There is no progressive's war against religion. It is merely a defense from religionist's insistence that we all live by their rules.
31
Better and better for fewer and fewer. The moral fabric of this country cannot be repaired as long as so many Americans will never get an even break.
14
The "jobs" the 21st century American economy can create are part-time or gig occupations with no security, no benefits, and no vacation-time.
They are better than starving but they are hardly fulfilling or really even worth doing, frankly.
14
"Don’t freak out about deficits in the absence of inflation"
This is one of the more stupid things that has been written about the extreme deficits that Republicans and Trump voted into law. We are in the second longest period of economic expansion in US history and it is going to come to an end sooner or later (the impending trade war just may end it). At that point, there will be no cushion for addressing the downturn. Republicans and conservatives kept telling us that the country should be run like a business. A well-run business pays down debt and makes capital investments when times are good to prepare for inevitable downturns. How many times do we need to see Republicans run up the deficit and leave the mess for Democrats to dig us out of before we recognize the trend?
10
ah... foolish, foolish religion !!! Only nincompoops believe that nonsense...
Yet, the need for a compelling moral vision that can join rather than divide could not be more stark. And America doesn't have one. Indeed, the world is without.
The nonsense comes from the paranoia and the hate of the 'Evangelicals'.... the territorial greed of Israel/Judaism.... the primitive aspects of Middle Eastern cults.... and the moral failings of Catholicism.... combined with the insecurities and vulnerabilities of a landscape changing at lightning speed.
And now we have stumpy, who combines many of the worst characteristics of all of the above.
Obama, in spite of his failings, began to articulate a way forward, but the forces aligned against him were and are too strong.
Ross. are you willing to step up? If so, then you, too, have to remove the shades from your eyes.... and start to get real....
7
Happy days are here again! (I must have slept through it all). Yay!!!!
4
Ross must in a good mood today to even dare to ask the church to step in for social justice and charity and the politicians to solve social problems. hahaha...
3
About 2 billion human beings do not have access to a clean sanitary toilet.
About 750 million human beings lack access to clean fresh drinking water.
About 65 million human beings are displaced and refugees.
About 6 million humans die from infectious disease.
But the House of Trump is grinning while making more good time money from their occupation of the White House. And no one has a bigger lingering smile and smirk on their face than puppet pet Donald John Trump's manipulator master Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
14
Mr. Douthat, your support of the current GOP leadership and its addled, godless leader is stunning. You should be ashamed of your verbal gymnastics defending this GOP in the face of so many affronts to Christ's actual teachings. And even your religious stance aside, this assault on our beautiful American experiment may be irreversible. History will judge you harshly. Your mother must weep for your soul. As a fellow Christian, I know I do.
14
I'm not a religious person. I've always pulled my cultural strength from the pride I took in America. In our high ideals, our accomplishments and how from many people we were one. I knew we were not perfect but I also knew that we would continue to strive to become that more perfect union. I knew who our friends were and I knew who they weren't. I still do.
Now the Republican supported Donald Trump is pulling that rug out from under my feet every single day. Enemies are friends and friends are enemies. The taxpayer is something to be milked for personal enrichment DURING the presidency. Lying and bullying is acceptable from our White House. Racists are embraced. Misogynists are embraced. Dictators are embraced.
Please tell me Ross how do I survive the disintegration of the very ground that I walk on? I'm asking you because apparently the GOP is fine with it.
14
Republicans and religion go hand in hand with each other. Both useless, and perfect for hypocrites that can't think and reason things out for themselves. Both the Republicans and the religion want everyone to be as miserable and as empty minded and as useless minded as they themselves are. The sooner religion exits the scene, the better for everyone.
5
Excellent.....
2
Wow such staggering disingenuousness, Ross
Over 500 days with no infrastructure plan, no jobs plan, no “beautiful” health care plan - for all, cheaper, and better
Now here comes Ross lamenting.......why do you bother?
12
Look, as a 66 year old gay man who has witnessed a life long culture war by conservative religious organizations that would deny me my rights as a citizen, indeed, my very humanity as a thinking, feeling individual with a fundamental value as a person to exist freely and openly in society, I do indeed feel nothing but contempt for the religious right. Keep your homophobia out of my life. If you don't want me buying your Christian cakes, lock the front door to your shop and close your business, just like you have locked shut your mind and closed your heart.
17
Are you ever going to say something new and truly thoughtful in one of your columns? They're so boring and formulaic: Despair over the country's religious decline (we could only be so lucky), the success of Republican agenda (complete hogwash), slip in a specious slight or two against Obama just because (will you ever admit that he saved us from economic ruin? Yeah, what am I thinking?), and celebrating the country's booming economy (booming for you and a handful of other lucky ones.) Boring Boring Boring, and blind.
20
"Of course, the wall-to-wall frenzy of the Trump era, in which everyone is constantly being asked to take sides in a battle to the death, makes these kinds of cultural efforts harder to formulate and pursue."
That's it in a nutshell, "the wall-to-wall frenzy" and it's the result of having elected a reckless idiot to the highest office in the land. Trump's supporters, some of whom comment regularly in this forum, like the way he's upended the status quo. What they imagine is a kind of Chauncey Gardiner type, unwittingly producing sage policy and good fortune. What we have instead is a self-obsessed and corrupt man-child who can't leave well enough alone because he's constitutionally incapable of doing so. His agenda is himself and himself alone, and it should be a warning to his supporters. When he stabs them in the back, and he will, they shouldn't be surprised. His character is on full display every day and character counts. Those who have chosen to ignore it for temporary gain will get their just desserts. Unfortunately, the rest of us will have to eat it along with them.
8
Ross, we have children being held in cages and you’re wailing in the dark about culture wars? These are literal concentration camps for children ripped from their parents. What is your Catholic Church doing? Nothing. And it is the Conservative Christians who cheer from the sidelines because they simply don’t want dark skinned people coming here.
The true sin of Sodom wasn’t about sex; it was about inhospitality and hatred shown to outsiders. The culture war from the Christian perspective is meant to be inhospitable of anyone who isn’t white and heterosexual, and women aren’t full humans. (I dare you to collect stories from women and their dealings with healthcare. They hardly rate.)
The booming economy isn’t what it appears. Wages are stagnant, and there are few good jobs even for those of us who are highly educated. And did you happen to notice that suicides have risen in every state but Nevada (oddly) since 1999? Are you aware that many of our LGBT community members kill themselves because they are marginalized and treated as non-people by the religious communities?
A towering giant of hospitality took his own life the other day while he was filming in France. Bourdain, an atheist, did more to champion those on the margins, and more to fight for equal rights for women, in a day than most Christians do in a lifetime.
This isn’t surprising. Studies show that children raised in secular homes are more educated and altruistic than their religious counterparts.
9
Ross, I would also suggest your column underestimates how deeply depressing it is to have our President be a man who is undeniably racist, misogynistic, greedy and corrupt. A man who has such incredibly sadistic impulses.
That such a truly unhinged and evil man can be so dominant in our politics (and in our lives) makes these times miserable no matter what our unemployment rate or GDP is. That so many who profess to care above morality (the church, conservatives) feverishly look the other way, make things that much worse.
9
what exactly are liberals doing to keep the church from reaching out to whoever they feel they can help?
8
Grim times\trends indeed. Mainly, I'd say, having a firecracker with brain damage running the White House. The pathology is breathtaking simply due to the toddler petulance and two-year old sensibilities surrounded by sycophants and rear-end kissers. America, we have a problem.
21
Ross always thinks that religion will help solve problems related to parts of society that are disintegrating. Then of course he predictably blames liberals for and gay marriage. Ross religion caused its own downfall and liberals had nothing to do with it. If you want to go to church do so but stop pretending that church is being attacked.
5
Hey Ross!
I have the answer, and you're gonna love it, because it takes us back to those golden American years of the 50s and 60s.
Let's hit <reboot> and tax our wealthiest few at the same 90% we did back then.
Bam! Schools get better, everybody can afford the money-for-health system you all adore, neighborhoods become miraculously clean and safe, and we'll have money for the mental healthcare you boys claim will solve every problem we benightedly blame on guns.
Better yet, as I recall, there was no shortage of initiative, innovation, or corporate success, so it's all good.
C'mon, Ross...it's gonna be great!
24
Nope, sorry. Not buying it. When over 40% of 'merican's cant swing a $400. sudden expense our economy is not doing well for We The People.
Yes, Corp. and business profits have never been higher. Record set yr. after yr. since '11. That 1% trickled upon us, the lower plebs, doesn't compare to the 99% shoveled hand over fist to the top.
As for this attack on religious institutions, STAY OUT OF MY LIFE~~! Then I will have no need to push back against YOUR transgressions. Stay out of our politics and our Gov. ~! Please! Your hypocrisy and venomous hate are your own doing and is what drives the animosity towards you and culls your own flock. Not us.
By the by, maybe if your institutions actually did the work you think they do, then push back might not be needed. What we see and feel is money grubbing, hate spreading, ugly people.
Amazing how much of the globe is getting along just fine without the saved and self righteous shoving their version of god down our throats and between our legs.
15
I know, Ross ---- if we all had Jesus everything would be just rosy and holy. Ever think that the progress we've made as a species and nation tracks the decline of all that bronze age dangerous nonsense? And that the rise of East Asia is almost entirely due to their never being poisoned by the toxic monotheisms the Islamosphere suffers and the Christianity which alienates and holds *us* back?
7
Denying people rights in the name of religious freedom is how Christian extremists like Douhat believe we can repair the social fabric.
More drivel from Douhat who can never see the racism, homophobia and intolerance of the right wing in this country.
13
It is good of Ross Douthat to note that virtually all the negative claims for liberal policies are phony. We now have a president who has authoritarian tendencies, might be a traitor. A party silent in the face of treason. The things they have done have been vicious and mean spirited. Their one enacted policy, the tax cut, may not be a disaster, we will see, but it is stupid economics.
5
So, bring back the churches and take away the cell-phones? That's the answer?
This column is itself a sign of grim trends at the NY Times.
10
Mr Douthat remarks that metrics indicate things are going well, yet perennial problems persist, and they will become grimmer when the next economic downturn occurs.
Americans have never had it so good. Our national health, educational, civil rights and employment standards would be unimaginable 100, even 50 years ago. But we are unhappy. Why is this?
Expectations inexorably rise. Humans are relentlessly aspirational and opportunistic. Today's win is temporary and soon we worry about next week's.
There are several trends I would like to address.
America is undergoing a demographic transformation from white to non-white. We are becoming an increasingly fractious collection of ethno-racial identifies all vying for power. It is unstable and will eventually lead to a second American civil war. Societies are stable when there is group hierarchy with a dominant at the top.
Secondly, China is poised to become the number one economic power and with it a vocal, forceful world political leader. Our Western system of government is overmatched now that China has emerged economically. We are on collision course.
Lastly, social and economic stressors will become more acute concurrently with ecological ones. Climate change is just one of the ways we have degraded our natural world. They will exacerbate the first two. I think we are in the calm before the storm
1
The same old it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Its great to be rich and own stock and stinks to have to make ends meet with a family and no college degree. And a college degree is very costly and debt is forever. People resent their lack of good fortune because, as many Trump supporters think, they are entitled to it. After all they are white and the US won the cold war and their parents lived comfortably as blue collar workers. The Republicans have successfully labeled the Democrats as the party of handouts and blocking personal initiative. The Democratic elite got burned with their support of Hillary Clinton no matter what. They have conveniently landed on the Russians as the source of Trump's victory. Time passes and entropy pulls the bonds that hold apart. Creative destruction is sold as a virtue of capitalism. Greed is good let the chips fall where they may.
Trump takes credit for the Obama recovery, but fails to tell us why wages have not risen for 99% of Americans. But that's OK, because we can just get down on our knees and thank the Deity for the Trump "miracle" that gives the 1% even more money while helping the rest of us by relieving us of things like health care that are really not good for us, because they erode self-reliance, and anyway, are mostly benefiting "those people."
Oh, yes, and we can thank God for ICE that is ridding us of all those annoying brown people who are inhabiting our schools with their uppity expectations that they will improve their lives through education and social support.
Mostly we can thank the Deity for our Emperor Donald who says all the ugly things we are thinking but don't dare say ourselves, so we can feel better about our xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and religious prejudices. Yes, he speaks our mind for us, so we have no need to say ugly uncomfortable things in public. It all is covered under our prayer-like mantra: MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!
Such a great religious expression. We all feel better already.
9
We need to remember that when we speak of " churches" we are talking about people, not just buildings or institutions. Mainline churches have been in decline for the last 20 years as many of their members have fled the faith that they once believed. Consequently the moral makeup of our country has suffered greatly. But there is hope. In the Bible (2 Chronicles 7:14 ) reads " If my people, who are called by my name,will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
1
American culture separates everyone into "winners" and "losers." If you fail you are a burden on society. You are a burden on your family. You are nothing and deserve nothing. On the day Anthony Bourdain took his own life, approximately 135 Americans made the same decision. Economic indicators look great but our social fabric is tearing apart.
8
So, like the good little right-wing nut you are, you celebrate all those low paying, no benefit, part-time jobs, that tRump likes to think of "full employment," which really only means they have something to do, not that they can afford their rent, their health care, or put food on the table. Mr. doubt That, you always fail to surprise me.
9
Nothing has damaged our social fabric more than religious conservatives waging war on the rest of us by elevating such anti Christs as trump to the WH.
8
You did not get what happened in the last decade or so. There is no return to status quo ante bellum, there is no return to the New Deal and welfare state. If you cannot think of anything else, stop writing and misleading people.
2
Where to start. First, five years ago the trends you applaud today were well established in Obama's 5th year in office. The only things that changed was the rhetoric on the right. They went from "Don't believe the numbers, it's 40% unemployment, it's carnage I tell you." To "Morning in America" as soon as Trump put his hand on the bible. Second, nobody on the left is looking for a religious fight. We're not denying people the right to eat cake or pee where they want to. The flak is all coming from the religious folk who, we see, will gladly give up their principals, teachings and morals in order to win political victories that are designed for their way of thinking exclusively. They're the ones who are losing ground (deservedly I might add) so Armageddon can't come soon enough for them. Third, Opioid abuse and the other middle class problems will be addressed as soon as the Democrats can wrest control of one of the levers of power. Until then tax cuts and dismantling the healthcare system is all that matters and the rest can only expect lip service. Lastly, when you see the divisions in American society ask yourself who hates the other side so much that they would allow their party to be taken over by an, openly racist, appallingly ignorant, constantly lying demagogue, who's every move is designed to divide. Then address your concerns accordingly.
7
This is a decent column. I can agree with your remedies. Why oh why do you have to drag your religion into it? Liberals are to blame? Say I'm a baker), which I am, and you walk into my shop (with your daughter)and ask me to bake a first communion cake. I say no. I'm an atheist and I hate Catholics. Would you just sail off to the nicer baker down the street? or would you take some action against me? The masterpiece baker can do whatever he likes, it's stupid it went to the Supreme Court. However, it still makes him a mean spirited and hateful symbol of religious intolerance.
Ross, perhaps you'd care to read something, also published today, by someone who actually understands the "strength"of the current economy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/beware-the-mother-of-all...
1
Really good column today, Ross...understandable for a change, less flaunting of your intellect and erudition. And bullseye, right on target, with restraint recommended since economy humming, and your proposal for getting institutions involved in research into social problems is constructive. But again it's sad that you feel a "post-Obergefell culture war" by us liberals is damaging the fabric of society. That's silly, Ross. Obergefell is about fairness and civil rights. If you were gay, you would not be submitting to conversion therapy. You would be using all of your considerable intellect and persuasive powers for equal rights, whether you remained under the questionable authority of Rome or not. paul in bessemer
2
These are nice thoughts Mr. Douthat, intended for rational, responsible leaders. Unfortunately, the bad guys have won and only care about themselves. The economy seems to be ignoring the elephant in the room, which is right now stomping its feet at the Canadians, while embracing dictators and autocrats like Putin and Kim Jong Un. How much more of this can we take?
2
I'm not saying that Trump's economy isn't good. It is. It's just not Trump's. Here's the core of the issue we need to deal with. People who get their news from Fox and other outlets who provide Republican propaganda feel better about this economy because they are told it is better just as they felt worse about it when they were told it is worse. The Economist looked at a number of economic KPIs last week and found them to be fairly stable continuations of the growth we've had since 2015. Hopefully Trump and Ryan won't blow it. But to my main point, we need to somehow get on the same page. Partisan news outlets cannot be tolerated. Ironically, one of the biggest victims of this phenomenon is Trump himself who seems to believe what he sees on Fox and Friends and in talks with Hannity several times daily. When they are proven wrong, as they were in the Hillary/Benghazi "scandal" they drop the matter without a reckoning, sometimes bringing it up as truth later on. Even more radical versions (Q Anon) are more harmful to our society. I kind of get the idea of "alternate facts" until those other facts are replaced by outright lies. The truth matters.
4
What an amazingly provocative photo running with this column.
The graphics artists and editors at NYT are very talented.
I am going to have a little break down here. I am so tired of politicians taking credit of throwing blame for economic conditions. The economy has CYCLES!!!! There are down turns and then there are up turns. This has been happening since people moved from hunter gatherers to farmers and craftsmen.
Yes there was meddling in the housing market that had been led by the Democrats during the 2008 melt down. Yes, Republicans are more liassez-faire than the Democrats. That does not change the fact that the economy has CYCLES.
Breakdwon over.
