Tyler Cowen is not joking here:
It is not sufficiently remarked upon that many Democrats have an increasingly difficult time believing in democracy....To put it bluntly, many Democrats have arrived at the position that democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices!
See my previous post, and also the new column by Krugman, ”Will Gas Prices Doom Democracy?” All rhetorical contortions notwithstanding, I don’t see how many current Democrats avoid an implicit or maybe even explicit super-charged skepticism about, yes, democracy.
This is absurd. Krugman is not writing about any personal loss of faith in democracy. He's warning that something dumb like high gasoline prices might lead to a Republican victory in November, which in turn would hand power over to a party that no longer believes in democracy.
When we talk about opposition to democracy, we're not talking about someone who dislikes the result of an election. There are 70 million of those every four years. We're not talking about someone who lacks faith in the intelligence of the American public. We're not even talking about someone who wants to pack the Supreme Court, as long as it's via legal and democratic means.
It's far worse than that. We're talking about people who storm the Capitol to prevent Congress from validating the result of a presidential election. We're talking about people who lead campaigns of intimidation against poll workers and election supervisors so that they'll quit and can be replaced with partisan cronies who will rig things in their favor. We're talking about the politicians who pass laws to make this easier to do. And we're talking about demagogues who stoke the fires of trust in elections with endless charges that the other party is cheating and deserves whatever it gets in return.
Apologies for the earnestness, but this isn't something to snark about. It's deadly serious and it's not a both-sides issue—not for now, at least.
Tyler Cowen is a joke. I honestly don't know why so many liberals swoon over him. He is always saying crazy, right wing shit. Do lefties (and many that I like) fawn over him just 'cuz he doesn't drool?
I don't get it either. He is spot on as to local restaurant recommendations but other than that he's a wingnut idiot.
Those are good points. I always found him pretty smart and he has good guests on his podcast and leads interesting discussions.
However, a few months ago I was listening to one podcast - with Marc Andersen maybe? - and Cowen opined that he thought crypto would surely succeed simply because so many smart people were working on it. I thought that was wacky.
He is smart. He just puts his smarts in the service of very bad ideas, very bad policies, and very bad people.
If he's so smart, how come his arguments are so easily refuted? I'm guessing you think Malcom Gladwell is smart too.
"If he's so smart, how come his arguments are so easily refuted?"
he is not interestd in how refutable they are. he is motivated by something else. First guess, making money.
👍👍👍
First guess, making money.
Wingnut welfare is a thing. A very lucrative thing. Books, TV appearances, podcasts, consulting contracts...
Plus, epistemic closure exists.
Cowen puts the "glib" in glibertarian.
In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked.
Maybe Kevin Drum can add this to his rotating quotations. It would make a good chiron of sorts.
In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked.
Sadly, this is all too true. This is not necessarily the case with Cowen, but sometimes people can be perfectly intelligent but also deeply incurious, intellectually-speaking. I think you see this in a lot of voters. Not all MAGAts are heavily tattooed, barely literate rednecks. There are plenty of quite intelligent people—folks who are, say, quite effective in professional careers and who have risen to positions of significant responsibility with high salaries—who nonetheless voted for Trump not once but twice. Why? In many cases they're just not interested in public policy, and haven't ever really educated themselves on politics. I think a sort of embittered pride gets in the way at times, too: there are voters out there who surely know better by now, but the call of tribalism is strong, and it must be painful to face up to the reality that you've been voting against your own (and your country's) interest all these years. And so you double down...
Well, you definitely have to wonder about that mis-reading of Krugman's very obvious point that it's Republicans who put gas prices ahead of democracy. Willful mis-reading on the level of Fox News. Oh well, another conservative goes down.
Marc Andreesen* that should have been
Agrees it's baffling.
I have no idea who that is, so no fawning or swooning here. Maybe this ridiculous love for him you suggest isn't all that wide spread.
Perhaps you're out of the loop. Cowen runs what is (probably) the most popular econ blog on the interweb and regularly opines at Bloomberg.
Thanks for this earnestness, Mr D! So much for the commenters who like to call you a "conservative" (aka "reactionary" in today's meaning of con).
