The Democratic President used the fancy words ‘I want to change the paradigm,” back in March 2021….
That should translate to changing the American economic order more in the direction of helping middle class Americans ‘s that pay more of the tax bill…Of returning money back to the states…..Of helping middle class Americans in gaining in the countries economic system….
Not just giving Rich Americans and Big companies MORE ways to make and keep money…
Joe Biden is NOT a ‘trickle down from the rich to the poor and middle class’ person….
Of course?
Republicans in Congress seem to have fought him ALL the way….
To quote James Carville….
“It’s the economy stupid’…..
Post Trump and pandemic have not made Biden’s job easy, nor is he getting much credit dfor advances he HAS made….
But he and others HAVE begun a campaign to get his message out…..
And get some credit where IT IS due….
(And get some better polling numbersw and more votes for his party in November)
With the ink now dry on the Inflation Reduction Act — the third major piece of economic legislation to pass across Biden’s desk, along with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act and the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — Democrats’ recent legislative victories have some in Washington asking: Are these new policies harbingers of a more fundamental change to America’s prevailing economic order?
Michael Tomasky, the veteran progressive journalist and editor of The New Republic and Democracy, is cautiously optimistic that they are.
In his new book, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity, which came out Sept. 6, Tomasky takes a step back from the day-to-day churn of economic policymaking to document the decades-long battle — waged by progressive economists, philanthropists and activists — to challenge policymakers’ reigning assumptions about how the economy operates.
Economists and policymakers haven’t settled on a single name for the new paradigm. Some have opted for “post-neoliberal economics” — a neologism that, as Tomasky notes, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Instead, Tomasky calls it “middle-out economics,” borrowing a term coined in the early 2010s by the progressive venture capitalist and philanthropist Nick Hanauer and former Clinton advisor Eric Liu.
At its most basic, this new paradigm reflects a theory about how economies grow: not from the top down, as Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics suggested, but from the middle out, through investments in the middle class and the institutions that support it, such as strong unions, good public schools, affordable child- and health care and a robust social safety net. But beyond a set of policy prescriptions, this paradigm also entails an updated — if not entirely new — way of thinking about fundamental economic questions: What motivates economic agents? What is the proper relationship between economic growth and economic inequality? How does economic policy relate to foundational American ideals like democracy and freedom?
Tomasky thinks that most Americans have a default set of answers to these questions: People act primarily out of self-interest; inequality is an inevitable byproduct of growth; freer markets lead to freer people. But in recent years, Tomasky reports, a growing group of progressive economists and activists have been challenging these assumptions. And when Joe Biden entered the White House, a sizable coterie of these intellectuals joined him as economic advisors and policy aides.
Now, with several major economic policy achievements under their belt, Democrats are getting a first glimpse of what this new paradigm looks like in practice….
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Strengthening the middle class strengthens democracy because when you don’t have a strong middle class, and when the wealthy have all the economic and political power, that’s when you devolve into oligarchy. That’s what history plainly shows. This is not some radical idea. This is a very mainstream and traditional idea. Thomas Jefferson believed this. James Madison believed that you have to have a strong middle class to have a functioning democracy. I think Democrats need to make that connection much more explicit, especially now that they’re actually getting people to care about democracy