How does one not take sides in this battle for the American soul? And, really, who seriously posits that materialism will bring us happiness? Yes, we all (or many of us, at least) secretly hope that bigger house will signal we "arrived", but we know that's not the answer. But we do need some sort of financial security to feel safe. Many Americans today do not have work that supplies that kind of security (not reflected in the employment stats). Dignity, meaning, community; these are what animate and fulfill us in the end. But, there is NO equivalent hysteria on both sides. It is the RIGHT that wants to bring back institutional discrimination. It's the RIGHT that supports (or looks away from) children being ripped from families at our border. It's the RIGHT that promotes the ugly lie that tax cuts for the 1% will help "Middle America"... I have great respect for Mr. Douthat, his beliefs, and his contributions as a writer. But, as with most conservatives, he understandably wants to believe that there is "equivalent" extremism on both sides of the aisle and - these days - that is simply preposterous. The "progressives" in the Dem party advocate for what I would call fairly "mainstream" American priorities (free education, access to healthcare for all, minimum wage, infrastructure investment, etc.) and 'centrist" Dems are really more like tradition center right Reps, who are retiring or being "primaried" by the Radical Right. False equivalencies only muddy the waters.
2
"Economic inequality isn’t throttling the economy."
This is factually inaccurate. As with most of Douthat's dismissals, he is hiding behind relative figures. Economic figures are better off than they were ten years ago. However, they are nowhere near as good as they should be. You can't use absolute figures when comparing metrics over time. That's why inflation indexes exist. The policy response to the Great Recession was a complete failure. The failure was bipartisan in nature. Republican obstruction however is the most explicitly intentional failure.
Here's the fact: Economic inequality is driving social unrest. Economic expansion is meaningless without shared prosperity. No prosperity equals social degeneration. Politicians, Clinton and Trump foremost among them, pretend the economy is prospering. It's not. Structural economic issues are more than a mere footnote. They are the underwriting foundation of our entire social order. Stop whitewashing the problem. Conservatives are in charge now Douthat. They once again only appear to be making the problem worse.
4
It might have been wise of Douthat to check a map that shows how well each county is doing in terms of income, employment, education and opiate overdoses.
If he had he would find that most of the jobs available in non metro areas are unskilled. low paying and even those require drug tests.
So Douthat's supposition is false that it is moral rot as evidenced by increasing secularization that is the cause of all of the woes that he listed.
There are churches of various fundamentalistic religions spread all over those counties so I see little need for an influx of missionaries.
There really is no cure for the jobs that sustained families with only dadworking are gone and will not return. The brightest young people leave to never reurn leaving an aging and increasingly dysfunctional young adults.
4
"post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions"? Sorry, but the culture war waged by the conservative religious institutions started it. After all, the conservative religious institutions are bureaucracies that resist progress to maintain the allegiance of them that pays them. It is a serious stretch to maintain that Jesus's church needs to oppress same-sex couples to fulfill Christ's message, although Mr. Douthat does try over and over and over ad nauseam.
8
As reported by the Economist magazine - two ideas have lifted more folks out of poverty during the past two decades all around the world than all of the social programs during the same period.
The two ideas? Global free trade and unfettered capitalism. It is just a shame that we have to re-learn these lessons every couple of decades or so.
1
I suggest you read Adam Smith, the Economist's intellectual godfather. Neither he nor the publication is in favor of "unfettered capitalism."
3
"Likewise America’s churches, whose weakening is part of the story of growing anomie, should recognize the new mission fields that social disintegration has created here at home — in once-pious working-class neighborhoods, or among the lonely late-middle aged and isolated elderly."
Ross, does this describe "praying with" or "preying on" the weak? Too often, the latter appears to be the true purpose.
5
Based on Mr.Douthat's reputation among some Progressives as being a conservative writer masquerading as a Liberal, every time I begin to read one of Mr. Douthat's articles I look for areas of inconsistency, weakness in his arguments and evidence of overt bias. Ross as a journalist, however, continues to surprise this old Lefty with his fact based arguments, his sensibility to the less fortunate and his hard headed belief in the basic goodness and good sense of the American people. And after reading many months of Douthat's articles, to me it appears that in many instances, Mr. Douthat's views represents a welcome (but currently out of favor) , middle ground in the American political establishment.
And yes, as an older person who has lived through many extremes in political and social experiments foisted on the American public, I can only hope that sooner rather than later more current commentators, writers, politicians and opinion leaders of all stripes in our country will (as Douthat seems to have successfully done) stop simply reacting to the extremes of those who hold opposite opinions, and learn to reach for a middle ground in which more people in our country can more comfortably and successfully be included.
3
The improved economy has little impact on most of us. Almost all the increase in wages and wealth have gone to just a very few and the rest of us keep losing ground. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation it would now be at $22 an hour. The economy could do worse but the 90% of us who have not done better, could do better if many other changes were made such as breaking up monopolies and allowing more competition, regulation of the housing markets so that many more of us could afford do own or rent, higher taxes on corporations and the rich, so they can no longer have unlimited funds to buy our politicians, health care for all and affordable college education and the list can go on and on.
As far as the break down of our culture. I think plenty of women were lonely back in the good old days when there was less divorce. You can be married and miserable at the same time. We still think of ourselves as those rugged individualists but those values seem to keep us from implementing policies that value families, children and community. And of course we still have the lingering values that came with slavery. We have a history of treating each other very badly. Although, I do think one of our strongest assets is the diversity of this country and our ability to assimilate new immigrants. With the Parkland killings, young people are waking up and getting active. This gives me more hope than anything I've seen coming from our politicians.
3
Ross essentially counsels us to follow the maxim "When in doubt, do nothing" and let nature take its course.
I thought Donald Trump was in charge of that.
3
I like this do no harm approach to governing. I wish it would extend to the military as they are among the worst offenders in doing unnecessary harm to others and to our country as a whole.
It's odd, though, to ask atheists / agnostics to believe in gods as some kind of social program. There is a perfectly good reason they have rejected these supernatural beliefs and I really don't think bringing back religion will provide the boost to well being that Mr. Douthat thinks it will. Lots of us do just fine without it.
Otherwise, the cake case is so trivial that I was astonished it made it into the news much less the courts. An argument between a couple of fanatics got turned into a spectacle by the media and absolutely nothing was gained by it. Anyone who is afraid of for their job as a result is... well that's just silly.
I don't know about these grim social trends... none of them affect me and I'm not particularly concerned about any of them. People are free to do as they please and there is little point in trying to modify their behavior.
Thanks Ross! Very helpful info and thoughts, as long as we keep the breathtaking bad news we have expereinced over 40 Plus Years in full view.
1. Currently, we know that 80 percent of Americans have not seen their Purchasing Power increase for 30 plus decades!!!
2. The Income Gap has been for a very long time, decades, growing beyond belief!!!
3. 40 Percent of Children live in poverty!!!
1
Oh Ross! Sure the economy is "cooking" but with the Trump Tax Cuts, our deficit is growing at an alarming rate!
Also, Republicans have all but completely dismantled the ACA aka Obamacare. Leaving millions of Americans without healthcare!
But wait....the tariffs! Trump tariffs will soon come along and damage our economy, hurting our economy.
Thanks to Republicans, Ross, we are in trouble!
3
You assume that a Liberal culture war against conservative religious institutions does some sort of damage to the social fabric, but refusing to make a wedding cake for two human beings who love each other and want to spend their lives together doesn't?
2
Mr. Douthat's op-ed made a lot of sense to me until his egregious slap at those opposing "conservative religious institutions" persecution of LGBTQ people as damaging the civic social order. The list is long of how the religious right and leaders like Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. have eroded our civic norms with their dehumanizing of Muslims, Gays, and immigrants.
2
Hmmm. Where to begin? Great Recession-- a Republican deregulation of banks, that Obama cleaned up. Birth rate down, and teen pregnancy -down, while contraceptive mandated in insurance plans-- another abortion preventer, brought by Obama. Suicide rate up, and 1 guns per household that owns guns. 62% of all gun deaths are owners shooting themselves in the mouth with their own guns. Grim trends indeed Douthat. You stand by all of them.
2
Reagan tax giveaway to the .01% = Great Recession. Bush 43 tax giveaway to the .01% = Greater Recession. Trump tax giveaway to the .001% = Great Depression II? It's coming...just a matter of time.
4
That Obamacare was killing jobs and sabotaging the economy was always complete baloney. What's happening now is what often happens when allegedly thrifty Republicans move back into the White House - they go on a Keynesian spending spree which temporarily puts some pop in the economy, while piling up debt, which a subsequent Democratic administration will chip away at. This is what Bill Clinton did, following the Reagan-Bush fiscal drunk-walk, and what Barack Obama did following when Bush II an economic psychosis. Americans had better be praying that the current GOP menace is a one-termer, because this can't go on much longer. A lot of this, of course, will sound topsy-turvy to conservative readers, because Republicans are so very, very good at saying one thing while doing the complete opposite.
3
The weakening of America's churches...If a person needs religion as a crutch or actually receives something emotionally useful from doctrines, fine. Just keep that wall between church and state intact. (Oh, and ridding the country of social security is not a centrist desire. That's pure right.)
2
I have to pull on the reins here. Cutting Social Security has NEVER been a "centrist" idea. It's the exclusive private property of your political tribe, Ross.
10
It would be refreshing if conservatives like Ross and the other rightwing ideologues residing at think tanks, on social media, and on at Fox would admit they were terribly misinformed and erroneous, if not innately deceptive, on how the Affordable Care Act and other policies of the previous administration and Fed Reserve chair were "job killers", risked hyperinflation and would turn our country into the next Greece unless federal spending for the needy and scientfic research was gutted to the bone. With Trump, the positive job data once derided as being inaccurate, phony, and fake news is now considered gospel (from the same government source) and as example of how we have magically turned the corner on the economy in less than 18 months. Ross did not apologize or say he was wrong, and I doubt the other "truthsayers" will as well!
4
As an atheist, I don't attend church, don't visit churches, and don't campaign against them, unless they metaphorically step outside their walls, reach out and try to tell me what I can and cannot do. If the Catholic Church (or other religious creeds) says it is a sin to be Gay, and it is a sin to have an abortion, or use birth control, etc. etc., it is fine as long as they stay within their religious community, free from taxation and don't try to make me live by their beliefs or mission. When they decide to enter into politics, and try to sway the secular world, then I am against them. Citing post-Obergefell culture and liberals "war against conservative religious institutions" is absurd; you can be just as conservative as you want, just don't try to foist it off on me. If you do, indeed then I am against them. Just as an aside, there is not mandate for conservative religious institutions to marry two Gay people.
6
What conservatives call a "war against conservative religious institutions" is about tax supported social programs. The religious think they should be allowed access to every citizen's tax dollar, but can decide which citizen may use their social services.
2
Now the GOP wants to destroy the 'pre-existing conditions' component in their ongoing war on healthcare. I hope in November the American people finally rub the dust from their eyes and turn congress over to people who will fight for all of us, not just the wealthy few.
3
"....centrist dreams about cutting Social Security." Centrist??? Get real, Douthat. Cutting Social Security is a far-right dream. There's nothing centrist about it. You write about shoring the shaky foundations of the middle class. Any cut to Social Security is a tragedy for those living only on it. And why would anyone only be living on Social Security? Because of the far rights' attack on collective bargaining which started with Reagan.
10
This article presents a necessary caveat if we are not to continue to misuse,or waste,limited human and nonhuman resources so necessary for creating and sustaining equitable types,levels and qualities of well being for all.The certainty which continues to envelope the validity of ideological and other belief-based underpinnings for needed concepts, processes, policies, programs, etc. is all too often faulty.Challenging realities’ ever present dimensions: Uncertainties. Unpredictabilities. Randomness.Lack of total control, whatever the types, levels and qualities of our efforts. Added to these interacting factors is toxic semantic surrealism.Words, used to describe, but presented as if they actually explain, inherently can never BE the IT for which they are/were constructed to represent! Just as the map is not the actual territory which is graphically presented.The word is not the targeted IT. And more, or other, words wont change this reality.An additional consideration is our choice of structuring realities’ dimensions into constraining, either/or,binary-banality,when uni and multidimensional ranges exist. And which can help us as we move from collecting and assessing relevant data,to their appropriate analysis, leading to factual-testable-information, to be transmuted into usable knowledge. Paying attention in this wordy check-list to: known; currently unknown, because of gaps in needed knowing/understanding;unknowable,and awareness that we don’t know that we do not know.
It IS NOT the governments responsibility to repair, maintain or decide the level of the social fabric. Though liberals do not have the stomach for it, capitalism is a bare knuckled, knock down drag out, survival of the fittest, winner take all system that weeds out the weakest, myself included. The difference is that I accept my lack of business acumen and do not begrudge it by those who do.
3
Laissez-faire capitalism is exactly as you describe, having no regard for the societal impacts of the economic outcome. Two points, though. First, rarely have we had truly liaises-faire capitalism, and it is no where written that that is the economic model we must adhere to. Second, the “social fabric” (encompassing two many things to enumerate here) exists independent of economic model, and we can and should expect government to contribute to the maintenance and betterment of it.
2
Huh - "liberals do not have the stomach for it". In the last 30 years the only the only positive economic growth and deficit reduction has happened under Democratic Presidents. This economy? Is Janet Yellen's and President Obama's. Trump got very lucky. I'm willing to wager we'll be in recession by the end of his term due to his poor skill at managing trade, unforeseen and unpredictable world events (mostly likely triggered by an angry tweet and petulance), and the fact he has no economic knowledge except ones rooted in 18th century labor systems.
6
So you think our leaders should sit idly by while the citizenry becomes enmired in addiction and despair? Interesting.
I would suggest that the reason our society, while "statistically" fully employed, is still in the middle of a growing humanitarian or social crisis - increasing drug use, opioid epidemic, increased suicides, and social disconnection - is partially, if not principally, due to insecurity.
Our economy is not really as strong as the statistics make it appear. It is a "Potemkin economy" which on the surface seems to be doing well, but a little deeper has no foundation, especially for the future. Many of our jobs are gigs, temporary, and low paying. Many of our citizens are an illness away from bankruptcy. The present working generation has no hope of ever being able to save for retirement. Our pensions have almost entirely disappeared. More than 90% of millennial do not believe that social security will be there for them when they retire. 80% of our families are unable to afford a four-year state college for their children, forcing them to borrow enormous sums that they likely will never be able to re-pay. For the average worker, health insurance costs exceed their mortgage or their rent. There is little "hope" out there to make people feel good about themselves or their future and that of their children. They sense the bleak future that this economy is offering them and they are scared, insecure, and anxious.
What we need is a new, New Deal offering Americans some respite from insecurity. As a start, I say vote Democratic this November.
20
People like me, in our mid-50s, laid off during the wonderful Great Recession and unable to find jobs because we were old to begin with when we got laid off, we get by on self-employment and part-time jobs. clients pay us when they feel like it. And the part-time jobs pay horribly. If you cut Social Security we may as well follow the examples of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade and do ourselves in. But we'll wait until we really are too old to work 7 days a week. and of course we won't have any money to leave our children anyway. So I guess we're all expendable in your perfect little Republican world.
17
Because even if nothing changes, it will still be better with God on your side. You'll still suffer, but there will be glory in your suffering, so sayeth Ross Douthat, whose answer for everything is piousness and church.
This is just silly.
Life is fragile. It is also random. Some people deal more easily with that reality than others. Others often cope by believing in god and gathering with like minded people through the social aspects of religion. Mr. Douthat's version of religion essentially boils down to telling you that the suffering is god's will and that there 's a reason "he" has chosen you to be miserable. Suffering is good! It makes you a better person! You are not alone! You will be rewarded in the end when you die and get to go on a permanent vacation in the sky with your invisible friend!
And if everyone decided tomorrow that organized religion was the answer, then by next week Mr. Douthat would be saying the same thing, only instead of decrying the lack of church, he would bemoan the numbers of non-Catholics, and claim that if everyone would just convert to *his* religion it would solve everything.
No thanks. I'll take random.
21
All the evils of the world are justified by treating the involuntary act of getting born as "original sin".
In fairness, Ross really doesn't proselytize much. Yes, he frequently mentions religion as a positive force, but I can't recall ever seeing him spout the kind of condescending sermons you accuse him of. He's a religious person, but he's not writing a religious column. Do us all the favor of reading the column before commenting, instead of adhering to preconceived, and incorrect, assumptions - I'm a committed atheist and I can manage this.
I'll be witness to my own experience in truth, that I didn't care much about people when I stopped being a Catholic, nor did I see value in others, nor did I have great confidence that there was any meaning in life. However, I stopped being a Catholic because I simply could no longer believe in a personal God, or any God, or in heaven and hell; the facts of science refute all these things to the candid mind. Religion is a lie, but it has a salutary effect on the individual and society from a moral and psychological viewpoint.
Our consumer economy depends on a depressed population. If people are happy, they don't need as much "stuff" and they spend less. Thus, the advertising, entertainment, fashion and media industries - in concert with the government - work to make people feel as badly as possible. And they seem to be doing a great job of it.
8
Gee, Ross, no, actually the doomsayers of five years ago sounded just as wrong then as now, to those of us who know anything. "Structural unemployment" is a trope conservatives trot out after every recession. It's a convenient notion for the policy of do-nothing, for wage suppression, for blaming workers, for not funding stimulus. Like all bogus ideas, it always turns out to be wrong.
The idea that Obamacare was bad for the economy was likewise convenient to those whose taxes paid for it. The rest of us knew separating work from healthcare meant freedom to choose noncorporate jobs. The rest of us wonder why the rich are discouraged from working by taking their money, and the poor discouraged by giving them money.