Of course, it would be really cool if "conservatives" wanted to "conserve" America's rule of law and democracy. But clearly, they're no longer into that. If you let people vote, they might vote you out! Which can't be allowed.
I don't think many people have absorbed the reality that Republicans don't just admire Putin, they've essentially re-imagined themselves as a Russian political party. Reflexive up-is-down lying about literally everything is now like oxygen to them.
Collusion???
You think that might be why Trumpski was hiding intelligence about China and the Iranian nuke program? That stuff might be very useful to My Daddy Vlad.
When I read that some of the documents were regarding the Iranian nuke program my immediate thought was it explained Saudi Arabia’s $2 billion investment in Kushner’s new company.
I didn't mean they are literally a Russian political party. I meant that they've fully embraced the culture of Russian politics, which is entirely based on brazen lying, and then doubling down on that lying with even more Orwellian "up is down" lying.
Absolutely. This is extremely troubling.
Let's not forget the new Ministry of Election Integrity. Orwell could not have created a better name.
High gas prices aren't dumb. High food prices aren't dumb. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, people have to satisfy their immediate needs first, before considering more abstract, long-term needs. This means that when inflation and recession put the crunch on someone, they're more likely to want a Trumplike figure who will fix it rather than a Bidenlike figure who makes it worse.
And, yes, Biden did make it worse. Putin does have his share of blame (as does every president who engaged in non-emergency deficit spending), but inflation was skyrocketing before Putin's war. As a more concrete example, Biden didn't have to provide that last bit of stimulus, and was warned not to, but he refused to listen - just like many Progressive partisans both then and now - and now here we are.
If you're having trouble just putting food on the table, what does it matter that Trump is a threat to democracy? If you're worrying about having enough gas in the car just to get to work, you can easily remember that this wasn't as large an issue back when Democrats weren't in charge. Life was easier under Trump; all those rich Democrats may not care about that but this is issue #1 for you. After all, those who are crowing about Republicans being a threat to democracy aren't suffering like you are, nor do they seem to care.
Democrats claim to be "for the poor?" Hypocrites. All of them. People are suffering, but Biden called it "transformational". The "Inflation Reduction Act" served only the climate change lobby; while that's a nice goal it helps Mom and Pop not at all in tough times like these.
Personally, I fully understand the threat posed by Trump and his Republicans. But I also fully understand the needs of the poor, how they suffer because of this economy, and how Democrats are neglecting them. I expect a great many of them will be voting party-line Republican soon.
If Democrats are so worried about threats to democracy, maybe they should have addressed the more basic needs of the voter base first.
Also watch these numbers swing in the other direction after the Democrats lose congress in the midterms. That bit is just a repeating story due to sore losers; for every Donald Trump there's a Stacey Abrams.
Let's see....what could Biden have done ....
1. End the drought out west the help bring down some food prices.
2. Stop Putin from invading Ukraine.
3. Keep the bird flu from infecting chicken flocks in the US.
4. Get guns off the streets
5. Make the domestic producers pump more oil and gas.
6. Make OPEC pump more oil.
7. Stop corporations from jacking up prices
8. Go back in time to ramp up renewable energy production and raise fleet mpgs.
9. Undo Trump's tax give-aways to the wealthy
10. etc...
Of course, Biden is not God.
Passing laws take time-- and can be nearly impossible with the filibuster. And any steps taken will not show up immediately--it's not like magic.
Good points. When did the American voters turn into a bunch of whiny toddlers, anyway? I feel that the Bush Junior presidency did us no favors with its constant, official(!!) characterizations of "good guys" and "bad guys."
"When did the American voters turn into a bunch of whiny toddlers, anyway?"
The day a whiny toddler was sworn in as our President thanks to these whiny toddlers.
On your point #1, I just made another trek up and down I-5. According to the signs posted along the way, the drought is Pelosi's fault. And the lack of solutions is Newsom's, because he won't "build the damn dams" and lets river flow to the sea.
Just did the same. I wondered how more dams would help. The ones we have now are looking pretty empty. Did you drive by San Luis? It was the lowest I’ve ever seen it:
https://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/rescond.pdf
And Shasta is at 32% Never seen it so low. Must be killing the recreational tourism business up there. Which is the fault of the Socialist/Commies.
