Economic policy

Elon Musk as Time’s Person of the Year

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There is nothing wrong in celebrating Elon Musk, who has achieved much of real value.  There are even good messages to be drawn from those achievements.   However there are also plenty of wrong conclusions that can and are being drawn about Musk.  So it’s worth thinking about what’s wrong and what’s right.

Wrong message #1:  We don’t need government involvement in the economy; the private sector can be counted on to get the job done.

Fact:  Tesla was started with Obama-era seed money and Obama-era price subsidies for electric car sales.   SpaceX got going with NASA contracts.  Without government involvement we would have had neither. The major US automakers had to be dragged kicking and screaming to electric cars.   The private sector is not good at supporting novel projects without a near-term payoff.

Wrong message #2:  We can count on smart people like Musk to tell us what to do.

Fact:  High achievers have their limitations and blinders just like everyone else.  Musk’s statement that we don’t need “Build Back Better” because he himself never needed help from anyone is actually typical blindness of the class.  I worked for a successful startup where the four principals fell out with each other almost immediately after we went public—because each was sure he was the reason for success!

Wrong message #3:  In the end we can always count on American ingenuity.

Fact:  Musk is one more example of the importance of immigrants and children of immigrants to the American economy.   Same for Apple and Google.

Wrong message #4:  A few big heroes are what makes for national success.

Fact:  Musk was important as a technical visionary.  No one else recognized that the technological basis existed for an electric car company.  However he also fostered an environment where he could attract the best and brightest to his companies.   The achievements of Tesla and Space X have that broader basis.

What’s more, the Person of the Year could equally well have been given to the many scientists and technologists who gave us the Covid vaccines.  There are more than a few single heroes in our midst.  Big achievements reflect individual contributions of many able people.

I’ll limit the right messages to two:

Right message #1:  Technology matters, and things really can change

Both Tesla and SpaceX are fundamentally new businesses, rethought from the bottom up.  In a very few years they have changed the US economy.

As contrast, a recent book about the Boeing 737 MAX shows what happens a company loses track of the reality of its business in a blind race for profit.

Right message #2:  At all levels individuals can make a difference and should be rewarded accordingly

This is particularly important in technology-driven companies, but not only there.  As noted, that was important not just for Musk himself but also within Musk’s companies.   For contrast, my contacts at NASA and even JPL have described them as stiflingly bureaucratic.  The difference between the SpaceX and the SLS project is undeniable.

Both companies and countries have a tendency to ossify into hierarchical structures that declare themselves to be meritocracies.  Equality of opportunity—including opportunity for real success—is necessary both for individuals and for the success of the overall enterprise.   For society as a whole, we need both a safety net and true opportunities for individuals to succeed.

That, not the pronouncements of Elon Musk, is what makes for success as a nation.

The Hijacking of Race

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The Democratic Party owes black people a debt of gratitude for their organized commitment in the last election.   Even if that weren’t true, the United States owes black people what it has never delivered—real, functional equality of opportunity.  It’s worth restating what never made it into any textbook I ever had—slavery in this country didn’t end in 1863.  With Black Laws and then Jim Crow, the substance of slavery in this country persisted well into the twentieth century.  It’s no surprise that we live with a pervasive legacy of slavery.

What is owed here is progress—on everything that makes for personal and family prosperity and life satisfaction.  A recent NY Times piece does a good job of getting at what that means. However it’s worth recognizing that this objective gets hijacked every day in favor of other more exciting agendas, as examples:

– Anticapitalism.  This is a kind of knee-jerk on the left that gets applied to all issues (climate change is another one).  Get rid of capitalism, let me and my morally-certified friends run everything, and racism will vanish in an instant.  Otherwise there’s not a chance. Somehow the dictatorship of the proletariat (like trickle-down economics) survives in the face of all evidence.

– Violence.  It’s amazing how attractive violence is for people who spend their lives far from it.  That’s not just for the classic case of British Nazi intellectuals prior to World War II.  Two very good books The Good Lord Bird and The Underground Railway end with ringing endorsements of violence as a necessary way to get things done.  In context that’s not really a call to action, but it indicates a willingness to forgive violence as a tactic—a significant mistake supported only by rewriting history. 

There’s not going to be a revolution on the left in this country, so we’ve got to work with the flawed political process we’ve got.  Violence hardens opposition—end of story.  If you want to get things done, there’s no greater mistake than believing you have powers you don’t have.