Income inequality lies at the root of the social ills you decry. The booming economy is benefiting the rich all out of proportion. The median wage has barely budged in 40 years, while the economy doubled. You don't think that has any relationship to dropping birth rates, the opioid epidemic, and rising suicides? Your prescription is to do nothing, and see if the economy heals all? Brilliant.
Higher taxes on the rich, a carbon tax, universal healthcare, tuition-free college, and regulated universal broadband. There's a prescription for reducing inequality and bringing more opportunity to the vast majority of Americans. Isn't that what government is for?
24
The fact is, people abuse that which is given to them without having to EARN it first. Too many of us already think we’re entitled to a living wage, comfortable life, suitable housing, full medical care, annual vacations, late model cars and more without having to justify it much less earn it.
Very helpful - thanks!
1
Fair enough. But most of the welfare state really IS earned. Most people work and pay taxes for the government benefits they eventually recieve. Just because some people do game the system is no reason to ruin things for everyone.
And while I am also disturbed by people who act entitled, I must note that Republicans, for all their attacks on the welfare state, have never stopped enlarging their own air of entitlement.
Many of the social ills that Douthat centers on, are caused not by economic factors so much as rather a dim and gloomy outlook on life. The overuse of opioids and suicide stems for a desire to end or tune out from one's current perception of life, irrespective of social or economic status. Ms Spade recently sold her business for several billion and Robin Williams was an acclaimed actor yet--. Certainly, one of the booming factors convincing folks that life is deteriorating is the rise and prevalence of writers and speakers who nearly always see the darker side of situations, such as Mr. Douthat. And even though wrong most of the time about where we are heading, he and others continue to write and be employed. We don't need new social programs, as Douthat points out, but maybe we need our chroniclers to really think through if what they are saying advances the common good. Where, actually, did the idea rise that the owners of a newspaper had the right to preach to the rest of us?
Ross really isn't the doom and gloom type - on the contrary, he's always looking for solutions. I will never understand where so many commenters are getting their impressions of him.
Robin Williams faced an implacable decline from Parkinson's dementia.
1
Why is the declining birthrate presented as bad news? That is exactly what we need if we want to achieve a gradual adaptation to the realities of climate change rather than an abrupt one. Expanding population and an expanding economy accelerate our path toward sea level rise.
10
Exactly. I couldn't agree more.
2
Material growth will never ease social problems, only exacerbate them. Uncontrolled growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. Most peoples' houses are filled with glittery, unused objects, while we sit in electronic cocoons alienated from our family, friends, communities and from nature. That is a major reason for so much unhappiness and anomie. And of course this mode of life is completely unsustainable. The planet will go on fine without doubt, it just may not support our puny species. I have happily spent a great deal of time in so-called backward undeveloped countries among people who by and large are far more content with their lot than the average American. That is the dirty secret where media sensationalism about violence in our southern neighbor conceals the reality that life in Mexico tends to be far more pleasant than it is in the United States. I for one welcome voluntary simplicity and the contraction of the economy.
5
"Demand" is still manufactured in the US.
"don’t revive centrist dreams about cutting Social Security"
Since when is cutting Social Security a centrist dream. Mr. Douthat? I know it's a Republican dream to abandon large fractions of our People to destitution, but I can't square the viciousness of such and act with the adjectives 'centrist' or 'moderate'.
23
Once again Ross seems to be occupying an alternate universe from the rest of us. The one point of access is his is this "...Michael Strain pointed out for Bloomberg News this week, inequality has stopped rising over the last decade or so, and if you include government transfers it’s going down..." Because down that rathole we have to push the war on benefits, health care, food stamps, and all forms of government support and the continuing attack on Social Security. We also have to acknowledge that this comment was written in total ignorance and avoidance of the recent Trump-world tax bill that will transfer enormous wealth to the top few percent at the cost of the middle class and future generations. That is not reducing inequality--it is increasing it at a rapid and unsustainable pace.
The unemployment numbers are equally interesting. Economic growth is one factor, thank heavens, but the other is the Trump war on immigration which tightens the source of employees to the point of starvation for some industries and regions.
So this is a temporary and transient moment that Ross wants to celebrate. It will not last and it will get worse, which he refuses to recognize. Welcome to Trump world--its all about me and now, not about you and then.
10
Russ..take a little trip with me to fantasy land. What if living in the richest and the greatest country the world has ever known, meant that all of its inhabitants...
had the security of knowing that their health needs would be unfailingly met--without outrageous premiums, mystery billing and Kafka-like administrative dead-ends...where business owners would not be encumbered by the need to provide said "insurance"...and where this was done at half the cost
were encouraged to have children by the availability of quality child care at reasonable cost
had jobs which paid a living wage (do you have any concept of what your life be like on 30K?--try "I Have Post-Brokeness Stress Disorder" on today's op-ed page)
could benefit from a quality primary education and opportunity for higher education or trade school without the $250K buy-in and without life-choking student loans
In such a society you have a foundation for child-rearing, community, institutions. Most people--i.e the 50% who'd be overcome by a $400 bill, or those with shifting schedules don't have the time or means to go to church or join a bowling league.
Now I'm not saying that Germany, Scandinavia et al are Utopia, but honestly now: who's doing a better job? How do they do it? The government. Not the free market. It is not the job of Mobil, Monsanto, Novartis, Pepsi, etc. to create a just, fair society. "Fiduciary responsibility", etc.
Yet you still want to drown the govt. And eliminate SS.
Whatever.
14
Desperation is America's motivation.
Unless you are closely associated with those riches, simply being a citizen of the worlds richest country does not confer any financial benefits upon you. Which is why the six Walton heirs have more right to the fruits of Sams efforts than the guy collecting shopping carts in the parking lot or the woman unloading one of their tractor trailers in the warehouse. It’s why again gets paid before the cashier who rang up that kids bike you bought five years ago.
"Don’t freak out about deficits in the absence of inflation;..."
At the lowest point of the last recession, when people were watching their hopes for their families fall apart Douthat had a different opinion. He was writing columns justifying Paul Ryan's demands for contractionary austerity and the House's extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe he could write a column explaining why that made sense then, when legislative policy could really have a made a difference, but not now. Now at the height of the business cycle, when there's no economic justification whatsoever, he's all for reckless debt financed stimulus.
No one can predict what would have happened if we had sane conservative policy in those years. If we had intellectuals on the right who cared about the common good rather than hacks like Douthat whose opinions on policy shift depending on who gets the blame/credit. But whether at least some of that economic pain could have been prevented for people struggling, it was also by design and Douthat condoned that sabotage because he saw political advantage in doing so. And the instant his party is out of power, his opinions will change just as quickly.
5
If true to historical form, the economy will tank just before the 2020 elections and changes will be made.
Unfortunately there's a chance it will tank after the election, the so-called president will be reelected and 'Merica will suffer through the idiocy of KKKonservatives trying to address economic problems without leaving the trough. Welcome to the even Greater Recession.
1
I hear your "wall to wall" Trump frenzy and think, America has little to offer other than religion, war and gambling. There is no American soul. Rather than telling their sons and daughters not to go into the military, Americans proudly send their cannon fodder. What does that tell you?
3
Ross, please read what people reference in their articles. The Michael Strain piece you mention is riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the CBO's report. Yes, indeed inequality momentarily stopped increasing during two periods since 1979 in 2001 and 2008, during times of recession and stock market volatility.
2
Sorry, Ross, but same-sex marriage is not the onset of Armageddon. Trump's election was. Your God can't protect you from Donald Trump, any more than he can turn water into wine.
16
Is a lie superior to the truth? It's hard to determine what's real and what is not!
Our millennials et. al have a solution. Techno dropout! Video games etc.
1
We don't have a strong economy. We have a president doing everything he can to create chaos in his home, in our country and in the world.
Maybe when business starts adding up the costs of the tariffs, from attorneys to lobbyists, cost of good sale of goods, maybe they will wake up and ask our worthless conniving congress to get rid of this nutjob before he sets off a nuke.
2
The evangelicals are against gay marriage.
I remember when the South fought to keep segregation.
We even killed some people fighting to keep segregation.
Today, we look back and ask how that could ever be.
50 years from now, people will look back and wonder how people could fight so hard against same sex equal rights.
3
Ross believes that christian extremists should get to decide which adults can marry in the US. Just pray that into law and our lives will become more satisfying.
Huh?
6
RD states that liberals are waging a "... culture war against conservative religious institutions ..."
How very wrong. Conservative religious institutions, i.e., evangelicals and their dominionist subset, are actively at work to destroy the First Amendment separation of church and state to implement their version of a theocracy in the USA. This truly is a culture war against our federal government and all freedom loving persons and is horror show we don't want to see.
Key culture warriors for the religious right is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in Arizona. Funded by evangelical organizations, this group of lawyers / lobbyists are at work in most states to assure that state and local legislation includes wording that furthers the aims of the evangelicals.
The only agenda of "liberals" (whoever that is these days) is to keep America from becoming a Taliban-style theocracy.
14
Religious institutions are a big part of the American economic problem, because they are a colossal burden on the taxpayer. Get rid of churches, tax them, and you'll be able to have a welfare state. That's more "Christ like" in the end, anyway.
10
Its mostly because we have a snake, leading the country!
3
It's odd, and unfortunate, that Douthat almost always feels the need to throw a sop to the most unreasonable elements of the right wing in his otherwise reasonable pieces. The idea that the left's problems with evangelicals stem from the Obergefell decision is ludicrous. Frankly, I thought Obergefell was wrongly decided, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the obvious hypocrisy of the evangelicals, their deceit and inconsistency. I actually find it laughable that they call themselves Christians.
9
Roe v. Wade was indecisively decided. There is no right to privacy recorded in the Constitution because it lists only the powers and structures of the federal government. The right to privacy and management of one's own body is a reserved power of the people.
It seems you have not actually read Row v. Wade. If you insist there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, where do you find the reservation of privacy and management of one's own body?
Your obvious and deep bias render this piece worthless. "Centrist dreams about cutting Social Security." How in anyone's mind could you call that extreme position "centrist?" The idea of cutting Social Security is radical right wing meanness. And liberals do not have a culture war against churches. That's your own hyper-religiosity interpreting the insistence of Church and State separation. Liberals can go to church. Liberals can believe in God. What liberals and most Americans don't want is your religion affecting my civil rights. You think abortion is murder? Good for you. Don't have one. You think same sex marriage is a sin against nature? Don't marry a same sex spouse. Do you see the difference, Douthat? None of these is the hysterical "war against religion" that you personally believe. It's a shame that some reasonable points you make are drowned by your innate bias.
16
Is Douthat referring to those conservative religious institutions that will make a deal with the devil, complete with "mulligans" so they can buy new $54 million private jets for their pastors?
We still are no where the 4-6% GDP growth Trump promised, yet the economy is "really cooking" while my tax cut is sucked into my gas tank by rising gas prices.
Why do we have to wait for the next Great Recession to hit? We know what deregulating financial markets will do as surely as we know what taking away peoples' HC insurance will do.
I don't know of Douthat is old enough to remember, but that Carter economy was really cooking, too.
7
"post-Obergefell culture war against religious institutions"?
and that would be recognizing science in our daily lives and insisting that religious freedom means freedom from it as well as to worship the Easter bunny at taxpayer expense
2
Ross seems unaware that the GOP see the poor as a resource to be exploited. And that President Trump cares only for himself, making no pretense to be president of the entire United States. In other words, with the GOP in control in Washington, there is no planning for the future, just immediate looting.
8
A declining birthrate is a really, really, good trend!
7
It's not so simple. A declining birthrate has very serious consequences for the economy as there are too few younger workers helping to support older ones. Without a balanced birth rate, serious social problems can result. So you can cheer that it's better for the Earth, but poor, desperate societies generally value survival above environmental concerns.
3
Yes, Scott, and this is why they are ultimately destroyed as we will be. "Environmental concerns" sounds like you're talking about something other than the means to sustain life. Our population will fall--most likely the traditional way: famine, pestilence and war.
The best solution? Use social pressure to move the birth rate deep into negative territory and backfill our needs (at every level, menial laborer to PhD) via open immigration.
Some cautious skepticism may be more in tune to the reality we are living under the thumb of a wildly capricious 'demon' in the White House, sowing discord not only at home (a reign based on 'fear, hate and division') but abroad. Even markets need some certainties, security, to function well. But this is treacherous when you don't know what imbecile move is next in Trump's rising arrogance. The economy may be doing well, since Obama's rescue in 2008; but our social framework, with a constant and unresolved chronic stress, and escape into drugs and suicide, leaves a lot to be desired. Did you notice that our standing in the world, as a shining democracy protecting human rights, has all but disappeared under thuggish Trump? That his corporate tax cuts will have long-term adverse consequences? That his trampling on the environment does carry a real danger to Earth's health, and our own survival? How do you explain the rampant abuse of power in Trump's misrule, a shameless corrupt Pruitt undoings at Trump's pleasure? Something is not right, rotten instead, don't you think?! Your column is far too benign towards the worst runaway president we have had, as he get away with 'murder' unmolested.
7
The entire premise of the column is not just flawed but utterly wrong. Since most of the jobs available today to those with fewer than two degrees aren't worth having, what then, exactly, are you talking about, Ross? I don't think you have any idea. Worse, I don't think you know that you don't have any idea. The price of everything continues to rise rapidly--in the case of real estate, insanely. The kleptocracy continues unabated, and not just inside the Toddler Presidency. Wage inequality has stopped rising, is in fact on the decline? What planet are you living on, man, and can I go there with you sometime? It sounds better than this one.
5
“.........if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric.”
Really? What about the decades long culture war that conservative religious institutions waged against the millions of us who just wanted to be ourselves and live our lives and be a part of the promise of this great nation? What about how their fear, resistance to inclusion, their denial of Christ's word, their hate, damaged the social fabric? Their vitriol encouraged families to reject and cast out their own flesh and blood. Their aggression inspired countless exclusions, criminalization sand murders. Their sad selective and facile interpretation of the Bible, and their fear caused countless tragedies. Their arrogant certainty fueled nothing but conflict but now you blame us?
8
Thank you Mr. Douthat for your important perspective. Shoring up the social fabric while the economy is steaming along makes sense, like saving for the proverbial rainy day.
However, with the prevailing political attitude of feast at the taxpayers's trough now and a maniacal narcissist as President, the empathy and caring needed to focus on these needs is severely lacking.
Thus, we will have grim times when the good times end, thrice as bad because our politicians laughed at the clouds on the horizon.
4
Inequality has stopped rising?
Who says?
Not these numbers.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/inequality-is-rising-global...
3
Ross, meet Pope Francis. Your conservative thinking really needs an update.
3
Entropy always wins, however. The planet continues to warn us about the ravages of capitalism and growth. The oceans are a seafill, our effluvia is warming the planet to a degree not even imagined, etc. etc. The rich continue their scorched Earth campaign and they may actually get it.
2
This is hilarious, marriage equality did not stop people from going to church, that downward trend was happening for a couple of decades.
7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America
https://churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-fac...
1
Why do conservatives always claim that bettering social ties requires churches???
2
Inequality has stopped rising over the last decade or so ? I guess Douthat hasn't heard about the tax bill passed last year. Interesting what drivel some people are willing believe to forward their agenda.
14
You're mouthing the words, but you've changed their meaning.
It's the devils work.
Speaking of the devil, here's this: "weakening" of churches. Churches are not 'weakening', Ross, neither is the spiritual live of the nation, much as you hunger to think so.
Your Conservative team has pulled an Anti-Christ-level transformation of religion. Scott Pruitt, (Scott Pruitt!) is deacon of his Baptist church. That exquisitely slippery and fragrant snake asserts he's doing exactly what God told him to do. Stealing millions, abusing his office and his constituents, lying, cheating... Yet he and the Walking Damnation in the White House are heralded as later-day saviors of true religion.
Your people haven't left the church; your woebegone church, notably the Deep State of your Catholic church, have abandoned the people. If there's a spiritual crisis, you made it.
Or this: "...how genuinely good recent economic trends have been" or "...the economy is really cooking for the first time in almost 20 years...".
Are you this disconnected from reality? Or is your economic life as perverse as your church life? This economy is not cooking. People failing while killing themselves in two or three jobs, neighborhoods consigned to ruin and despair, workers reduced to wage slavery, illness, crisis and want do not bespeak cooking of any sort.
You're an unrepentant elitist, heartless and blind.
From your pedestal of privilege and influence you see no further than your expensive shoes.
9
Speaking of the devil, Trump is beginning to look like the picture of Dorian Grey, or even Oscar Wilde in his later years. Trudeau is young, thin, and good looking: Jealousy, another commandment broken.
2
"(Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric.)"
It's not a culture war. It's about right and wrong in the commercial business place. The same logic WAS used to deny blacks to sit at the whites lunch counter. The logic is "Because I believe ---- (insert belief)---i have a right to refuse to sell to you."
It is wrong to use religion as an excuse for discrimination. It is wrong to use religion and a justification for race supremacy. Our history is built on exactly those views, and it resulted in a devastating Civil War.
It would be nice to skip "Civil War II - The Return of the Haters"
How would you feel if I refused to bake a cake because you were an Evangelical Christian. What would the editorials scream if I refused to bake it for Editors?
4
@Bob Woods . . . you make an important point well. Thank you.
Greed isn't good. But your party, Mr. Douthat, thinks it is.