If only Democrats would just let 'em damn the whole fucking Sacramento valley and let the delta salt up all our problems would be solved!
This is probably wrong about a lot of things with regard to inflation. It's recognizable as a poorly founded swipe at Democrats, especially the accusation that they don't care about the poor. Clearly, caring about the poor is part of the Democratic value system, much to the dismay of some of the people who are not poor. Also, equating Donald Trump to Stacey Abrams is nutty Republicanism.
Yeah, that last bit of Biden stimulus was such a mistake it caused inflation around the world. I just left the Czech Republic, where I was told that inflation is more than double that of the US. Who knew a Democratic President could blow up the koruna with bad policy?
The Republicans aren’t going to make inroads among the poor, who have voted Democratic since FDR; TFG’s base was middle-class and higher.
The main issue is that the poor don't vote much. Dems should care less about the poor and more about teliable voting constituencies
Americans are finicky. They don't care about worldwide inflation. They care about inflation at home. And they blame the current president and his party - likely much more than I blame him.
And you'd be surprised about the poor. I'm not saying they'll all become lifelong Republicans. I am saying that, while Trump didn't do them any favors, what's happening right now under Biden's watch is so much worse. Best case for Biden is they stay at home, but worst case is they vote not for republicans per-se, but against democrats.
Nobody here is buying your BS
Re: I am saying that, while Trump didn't do them any favors, what's happening right now under Biden's watch is so much worse.
Even with inflation and the Ukraine war things are in a better place now than when Trump left office. How not?
"inflation was skyrocketing before Putin's war"
No it wasn't. Putin invaded in January 2021 and immediately oil price went up and so did energy inflation and total inflation. You can see the data at FRED. This doesn't mean that the stimulus money didn't play a role, but without all the other things which Biden had no control over inflation would probably be a lot less.
Never trust what the media say about economic matters, particularly inflation.
Yes, it was! I can't tell you how many times I went to fill up my car, and the gas station had one of those "I did this!" stickers with Biden pointing at the price per gallon, all before Putin started moving troops into position. While I hate the vandalism aspect of such things, it made it easy to remember; gas prices were skyrocketing before Putin's war, and then Putin made it worse.
If you don't remember the inflated pre-war gas prices were, then you really need to doublecheck how out of touch you are.
Pre-war gas prices were about where they were back in the good old days of 2008 (pre-Lehman Brothers collapse). In February just before the invasion I recall paying 3.29 a gallon (drove slightly out of my way to do so because that the was best price I knew of).
Golly, Biden's stimulus spending was so insane is sparked runaway inflation in from Argentina to Holland? That's some pretty damn impactful deficit spending!
Colorado is currently hoping to pass a program to feed kids in need free school lunches and all the usual trolls in the local paper comment section can't say enough hateful things about it.
The Republicans will never ever help the poor though, so voting for them instead is even worse.
Let's see now, Republicans insist they won't accept, an if in power won't certify, elections they don't win. Democrats are upset by that
Republicans try to stop people from voting and intimidate voters. Democrats are upset by that.
Democrats try to make it easier to vote. Republicans are upset by that.
Look both parties are upset by voting!!!
As far as gas prices go--people tend to vote the party out if they think things are not going well for them. That's democracy. To counter that, you have to convince people you'll do better at tackling problems going forward than the other guy. That discussion is hard to have with dark money flooding the airwaves. Recognizing this is not an attack on democracy.
“If you're having trouble just putting food on the table…”
This is such a common lefty economic observation that it is a tired cliche.
If you are really having trouble just putting food on the table, you’re a flipping idiot. It’s ok. There are lots of flipping idiots in this country. There is not enough money in the world to prevent these flipping idiots from doing the stupid stuff that leaves them hungry and broke. Don’t worry about them. They don’t worry about you.
Meant to reply to starglider… see… flipping idiots everywhere! 😂
figured as much
You should care, because a nonzero percentage of them vote.
If you're deciding who to vote for, or choosing between candidates to coach your kid's soccer team, or putting anyone in a leadership position of any kind, forget about progressive versus conservative.