– Cultural superiority.  This has many manifestations.  The good guys are immune from racism, create better artistic productions, are more moral and humane to each other, etc.

If you get past all of that, objectives here are not so different from what we owe to everyone else—a fair chance to succeed and a viable safety net.  What it takes to get there must be adapted to the history of anti-black racism, but adaptation is the rule for every other group also.  Our task as a society is to get the job done for everyone.

It is hijacking the race issue to

– Use it as a justification for anti-democratic behavior.

– Use it as a reason to justify any departure from the rule of law.  We are not doing anyone a favor by asking for an understanding of mob violence.

– Engage in ridiculous exercises of cultural superiority. That includes, in particular, anti-racism competitions.  I’d even say everybody is racist; the important question is who is doing damage and how to stop it. Anti-racism crusades may feel good, but they are not progress. And if they lose elections they are nothing more than destructive vanity.

Even if you think this is an oversimplification, you have to admit that the objectives here–a fair chance to succeed and a viable safety net–are worth pursuing.  You’d think they would be universally popular.  After all, as many have pointed out, essentially any social program has more white than black beneficiaries.  So why aren’t they universally popular?  The reason goes all the way back to What’s The Matter with Kansas.  Republicans have been convincing people for decades that all those measures are not for them.  It’s just giving the country away to the shiftless blacks.  People in Hillbilly Elegy and Strangers in their own Land are astonished that any of their own would waste time applying for such benefits.

Why are Republicans so successful?  BECAUSE WE KEEP HELPING THEM.  With all the discussion of white racists who just have to get used to giving up the advantages of white privilege (and deservedly take the hit), what else would you expect them to believe?  We’re not spending our time saying we’re committed to what it takes to achieve equality of opportunity for everyone—with all the benefits that entails.  Too often we’re playing the Republicans’ game.

You don’t have to agree with everything here, but one thing is indubitably true.  Fighting racism is about results, not morality contests.  It is about jobs, safety, and education for your kids.  It is a pragmatic issue.  Anything that doesn’t produce results is hijacking, regardless of how good it feels.

How We Won the Cold War

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“File:Map-Flag of the Soviet Union.svg” by NuclearVacuum is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

We hear every day how we need to get tough for our new cold war with China.  The unstated subtext is that threats and bluster are the “getting tough” that’s going to win. In fact we know exactly what won the last Cold War.  It’s worth paying attention to what that was.

The dynamism of our economy won the last cold war.   Our technological base reinvented itself many times over, and the top down economy of the USSR just couldn’t match it.  There were many individual factors behind the collapse—low growth, corrupt state enterprises, spending on defense, oil price collapse, Chernobyl.  But what it all came down to is that the Soviet economy collapsed because it just couldn’t find the resources to keep up.

Many factors made the difference—the historical strengths of the United States:

– A free market for new technologies.  A venture capital industry supported by anti-trust enforcement to protect new companies from powerful old ones.

– The US as world’s best destination for entrepreneurs from everywhere to realize their dreams.

– Openness to ideas from everywhere and active participation in international organizations of all kinds.

– Government support for pure research–to be on the forefront as new developments translated to opportunities.

– Expanding equality of opportunity, so ideas can come from everywhere.

The USSR had a well-trained population of elite engineers and scientists, but ultimately they couldn’t compete with the ability of the US model to reinvent itself and grow.

What can we say about the current situation with China?  There are three points:

  1. The rise of China actually followed the US model.

One part of this is familiar—China invested in its people:  education, infrastructure, health care, etc.  The regime tolerated no disagreements, but it put money (as we used to) into the environment necessary for success.

However the bigger part is less-discussed—what kicked off the Chinese miracle was an accidental surge of free enterprise.  As a weakening of collective economic control, Chinese municipalities were freed to carry out their own businesses once obligations to the state had been met.  That minor bit of freedom took over the economy.  Independent municipal businesses became dominant to the point that they dwarfed the hugely-corrupt state-run enterprises.  Municipal businesses grew into the independent private sector.

  1. Under Xi, China is abandoning that approach in favor of a return to central planning and control.

Xi is a princeling—a child of former revolutionaries brought up to believe he was born to rule.  All of his recent actions have been directed at crushing independent forces in the Chinese economy.  Appointments have been based on loyalty above all.

China is back to the old Soviet and Chinese world of massive state enterprises and a dictated economy.   That won’t change the immediate future, but we have no reason to despair of our ability to compete.