10
Yes Mr. Douthat, as I often do, when I read your sentiments I usually agree... with your sentiments. However, I'm always at a loss as to what you are willing to do, as a voter and tax payer. Conservatives tend to only rely on the free market for social improvement... it's hard to say otherwise when you gripe and grouse about paying for ANYTHING that doesn't directly benefit your economic mobility. You may say that you give to your church, which is good. I would argue that 90% of what you give is going to the church itself (keeping it running and for sending Bibles to Azerbaijan etc.), and the last 10% that goes to actually helping others is often restricted to Christian others.
We are all adult enough to agree that the economy, even when tended meticulously, will ebb and flow. The free market will never be the ultimate source of an equal, generous society. We must contribute, on a personal level, to ensure that social progress is had. I believe that my taxes are a major part of that social contract and I am happy to pay them when I feel they are going to our general welfare, and not into corporate pockets.
People always take advantage of any system. But given the choice of who might unfairly take advantage of my tax dollars, I'd rather it be a thousand poor people than one investment banker.
If you truly believe in civilization and the betterment of others (that's OTHERS, not just the folks who resemble yourself), what will you be willing to pay for Mr. Douthat?
4
With so huge a deficit, an economy that goes well goes so because of or thanks to this deficit ( thank you China?).
4% umemployment rate is impressive if and only if you do not have a closer look at the quality and sustainability of the jobs created.
Repairing a crumbling social fabrics is, anyway, not a matter of opportunity (if that means something), but a matter of chosen values and policy.
1
Mr. Douthat, you forget one small grim trend: the planet is dying.
Among the two great existential threats we now face, including nuclear holocaust caused by accident or unauthorized launch, is human-caused climate disruption. This threat is caused in large part by economic growth predicated on wasteful consumption.
That out of control capitalist rapaciousness must radically and rapidly change if we’re to save ourselves. We’ve got to man up to that.
2
I love how a writer will turn up, from anywhere across the ideological/social spectrum, telling all of us how best to live; or what is wrong with us collectively. All from the comfort of their privileged position.
I'm not trying to be overly critical here because in a complex society there must be some who take on the guise of our conscious and such. But for all the chatter, all the talk, speculation, angst and the rest that emits from that quadrant does it not come down to some very simple advice first stated many, many, moons ago? Do for others what you would have done for you.
If we can resurrect that sage advice from the grave of our good intentions then we would all be the better for it.
John~
American Net'Zen
“Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. . . . Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”- Robert F.Kennedy, March 18 1968
2
Mr. Douthat and the GOP are cheering about the low unemployment levels, but all those "employed" folks are not cheering. Many are employed, but they know they are a heartbeat away from being unemployed and have very little job security. The Gig economy has made folks unable to plan for the future and they do not have the motivation or the time to invest in the civic life of their communities. The unemployment rate is not a good indicator these days of the economic health on Main Street.
Please, Mr. Douthat, stop this paranoid nonsense that the crazy liberals are trying to destroy religious institutions. Organized religion is responsible for plenty of self inflicted wounds. I do agree that lower participation in civil institutions is a problem, but I believe this is a function of the lack of economic stability on Main Street, discouraging average citizens from engaging in a community where they are not likely to be for very long.
3
As usual, Ross, you throw in a few straw men I'm sure you know are disingenuous. "...war on religious institutions?" Call it what it is: We don't want your church dictating our personal norms. "Centrist" cutting of social security? Call it what it is: the favorite right-wing fever dream. Oh, forget it. Let's just focus on one thing even you might have to agree on: The lower unemployment numbers cover up the fact that those jobs are less secure, come with less benefits, and do less to close the gap than ever before. The best time to build a safety net is when the economy is, as you put it, cooking. You advise waiting, which is exactly the wrong answer.
1
The notion that Mr. Douthat's pipe dream could really happen at a time when our current leadership is determined to tear us apart seems ridiculous.
The economy we have now is the direct result of the 8 years of recovery and foundation built under Obama in response to that last time Republicans controlled the economy. If the naysayers - mostly on the right - were completely wrong about those Obama years as they were wrong under Bush then almost certainly they are equally wrong now, and what we are seeing is merely the euphoria that typically precedes our running over the cliff.
3
What is going on here? Where is the Republican fixation on the U-6 "true" unemployment number - or even higher still because who can believe the lying government fake statistics - instead of the suddenly attractive "less than 4%". Likewise the $21 trillion in debt for our grandchildren to pay off. In what alternate reality are there "centrist dreams about cutting Social Security"? Maybe in the center of the far-right Republican party.
As noted by others, a falling birth rate is overall a good thing. Will NYC be a better place if it has 35 million inhabitants, and still continually growing? Does encroachment on and destruction of now semi-wilderness areas stop as the population increases? Or human contributions to global warming? Maybe the quarter-to-quarter profit growth numbers for public companies and the resulting "compensation" and performance bonuses should just have to suffer a bit instead.
As for the sudden Republican apparent concern about suicide and opioid overdoses, where is the individual liberty and individual responsibility we hear so much about, and the odious jack-boots of Big Government coming to help that we need to fear and fight? How about the hideous Socialism of public money and government employees intervening in private matters?
Aside from revealing how little Republicans actually care about their political talking points, I have a hard time being persuaded that there is actually any reconsideration going on.
1
It is Sunday and since, as an atheist, I don't go to church, I'll do the Christian thing and find one good thing in Douthat's column.
Yep, there is a good thing. As Douthat points out, schools and colleges must stop being carried along and carried away by information-age propaganda. Technology is convenient, but its ubiquity is a net loss for learning and child development.
1
We seem to muddle along despite all obstacles. For many, many generations of the human species there have been obstacles to the “good” life however it was defined at the time. Imagine being a farmer in the path of the Mongol invasions or a survivor of the Black Death attempting to revitalize village life.
Life has been a struggle for most folks who have ever been. There is nothing wrong with Ross writing this article, it is what we need from time time to time to remind us of our human dillemas. However, just like the old song of the South, “ He keeps on rollin’ along”, we need to do the same.
In short with some content adjustment: Obama's economy repair has been effective - his healthcare initiative was not destructive and gave millions access to medical care - and we have a new president who fully represents the social ills and dereliction that come from the grave misfortune of 'having it all', so the masses shouldn't pine for greater wealth.
Got it.
2
Could a lot of the cultural malaise we are in have anything to do with the toxic popular culture we have created over the last thirty years?
I watch a lot of youtube videos from the seventies and am amazed at how many of them have comments from people in their teens and twenties saying they wish they had a time machine and could back to the sixties and seventies.
There was a war and a recession back then but the popular culture was mostly positive and people seemed to be much happier.
It was a time before cynicism and gangster rap and hyper partisan news programs. Before rudeness on the Internet and people on their cell phones twenty four seven.
What people want and what they need has been confused.
Who should we blame for the epidemic of school shootings? Are they in any way related to the "booming" economy? What actions have religious institutions taken to address social issues? Should they? What is the relevance?
Lost in Mr. Douthat's somewhat glowing review of the "Trump economy" is that he appears to be giving Trump credit, after less than a year in office, for seemingly instant results. He does this while failing to tip his hat to the reality that it was the seeds that President Obama sowed through two terms of hard work that have truly invigorated the economy. The depth of the economic hole that Obama dug us out of cannot be overstated.
Yes, timing is everything, and yes, it's easy, albeit somewhat lazy, to give Trump credit because improvement is indeed happening on his watch. But it is as superficial as Trump himself to ignore the fact that we've come a long way since the Bush II economic disaster. It is not our current president, but the last one, who really deserves the credit for putting us on the corrective path that is now bearing fruit.
2
These are not good times. The economy is being propelled by massive tax cuts to the wealthy while nearly two trillion dollars of new debt is added to an already staggering debt. The result of this Republican stroke of genius is that the social safety nets are now closer to being shredded. We have a president who is incompetent to administer the federal government and America is in full retreat on his watch. Tariffs will drive more good jobs offshore while air and water pollution worsen daily. All the while, Russia and China are licking their chops. Resistance is the only option and it is liberals at the barricades. And don't get me started on your nonsense about conservative Christians as victims. Villainy and anti-Americanism is the stock in trade of evangelicals of all denominations. Grim trends in grim times, Ross.
Good times for who exactly? Majority of us are ruled by a bunch of predators whom we now know were all along and *still are* in cahoots . Anyone who doesn’t want to be involved in that or who has been on receiving end has to think very, very carefully about bringing kids into the world they’ve created.
1
Our current situation indicates economic success in the face of social disintegration due mainly to moral decline as religions embraced sociological fashions and Progressive political solutions. The primary to blame for this is the post Vatican II Catholic Church which ceded it's place as a moral stalwart replacing it with largely Democrat Social Justice initiatives that have given us the moral chaos that exists today. On the other hand, Evangelical Protestants have done a generally good job of upholding their moral code.
The only fix for our current condition is a return to Judaeo-Christian morality where folks stay married, where women tend their children, and where everyone is their brothers keeper.
Accordingly, to reg
1
Rarely agree with your words or political suasion, Ross Douthat, but today your headline hit the ball right out of the park "Grim Trends in Good Times". Yes, social media today is isolating Gen Ys and Millennials from the reality of life itself. Our young people -- isolated while plugged 24/7 into their smartphones -- are bereft of learning how to befriend, love and marry during these valueless and chaotic times.
"Post-Obergefell culture" (your blaming Liberals for espousing LGBT marriage) has nothing to do with the rot of our social culture. High-tech widgets and games are isolating our youngest Americans from the beauty of reality. You are correct, Ross, to describe the Trump Era as "wall-to-wall frenzy". And yes, this chaotic era will pass, leaving catastrophe in its wake, no matter today's good jobs news.
1
A Ross Douthat piece is never complete until he blurts out some paranoid accusation about the unrelenting war on religion. What he fails to see is the so-called war is defensive. Religious conservatives are desperate to use government to impose their values on those whose beliefs differ, which is tyranny. And for what it's worth, that is a key cornerstone of the GOP that delivered Trump. Otherwise, a thoughtful piece.
1
So the GOP that fights every turn toward more universal scientifically based mental and physical heath care would be our savior?
So causing consternation to ultra-conservative religious by finally giving a maligned mostly very productive and socially good group the legal right to join together with the person they love in peace and acceptance is a sign that the Nation is losing its moral footing?
So insisting that public commerce (say a cake baker) not discriminate against people properly asking for services in support of an end that in and by itself is legal and are NOT asking for anything objectively offensive e.g. inciting violence nor meanness to others and that would simply be a nice part of something that celebrates life, love, and unselfish commitment is (that insisting) the bane of this Nation?
So calling religious pretensions and suppositions so obviously incongruent to a modern World but more importantly so obviously out of touch with known reality invalid argumentation should make us all apoplectic?
So the fact that the States with the most religiosity (thus GOP infiltration) have the greatest overall social problems like opioid overdose deaths, active addiction, and violent crime per capita signifies that old time religion would be our cure?
What IS the signpost of our moral weakness - allowing a GOP that obviously cares little for the central social message of JC power and an obviously demonstrably deplorable dishonest person like Trump to be President!
5
Throwing out a couple of statements that seem detached from logic, reason and history, belongs more in a Fox News opinion piece than in a thoughtful NY Times column. How do you conclude that in an aging population, requiring more healthcare services and adding 20 million more paying customers would kill jobs. Although you seemed surprised it didn't, it's hard to understand why you would think along those lines.
Along the same vein, the prediction that gay marriage would destroy the social fabric of this country was already disproven in much the same way as gays serving openly in the military, did not destroy military readiness.
These conclusions that conservatives toss out without the need for explanation or evidence, contribute to the stereotype that conservatives ignore science and reason while substituting faith and gut mentality.
3
The strong economy will PROBABLY morph into high interest rates and inflation before the fall of 2020, but it is unlikely to do so before the fall of 2018. You watch Trump's approval rates inch up and it is truly truly scary. I'm beginning to fear that taking back the House is in jeopardy, and taking back the Senate is potentially out of the question. Douthat is increasingly becoming a voice of insight and wisdom as we progress further into this particular "long national nightmare." He is simply telling us all a dangerous truth. Commenters calling him names for doing so is naive foolishness.
This is what happens when you transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Why is the birth rate going down? Why are suicides going up? Economic despair, that's what.
What if we had a tax policy that was actually sustainable? You cannot run a modern society on tax receipts at 19% of GDP which is one of the lowest numbers among OECD countries.
Now we have a corporate tax policy that will reduce corporate taxes to the lowest as a percent of GDP since it's inception.
What would this country look like if its tax receipts were more like the rest of the OECD? What could we do from a policy perspective if federal taxes were 25% of GDP? How many roads could we build? How much could we improve education? How much could we help the working poor and those really unable to work?
But no, that is not going to happen. We have become a cruel society with no values other than the almighty dollar. But just wait for this next recession. It is going to be a doozy.
2
What world does Ross live in? I recently had a (relatively well-off; with decent insurance) newly divorced friend have her child taken to the hospital because the kid had horrible stomach pains and fever. The running medical bill (and looks like it could be just a bacterial infection) is $150K . 1.5 days in the hospital room - $40K. Ross - the economy might be chugging along - but there’s deep structural problems underneath which Trump will never fix. Add the tax cuts and a focus on prioritizing the values of corporations over common people - give it 12-18 months before we have another reckoning. And no evangelical church with their obsession with women’s bodies and homophobia is bringing the country together.
5
And I hate the growing cynicism and distrust towards all official pronouncements:
—Pharma greatly increased the opioid epidemic by promoting the use of an intractable pain medication for cancer into common off-label use pushing greatly increased dosages, the EPA no longer cares about chemicals in our water and air while Pruitt drives around with his security looking for used mattresses and moisturizer, Trump turns our nation into. A global pariah by insulting our allies while cozying up to tyrants and is either staring a massive trade war or simply hurting us all by destabilizing economic rules.....and let’s not forget our healthcare is poorer than other nations even as we can no longer afford it.....didn’t we go to war because of the thousands killed in 9/11 whole the GOP is planning on allowing far more of us die by destroying access to health care for millions....
What a short-sighted column this seems to me. The GOP took a solid economy and charged it up with debt. They gave the markets and wealthy a huge gift - 1.5 Trillion. They paid that for the short-term gift with the capacity to do things for the long-term good.
Healthcare, infrastructure, social programs, education, foreign aid - all of these and more go begging. We are unable to do the things that make America more competitive, more responsive, more responsible to our nation, its people and the world. And when bad times come, we will be handcuffed in our response by the added debt.
Add to this, we see the reflexive attacks on liberals and other easy targets such as the internet. We are asked to refrain from a "post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions," as if this "war" were started by liberals. I do not recall pro-choice liberals threatening and killing those who protest abortions. I do recall being told this is a "Christian nation," and the kind of Christianity they held it to be was one that would not be welcoming to those who of the wrong religion, wrong sect, wrong color or class.
This administration and this GOP have set us up for a fall economically. They have ripped apart the social fabric.
Mr. Douthat needs to look in the mirror before he writes more about where we are, how we got here, and where we may be going.
4
Which religion is the answer to our social problems ?
Is it the religion of someone who spoke constantly about helping the poor and the sick or is it the religion of those who preach the Gospel of Wealth on television ?
Is it the religion of those who fight tooth and nail for the rights of the unborn, but are muted while children are torn from the arms of their parents ?
Is it the religion of the man who fed the multitudes with some loaves and fishes before he preached his message or the man who said he needs a 54 million dollar luxury plane to preach his message ?
The column emphasizes that governmental leaders should not interfere with the amazing economic engine that is creating enormous wealth for the few while churches and schools might concentrate on the dangers of smartphones.
John 11:35
1
If we're going to let the economy cook, then why is it necessary to give carte blanche to industry to be bulls in an environmental china shop when business and profits are already sizzling?
2
Liberals have not declared culture war on conservative religious sensibilities. Those of US who are spiritual progressives insist upon equality for marginalised groups. We say do as Jesus taught: In EVERYTHING do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Spiritual progressives do not excuse bigotry and misogyny and lies in the name of religion.
1
Mr. Douthat mentions in passing liberals' "post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions." As someone has remarked in the past, "they only call it a war when we fight back."
I, along with all the liberals I know, have no problem with anyone believing whatever they believe. But when conservative religious institutions try to impose their views on the rest of us, I draw the line. If you believe that God says abortion is murder, well, I disagree with you, but when you tell people who believe differently that you are going to stop them from deciding how to make one of the most important decisions they will ever make, I draw the line. If you justify unlimited mining and fracking and polluting the world we live in because the Bible says we have dominion over the earth and the animals, I draw the line. And if you insist that teaching science has to include discredited "evidence" denying evolution and promoting fundamentalist Christian beliefs about creation, I draw the line.
PS: "...centrist dreams about cutting Social Security...." Centrist ??? Since when is cutting Social Security anything but a radical conservative dream? Next you'll be telling us it's the Democrats who have moved to the left, not that the GOP has been captured by extremists.
2
According to the secularists who dominate our culture, we are just meat puppets--atoms spinning in the void--and life is radically meaningless. So of course depression is pervasive, it's the only real response to the materialist ideology.
Free speech is a wonderful thing and I am all for it. The flip side of that freedom, however, is an obligation to speak the truth. We don't tolerate a person screaming fire in crowded theater if in fact that is a lie.
The same standard should apply to editorials in the press.
Why is it that Republicans and conservatives are given a podium from which to spew utter nonsense in a defense of the indefensible? Permitting that kind of duplicity in order to advance an odious or deceptive point of view does not serve our society nor our democracy well. The purpose of the fourth estate should serve the common person - the third estate. When the press serves the king it is just propaganda. When the clergy, like Catholic bishops and Evangelical leaders are served at the expense of the poor and middle class it is a theocracy, not a democracy.
