Legal Commentary

The Economic Class Divide In The US

By Big Tent Democrat

This Brad DeLong post is rightly getting a lot of attention:

The most astonishing and surprising thing I find about Washington DC today is the contrast in mood between DC today and what DC was thinking a generation ago, in 1983, the last time the unemployment rate was kissing 10%. Back then it was a genuine national emergency that unemployment was so high [. . .] Today…. nobody much in DC seems to care. A decade of widening wealth inequality that has created a chattering class of reporters, pundits, and lobbyists who have no connection with mainstream America? The collapse of the union movement and thus of the political voice of America’s sellers of labor power? I don’t know what the cause is. But it does astonish me.

I like to criticize the Beltway as much as anyone, but this phenomenon transcends DC and has infected the entire country. I used to write a lot about the concept of the Common Good and how it historically animated the Dem Party and how it should again. But it simply hasn't. Matt Yglesias writes:

It’s typically the out-of-power party’s job to complain about poor economic performance, but the GOP is ideologically committed to the view that less stimulus and tighter money are preferable.

I think this gives the Dem Party a pass it does not deserve. I wrote a lot about Barack Obama's opportunity to be our FDR and have sadly been proven to have been delusional. Even now, Dems and progressives spend most of their time telling us how well the stimulus package worked.

There is no Party willing to argue for the Common Good anymore and that is just terrible.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 13, 2010 (boomark / email).