  1. Under Trump we are similarly abandoning our strengths.

Trump, like Xi, is an autocrat who view himself as the all-encompassing genius who needs to run everything.  He picks winners and losers with tariffs.  He awards exceptions to supporters.  He ignores real problems (such as Covid) that he doesn’t want to deal with.  Job appointments are based on loyalty over competence.  Every one of the listed US strengths is at risk:

– New enterprises are sacrificed to the existing powers that be.

– Xenophobia and nativism are pushing entrepreneurs elsewhere.

– Global participation is discouraged.

– Science is discredited and only mainstream technologies (e.g. AI) or Trump whims are funded. Climate change can’t even be mentioned.

– A political strategy of divisiveness means we’re fighting internally rather than drawing on everyone for progress.

 

We didn’t beat the Russians by mimicking their authoritarian control and top-down economy.  We won because they couldn’t compete with our ability to reinvent ourselves over and over again.  We have that opportunity today, but we’re losing it to the false god of dictatorship.

Democracy is not a nicety but the core of our success.

Dictatorships lose.  All-powerful leaders make disastrous mistakes that cannot be remedied.  They can ignore the well-being of the population.  They create massive corruption that cannot be contained.  All these tendencies are visible today (Covid alone shows several), and the effect is—as always—accelerating.

We still like to talk about the power of democracy and free markets, but both are slipping away.  Voter suppression is an openly-discussed goal.  Anti-trust enforcement has effectively ceased to exist.  The power of corporate lobbyists has starved the public sector (including infrastructure of all kinds) and defended the economic status quo against all comers.

Our problems today are not weaknesses of democracy but an indication of how far we’ve strayed from it.  There’s no reason to despair for our competition with China—or for the country generally.  It’s just a sign we have to get back to doing what we’ve always done best.

The True Cost of CO2

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It seems perfectly reasonable.  Each ton of CO2 added to the atmosphere causes damage.  We can estimate that damage by looking at what’s happening.

The Obama administration went through that exercise in some detail to justify environmental protection measures—and came up with $42 per ton.  The Trump administration people reduced that number to less than $7 and increased the future discounting factor from 3% to 7%.  That’s certainly a problem.

However the $42 figure is also wrong, and the whole notion of a dollar cost of CO2 undermines much of the discussion of the costs of climate change.

One way to see that is to look at the language we use to talk about hurricanes.  For starters I’m going to reference the usual storm class definitions:

hurricanes

As the wind speed increases, the damage rises by orders of magnitude.   At each stage the damage rises to such a degree that damage at the previous level becomes negligible.  There is no single number that tells you how much extra damage you’re going to get from a 5 mph increase in wind speed—it gets dramatically worse with each stage.  This is basically an exponential model; it is certainly not multiplication of windspeed by a number appropriate for category 1.

You can see how this argument plays with climate.  Starting with hurricanes, we have a basically linear relation of CO2 concentration and water surface temperature:

sea-surface-temp-download1-2016

And essentially the same is true for water surface temperature and maximum windspeeds. To that gets added the exponential relation of windspeed with damage.  Put it all that together and you get an exponential relationship between added CO2 and hurricane damage.

The same kind of relationship holds for almost any kind of climate damage you can think of.  Sea level rise first affects marginal districts but then more and more of mainstream society.  Droughts first affect marginal areas and gradually more and more of the breadbasket.  Health threats first affect the most vulnerable but eventually everyone.   Accelerating costs are the rule, not the exception.

How does this affect how we think about costs of climate change?  In fact we’re missing most of the damage.  The cost of a ton of carbon today has two components:  the costs that we measure today and the extra damage incurred by raising the CO2 level for all subsequent tons of CO2.  That second part is what you won’t get with any fixed value for the cost of CO2.  It may be harder to calculate, but it’s ultimately the main thing—because it’s adding CO2 that gets us to catastrophe.  We’re missing the step-ups in the hurricane example.

There’s a weird dichotomy between the science and the cost models.  On one hand we have scientific studies about truly catastrophic consequences of going beyond a global temperature increase of 1.5 degree C—even to 2.0 degrees C—and on the other hand we have the fixed value of $42 per ton.  In the second case we’re not charged for contributing to glacial melting that can’t be stopped before inundating both Bangladesh and Manhattan.  It’s beyond ludicrous that we’re applying discounting factors to future costs but not charging for the long-term consequences of that ton of CO2 that remains in the atmosphere!