The first question to ask is, "What do the candidates care about?" It's not hard to tell if a candidate cares about the whole thing they'll be leading or only a part of the whole. If Candidate A cares about the whole, and Candidate B cares only about a part, choose Candidate A. If they both care about the whole, then choose the more competent candidate. If they both care about a part of the whole, then choose less competent = less damage to the economy, the justice system, and literally everything else.
In other words, as a real Republican POTUS once said, "Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care." My interpretation is that Teddy Roosevelt is telling America to vote Democrat this year.
Democracy involves far more than electing representatives to public office. The rule of law and preservation of many individual rights are core elements of it, to prevent majority rule becoming mob rule.
Trump Republicans are logically compelled to reject democracy. They want to impose a regime on America which would never be accepted by a democratically elected legislature or a judiciary committed to the rule of law. For example, John Daniel Davidson a few days ago called for eliminating no-fault divorce, criminalising health care for the transgendered, starving universities of public funds, and using the power of the state to crush liberalism. Since democracy will not produce the kind of Christianist fascism he wants, it is implicit in his argument that democracy must go. That's why Trump Republicans are working so diligently to stack the courts and take over the management of elections. While Davidson asserted it was time to 'give up on conservatism', what he meant was 'give up on democracy'.
The problem facing democrats in the US is that democracy can only thrive if all the major public officials and their institutions voluntarily abide by certain norms of behavior. If one influential group declines to do this, the rest of society has no good response. It's all very well for the president to tell people to vote, but voting doesn't solve the problems of state officials who refuse to accept the results and courts who let them get away with it.
I don't know how one would go about getting the attention of a majority of US voters long enough to explain to them the peril facing their democracy. And even if there was a way, the history of other nations suggests the majority will prefer the party that convinces them it's on their side by doing things like cutting the price of gas and keeping out job-stealing immigrants. They won't much care how they go about getting into government and staying there, let alone abstract democratic ideals.
I know this is kind of a departure from the main topic, but I can't help but comment on this fact that drives the impact of gas (actually, gasoline) prices on elections:
It's the ONLY economic indicator that everyone sees in huge block letters every time they leave their house. For everything else, you have to actually read and think and learn. And since their sponsors' customers don't generally do much of those things, the media has NO motivation to make their viewers/listeners aware that (a) there is much more to the economy than that sign at the corner gas station, and (b) the President of the United States has close to ZERO ability to influence that number for good or for ill.
"It's the ONLY economic indicator that everyone sees in huge block letters every time they leave their house..."
Imagine the US's Gini coefficient done this way...
And one more thing: for years and years, the pollsters (a variety of cockroach) have surveyed the public about "jobs and the economy," but now that we have the unusual pandemic-driven situation where we have plenty of jobs but high inflation, it's turned into "inflation and the economy." It's almost as if the media has a financial incentive to massage the news so as to achieve a "dead heat" in national elections. It just so happens that close elections unleash the biggest tsunami of campaign spending, most of which goes to -- ta da! -- media companies, in the form of election season advertising revenue.
Funny, that.
That's an excellent observation! In actual horse races, the handicapper loads weight onto each horse, with the goal of getting a tie finish between ALL the horses. So, of course, the media does the same.
It's another factor in Republicans getting fluffed in the news so much over the last 30-odd years while Democratic achievements and voters get ... crickets. Yet more built-in "minority rule" factors!
What can we do to combat this, anyway?
Come up with a liberal version of Fox News that gets played in car dealerships, military bases, and sports bars around the nation 24/7.
I don't know if this is going to work, but I'm going to try to post a picture of a local gas station that closed around 2015 because road construction cut access off. The price on the sign is $3.199 for regular. I bought gas there a few times because it was pretty cheap at the time.
Right now most places around here are pricing gas around $3.299, but I saw a station today with a price of $3.189.
Apparently most Americans have no memory at all. Probably we should all be in elder care homes. We're paying about what we were paying for gas seven years ago and we're all bent out of shape. What a bunch of morons.
Of course gas should cost $10/gallon if we want to save the damn planet. I wouldn't like it either, but it's the truth.
Anyway, I like Biden. He isn't a miserable, lying, stupid piece of shit criminal like his immediate predecessor. But I'm funny that way.
Okay, the picture won't post. I'll try a link to a googlemaps view.
