Matt Yglesias reports:
Jared Bernstein, a first-rate guy with what I’d say is a clearly more left-wing orientation than the members of the Obama economic team that have been announced thus far, was just announced for the new position of Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor to the Vice President. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of influence that post holds. At a minimum, if the president wants to get someone on the phone who’ll criticize Summers/Geithner from the left they’ll know where to call.
I believe the Obama years will cause a crisis for progressivism roughly comparable to what the Bush years have brought upon libertarianism.
Does he have a PhD?
(Sorry, I wanted to put “far left” in quotes there. It’s a bogeyman.)
Poor analysis in this post–economic Policy Advisor to the Vice President looks like a symbolic appointment. It would be unprecedented for this office to drive policy for the administration.
I have been favorably impressed with the choice of Geithner and Summers. Comment on their role in a ‘crisis of progressivism’?
I’m in hopeful agreement, but I remain unconvinced. I think that free market libertarianism was a much smaller movement pre-Bush than big government progressivism right now, thus it’ll be a harder animal to kill.
And as spectacularly bad as I believe big government progressivism would be for this country, I believe Obama is going to embrace unproductive centrism (a worse fate for the continuation of libertarianism, IMO, but that’s a topic for another time).
I think it’s pretty hard to say what the Bush admin has done for libertarianism. While a lot of people have blamed lack of regulation as the root cause of the financial crisis, probably just as many don’t blame it on lack of regulation and have been edged toward libertarianism by the fact that the Republican party’s steered its focus from small government/fiscal conservatism to things like NCLB, Plan D, and socialism in the financial markets.
But progressivism is so much less well defined than libertarianism.
Libertarianism is for more liberty.
Progressivism is for more … equality?, social justice?, social welfare?, equal opportunity?, solidarity?
Liberty has its holes and gray areas, but the other stuff aspires to having holes and gray areas.
Libertarianism is so much less vague than all the other isms. That’s one reason it has a harder time wiggling out its difficulties.
Clark Groble does put his finger on one important difference: whether Obama is successful or not, and whether he governs from the center (wherever that is) or the ‘far left’ aka ‘progressive wing’ of his party, there is little reason to believe that his first term will be ‘reckless and incompetent’, which describes so much of Bush 43′s behavior.
PhD in Social Welfare? Why is this a PhD program?
The Bush “jihad” against down payments was the obvious cause of the housing bubble. He even held a CONFERENCE about it! People MADE SPEECHES! GOALS were set. What could a poor banker do? Throw up his hands and yield to the intolerable political pressure. The noble but fatally feable free market is vindicated.
Tell it to the Marines, Sailer.
Geithner lacks a PhD. Although at least his master’s was a little more topical.
“Much more of the blame for the Housing Bubble than has currently been allocated should go to Bush and Rove. But you don’t hear the story because Republicans won’t tell it because it makes a GOP president look bad, and Democrats won’t tell it because it’s politically incorrect.”
Just when I think I’ve heard everything …
Oh, nonsense. Really. Progressives are largely advocating policies that have actually worked; libertarians were advocating policies that have never worked. But I don’t think we need to worry very much about Obama the progressive–he’ll only govern like one if forced to it by circumstances.
Caw!
Tyler Cowen:
“I believe the Obama years will cause a crisis for progressivism roughly comparable to what the Bush years have brought upon libertarianism.”
Have you really not noticed the economic melt-down that you and yours brought upon us?
In terms of crisis, neoliberal/right-wing economics is now in shambles, as far as
reality is concerned. However, I do expect it to hold on in academia for another decade or two; reality doesn’t matter much there.
I find it illuminating that because of this economic downturn, the seeds of which were sown decades ago in different areas of the economy, the fruits of which end up working in concert despite ripening along much different timescales, suddenly the figures on the statist-interventionist side are all rabbling like Palestinians on television and throwing metaphorical rocks at the neoliberal-laissez-faire figures, whether in academia or just in blog comments.
It is a refutation of neither system, and instead shows just how incredibly difficult it is to manage or steer a complex system such as an increasingly globalized economy. This is not the same as saying “oh it’s so complicated that everything in the system happens like magic, with invisible powers pulling the strings.” The “Invisible Hand” is a metaphor largely for simplistic supply-and-demand in an economic world driven far less by services, finance, and credit, and that’s not what I’m referring to.
But while it is possible to look back into things both like government policy AND discernable market forces and see the roots of the current economic crisis, however imperfect such a view would be. The question is, would we really want something akin to a Brave New World-esque global economy that is focused on making everything perfectly serene and shielding everyone from hardship? Is that even a moral or ethical goal, or is it just animalizing the individual; yet from both sides of the aisle, thinkers and average Joes alike are clamoring that we should somehow protect people from failure and hardship at all costs, instead of trying to create a society in which social groups act as units to help each other, or “investing” in support systems like re-building the concept of community, locality, or neighborhood.
But in any case, i find this line:
“Have you really not noticed the economic melt-down that you and yours brought upon us?
In terms of crisis, neoliberal/right-wing economics is now in shambles, as far as
reality is concerned. However, I do expect it to hold on in academia for another decade or two; reality doesn’t matter much there.” laughable given that almost those exact words, a couple of years ago, were flung in the face of self-labelled “progressives” who were, rather than predicting that the system would collapse so spectacularly, jockeying for statist controls over as much of the new-made wealth as possible.
I believe the Obama years will cause a crisis for progressivism roughly comparable to what the Bush years have brought upon libertarianism.
? This statement really is kind of odd. Let’s see if I can unpack this correctly…. What about George Bush gave libertarians the same “hope” (or whatever) you think Obama gives progressives? Was it his drug and alcohol abuse? His inability to run a company which didn’t require being bailed out by his daddy’s friends? Was it perhaps his amazing record as Governor of Texas?
Or perhaps you’re referring to the libertarian love affair with Republicans, in general, and the Republican’s record on civil libertarian issues as well as pretty much everything under the sun has been thrown into the dustbin.
You always throw these little bits out there, Tyler, without much more than a Cheshire cat’s smile to provide any actual backing of what you mean. At some point, it would be interesting to have you expand on these so that you’d be actually pin yourself down on these so that one could actually figure out what you’re saying…
Bush was a big-state centrist. In that respect, he provided the libertarians with a target. Progressiveism has plenty of history, including “holes and gray areas”, mostly filled with the bodies of those who disagreed with them.
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