For now the only viable number for the cost of a ton of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually how much it will cost to take it back out.  That number is currently about $1000 a ton. There are many people trying to do better; the current (undoubtedly overoptimistic) estimate is about $150 per ton.  That’s the lower bound.  And even that low-ball estimate says we’re currently subsidizing the fossil fuel companies by about a trillion dollars a year.

Believe the scientists.  A catastrophe is a catastrophe.  You can’t make it go away with cost models that sweep it all under the rug.

The Coronavirus and the Limits of Capitalism

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“Lankenau Hospital” by Montgomery County Planning Commission licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

It’s easy to look at the coronavirus as a one of a kind.  After all, who expected this cataclysm that came from nowhere?   How could anyone have predicted it?

In fact the world is full of low-probability events that you have to care about.   The coronavirus is on a par with airplane crashes and oil-rig explosions.  Capitalism is not good at dealing with any of them.

There’s a myth about that sort of thing.  Of course we don’t need airline or aircraft regulation, because the companies in question know what a disaster would mean and will take care that such things don’t happen.  That’s a nice story, but it’s false.   People don’t get promoted because of events that didn’t happen.  They do get promoted by saving money wasted on something that’s never going to occur.

If you’re going to stop that sort of thing from happening, you need a different mindset.  Government has to spend money on regulation and public health and safe, comprehensive infrastructure.   No one else is going to do it.  We now know unequivocally that we decided we didn’t have to care about the CDC.  It has come back to haunt us.  There’s more where that came from.

In fact there’s a whole bunch of other things we’ve decided we don’t have to care about.  After all, “I don’t have to care” has been the liberating elixir of our age.  Many of these we’ve talked about before, but it’s worth recalling some here:

– Climate change

– Avoiding a depression (clearly relevant now)

– Nuclear proliferation

– Losing our edge in science and technology

We’ve washed our hands of all of this, blithely punting to a private sector that is no more prepared than for the coronavirus.

The message from the coronavirus is that bad things really can happen, no matter how much we may want to avoid thinking about them.

The coronavirus is the canary in the mine.   We’ll get over it somehow, but we’ve had our warning.

Irrelevance

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“P1040738” by frederique.baggio is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I find I can’t watch British TV series anymore without a post-Brexit shudder.

Those programs are no longer studies in quirkiness from a historically-great country that is almost us.  That country is gone.   It can’t even keep its own pieces together.  The solid core of the country has evaporated.  All that’s left are the quirks, and many of those are rather sordid.

Britain is a land possessed by dreams of lost empire, unwilling to accept either the now-visible reality of that imperial past or the self-evident fact that it is gone.  Ready to slap the face of anyone who reminds them of either.  What could be more preposterous?

We’re in the running.

We had our own years of empire.  By virtue of geography we were the last country left standing at the end of World War II, so we put together the world afterward.  And we ran it.  And we got comfortable with the idea that was the only way the world could be.  God chose the United States of America to rule the world.  The Brits had the same idea.

Those were the good old days.  Not only did America rule the world, but American products reigned supreme.  And notions of common effort left from the war drove broad-based prosperity through measures like the GI Bill.

Things aren’t quite the same anymore.  The rest of the world grew up.  We can’t just order everyone else around, and our products don’t automatically win everywhere.  And we seem to have forgotten those notions of common effort, with sad consequences for the spread of wealth in the population.

Unfortunately, like Britain, we haven’t forgotten empire.  That’s what we have to get back.  Rule the world.  Same population.  Blacks under control.  Winning everything.  Pot of gold for everyone.  God said so.

We have even more to lose than the Brits.

The United States is a prosperous country, in many respects the richest in the world.  We’ve messed up our social contract, but that’s ours to fix.  In the same way, there are no insurmountable problems in making worldwide growth good for everyone.  Even climate change, a monumental problem, has the technological basis for a solution.

We stand ready to sacrifice all of that to a fantasy of empire as vaporous as the British one.  It’s scary as hell that we seem ready to repeat history.  Their Brexit vote presaged Trump—what does the Boris Johnson vote say now?

Symbolism to the contrary, we have a better chance.  In Britain the vagaries of their electoral system prevented a legitimate revote on Brexit.  Regardless of who gets the Democratic nomination, we will get a chance a to vote on the future of the country and the planet.  History doesn’t repeat, people do.

But history will certainly judge.

Lessons From the British Election

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“Boris” by Raymond Wang is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

There is no way to avoid talking about the horrors of the British election.  With the confirmation of Brexit and the triumph of Boris Johnson, we have all stood witness to the disgraceful demise of a nation now left only with dreams of past glory.