The value of a free press is *only* to shine a light on the truth, not support the madness of a king or protect the power of a religion. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Douthat and his conservative ilk conveniently ignore consequences to espouse a point of view that time and time again has resulted in disaster. Trump and the conservative religious types may be served by this type of mendacity but We the People will suffer mightily for these policies and laws that are nothing more than a transparent attempt to subvert the intent of our Constitution and the idea that we are all equal under the law.
1
Hey Ross, Here's a news flash for you at your NYT news desk. I am actually a boomer churchgoer. And I am far too busy trying to find people to join my own Unitarian Universalist congregation than to waste time waging a "culture war" against phony Christians who haven't a clue what Christ really stood for. Stop projecting what they do against others.
We UU's actually believe in stuff and try to live our seven principles. Here they are:
1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Our founders were people like Ralph Waldo Emerson. We hold traditional church services with choirs, sermons, RE, coffee hours, prayer and meditation, and benedictions.
No, we don't have a creed or catechism or holy sees or edicts. We treat the Bible with respect as we do other holy scriptures, and we just try to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Try it sometime. You'll like it.
2
In WWII 405,000 Americans gave their lives and put the US on top of the world. Every president since has maintained that stature, except for this one. Thank goodness for the invention of the smartphone to take our minds off of reality.
3
It is true that unemployment is low. That is because employers have been allowed to hire part time and contract workers without benefits. These people remain poor and indebted and without hope for a future which includes adequate housing for families, totally dependent on a many times poorly functioning public school system, dependent on cars for transportation as public means are so poor. There are way too many of these poor people in all age groups who see very clearly how the other 90 per cent live. I hope the Democratic party can find ways to address this group's needs, hopes, aspirations. If not we will continue to have Republicans and Republican light Democrats. That means Trump and his ilk. That means an eventual loss of our democracy. Ross is correct. The people are not starving. But many are hopeless.
1
The best thing the US can do to improve our current situation is to vote every Republican out of office, starting with Trump.
1
I would take issue that our economic situation is in good shape---Trump's erratic economic behavior and the Republicans predictable economic behavior has set in motion forces whose unintended consequences will trash all the positive economic fundamentals President Obama put in place before he left office. The good news, if you could call it that, is these consequences will start to bite around 2020.
Good column. And along with the other social ills that need some attention, how about doing something about 30,000 people every year who die from guns.
To reinforce what the word "establishment" really means in the first amendment, contemporaries of Ben Franklin would say he established that lightning is electricity by an experiment using a kite, a Leyden jar, and a key. "Establishment" points to the source of a belief. An "establishment of religion" is thus a faith-based belief.
Mr. Douthat - you want to know why there are grim trends in good times? You can ride your pet hobby-horses all you like, but let's talk about some of the elephants in the room.
1) Civilization is under attack. The west - those "LIBERAL" democracies (and how you must hate that L word) are being deliberately destabilized by Vladimir Putin, aided and abetted by corrupt oligarchs and demagogues like Donald J. Trump. It's a zero-sum game in their eyes, and everyone else must lose so they can win.
2) Inequality is on the rise everywhere - and decades of research show that inequality has a negative effect on everyone in developed countries. The greater the difference between top and bottom, the worse it is for everyone. Crime, drugs, educational outcomes, teen pregnancy, health, life expectancy - you name it. Inequality makes it worse. It's the story no one wants to talk about.
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level
3) The world is in a slow-motion disaster. Climate change is happening, it's accelerating, and even those who deny it are still suffering the consequences. When food and water supplies are in jeopardy, when weather disasters happen more often... and the ones in power make it worse...
Getting rid of Trump would be a good start on dealing with all of those problems. Quit trying to change the subject Mr. Douthat.
1
It's always less than reassuring when a journalist, even an opinion writer, offers a link in support of a statement they've made and that link, it turns out, leads to another article by the same writer. Thus is the case for the link about anti-religious damage done near the end of this article . It's kind of like saying, It's true because I said it was true.
1
<<centrist dreams about cutting Social Security or suddenly increasing low-wage immigration>>
On what planet do "centrists" dream of cutting their own retirement incomes?
3
Things are not so great on the ground despite the economic numbers. Conservatives acknowledged this when Obama was president; now, however, the economic picture is supposed to be just peachy. Here’s the truth: There is a pervasive hopelessness permeating society. People are living paycheck to paycheck; people can’t take a day off if their child is sick without getting their pay docked; they have no savings and no retirement; their children are being murdered in the classroom; “Masters of the Universe” are manipulating money and markets and eliminating chains like Toys R Us and leaving empty buildings in every town in the country; the government is looking backward instead of forward and lying about our future prosperity which everyone secretly knows is not true; the religious have sacrificed piety for power. People are turning to drugs, drink, social media to fill this growing emptiness within.
When times are tough, people often choose between two stories: (1) I need to try harder; and (2) I'm a victim of inexorable fate. For many years, before it sold its soul to the sponsors of Citizens United, the mainstream GOP, in conjunction with the non-slave-state Democrats, whistled the "I need to try harder" tune as they worked.
Both parties understood the primacy of the opportunity of employment. One more for white people than black, but let's not go there right now.
We got a glimpse of an emerging successful GOP strategy in 1968 when Richard Nixon broke away from the "war and work" mantra that would have carried Nelson Rockefeller to the Presidency (Nixon barely won over the VP of possibly the most vilified man in America).
Nixon made 1968 about forgotten Americans, those who were not burning flags or rioting in cities; cleverly, he anointed a new voting bloc of middle-class American victims.
So, while the untethering of self-esteem from action began in earnest in Goldwater's campaign (which was so outre that no one expected its strategies could be tweaked to remove KKK and include The Silent Majority), it ramped up in Nixon's and then Reagan's, where President Ron sent the message in Philadelphia, MS and then again in Bitburg that those who believed the story that the black man in Mississippi and the Jew in Bitburg were victimizing nice white people could memorialize their own victimhood by voting GOP.
Ecce Trump, a victim with nukes. Who's our next GOP paladin?
1
One must wonder where Ross gets his idea that the economy is in a good position. He is probably listening to trump. With personal savings at the lowest level in half a century, its clear that Ross, though a devote right-wing catholic, is no economist.
2
I suspect if I dug up some writings by Douthat in 2012-2013 he would have railing against Obamacare and claiming it was a job-killer. Now he observes those criticisms were unfounded, but has that realization changed his views? From the tone of this column, probably not.
2
The comment about how liberals should recognize that their "post-Obergefell culture war against religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric" is deeply insensitive and mistakes effects for causes.
You know what does primary damage to the social fabric? Parents and communities disowning LGBTQ people, churches refusing ministries and sacraments to people based on gender identity and sexual orientation in the name of Christian love. As a Catholic, I experience this conflict as deeply painful; it is difficult to embrace my faith fully without feeling like (several kinds of) a hypocrite.
To turn around and pin the consequences of this distortion of the Christian message on people who fought to legalize love is disingenuous, and an example of the kind of discourse that makes civility across lines of difference increasingly elusive.
The liberal post-Obergfell culture war on Christian churches? Is insisting we are all God's children and He made all of us equal in His eyes, a war on Christianity? I am a Christian. I applauded the Obergfell decision.
1
"Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric."
So it's now the "liberals'" fault that evangelical and conservative "Christian" churches are now more focused on sound and light shows every Sunday, howling at Trump rallies, and paying for pastors' planes than taking care of their own old, poor, and sick.
1
The Leader went to an economic summit, deliberately arriving late and leaving early, and showing up late for each day, then signed on to a Statement, then left to go tweet in his private jet, where, in the absence of the press or the people he wanted to attack, he gleefully attacked both facts and his own statements, and insulted, in personal terms, Canada and the Western Alliance, all for the Victimized Dairy producers (of one Trumpian state)-- who currently sell more cheese than the entire Canadian economy combined. Of course, scatterbrained demagogy is beside the point, isn't it.
5
Cutting Social Security, Mr. Douthat, is not a "centrist dream." It is part of the ruling-class plutocrats' plan to starve the little people of every possible dollar, while giving themselves huge tax breaks.
5
Ross, your never ending bleating that churches are losing relevance is really a testament that many are finally seeing through the haze. Churches, regardless of denomination, demand suspension of facts and that their flavor of faith be allowed to take over. People have also discovered that that model is also used to obscure and excuse horrendous conduct. The now never ending revelations of sexual predation by ministers and priests, the horrendous scandal of the Magdalene Laundries or outright physical abuse of children by those who follow the notion of "spare the rod and spoil the child". But lets not forget the charlatans who take and live grand lives of mansions, yachts and jets at the expense of their "flocks". Knowledge is catching up, The inability of churches to broadly accept the LGBT community while a good portion of the rest of society has and moved on. The fixation on "sex" and the need to punish sin. Make no mistake Ross, the obsession with abortion and birth control has more to do with preventing sin without consequence than it does about preservation of life - way more. The problem all religions face today is that the world is growing up, knowledge is (and will continue) to inevitably trump faith. In the end, belief in an unseen something that has no concrete evidence of it's existence will lose. One should also never forget that a "shepherds" mission is to protect his flock until they can be shorn of their wool or led to slaughter.
2
"Of course, the wall-to-wall frenzy of the Trump era, in which everyone is constantly being asked to take sides in a battle to the death, makes these kinds of cultural efforts harder to formulate and pursue."
Every key government agency has been usurped by a trump dogma litmus test Incompetence and regression at every level is the result!
It's wall to wall Scott Pruitt -from environment -energy - HUD - consumer - treasury et al. Individuals who couldn't get a job as dog catcher in a blue state.
AND as we know "fish rots from the head down" -and the rotten head we are dealing with now has an 87% approval rating from his base.
These are not the stuff from which a new enlightenment will be shaped.
2
One quibble in an otherwise good column: Since when is cutting Social Security "centrist"?
1
I think we need a new myth. Mythologist Joseph Campbell says the old myths no longer function, and that society is changing so rapidly now that it's difficult for a new myth to form. Simply returning to the old myths will not work. https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-2-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myt...
I'm really happy the Obama recovery has not yet been wrecked by the poor choices of the Trump team. I hope they have the sense to continue to let it spin and, as you suggest, 'do no harm'. Good economies are notoriously fragile, and an idiotic trade war will destroy the current good time as surely as Smoot-Hawley did in the 20s.
In theory the tax breaks should not harm things, although those breaks will continue to undermine our society and middle class. And this is the larger problem: A trend of 40 years of undermining the working and middle class of this country by both parties but primarily the Republicans. We are starting to bear the fruits of this anti-Democratic and anti-Humanist effort, and the result is a loss of hope by a good portion of our people. Should we be surprised? As long as we persist in building an economic moat around the top 10% (and 1%) in this country, this great society will continue to dissolve and eat itself as surely as Rome fell in the first 400 years A.D. It's not too late to turn the tide: 70% highest tax bracket, Healthcare for all, free College. Those three items will do the trick, turn the tide, and save our Democracy. It's a simple answer, and you can be sure that the enemies of the American People will continue to fight against it, every step of the way, using every weapon they can find. At this point it's clear that they have no shame.
1
as long as moving money around is the priority of society, young people will accurately perceive a dim future.
Sure, let's just ride this expansion into the future and not worry about deficits or healthcare or the suicide rates or college debt. Hey, you're employed now! Maybe it's not the 80K job you lost, but you can learn to live on 30K with no health or retirement plans, right? And if they use the looming deficit as an excuse to cut your Social Security, well maybe it's your fault for not taking a second or third job flipping burgers. And don't give me any socialist talk about the rich paying their fair share of taxes. They're rich! That should excuse them from any responsibility.
1
Continuing and even increasing social anomie--suicide, mental health issues, drug addiction, etc.--in America despite economic improvements in society?
I cannot speak for society as a whole, but the economic improvements I see in society are too often associated with a mythical, illusory, hedonistic, strangely detached yet happily involved dichotomy of work vs. play which does not really solve all the looming problems for the human race, but which is rather a forcing of people into "work", the "useful" according to rather crude and authoritative standards, and when people are not forced into work they are told to "play", vacation, according to accepted standards.
Meanwhile population increases, the planet environmentally is ruined, the best minds are seemingly nowhere or are rendered ineffective (for example great intellectuals replaced by mere shills for this or that interest or deep sea scientists constantly writing about how the ocean is being destroyed but entirely run over by society and their work essentially futile), and a massive disconnect appears between what we are constantly told to do by authorities and what in our heart we know we should actually be doing.
And the mental health profession is complicit in all this, declaring mental problems are virtually entirely located in the person, that it's in YOUR mind, that you need to take a pill, when all around in society is cowardice, stupidity, vanity, greed, foolishness, corruption, enemy of sanity itself.
Mr. Douthat,
If you want to reduce abortions, give people sex education and birth control and reduce unwanted pregnancies.
Liberals are warring against conservative religious institutions, Mr. Douthat?
Oh golly. Maybe you call it war when they are against 'conservative' - aka Evangelicals - trying to impose their religion together with the arch-right political ideology onto the majority of Americans, while wanting to take us back to the pre-Enlightenment period.
As for our little darlings being dumbed down by social media and constantly using their smart phones, this country should follow France which has just passed a law that K-12 pupils are not allowed to bring cell phones to school anymore.
2
The economy is doing great if you want a low-wage job in the service industry, but you won't be able to afford health care and you may not be able to get food stamps for much longer. And with GOP tax cuts limiting your schooling to four days a week, you won't be smart enough for the higher paying jobs that require better educated immigrants.
5
The economy may be alive but it is not healthy. Ask those who have decent jobs yet struggle with basic needs and are one illness away from bankruptcy.
17
Full employment (a/k/a 4%) is just the right time to implement a "a federal job guarantee". The only structural limits are that the jobs should be transitional, in the non-profit sector, and pay less than the private business sector for similar work.
Transitional jobs keep families off the public dole, offer on-the-job education, sharpen skills, and enable the development of a resume that gives hiring managers cover for what would otherwise amount to hiring those hardest to employ.
Leaders on the left are ready to support a job guarantee program and those on the right have nothing to loose by joining this pro-family, pro-dignity, effort to provide long range stability and growth.
7
Liberals don't have a war against conservative religious institutions - they have a self defensive holding action against conservative religions war on them. Who is it that continually tries to seek advantage within the law, who tries to force others to live by their religious ideals, who ignores and dismisses the long and strong tradition of LIBERAL faith and churches, who believes all the support from govt should go to conservative faith? Not being able to insist on military going to prayer meetings and spending their MWR money on Christian events is not a war on Christians, it is self defense by others. Insisting that conservative churches play by the rules, that non church related groups don't get out of their tax obligations, that businesses obey civil rights protections is not war but a bulwark.
52
These people who defy "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" have decreed themselves God.
2
Ross thinks the economy is doing well, and that offers the opportunity to focus upon fixing society’s ills. His only caveat is Trump: “Of course, the wall-to-wall frenzy of the Trump era, in which everyone is constantly being asked to take sides in a battle to the death, makes these kinds of cultural efforts harder to formulate and pursue.”
Well, you don’t say?
Ross could add the impediment of inappropriate Trump appointees dismantling the safety net, cranking up global warming, and pollution of the environment.
And the supine GOP Congress doing whatever the bonkers Beckers and Uihleins and Wilks ask of them.
And then there is the little problem of tariff wars and nuclear wars.
But let’s be optimistic - the rich 1/4% are doing fine.
23
There is nothing centrist about cutting social security -- that's strictly right wing. It's a sign of how lopsided our political philosophies have gotten that anyone can claim it as a centrist position.
30
I agree with a lot of what Ross is saying (this is unusual). But some of these problems could be helped, not hurt, with some leadership from Mr. Trump.
5
Unbridled capitalism (the quintessential American deity) and humanism do not go hand in hand.
The ten year and counting recovery bolstered by now wanton deregulation and the burden of deficits as far as the eye can see will have its destructive due.
As Ross portends the inevitable economic collapse will be deeper, broader and far uglier given our burgeoning decline into anomie.
18
This infantile nation makes some kind of weird religion out of banking.
"don’t revive centrist dreams about cutting Social Security"
No, Mr Douthat, those are not centrist dreams. Those are the dreams of the far right, Ayn Rand, libertarian, objectivist fringe. Put the Overton Window back where it belongs.
38
This conservatism of conserving nothing is a black hole distorting political space itself.
2
Maybe wage growth is not a cure. Price and cost reductions on all goods, housing and energy is this a possible cure.
Oh! The latter requires a depression or a severe recession, the former requires inflation.
The economic situation we are headed for is completely unknown, this is a global challenge.
Hopefully, new leadership globally step up and realistically provide some adult supervision.
I am betting on millennial and Gen’xers. Boomers and older get out of the way.
5
The Republican party has surrendered to the far right, which now has its' sights on dividing and conquering this country.
That is what must be addressed.
23
It takes time for policies, whether beneficial or detrimental, to percolate through a country as large and diverse as the US. To recover from the Great Recession took almost all 8 years of the Obama administration, in part because a Republican Congress threw one roadblock after another under the pretense that deficit was out of control but in fact to prevent Obama from taking credit for any positive change. Now that the economy has recovered and Republicans are fully in charge the deficit is set to explode, a trade war has just begun and we have a President that is relinquishing world leadership to Russia and China, has no use for scientific facts and is best at alienating allies. What can possibly go wrong in the next two years?
41
I quite agree with what serban says.
The problem is that (we?) in the upper middle class and higher are not paying our fair share. The money has to come from somewhere to fix our infrastructure, bolster social security for the next 100 years, shore up healthcare and prevnt the deficit from going into outter space etc. etc.
