David Brooks: This is Why We Need to Spend $4 Trillion

[muriel_volestrangler]

A centrist-to-right argument that you'd hope would persuade Sinema and Manchin - analysed by Wonkette:

David Brooks Actually Right About Thing, Wants To Build Back Better Too

Over the past few decades there has been a redistribution of dignity — upward. From Reagan through Romney, the Republicans valorized entrepreneurs, C.E.O.s and Wall Street. The Democratic Party became dominated by the creative class, who attended competitive colleges, moved to affluent metro areas, married each other and ladled advantages onto their kids so they could leap even further ahead.

Yes, this is true.
...

The Democratic spending bills are economic packages that serve moral and cultural purposes. They should be measured by their cultural impact, not merely by some wonky analysis. In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward. They would support hundreds of thousands of jobs for home health care workers, child care workers, construction workers, metal workers, supply chain workers. They would ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.

This is good. This is the part that is good and in which David Brooks is correct. This bill would restore dignity to a whole lot of people and that is a very good way of thinking about it.

In normal times I'd argue that many of the programs in these packages may be ineffective. I'm a lot more worried about debt than progressives seem to be. But we're a nation enduring a national rupture, and the most violent parts of it may still be yet to come.

Well, there won't be any debt because the package is spread out over 10 years and is fully paid for, but it is worth considering that you have to spend money to make money. This package will lead to Americans making more money, having more money to spend and therefore more tax revenue all over the place. If we don't invest in our country, if we don't invest in our people, in our children — if we don't make it possible for everyone to earn a fair living, we are not going to have a whole lot of tax revenue in the long run, which will lead to more debt. This is not a spending bill, it is an investment bill.

These packages say to the struggling parents and the warehouse workers: I see you. Your work has dignity. You are paving your way. You are at the center of our national vision.

This is how you fortify a compelling moral identity, which is what all of us need if we're going to be able to look in the mirror with self-respect. This is the cultural transformation that good policy can sometimes achieve. Statecraft is soulcraft.

Yes, yes and yes.

We have spent a lot of years in this country telling people that if they can't make it here, in a country we have made it incredibly difficult to make it in, that they are morally deficient and not worthy of any respect. We let things go too far, we let things get really bad for people, and it's going to take a lot of work to reverse that. The more we put it off, the more expensive and less sustainable it is going to get.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/opinion/federal-spending-democrats.html

https://www.wonkette.com/david-brooks-actually-right-about-thing-wants-to-build-back-better-too

Yes, Brooks is both-siding it in the first quoted paragraph. But he goes on to explain why the Democratic policy is the right thing to do, in this worldview, to help equality - the Democrats want to build ladders to allow everyone up, while the Republicans want to burn them.

[Paladin]

1. Whatever you say, David.

Just go over to Ross Douthat's office and kick him in the ass for his latest column---the snotty one telling we liberals to rejoice at how good things are for us. Make it a good solid kick, and I'll do anything you say.

[Budi]

2. 4 Trillion was Manchin's original number.

🙄

[halfulglas]

3. OMG. Are those pigs flying? David Brooks actually coming out in favor of Dem policy!

[fescuerescue]

4. Mind boggling when a rounding error is 500 billion