For us though the important question is about what it means for our own election.  On that point the discussion has been generally limited to one question:  Does it say we should worry about the Democrats going too far to the left?  That one is hard to decide, since Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn was so unpopular for his own sake. 

However, that being said, there is still much to discuss.   We propose three points:

  1. Catastrophes not only can happen, but will happen if we don’t watch out for them.

The Democratic debates thus far have played out largely as conflict between the center and left wings of the party.  That means essentially all of it has been fought in the never-never land of post-Trump.  That’s not the same as working on viable strategies to win.

This will be a very tough election, fighting the Fox News, the Electoral College, incredible amounts of Republican money, and all the (legal and illegal) powers of incumbency.  Most candidates have done a reasonable job in providing position papers for what they stand for.  They need to tell us how they’re going to win.

  1. We need to recognize that the electorate isn’t convinced of the urgency of change.

In Britain, Corbyn’s big socialist revival was not so much wrong as a non sequitur.  What actually was all this trying to solve?  Why was it an argument for change?  It was ultimately a declaration of irrelevance.

We have a similar problem.  The very first question of the very first debate has never been adequately answered.  Elizabeth Warren was asked (more or less): “Why are you proposing all these changes when—by all polls—the vast majority of Americans think the economy is doing fine?”  That’s a question for all Democrats—what is it that’s so bad that we need change?

Warren’s answer—about radical inequality—was nowhere near strong enough.  It essentially said that all those people who answered the polls were just wrong.  But no one else has done better.  Healthcare was a great issue for the midterms—that’s something broken that we’re going to fix.  But it’s not enough to unseat Trump.  Impeachment doesn’t touch peoples’ lives directly—it’s about an abstraction called democracy.  Even climate change comes across as an abstraction, although it’s part of what’s needed.  Democrats need a short, clear reason why people need to worry that there is something that needs fixing.

That’s a bar to be passed before we can begin to get traction with specific plans for change.  Until then, like it or not, “fundamental structural change” will be a negative.

  1. We have to keep this a referendum on Trump.

Corbyn pretended Brexit wasn’t the main issue and went off with his own program.  The public was unwilling to follow.

Regardless of how broadly we see the issues, this election is about where Trump is taking the country.

We need a well-defined Trump story to challenge Republican claims of a great rebirth of the American economy.  Even on trade they’ll do what worked for George Bush on Iraq—we’ve been through all the pain, don’t miss out on the rewards!

That means we need to show what four more years of Trump will actually mean.  And how to meet the real challenges for our future.  It seems helpful to think in terms of personal and national issues for the voters:

Personal well-being

Healthcare (complete failure of vision)

Decline in good jobs (manufacturing, good jobs in general)

Education (no initiatives, no funding)

Income inequality (all growth for the rich)

Guns (unsafe to be in school!)

Climate change (what world for our children?)

Women’s rights trampled (bodies owned by the government)

⇒ Worse life for everyone but the protected few

National well-being

Eroding technology dominance (science marginalized)

New businesses sacrificed to old (Net Neutrality)

Losing out with climate change denial (ceded primary position to China)

Weakness with China and North Korea (situation is worse than ever before)

Nuclear proliferation (a danger in all directions)

Racism and divisiveness undermine our strengths (just what Putin ordered)

Demise of democracy (our major source of prosperity and power)

=>  Welcome to the Chinese century

 

That’s where we’re going.  For our own dreams of past glory.

Reasons For Pragmatism

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“COD Volunteers Give Back to the Community During COD Cares: Roll Up Your Sleeves Service Day 103” by COD Newsroom is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Ideology can be inspiring, but it’s never the same as a plan to get a job done.  For now it’s getting in the way on many issues.  Here are a few examples:

  • Healthcare

ACA is an imperfect compromise with known issues—in part because it was a non-final version enacted in the wake of Scott Brown’s Koch-funded victory for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.  All attempts since then to improve ACA have been blocked by anti-healthcare Republicans.

That being said ACA has enabled tens of millions of people to be covered for the first time, and it is supported by a non-regressive tax—the ACA surcharge.  It also attempts to get around some of the worst problems private insurance by covering pre-existing conditions and regulating how much of premiums must be paid out in benefits.  In fact insurance profit margins in healthcare are well-below margins in every other insurance category.