Right now its hard to image how we are to do this. Maybe it would help if the people who call themselves Christians would start acting like it.
14
Income inequality has stabilized at levels not seen since the 20's so there is no need to be concerned about it anymore? This philosophical insight bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to that of Douhat's fellow conservative moralist David Brooks the other day when he suggested that outrage over school shootings and the 11,000 annual gun homicides generally is misplaced because there are fewer of them than 20 years ago.
20
I have no problem with people who have religious beliefs different from mine. It's their constitutional right. What I object to is the continuous attempts by the religious right to void the absolute separation of church and state in our Constitution by forcing their religious views on others who do not share them. Opposition to the right of a woman to make her own reproductive choices is the prime example.
I would never attempt to pass laws that would, for example, command that these so-called Christians respect other religions and atheists. That's already written implicitly into the Constitution.
36
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" plainly bars any legislation that treats any tenet of religion as a scientifically established reality.
1
The idea that we need more respect for religion is utter nonsense. Right wing religions demands that religious freedom means everyone else must fall in line with their extreme beliefs is a major part of what is wrong in this country.
First, do no harm.
A nice thought, but I would argue that the harm has been done - by the Rush Limbaughs, the Fox News propagandists, and the churches that have lost the spirit of fellowship.
The ideological division that these demagogues have put in place is not any sort of casual thing. It has become the measure by which Americans decide whether or not they can tolerate each other.
A former good friend of some 40 years now believes passionately that climate change is a conspiracy hoax, that the unemployed are unmotivated loafers who have it too easy, and that there is a gay agenda that must be opposed. We can no longer have civil conversations.
I honestly do not see how a booming economy will heal the descent into tribalism that pervades so many in our society. And no, Ross, centrists are not the problem-makers.
42
I too weep for friendships fractured.
2
I have several of those former friends as well... makes me wonder whether they were always stupid and I just didn’t see it or did they ingest something that thankfully I didn’t.
1
So, to summarize, the economy is just peachy but our society is rotting. So then, if the economy goes south any time soon and before we can regain social meaning and cohesion, we will have to look to Trump and his GOP for salvation.
We are really in for it.
23
The "wage growth should be faster" is obvious. Gee, I thought that big tax break corporations just got was supposed to do something about that. Oh wait, they passed virtually all those savings on to their shareholders in the form of stock buybacks. What a surprise.
29
I congratulate Mr. Douthat on his late to the party realization that the economic policies of President Obama, far from engendering economic chaos, had instead started to reverse the economic inequality in our society, and that Obamacare, instead of adding to unemployment, instead made living in this country slightly less cruel and capricious.
Unfortunately, his freshly discovered feelings about deficits not mattering seem suspiciously timed to the massive Republican tax cuts. I don’t believe he voiced a similarly carefree attitude when Obama attempted deficit spending in the wake of the last Republican engendered catastrophe.
We’ll see if he feels the same way when the next Democratic President attempts to right the ship the GOP has, once again, attempted to capsize.
32
Maybe Ross will get some sense when Trump's "tax cuts" increase his tax bill because he lives in a more heavily taxed state.
Like others here, I agree with a good bit of what Mr. Douthat outlines. There are couple of differences.
Although America's churches could be part of a constructive process, relying too much on religion to fix our national social fabric is fraught. Across the sweep of history, this divides as much as brings together. It's fine as a personal choice, but as national policy we should continue to be skeptical.
Our Bill of Rights, particularly our first and second amendments, has been subverted. Well-paid corporate financial engineers and attorneys, aided by our legal system, have stomped on the working class over the last 50 years. These wealthy groups raise protective walls around their empires, at the expense of the general welfare (this does not imply the need for socialism). They have the money to cynically argue that they are doing this as a public service. The idea of free speech in public discourse is subverted to the will of those wealthy groups, with the approval of our courts.
We have the worst record of job retraining in the modern developed world. Our political leaders subvert the role of government to provide and maintain social contracts for the public good (health care is a good example here, another arena where we lag other developed nations).
For now there is little hope of fixing what is wrong--no matter our impressive unemployment rate. We are battered on a minute-to-minute basis with the opposing views of our two major political clans.
9
Seems to me that the reason grim times continue is that conservative religious and social values simply do little to address the times. Hard to find your footing in today's complex landscape by hearkening back to the religious and social rules of another era. Conservatives need stop judging others based on old standards and open their minds to alternative religious and social norms, Norms that embrace more people and allow more people to feel accepted in the culture. Conservatives fear the future and so they create rules and standards attempt to keep us in the past. It can't be done. It tears individuals and communities apart. and offers no positive vision for a future that incorporates today's realities.
10
Douthat says, "The hope that material growth would heal our social problems hasn’t been vindicated so far."
That's an easy explanation. The growth has been way more tilted to the top.
In fact, it is just making our social problems worse.
And this is a direct result of Republican tax policy. They cut taxes for the rich and get big deficits and then cut social programs that the poor and working class need. Somehow, they never feel the need to cut military spending.
And Republicans use people like Douthat to engage in the culture wars of abortions and gay marriage to get voters to vote for Republicans against the good of the country.
Anybody voting Republican is voting for tax cuts for the rich and deficits to be paid for by us and our children and grandchildren.
That doesn't sound good for anyone but the rich.
That includes Mr. Douthat and his children.
19
Who doesn't have a cargo cult mentality in the US?
Americans need three things to prosper: affordable health care, college tuition and child care. If they lack any one of these, the birth rate will be low as people make the judicious decision not to bring children into the world whose health needs beginning in utero are considered a nonessential benefit. Lack of reliable, affordable child care means the ability of the parents to work will be limited as will the income of the parents. And, of course, having to go deeply into debt to purchase a college education will limit future economic prospects of the child either because they don't go to college or spend an untoward amount of income paying for it. These are the social issues that need to be addressed.
34
Frankly I am relieved not to have to make up why I brought a child of my own into a world stumbling towards self-destruction apparently nobody can avert.
Good times? North Korean strategic nuclear status is consolidated, though the Pompeo-Trump team may stabilize the new situation. The Obama recovery
can't last forever. The Middle Eastern Wars that Trump has recently assured us can't help with the economic trajectory. (And the Irish have lost their Faith.)
I thank my lucky stars every day that our economy is in good shape. Otherwise, I would worry about Trump and his minions pointing to scapegoats to explain the doldrums. He will, of course, never assume responsibility for any negative outcome. So, let’s hope that the economy purrs along through his term(s) and that our problems don’t get worse until we can get leadership that looks beyond next week when forming policy —-and deletes the Twitter app.
5
In re: The roaring economy
Many, if not most, of the statistical indicators commonly used to judge the economy are clumsy, out-dated and not very informative. In fact, using statistics to make judgments about such a large and varied economy guarantees that the real experiences of very large parts of the populace simply aren't represented.
The middle- and working-class people I know here in Brooklyn have stories that just don't jive with the headlines.
Our expert economists need to work much harder and do a much better job.
13
Agreed. The official unemployment numbers, in particular, are so far from reality I marvel that anyone (in an opinion column, especially) uses them in an argument.
There's a current NYT column about "post-brokeness stress disorder" that really spoke to me. Due to a period of terrifying poverty (with 3 kids) I went through in my 30s I still fear running short of money in my 70s. The shadow of even temporary poverty stays with you forever.
3
Consumer culture began about 1880 and, despite the stock market crash of 1929, or rather because of it, the optimism in the "economy" as a force (akin to the Force in Star Wars) of endless benevolence seems to be like Elijah's widow's jar of oil. And so long people on welfare can get their smart phones, we will continue to scoff at the naysayers who point out that basic economic principles will not permit deficits and growing national debt.
As Mr. Douthat points out, despite our faith in the economy, our society has not become the social utopia one would expect from the most affluent society in the history of the world. And the history of the world should be a lesson.
No society or culture has lasted for ever. Rome had a good run from 753 BC to 476 A.D. America, which is very much like Rome in its culture, might have a good several hundred years left.
But even if our consumer culture continues to drive the American dream, which evolves in a Darwinian manner, the social utopia will never materialize. Just like Roman culture, which was hostile to Godly morality, so is American culture hostile to Christianity: at least the Christianity of the Bible.
That would be Elisha.
"Economic product" is measured by movement of money. As long as money continues to change hands, there will be economic product. What we don't need are liquidity crises of the sort that happen when the scams of crooks like Trump collapse.
Maybe we'll know what the wave was when it's passed--the wave that provides the new boost to the economy. And we’ll know where the people got the money for even more consumption. In my lifetime land was real wealth for what it could produce--people, produce, meats, timber, ores, gems, etc. And these were paid for, in part, by wealth extracted from foreign governments and bandits. Then housing land created value, until too much was rezoned and repriced, distorting estimates of wealth. The destruction of WW2 created a market for consumer goods, boosting the economies of some countries not physically ruined by war. But the Golden Years passed. Hidden since then, is the role of debt. Americans now owe at least $12 Trillion in personal debt--home mortgages, car loans etc. Shockingly we have mortgaged our future by the crippling rise in student loan debt. Since WW2, the population has more than doubled, but we fail to educate our new people, home-bred or foreign. We train them with mindsets of the 19th C. Meanwhile, the free market keeps our infrastructure crumbling around us, and piggybacks more commercial messages on “entertainment.” Indeed, let’s have hope in “progress,” but not of the kind people like Douthat describe after the event.
7
Are the jobs created really paying for basic needs? Are people living in state of constant economic stress and overwhelming anxiety? Do they really have a life? Can they really enjoy life? Why so much drug use and so much depression? Those are the questions I would be asking.
19
There is so much despair and drug use because we’ve become so soft, so entitled, so weak that we expect our lives to be whatever we strive for whether we’ve earned it or not. If you end up with a job at Walmart, you need to live the life that minimum wage allows you. Neither the US taxpayer nor Walmart owes you 2.3 children, a car in your garage and a chicken in your pot.
1
Before you start judging and touting your self reliance, you may want to find out if a Walmart wage can pay for basic needs for one person. I would argue that government policies should guarantee a living wage. The very idea that the poor does not work hard is a fantasy.
You must be a strong and successful person. What do you think about government role in making sure Walmart workers without 2.3 children get a living wage?
The current situation doesn’t make sense primarily because it is not framed properly. The economy is changing big time. We are ending an age of technology (yes) and in this moment capital invested over the last 5 decades is maturing and making its owners rich. The new age beginning is hiring millions of people to build out infrastructure for renewable energy and ecosystem services. It’s early days and sometimes hard to discern the pattern but it’s there. It’s the economics of long-cycles, K-waves. Most of what you see is a last hurrah and it can’t end fast enough.
1
I agree with much of this, but it is awfully difficult to argue that young people are abandoning the church because of liberals.
We certainly haven't proved that we can succeed as a fully secular society where the older substrate of religious values has completely disappeared. It is folly to assume axiomatically that we have, or can.
But we surely know we won't succeed when the most prominent voices of religion (I won't say "faith") are Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr.
13
Mr. Douthat writes: "Of course, the wall-to-wall frenzy of the Trump era, in which everyone is constantly being asked to take sides in a battle to the death, makes these kinds of cultural efforts harder to formulate and pursue...."
I will declare here and now that this "battle to the death" environment is the fault of the Trump campaign in 2016 and also the decades long propaganda promulgated by right wing AM talk radio and more recently, Fox News. Also, the NRA and its terrible people at the top like Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent.
There, I've said it. Notice I didn't blame the Republican party itself. It just went along for the ride.
31
Yes, we should look at our social fabric. We should especially look at how economic decisions should/could be made more people friendly, more "moral", more "christian" with a small "c".
It is very destructive for just a few people to own half the wealth of our small planet. We should also look at how family decisions, especially reproductive ones, can be made more secure economically. If you fear losing your job, you are less likely to feel you can afford to have a child. Secure health opportunity and secure educational opportunity would help a lot: We had a great public educational system but its high quality was built on women who were underpaid because of lack of other opportunities and because a lot of kids were left out: minorities and handicapped. We haven't been willing to invest in our kids: so why should families be willing to have them?
Churches should lead by example rather than by divisive political pressure. Christ said: "Love your neighbor as yourself". He meant for us to LOVE ourselves: churches should not be preaching hate but love of self and love of all humans, everywhere. In order for families to thrive, the adults have to love themselves enough to love each other.
14
"Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions.."
Wait a minute. Liberals are not 'waging a culture war" against religious institutions. Liberals have very carefully carved out exceptions for religious institutions.
What we object to is the conservative attempt to redefine commercial enterprises as religious institutions, based solely on the beliefs of their owners. Bakeries, big-box hobby stores, and fast-food chains are not religious institutions, and they do not have the right to refuse to follow employment laws they dislike or discriminate against customers who do not share their religious beliefs.
45
Trump and Ryan cut taxes on the rich. 5 months later Social Security and Medicare lack funding. Republicans will find solutions in cutting both. The only way we prevent this is to vote Democratic in November and in the future.
Only solution is to vote Democratic.
Pretty simple.
40
The budget deficit under Trump has increased by 42%. By 2020 the estimates are that it will have doubled; and this during a time of prosperity.
4
We need a retraining program for people who lose their jobs. Obama had this, but it appears Trump has stopped it. We have more jobs that require advanced training that pay well, but individuals don’t have the skills. That would help the economy to get able people trained and back to work. There are at least 3,000,000 job openings that are not filled.
6
Why is that for the government to solve? If it was a significant problem I expect that the employers needing better trained employees could afford to initiate apprentice and training programs and they would do so if it was truly preventing their growth.
6
They've been shipping jobs abroad for the last 15+ years. As well as moving their "headquarters" overseas to avoid paying taxes in the U.S. Corporations have also been pushing for more H1-Visas and laying off U.S. born employees over the age of 50.
Why would you assume employers have the spare cash to put into basic training and retraining? Some do. Most - especially small businesses and start-ups don't.
Education is a basic government function. Retraining that helps both those in need AND our businesses is the smart thing to do. It's also the nice and moral thing to do.
The Great Recession was primarily caused by 10 years of an irrational real estate market. I and others back in 2008 predicted that it would take some 10 years for the economy to restore itself. It has, thanks primarily to the Federal Reserve whose policies provided liquidity that supported stabilization and then growth. The social problems that Douthat points to existed prior to 2008, but accelerated as kind of cultural Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the Great Recession. American freedom has always been framed essentially as economic, and as a people we are bottom line folk who naturally address economic issues. Cultural and social issues are not our forte as these are more matters of soul rather than the pocket book. Whatever the path forward may be, it will be neither simple nor inevitable that the decline of the social fabric of the country will be reversed.
7
Religious institutions drove away a huge percentage of the population when they strayed from their purpose (to bring people together in fellowship) by aligning with a political party and elevating divisive issues over inclusive issues.
90
What's bad about the birth rate going down? Climate change is going to be pretty harsh for that generation to cope with, especially from an economic perspective. They'll have an easier time if there are fewer of them producing carbon.
18
Most of the social trends Mr. Douthat is concerned about predate the Great Recession and cannot be blamed on the current administration. Rather, they are more likely the result of a decades-long process of an increasing sense of isolation and alienation among a growing portion of the population, as well rapidly increasing stresses and complexities of modern American life, as "civil" society becomes ever more uncivil and many seek ever greater levels of stimulation of one sort or another (as reflected by the many facets of the offline and online entertainment industry). All of this has the effect of ripping apart the fabric of a stable society -- a sense of belonging, cohesiveness, family, shared values, fairness, etc. -- and that sense of loss people are feeling is now being reflected in how easily many have been seduced and conned by the demagoguery being offered on both ends of the political spectrum.
5
Ross, I think you need to look into the extent to which liberal atheists are happy, productive, community oriented people who do a lot of good based on humanistic ideals. You seem to focus a lot on the decline of the church and how that is at least in part a cause and effect of our social ills. I don't disagree with that completely but the church brought that on itself. More importantly though, the fact of fewer church goers is not a cause, it's a correlation. People build very wholesome secular communities all around the world. You should study why they work. It might help you see things outside the box created by your upbringing. Religion isn't the only way to build communities.
53
I’d challenge the basic assumption that the social trends Mr. Douthat describes are a oroblem in need of a solution. Falling birthrate? Wonderful. Late marriage? Even better. Greater geographic mobility? What’s wrong with it? Suicude? An expression of individual freedom. We are experiencing the birth pangs of the transition to a new social and familial paradigm. There will be winners and losers, but more of the former. Look at the thriving global cities and the dying rural and exurban areas. The return to the mythical “Middle America” of churches, babies and patriarchal blue-collar families is both impossible and undesirable.
5
I agree with a lot of this but it is disturbing to see suicide shrugged off as no problem. It's not an "expression of freedom," it's an expression of intolerable pain.
18
DW - suicide was not invented yesterday. Many cultures, including Greeks and Romans, regarded suicide as an expression of personal courage. Judaism and Islam consider it to be a religious duty under certain circumstances . Are you sure you want to impose your (western and Christian) understanding of suicide upon the rest of the world? Douthat was talking about social trends, not individual tragedies. I don’t think that a temporary uptick in suicudes, even if real, needs to be a reason to herd everybody into the nearest church.
"But as the economic picture has improved, the social picture hasn’t. The birthrate keeps declining, the opioid epidemic is dragging down American life expectancy, young people’s mental health seems to be worsening, and new data showing a rising suicide rate "
The decline in the birth rate is a good thing.
16
But the decline in the birth rate isn't happening among the prosperous, they are breeding like rabbits. This town has been invaded by rich New Yorkers, and all they do is breed out of control.
