21 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2021
    1. Ending the threat of authoritarianism is not a left-wing or right-wing problem, and the solution does not reside in building a bigger or a smaller government. Restoring political stability means structuring society’s public and corporate institutions so they can be governed by human beings and communities. It means protecting the property rights of citizens and not confusing property with arbitrary tollbooths erected by tech billionaires. And it means understanding that protecting competitive markets and preventing concentrations of power are essential components of democracy.

      what we need!

    2. From 2009 to 2010, the administration prioritized the stability of a concentrated financial system over risking an attempt to end the foreclosure wave threatening the American housing market.

      Prioritizing financial industry's needs, as opposed to People's. We saw this with Hoover in the beginning of the Great Depression. It didn't work then, and it didn't work here. FDR like policies, bailing out homeowners, would have been better, no?

    3. And white working-class people, whom Dutton had dismissed, did not perceive the benefits of the “greatest economy ever.”

      First is reflected in Bush's victory, but leads directly to Trump in 2016.

    4. Early in Bush’s term, the stock-market bubble burst and wages collapsed. A few years later, a global banking crisis, induced by a financial sector that had steadily gained power for 40 years, erupted. Concentration of power in the private sector, it turned out, had its downsides.

      And financial crisis basically reversed all gains of the 90s and it hasn't budged since.

    5. Putting money and power back into the hands of businesses with deregulation and a balanced budget led to low interest rates, massive corporate profits, productivity growth, and broad prosperity. Bork and Thurow, in other words, were right.

      Suggestion that Clinton's policies, the pinnacle of Neoliberalism, worked. But what's missing in this story? 2008 housing crisis?

    6. At the same time, Rothenberg noted, while they agreed with Republicans on the importance of a depoliticized economy, they also still believed in the public good. They sought an “industrial policy”—a never-quite-defined planning mechanism—to direct resources in the economy through a cooperative three-way dialogue among labor, business, and government. The government, they felt, should push the United States toward a high-tech future economy via private high-growth technology companies.

      Seemingly good, right? Also, probably what leads to Silicon Valley (DARPA and other technological advances)

    7. Previously, voters had expected politicians to do something about everything from the price of milk to mortgage rates.

      This, also, is not good.

    8. Monopolies, Bork believed, were generally good, as long as they delivered low prices. A monopoly would only persist if it were more efficient than its competitors.

      The shift in antitrust policy to focus solely on prices.

    9. If there were a company making super-charged monopoly profits, bankers would naturally invest in a competitor, thus addressing the monopoly problem without government intervention.

      Why wouldn't they just invest in the monopoly? It's guaranteed profits, essentially.

    10. After Humphrey’s loss to Nixon, Democrats formed the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, also known as the McGovern-Fraser Commission, which sought to heal and restructure the party. With the help of strategist Fred Dutton, Democrats forged a new coalition. By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as “a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote.” The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites. In 1972, George McGovern would win the Democratic nomination with this very coalition, and many of the Watergate Babies entering office just three years later gleaned their first experiences in politics on his campaign.

      Roots of the 6th Party system

    11. When RFK died, Democrats nominated New Deal populist and Vietnam War supporter Humphrey, which split the party between the new-left youth activists and the labor-influenced party regulars—leading to the turbulent 1968 national convention.

      Split that leads to the 6th party system. This was documented in the Chicago 7 Netflix film. The main issue of the day was Vietnam.

    12. In 1968, there was a great debate about the future of the Democratic Party. Robert F. Kennedy sought to win the primary with a “black-blue” coalition of black “have-nots” and working-class whites. He sought continuity in the policies of protecting independent farmers, shopkeepers, and workers, all of which formed the heart of the New Deal—yet he also wanted to end the war in Vietnam and expand racial justice.But Kennedy’s strategy to merge these ideas disappeared when he was assassinated.

      Wow! How this would have changed things. One only knows.

    13. The essence of populist politics is that political and economic freedom are deeply intertwined—that real democracy requires not just an opportunity to vote but an opportunity to compete in an open marketplace. This was the kind of politics that the Watergate Babies accidentally overthrew.

      Whoops. Democrats are at fault here.

    14. The essence of populist politics is that political and economic freedom are deeply intertwined—that real democracy requires not just an opportunity to vote but an opportunity to compete in an open marketplace.

      The same realization MLK made when he shifted focus to economic rights via the Poor People's campaign. Economic freedom is necessary to achieve all other freedoms. Economic rights are precursory to human rights. Economic freedom, or economic autonomy (power), is necessary to secure other rights.

    15. Competition policy was also a powerful political strategy.

      what we need today

    16. farmers gained government support for stable agricultural prices free from speculation

      Could there have been a better way to do this, use fair, free market principles? Because this, assumingely, leads directly to the farm subsidies that still exist today and fosters industrial agriculture focused on commodity crops. Could this have been done by just splitting up larger grocery chains or limited commodity trading on agriculture??

    17. anti-monopoly, or pro-competition

      reframing anti-monopoly as pro-competition. brillian.

    18. Among other things, they maintained a sufficient concentration of power to keep prices up, workers disorganized, and politics firmly within their grasp.

      This is identical to today, besides prices, though that could be argued. Amazon drives prices down, at least in theory. Facebook is free, at least in theory. But, there are arguments to make that Facebook is a tax, in that we pay more for the products we buy because of the advertising that must take place on Facebook. That advertising is an expense that must be factored into the cost of the good. Same applies for advertising on Amazon. Same with Apple - they take 30%, so that must increase prices. In fact, you can see this for some apps that if you pay for via an Apple device, you pay more, whereas if you go direct via your browser, you pay less. So, there's no price fixing happening directly by the manufacturer of the goods, but prices are affected.

      But despite all that, we need to update our antitrust policies to not hinge on pricing of goods. Rather, they need to revolve around workers right and organizing, and political power. Power over people's lives essentially.

    19. This is the story and repeats itself over and over through our the history of the United States. A story of concentrated power in the hands of capital / property owners vs. a government that breaks up that power to serve the people's interests. Concentrate power takes shape in the form of monopolies and need to be broken up, trust busted.

    20. Woodrow Wilson authored the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Federal Reserve Act, and the anti-merger Clayton Act, and, just before World War I intervened, he put Brandeis on the Supreme Court.

      he did this all on behalf of white southern farmers, which to his credit, was a good thing for the working class.

  2. Dec 2020
    1. cradle-to-career youth programming

      This becomes where equal opportunity must start - at the beginning of a child's career - at 18, the age we otherwise use to mark the end of childhood and the beginning of childhood.