Thread by @oren_cass

1/ Today's Understanding America, You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Post Is About You, takes a look at the bizarre social media reaction to this @FrankLuntz tweet and what it says about the blinkered innumeracy and elitism of reindustrialization's skeptics.

2/ The Rorschach test here is one separating people who can think rationally and empathetically about the wide range of opportunities their fellow citizens might pursue, and those who lack that basic capacity. @scottlincicome apparently falls in bucket 2.

@scottlincicome 3/ See, if 25% of respondents say they’d prefer a factory job to their current job, that suggests an enormous opportunity for improvement in many lives. But @gtconway3d thinks only people who themselves see a factory job as their best option should support more factory jobs.

@scottlincicome @gtconway3d 4/ We see this same thinking elsewhere in our politics. @MattZeitlin draws one analogy directly, to the idea that there’s something wrong with people who want their own kid to go to college but don’t think we should have an education system oriented toward college for all.

@scottlincicome @gtconway3d @MattZeitlin 5/ This style of virtue-signaling from the elite is so obviously self-interested and socially harmful that it’s hard to believe it passes as virtuous at all. Which, unlikely @ernietedeschi's view from the Yale @The_Budget_Lab, really does sum it all up.

@scottlincicome @gtconway3d @MattZeitlin @ernietedeschi @The_Budget_Lab 6/6 A healthy politics celebrates pluralism and embraces an obligation to advance it. An elite that thinks it is supposed to promote only its own path is helping only itself.

Read/subscribe here: understandingamerica.co/p/youre-so-vai…