Ezra Klein is a concern troll. He has never not been. He is the Republican Lolbrooks. His message is "I'm a big booster of liberals so why do they keep doing all these liberal things." I'm sure David Brooks is a nice guy, too, and I'm equally sure his heart is in the right place. His mind, however, is very much about arranging what he sees in order to make his '60s Republican ideology work. Ezra Klein? Dude wants to go back to Clinton SO HARD and I mean, why not.

Scarcity. Scarcity is why not.

You're absolutely right - rebuilding a strong labor economy is absolutely the right thing to do. The Democrats have fucked up so badly that the president of the Teamsters spoke at the fuckin' RNC. Reducing inequality is another great way to reduce scarcity. Hey, how have the Democrats been doing on that

See that jaggedy bit where the income share almost started to pull back? That's Black Monday. 'how bout that bit where it beelines for the sky again?

(who had two thumbs and a wife on the board of Walmart?)

I voted for Clinton. Twice! he was absolutely the best choice available. But he also fucking gutted the American Dream in deference to Wall Street. You wanna know when the Dems went corporate, it was under Clinton. He basically stole the Republican mojo and left them with Newt Gingrich. But it turns out that opening the world to free trade and offshoring everything so hard that even the metrics changed is bad for the proletariat!

So sure. Let's build some trains. Only... the United States is unique in the world in that we have private track and public trains running on it which is the main reason amtrak has never made money. Most of the world does it the other way... except the UK, which took its rail system from pride-of-the-world to laughing-stock through the simple act of privatization. Hey, maybe some giant public works projects! Kinda like... Oh I dunno

There's other ways to do it, of course. I hear Ezra Klein is big on state capitalism!

Here's the thing, man. scarcity is real. You wanna see when the 'boomers got all their ideas? It's from back when Concordes made sense. It's when all the resources of the world were piped into the United States from literally everywhere else and American manufacturing was the gold standard for the world. And we could absolutely get there again. the United States has an unparalleled amount of natural resources, a highly-skilled labor force and economic protections to build a robust middle class.

But all that shit was built by the government.

Regulating private industry.

To protect the people from its worst impulses while also providing protections to allow it to flourish. Which is why the business douches rescued Hayek and Mises from Austrian ignominy, propped up Milton Friedman and argued that corporations don't owe the public shit.

Sure. Let's deregulate it all. What could go wrong? That's the wrong question, though. The right question is "what does deregulation have to do with jobs." 'cuz it's totally fucking unnecessary.