The high employment rate masks the fact that so many middle aged American whose careers, retirement savings and in some cases their homes were lost forever during the Great Bush Recession, have given up looking for work. Most of those current job openings don't pay a living wage to support a family, let alone a home mortgage. In some of the most dire cases, suicide seems like the only option which at least partly explains the ballooning suicide rate among older men. Add the Trump and Republican stoked uncertainty over affordable health care coverage and calls for social security and Medicare cuts, all weighing heavily on many whose American dream never felt more bleak and unattainable. Isn't it telling that Trump's trumpeted tax cuts aren't lifting all boats but instead lifting most yachts instead. Trump's pledge to revive the moribund coal industry while rolling back several environmental regulations--which are only onerous if one thinks clean air and drinking water are overrated--just contributes to the grim sentiment from a majority of 99.9% of Americans who don't work in coal mines.
Donald Trump's vision for a better future apparently only includes him, his immediate family and the wealthiest Americans. That MAGA nonsense only applies to 1% of Americans.
35
Sadly, the Democrats also killed the American dream in coastal cities. Life in America is only for the rich.
Our social ills continue despite economic successes, because our community foundations are crumbling. The concentration of power at the national level has undermined the power of communities to craft their own solutions. Federally-mandated programs to help the poor have as often as not made things worse, in part, because they have stripped communities of their responsibility of caring for their neighbors. There has also been an incessant campaign to expand government and exclude religion from the public sphere, which must lead eventually to the destruction of religious institutions. Those states with highest levels of communitarianism and religious participation are resisting social ills. Utah has the lowest economic inequality in the country as measured by the gini coefficient (https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-by-gini-coefficient.html). Utah and the Plains states also have the highest rates of social mobility. The same states also have the highest participation in organized religion (https://www.vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Faithland_US.png?2510). These are the best places for a poor child to grow up https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-and-worst.... New York preaches helping the poor, but Utah lives it.
2
The problem is economic, because the rich won't pay their taxes, and the cost of living is high while salaries are low. This has nothing to do with helping your neighbor, but everything to do with BOTH PARTIES decades long trend of ROBBING your neighbor.
5
Saying the "economy is cooking for the first time in 20 years" is to ignore Obama's turning on the gas, lighting the fire, warming the water to just about boiling, cutting all the vegetables, preparing the meat and getting out the pasta. Sure, Donald Trump put the pasta in the water, but the cooking's been going on all along. To mix metaphors, born on third base, thinks he hit a triple. It's ok to note that the economy is doing swell, and that other problems persist, but let's not forget how we got here.
32
... and if Ross Douthat's colleague Paul Krugman is to be believed (and I do believe him), the economy could have recovered significantly sooner if the ARRA stimulus package had been larger. Some of the gloom that Douthat points to could have been ameliorated if we'd been more effective at ridiculing and marginalizing the austerity sadists, and if we'd been intellectually brave enough to listen to the Keynesians and compassionate enough to really care what happens to our fellow citizens. I suspect we'll get a chance to rerun this particular movie in my lifetime – maybe the kids will have learned enough from our ignorant and cruel ways to do it differently next time. Go kids!
1
Sure, the economy is strong. The employment rate is high. But you're missing something really important. People have jobs but their Incomes aren't adequate. Remember all the talk in the last election about people being left behind? About the awful burden of student debt and rising healthcare costs? Guess what? That hasn't changed. Haven't you noticed all the big teachers' strikes across the country? Teachers are working two or three jobs to make ends meet. They work full-time but their incomes have stagnated.
Maybe our definition of a "strong economy" should be reconsidered. We are the richest country in the world. Yet look at the level of child poverty in the U.S. It's shameful. We rank about 30th in the world. And we pay more for our healthcare than any other wealthy country and we are sicker than them.
Why has the birth rate dropped? Mostly because we can't afford to have more children. There isn't enough support for childcare, healthcare costs too much, many of us owe thousands in student debt, and most Americans have no savings in the bank and no plans for how to manage during retirement.
It's hard when everyone is talking about how great the economy is but you're struggling to make ends meet. The rich have gotten richer, the poor and middle class have not.
48
The great depression impacted the silent generation in much the same way the recession has impacted our current young people. When you watch your elders lose everything and struggle to recover, when you yourself are stuck with crippling student loan debt, and when you're forced to navigate the gig economy because employers don't want to pay healthcare you tend to be depressed, untrusting and you push off having children until you feel more secure. This is one of those moments when government is the solution and could do things like infrastructure, invest in affordable housing, provide universal daycare, restructure student debt, and provide Medicare for all. Doing these things would give Americans peace of mind and security which would stimulate the economy and improve the quality of daily life much more than a judgemental church is capable of doing. We need solutions not prayers.
20
Centrist dreams about cutting Social Security? Centrist? Ah, no, not centrist Mr. Douthat. Republican yes, right-wing yes , the 1% yes, but centrist never.
63
For the last 40 years certain groups in our country have spent a good part of their time demonizing our governmental system and many of our other societal structures such as public education, public service and very cultural cohesiveness that enabled our success in the period after WWII.
In it's place they sold the idea that only the unfettered "free market system" led by the rugged individualists were responsible for that success. That wild west, mindset only works when it works. For the majority of our citizens who have seen their situations worsen, that construct can lead to the sense of personal failure and a spiral of isolation, hopelessness and ultimately, in some cases, depression or addiction.
We are one of the few species who have the innate ability and predilection to work together for the good of the larger group. E. O. Wilson would argue that that is why we have, for better or worse. come to dominate our planet.
Until we reconnect with that idea, I struggle to see how the situation improves. I might suggest Robert Reich's book "The common Good" as a starting point for those interested in beginning that conversation.
16
What "liberal culture war against America's religious institutions"? The one that argues that those religious institutions should stop attacking the concept of same-sex marriage now that it's settled law? The one that insists that religious institutions stop interfering in women's reproductive decisions, even when the targets are their own female staff members desirous of having their morning-after pills included in their medical insurance packages? Surely Mr. Douthat isn't referencing the so-called war on Christmas...? Or that quaint liberal idea that guns shouldn't be carried into a house of God? I acknowledge that freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Constitution but shouldn't those seeking freedom FROM religion be accorded the same privilege?
45
I live in a liberal town, and we have WAY TOO MANY CHURCHES, including two megachurches. That's why our taxes are so high and our Sundays are horrible. I wish liberals hated Christianity. Then we might get some peace and prosperity around here.
2
I'm not convinced at all. A premise of this column is of a booming economy, but there is a huge difference between 2% (about where we are) and 4% (which would indeed be boom territory); productivity growth is approximately 0%; while deficits haven't brought crisis they have precluded the infrastructure improvements everyone has begged for and which would themselves improve productivity; education statistics continue to lag behind our competitors; and immigration policy (and actions) a la Trump promise to starve the economy of both low-skilled workers and highly-trained H1B types. I'd posit - without evidence - that the current regime, and the specter of its continuation, contribute to the increasing suicide rate and other problems Dothtat mentions.
12
Mr. Douthat describes "increasing isolation, worsening depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation" as one of the recent evils affecting the society. In a life that is a constant, or even eternal, struggle between Good and Evil, there have always been in the past other factors of social perturbation. The only common denominator of the human drive is material well-being or worship of the Golden Calf, in whatever other politically correct terms it may be cast.
The conversion of the US to TRUMPISTAN since 2017 is a new phenomenon, and it has many faces. (I am neither a Trumpian, nor Clintonite). If people took the political orations and views propagated by the media less seriously, they might have been able to reason more rationally and create a more harmonious society.
2
While in any time there it is true that the worst actions will make the situation worse, the article would be much more compelling if he found and argued for a political action which would dfo some good. Dp no harm is only a start, not a compelling conclusion in politics as well as medicine.
3
There were periods in this country, even up to recent times when one could see that the country wasn't in such upheaval against itself. When families and neighbors tended to things important in their immediate world, raising their kids, gathering neighbors in events, obeying the laws, oblivious to what your neighbors' political leanings were, even going to church and looking to the future. The president may have been Republican or Democrat and neighbors and families were not at each other's throats. We felt comfortable, but not passionate, with our presidents. But that has disappeared and likely will be very difficult to restore.
This weekend one could easily get the impression that our current president has become unhinged. Calling out the Canadian Prime MInister, refusing to sign the G-7's note of declaration, trying to impose Russia to be re-admitted and leaving the assembly early to go to Singapore. We used to do that type of stuff when we were kids playing marbles, especially when we were on the losing end. There never was an ounce of humility in the man and to compound that lack of virtue, he has declined even more in the civility area.
Since when does the most powerful, most free, most concerned and most generous nation go around banging heads with allies like the G 7. Have we lost all reason? What are we playing here: "King of the Hill?"
25
don’t revive centrist dreams about cutting Social Security or suddenly increasing low-wage immigration.
Only in Douthart's mind is this a centrist dream. I would like to see Douthart defend this assertion that it is is centrist and not the dream of the 1%.
23
Talking about the bad effects of smartphones is like talking about the bad effects of carbon dioxide. Both are attempts to get in the way of and limit the reach of free enterprise and the market. But market-based solutions are the best, and ideologically-imposed ones are ineffective if not harmful. The market will fix any problems it creates, sooner or later, and if we want sooner we should get out of its way.
Talking about the social responsibility of various entities takes us back to the Middle Ages; such responsibility limited markets and prosperity. Progressives see such limits as a positive thing that was abolished with the rule of the market, whereas conservatives dislike them unless they are explicitly religion-related.
1
"Market-based solutions" are the best?! I guess this poster was asleep or on another planet back during the Enron scandal, the 2008 financial crisis, or the Wells Fargo debacle.
Evidently our poster is someone blessedly inmune from the effects of evidence and history, which clearly shows that capitalism needs to be referreed well and rigororously to deliver anything like broad-based prosperity!
We need Medicare for all. Requiring businesses to provide health insurance for full time workers is not working out. If you're an unskilled worker it is nearly impossible to find full time work because of the insurance issue. People have to patch together a living with multiple jobs. It is not just that wages are low but Hours are low. This can be fixed if we have single payer insurance. People and businesses will be happier.
21
That's national health care. Ask Britain if they like it. Ask the Candians and Brits who come here to get healed if that works. Ask the hordes allowed to die every month in Britain - but hurry.
1
Conservative religious institutions want to be the ones to correct social disintegration, and to do it their way, so they do not want anybody else doing it and especially not in a different way. If divorce is too frequent, counseling to repair marriages must be God-centered; counseling that helped repair marriages and was not God-centered must be opposed as weakening religion. (Since the state cannot require that counseling for marriages that need repair be God-centered, the state should not be allowed to require counseling as a prerequisite for divorce -- an otherwise reasonable step in reducing the divorce rate.)
A culture war against conservative religious institutions is thus perhaps a prerequisite for getting anti-disintegration policies enacted that actually work in areas like family planning and drug abuse. The damage done to these institutions is perhaps a good thing, since they are not interested in fixing social disintegration except if they are the solution. In fact, God's plan is to use social disintegration to drive people into His arms, and those who try to thwart his plans are not just misguided but evil.
2
Douthat's "partially regained prosperity" is a sad joke. Real wages haven't risen significantly for most Americans for a long time. Blue-collar work paying middle-class wages, for men in particular, has largely disappeared. Douthat, who yearns for a more traditional America in just about every way, runs past the reality that both parents, if they're in the home, have to work in most families in order to make ends meet. And, of course, a striking percentage of Americans remain uncounted in the employment statistics because they're not looking for work.
To say that economic inequality has leveled off in the last decade isn't a sad joke; it's an egregiously offensive one. Inequality, if it really has leveled off, has done so at levels we've not seen for about a century. The political system, increasingly dominated by the rich, is less responsive to the needs of many Americans.
And so on. The core problem with Douthat's analysis is his attempt to decouple economy and society. Not so fast.
24
Cutting social security is not a centrist dream.
It's a right wing doctrine.
Cutting social security is what ideologues hanker to do when they've busted the budget by cutting taxes on the super rich and gone on waging war off the books.
80
Cutting SS is a 'centrist dream'? In what alternate universe?
3
No need for a real rise in wages for the 99%. Give the masses more religion.
Like the faith-based budgeting and tax cuts practiced by the GOP.
Who are you kidding?
33
I'm all for more social institutions, but not for right-wing churches. Whatever they're doing now seems to be the opposite of Christianity.
They've blown it. Give other institutions, including Christian churches with more benign theology, a chance to flourish again.
12
The Catholic church, among others like the Methodists, are beneficiaries of evangelical excesses like these evangelical leaders asking for money so they can ride in a fancier private jet. The various Catholic charities and institutions still believe in what Jesus taught and so do the Methodists. (Read the"Book of Discipline" sometime. )
Cutting Social Security is NOT a "centrist dream" - it is a Reactionary Right dream, and a nightmare for most of the rest of us!
30
If we really want to incorporate the pursuit of happiness as a goal of our governance, we should follow Bhutan and measure Gross Domestic Happiness.
I don't think religion will help us much. But national service might make things tick up a bit. There's nothing like commiserating about a shared misery to make make people happy.
9
Actually, Ross, the opposite is true. It's Grim Times in Good Trends. While you give a nod to the idea that debt and deficits haven't produced the economic disaster that was predicted YET, you fail to acknowledge what we have learned from past experience. People who assume that debt and deficits don't matter are simply whistling past the graveyard.
Of course they matter. Imagine the prosperity that America would be having if we weren't facing the multi-trillion dollar debt from the misguided Bush Iraq invasion that destabilized an entire region. That fiasco began with a tax cut, an economic boom, debt busting loans from China followed by an economic collapse that shed millions of jobs world-wide and brutal austerity in the EU and other countries.
Bush’s ‘forever war’ led to mass migration that has given rise to far right revival of hate groups squabbling over scarce resources. The Republican party fought recovery spending, and while demanding major budget cuts with divisive virulent rhetoric. Yet now that rant was false posturing. It was a tool to undermine Obama but allow Trump to give themselves a deficit busting tax cut to finance an illusory economic boom and false posterity for the rich. Suffering from the Great Recession is still here. wage stagnation, Wall Street greed and the GOP insisting we can't afford healthcare. But History tells us what follows is an economic bust, massive debt and brutal austerity for American workers. People forget easily.
20
Douthat misrepresents the Bloomberg report on inequality. It did NOT say that inequality had stopped growing; it said the the rate at which inequality was growing had slowed. Radically different statement.
It went on to say that the high absolute level of income inequality might be more significant than changes to the rate of growth.
It also did not project the impact of the Trump tax plan, which will certainly increase the growth of income inequality.
And wealth inequality continues to increase.
Ross Douthat is very smart and very well educated. So is this misrepresentation an attempt to mislead us or just wishful thinking?
34
"Once you add in cash payments and in-kind transfers from government safety net programs, inequality actually fell over this period." (2007-2014)
Bloomberg
1
The real point is that Douthat implies that inequality is falling now.
With a tax cut that has significantly advantaged the ruling class while distributing crumbs or nothing at all to the working class, inequality is on the rise.
What about people who don't qualify for such transfers and are still trying to make ends meet on low-wage employment? Reducing inequality by bringing up the bottom is obviously a good thing, but has it really closed the gap between rewards to employees and those running the companies they work for?
"In between 1978 and 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO pay increased by almost 1,000%, according to a report released on Sunday by the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, typical workers in the U.S. saw a pay raise of just 11% during that same period.
With these increases in mind, it should come as no surprise that the ratio between average American CEO pay and worker pay is now 303-to-1. This ratio is lower than its peak in 2000, when it was 376-to-1, but it’s in excess of the 1965 ratio of 20-to 1."
http://fortune.com/2015/06/22/ceo-vs-worker-pay/
The real issues concern people in the second and third quintiles of the income distribution. In 2016 the mean real income of the second lowest quintile was $34,504. In 2000, it was $35,358. For the middle quintile the 2016 figure is $55,412; in 2000, it was $58,582.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historic...
Income transfer programs aren't likely to affect these people very much.
"(Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric.)"
Interesting.
My very traditional Episcopalian church in Seattle is socially liberal and our motto is “all are welcome.” And we are growing steadily, with the growth finding place mostly in young families. Our vestry is at least half young people. Pledges are up, and we draw from an incredibly wide area.
We march in the Pride parade, we perform same-sex marriages. We make war on no one, but we watch right-wing Christians making war on women, LGBT’s, and diversity, siding with a morally corrupt GOP while saying noting, brushing the president’s behavior under the carpet and legislating other people's morality – in short, doing everything possible to drive away young people, who are now aware of diversity and science. Jesus welcomed everyone and condemned the religious who set up barriers between ordinary people and God.
The culture wars aren’t coming from the liberals.
89
Religious fundamentalism is one of the most destructive forces on the planet and a growing danger to this country. The Obergefell decision as well as the election of Mr. Trump has confirmed my fears. I long ago cut ties with the religious fundamentalists in my family and social life and I am much the better for it. I will continue this practice in the marketplace and take my money elsewhere. I will resist religious fundamentalism wherever I find it.
21
For you, Mr. Douthat I would be willing to let time spin back 70 years so that you could experience life firmly under Catholic Church control--Brazil! No divorce. No abortion. No public schools--no competition with church dogma teaching. No jobs for middle class women. But for the rest of us, change is good. Pope Francis is a light in the darkness. Having Trump is bad in the moment, but he too shall pass.