The most critical issues today are to improve coverage, pricing, and the range of offerings for ACA plans.  Some of this is just a matter of rolling back Trump efforts to destroy ACA.  The rest is more complicated, but nonetheless well-studied.  This needs to happen independent of long-term plans.

“Medicare of All” is an ideological choice—to get healthcare away from the insurance companies.  It’s a good slogan but something of a misnomer, because the changes from Medicare are decidedly non-trivial.  The Sanders bill optimistically assumes all private insurance will be gone in four years, but without a real plan to make it happen.  While virtually all developed countries have some form of universal healthcare, the systems are dramatically different from country to country, and many keep some form of private insurance.  Even current Medicare has many roles for private insurance.

Focusing on Medicare for All does nothing for current problems, and puts us in an ideological battle for the future.  As Krugman recently pointed out “Not many people love their insurance companies, but that doesn’t mean that they’re eager to trade the coverage they know for a new system they don’t.”  Additionally—for current Medicare recipients—Medicare for All is easily posed as a threat to Medicare itself.  That worked (using ACA) in the Scott Brown election and could well work again.

The long-term objective is affordable, universal coverage.  And the first steps start now.

  • Climate Change

If anything should ever be non-ideological it’s climate change.  Facts are facts, and the solutions are primarily matters for science and engineering.  The main political issues are how much money to spend and who is going to pay for it.

Both sides, however, have turned this into a culture war.  That the Kochs have dishonestly challenged the basic science is by now almost beside the point.  “Bad science” is just an epithet thrown out in the culture war.

We need to stop the culture war and make sure we take care of the people who will be hurt as the economy goes off fossil fuels.  Green New Deal makes some things better and some things worse.  There’s so much political deal-making thrown into it, that it can’t possibly be viewed as anything other than a left-wing grab bag.  Maybe that helps in defeating Trump—which is of course necessary for any progress—but there are too many distractions from the climate change goal.

We need to make sure that everyone realizes that the new post-climate-change world is a good world for all—even people who want to drive AV’s and Chevy Suburbans.  And we need to commit to protect everyone—coal miners, car mechanics, people hit by carbon pricing—who might otherwise be hurt in the process.  That’s the objective.  We can refuse to play the Koch’s culture war game.

We have to get away from the notion that we need to create a kind of “socialist new man” of conservation.  We’re not repealing the industrial revolution.  We just changing the technological underpinning of how things work.  That’s not to say there aren’t other environmental issues, but they’re not the same.  We shouldn’t expect fixing climate change will put the EPA out of business.

  • Jobs

This whole area is filled with so many wrong and misleading ideologies that we can start with a catalog of wrong ideas.

Manufacturing is the basis of economic strength.

The Chinese have gutted manufacturing in the US.

Balance of payments is a good measure of economic strength.

A strong private sector will provide everything necessary for economic success.

Tariffs protect and strengthen the domestic economy.

Low business tax rates build national competitiveness.

Taxing businesses hurts everyone.

Strong unions and strong anti-trust enforcement will preserve the middle class.

Public sector jobs aren’t real jobs, they just pull money out of the private sector.

In the future there just won’t be jobs for everyone.

From the list it’s clear this isn’t a matter of left versus right (even if you discount the lunatic fringe running things today).  The world is moving into new territory (more and more companies with 0 cost of production, tighter and more automated international links).  So the challenge is to see things as they actually are.

Ideologies can get in the way of understanding.  No candidates seem willing to talk about the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy.  Unions and antitrust enforcement are still good ideas, but they buy less than they used to.   As the last of the points indicates, futurists tend to provide more ideology than reality, so nothing beats experience and pragmatism.

For ourselves we see government challenges as:

Supporting education and research to keep ahead of technology change.

Managing the continuing transition from a manufacturing to a service economy.

Taxing and regulating dynamic international corporations with monopoly power.

Building and maintaining a bigger public sector to provide necessary services the private sector won’t.

Maintaining quality of life for all who live here.

Consciously working at creating and managing the international institutions that make the world work.  We used to recognize this responsibility (and avenue to exercise power), and no one else is stepping into the gap.

Overall we need to recognize the problems we do have—not the ones of the 1930’s—and look what will actually be effective to fix them.

There are many other areas where the same kind of story plays out—where an ideological war masks a more tractable, practical problem.  I’d even put immigration in that category.

It’s hard, given the daily atrocities of the Trump era, to focus on anything less than epic changes.  But if we’re going to put the pieces back together afterwards, it’s pragmatism that will get the job done.