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1413721,-79.9224151,3a,15y,276.68h,90.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4fSQfgOm27TG3zNIDUxtLQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Like +50.
The price of gas where I live (San Mateo County, California) is over $5.90. But that varies widely. I bought gas at Costco a couple of day ago for $5.00. Gas prices always go up quickly and go down slowly. Oil companies have little incentive for lowering prices.
I suppose this could contribute to inflation. Stuff that gets trucked from California costs more because of the price of fuel here.
Despite the high cost of fuel, California will vote blue.
I am paying $3.70. It never went below $3.50 in my area.
It went down to 3.29 here but bumped back up after OPEC's announcement and it's now running between 3.59 and 3.65.
I guess republicans are anti democracy or something, but…
“As long as conception and birth are seen exclusively as mere physiological processes, we cannot understand the impact and seriousness of the making of a new human being.”
This is, I think, the real disconnect.
Surely a bad sign when otherwise intelligent conservatives such as Tyler Cowen become so willfully obtuse. I guess at George Mason you can't afford to be pro democracy.
George Mason has been turned into Wingnut U over the past few decades. SIGH.
Their economics department is (in)famously conservative/libertarian, mostly due to its affiliation with the Koch-funded Mercatus Center whose director is...ta da! Tyler Cowen! The rest of the school is a regular public commuter university.
I live near GMU's main campus. It's been increasingly tainted by wingnut welfare to the extend that they dark money now has veto power on hiring of faculty. I would be hesitant to recommend the school to any prospective student.
Cowen shouldn't ever be taken seriously.
As I and various others keep telling you, Tyler effin' Cowan is an idiot. His bread and butter is simple-minded contrarianism for contriarianism's sake. There's no careful thinking out before-hand, which is why his 'brilliant ideas' are so easily shot down.
A person that disagrees with another person has two options. Option 1 = respect, and Option 2 = not Option 1.
Respect = look (spect) + again (re). That's what Kevin does. If he starts with an initial reflexive assumption that the other person is an idiot, then his second look is as skeptical of his own reflexive assumption as it is of the other person's assumption.
Option 2 starts and ends with the initial reflexive assumption.
Simple mindedness is inversely proportional to the frequency of Option 1's use, and directly proportional to the frequency of defaulting to Option 2.
If Tyler Cowan is such an idiot, then why is he a university professor? Then again, if John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the United States, then why is he unaware of what every preschooler knows? Specifically, that it's not okay for any judge, let alone a Justice of the Supreme Court, to be making a judgment in a case that they know implicates their spouse.
My vote is for Kevin to continue to speak truth to power.
If Tyler Cowan is such an idiot, then why is he a university professor?
So you've never attended university, or so I take it.
+1
LOL
Conservatism is crime, and until Democrats start treating it will just keep on creating more harm and more injury.
'treating it like crime'
is what that means to say.
And those conservatives can now point to that one statement, among so many others, to justify their gun-hoarding tendencies and revolutionary rhetoric.
73.6 million people voted for Trump. Don't ask me why; I don't understand it. But if you don't figure out a way to coexist with those people, you are only increasing the likelihood of you staring down the barrel of one of those guns.
They'll point to their own left foot to justify their gun-hoarding tendencies and revolutionary rhetoric. The leave son their lawn, a cartoon frog or whatever else crosses their line of site. Their logic doesn't exist, I don't give a damn about it anymore.
geez, tell them that.
Political conservatism is the means of manipulating social conservative baboon colony to support the interests of billionaires, cutting taxes and destroying government and now the baboon colony has gone rogue and a lot of billionaires are happy to go rogue right along with having drunk their own kool-aid.
Conservatism is a crime against humanity.
This paragraph is concise and accurate. Who knew that human beings were so susceptible to insanity? Well, maybe historians, because it has happened before at different places and times.
Who knows how bad it will be this time?
"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution." - Hanna Arendt
But then again, maybe cld knows something Hanna was never aware of.
Looking forward to the NEAP post tomorrow.
Discordant knowing, psychological mechanism underlying fanaticism,
https://nordot.app/956508293865504768?c=592622757532812385
Maybe. But I just call it stupidity.