17
If people had a little religion in their lives maybe things would not be so bleak and depressing. There is a strong possibility that opioids and suicide rates would not be skyrocketing to the degree we are now seeing. Faith would bring hope and peace and there would be less despair in our troubled world. It certainly beats the alternative of death and destruction that we are seeing so much of today. Could we at least give it a chance. No one is forcing a person to believe but we should not be discouraging it either. Could it be worse than the alternative?
4
WPLMMT.....many people do enjoy religious sugar placebos, but who needs more irrationality in their lives ?
We have given it a chance for a few thousand years and it's been wretched to women, children, science and logic; people are rightfully fleeing religion in droves.
The alternative - logic, facts, reason, extra free time, and freedom from Bible Concussive Syndrome - is an absolute jackpot.
Join the atheistic-agnostic-secular party !
(And there's no collection basket or dues)
Drink up !
29
How or what are we exactly doing to "discourage" organized religion in ths is country exactly? It seems to me believers, at least those who lean rightward politically, pretty much have the run of the place.
19
"Faith would bring hope and peace" ... Say what?! Often faith brings just the opposite.
4
I've come to the conclusion that we are living in an alternate reality.
11
Don't underestimate the legitimatizing of Fox news and Breitbart by the GOP that has brought fear and angst into the lives of millions Americans and thus brought us the most unqualified president of all time. I know many people who are still depressed about the direction of the US after the last general election.
21
A bad time is coming. That statement is always true, of course, because life fluctuates between good and bad times--but a REALLY BAD TIME is on its way and sooner rather than later. Our chaos-creating president cannot govern. He can only destroy. If he actually cared about this country, I would feel hopeful about America's future, but he is concerned only about his own family's welfare.
What has put this bleak notion into my head is the callous treatment of children on the border by immigration officials. The cruelty of separating children from parents is not what America is about. This is a stain on our history, similar to the stains of slavery and the genocide of native Americans.
I am urging my family members to save money, to stop unnecessary spending, and to be mentally ready when the next recession comes. We will all have to help each other.
22
I am retired and I live in Washington DC., down the street from Howard Law school, where I have watched many beautiful and courageous young African Americans graduate in the fine old chapel. The fact that I am an old white guy means nothing to them; I am their friend. My neighbors here have been my neighbors for a long time. They are white and black and Asian and the great man on the block for all of us was always the unforgettable Dick Gregory, really our Whitman, who would go to our corner liquor store to play the lotto and pet the heads of our children and was unfailingly gracious—our patriarch, no matter our race, religion or background. He died last year, but our neighborhood sidewalks, especially on warm early summer days like this one, still quiver with the moving breeze of his spirit, guiding and protecting his kids. That’s America to me, all of us here together, here in a Washington so far removed the corridors of power or greed. Want to see a community, Mr. Douthat? Full of hope and eager to dream? Come and see us here. We’ll take you to Ben’s Chili Bowl.
12
The thesis is fine; you gotta start getting many things better before the economy slows, but the depressing reality is you have a president bound and determined to make things worse.... he encourages racism, misogyny and petty corruption among officials; he’s actively undermining democratic principles, the constitution, law enforcement, and courts. He’s gutting environmental laws, damaging global climate change efforts, and is cozying up to dictators who are clearly American enemies, while wreaking havoc with established, mutually beneficial trade pacts. Sooner or later when the rest of the world moves on without him and the U.S. and America loses thousands more good jobs it could have kept with a saner approach, the economy will sour . . . And it might be a very long time before anyone else in the west will trust America as a trading partner again. Good luck. Somehow youy guys elected Trump; but it’s sad because i really don’t believe most of you really deserve what he’s going to leave you struggling with for decades.
18
Great post, except I DO think Trump voters deserve every bit of dreck his policies are going to rain down on all of us!
Oh, and then there is that pesky little problem about the fate of life on Mother Earth as "the planet itself shivers into a bone-wrenching fever," accelerating an already "intensifying ecological disarray."
12
"And yet: The hope that material growth would heal our social problems hasn’t been vindicated so far."
Mr. Douthat, history teaches us that more money does not heal social problems. However, less money, i.e. dire and difficult economic conditions make them worse. Money will not solve all problems, but having it allows for the building of possible solutions. It is what you do with it.
8
Perhaps the smartest thing the Democrats might do is not contest the 2020 elections. Fight your battles local and state but leave the Fed to Trump and Republicans.
Republicans have put in place all the economics that will undoubtedly lead to the collapse of the economy, once again. So, let it be on their watch, let it all come tumbling down on their shoulders, let them spend a few years trying to fix the mess they've made instead of always handing it off to a Democrat to fix.
Perhaps that might finally wake up the electorate to the slogan-based propaganda scams that republicans have been running since Reagan.
I dream, I know, but still....
7
Ross Douthat’s truth stirs up the Christian haters.
5
Kool Aid....Ross's 12th century view of reality stirs up those of us residing in 21st century.
22
I’ve been teaching at a small Catholic commuter college for 15 years, and trust me, my colleagues and I can’t help but be “looking harder at the ways in which the smartphone era might be making social life worse among the young.” The ways the smart phone makes their lives worse are painfully obvious. The cure for what ails our student body seems fairly clear: regularly unplugging from social media, reconnecting with the natural world, building a habit of reading and reflection on philosophy, religion, literature and history, and expressing themselves creatively in the arts.
But this kind of humanistic education is only made possible by basic economic security: good paying working class jobs for their parents and expansive student grant programs that would enable them to go to school without getting into debt or without working long hours outside of school. The smartphone defines the era only because it’s ubiquitous, but in principle it’s nothing new; it’s only the most advanced technology for entertaining us all to death. What defines the age more substantively is vast income inequality; addressing THAT would go a long way toward giving my students the thriving social life they long for.
15
Probably similar negative statements were made around the time of Alexander Graham Bell
1
Agreed. This could be the greatest time to address some social issues. For instance, what can we do to stop bankruptcies caused by medical expenses? These bankruptcies are common and the threat of them should make most of us feel unsafe. Eliminating the requirement that those with pre existing conditions be allowed to buy insurance at same rates as others---- that is not really a plan to help shore up the social fabric... Nor are tax cuts to corporations and wealthy helpful. Threats to reduce Medicare and social security don't encourage us to safe and valued, able to contribute.
This warmed up and growing economy is an excellent background for restoring a feeling of community, hope, safety and connectedness. Unfortunately we seem to have a government that is devoted to growing a hopeless, desperate and bitter underclass.
11
The problems we're facing now had their beginnings just prior to the Reagan years. Politicians knew that there was going to be a huge number of people coming into the job market, needing work, needing places to live, and growing old. There was a decision made to make life difficult for those born after 1954 or so. Generation Jones or the back part of the baby boom generation never had the same chances the earlier cohort had to have to decent lives.
Most of us were not able to save for anything. We've experienced multiple bouts of long term unemployment. Some have experienced homelessness. Others have been unable to afford needed medical care for themselves or family members. Yet nothing our politicians did ameliorated the problems. Union membership decreased and unions were deliberately weakened. Workers rights have been overridden to the point where we have no rights. Banks and other financial institutions can rob us legally of our money.
What's left is a country where the majority watch the rich minority steal more from us. We can't find jobs: too bad. We can't afford housing: also too bad. But we can afford a tax cut for the richest. We can afford to waste people in their prime earning years and a bit past because businesses don't want to pay for experience, invest in anyone, or keep anyone around. It's called the disembowelment of the working class so as to enrich those who have more than enough. Trump didn't start it, he's just going with the flow.
38
Mr. D., let me just comment on your observation about weakened churches.
I see the churches with the strongest incomes and the most committed adherents doing the most to undermine the spiritual and social mission that churches once saw as their earthly responsibility. I refer of course to the evangelical churches whose leader worship mammon and sell their souls to trump and his party in return for a privileged place in our system.
The far-right evangelicals and their mainstream fellow-travelers like conservative catholics may think they gain in the short run, but they are undermining the society they are part of and therefore spiting themselves.
39
First, there was never a chance that Obamacare would prevent people from returning to work. It ensured that those who work would have health care, even without the employer's help.
Second, unemployment is not that good. Those numbers are extremely misleading, and most who know that best have motives to keep that quiet. A great many people are simply not counted. https://qz.com/877432/the-us-unemployment-rate-measure-is-deceptive-and-...
There are at least five problems with the number. https://smartasset.com/career/problems-with-the-unemployment-rate
In many cases, people are no longer counted as unemployed when their unemployment insurance ends. They are still unemployed, they are just ignored when they don't get any more money.
They are also not counted if they don't quality for unemployment benefits. They may not qualify despite being unemployed because they were self employed, or did a "voluntary quit," or the employer claims cause for firing (and so avoids paying higher insurance rates). There is a long list of reasons. All of them mean job lost and unemployed but never counted.
So the economy has never recovered. Dems can't claim that for 8 years of Obama, and now Trump can't claim that. Of course, none of them want to tell the truth.
14
"a broader measure of unemployment still leaves something like 11-12 percent”
"globalization — which has effectively [created] a global pool."
"With low unemployment, they may go to their bosses asking for a raise. But the boss can just say: “You want a raise? Fine. I will just move the plant to Mexico, where wages are 1/5 of what I pay you. Or will import from China, when I can pay workers 1/20 of what I pay you.”"
"If you make people desperate enough, they will take any job or go out into the street and do anything to bring in some income. They will also then be counted as employed, since, for example, they are out there, say, selling cigarettes or lottery tickets. Businesses can then hire workers for a pittance. But this obviously does not correspond to anything like what we may consider as a decent society."
"3.8 percent — refers to everyone who had any kind of job as “employed,” including people who wanted to work 40 hours a week but could only find a job at, say, 10 hours a week. . . . they are still counted as employed in the official measure of unemployment.
Also, "people who are not counted as part of the unemployed in the official measure, because they haven’t looked for a job within the last month, but have looked within the past year."
Those who looked for a year and did not find a job are just not counted anymore.
https://truthout.org/articles/misleading-unemployment-numbers-and-the-ne...
19
The economy is doing well, so Trump admin gutted the policies that drive it. We are 4 months into the first Trump admin budget.
15
"(Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric.)"
Gosh, Ross, you really are hellbent on equating same sex marriage and liberals in general with anti-religious animus.
It's really getting tiresome to hear this from you, week after week. Talk about tarring an entire group with one brush.
I'm liberal and a practicing Catholic. Yes, we do exist. I'm also in favor of granting other people freedoms under secular laws, including the right to marry. I'm not waging any kind of "culture war" except for the one that Jesus Himself unleashed more than 2000 years ago, in His sermon on the mount .
Could it be, Ross, that when liberals call out conservative Christian churches it's more for hypocrisy of not living up to their alleged belief system?
The "missions" you speak about are already being undertaken by numerous churches in liberal Massachusetts where feeding the hungry and comforting the housebound elderly are among the social problems aimed at alleviating the problems of social alienation, substance abuse, and poverty.
I'm not nearly as sanguine as you about this roaring (overheated?) economy, but as for societal problems, well, they aren't being helped by the cruelty, bullying and lies of this current administration.
The president sets the tone, and it ain't good.
206
If churches paid taxes, maybe people wouldn't be homeless and hungry.
9
To ensure peace from New York to MD, I decided not to remind a friend that more than seventeen months ago, she blew a fuse when asking for an opinion, I gingerly ventured that Trump could be the next president. Now she wonders why 'Liberals' are more prone to taking their lives. Silence is golden.
True this was not second sight on my part, reflecting on the possibility of Trump of being elected but from listening to neighbors on each side, and remaining placid. Those billboards indicating our political preferences for all and sundry to see; and this is a working-class community as 'American' as apple-pie.
Working as a cleric for a prominent economist in the world of big deals does not make one a financial tycoon; placing conference calls for campaign managers does not mold one into an astute politician; and wondering if America is the only democracy that could vote for Trump is self-defeating.
The only reservation maintained on the side was how America reacts to the State of our Wallets, and not our Current Affairs. Good Times are here again and few are singing the best is yet to come.
Perhaps The Recession was the dividing line between the have and have-nots, but what I note as an anxious observer is that there is no joy in the air. The birth of a New Order of America might stir the hearts of a few extremists, and already a pop-up billboard for a progressive is to be seen on a spring lawn, but it smacks of despair.
3
We are living in the tail end of the Obama economy, the Trump economy has yet to manifest itself. Borrowing vast amounts of money to finance tax cuts is not sound economic policy. Rewriting the tax code with endless loop holes while assuming 4% GDP to support a deficit spending budget is not sound economic policy, the deficits will be much larger than anticipated.
The Trump economy is a debt driven economy. we have played this game before and the Republicans almost succeeded in totally devastating the US and the worlds economies, perhaps this time around, Trump will succeed.
52
The economy has never been better and people are gainfully employed once again. President Trump must be given much credit for this but the Trump haters will never admit that he is responsible for this success we are currently seeing. He promised he would make America great again and he is delivering.
People are once again spending because they feel confident about their station in life. They are optimistic that these good times will be around for awhile. They have regained hope that we will continue to be robust and have a very positive outlook on life.
8
"Cheer up....the worst is yet to come", WPLMMT.
Give the GOP strychnine some time to work....be patient.
It took Dubya a few years before he and the GOP destroyed everything.
I have total confidence that Trumpty Dumpty will come though in grand bankrupt fashion.
16
He is responsible for protecting his donor class supporters. The economy is better for them not the bottom quartile who will see little to no benefit from the recent tax cut. If you wish to see a true indicator of an improved economy, study the rate of increase to maintain housing. The standard was to avoid paying more than 30% of net income for housing, in many regions of the country that rate has jumped to 35%.
Another indicator is the number of benefactors from the lastest GOP tax cut who buy back stock. As in 2004, that "bonus" never trickled down. It facilitated massive increases in CEO pay and dividends...as jobs raced to countries where labor costs were reduced to merely pennies on the dollar.
Trump haters will never admit that he is responsible for this success we are currently seeing...
Oh please. He isn't. This recovery has its well-rooted origins in the years of the Obama administration. You do remember Obama? Y'know, the guy who cleaned up after the last financial disaster left over from the Bush administration? And no doubt it will take another democrat to clean up after the Trump administration crashes the economy.
1
The economy, in a broad sense, improves: the unemployment rate is low, the job-creation numbers are solid, the equity markets are up. And it is all thanks to the steady hand of the president, whose influence cannot be underestimated, whose vision is perhaps unappreciated, and whose intellect and hard work has brought us to a far steadier place....
Thank you, President Obama.
238
Remind us when Obama cut taxes and regulations? Ot, decided to make the US a new oil exporter? Or ordered the US embassy to Jerusalem? I love winning.
In the midst of all the "good news" - that most Americans now get to work more hours for just a few pennies more on the dollar -- economists and other pundits have lost site of the impact of gutting our social institutions for 40 years.
After years of slashing taxes, our schools are underfunded. We don't see fit to properly compensate the people who spend quality time with our children. Our libraries -- those all important community organizations -- struggle to stay open. Public spaces are neglected. We starve the arts and the other social activities that bring joy to people and help to create community.
Add to this the relentless drum beat of nastiness from Washington, and for many people, life in today's thriving economy looks pretty grim.
84
The math of control systems says that underdamped systems oscillate and overdamped systems take to long to recover. The Fed and Congress are supposed to figure out the damping constants so that things come back to normal as quickly as possible. When, instead, you are diverting money to your contributors, underdamping is good. Let the economy overheat. Take the gains. Stand by when people suffer. Pick up the pieces.
That is the GOP tactic here.
10
They won't even bother to pick up the "pieces." The pieces are all dead.
"Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric."
This may be so, but please give us even one scenario that illustrates this point.
15
Gee, the things you say we ought to address are things that would be addressed under democratic control. Instead, Trump has a big opiod policy with no plan, his terror team in the cabinet is dismantling protections for consumers, the environment, healthcare, education, workers rights and the integrity of our financial system. He's about to mess up trade too.
But yay, yay for the economy.
What you miss is that the vast majority of Americans have been systematically shooed from the table and the benefits of this economy - this great big groaning board of tax cuts and rollbacks is for and in favor of the wealthy and corporations. The one thing you and I agree on....it's going to be WAY worse when the economy does tank again...at least it will be for MOST Americans. Corporations and the wealthy will still have their welfare.
34
I know, right. These guys took one of the two major emergency tools that we rely on in times of economic downturns and used it to pump adrenaline into an economy that didn't need it. Reckless and shameful, especially after lording deficits and the debt over Obama for 8 years like frugal Igors.
Interest rates are still quite moderate, not allowing a necessary drop in rates very much of a punch.
But their tax grift was a needless, selfish grab that served to satisfy the greedy donors republicans must deliver for. It also juiced the economy, which our utterly uninformed electorate will credit to Trump while remaining blissfully unconcerned as to why. So with the budget deficit projected to be almost a trillion dollars this year alone, there's almost no where to cut taxes and borrow to stimulate the next inevitable downturn. It's only a matter of when it'll happen and what our situation will look like at the time. It better wait till Democrats come in and do the usual housecleaning necessary to right the ship republicans are always so keen to treat like a speedboat while they're in charge. And this all goes unnoticed and people think republicans are the responsible party regarding economic matters. It's so maddening.
8
In what way does "Democratic control" solve the lack of community, the shallowness, and isolation in society Douthat is describing? Please explain.
1
"Don’t freak out about deficits in the absence of inflation." Mr. Douthat do you not shop for food nor fill a car with gasoline? If you did you would have noted there is rising inflation in the prices for those necessities. Further there is wage stagnation, so there is no "partially regained prosperity" for the Middle Class. With Trump's newly imposed tariffs on trade with other nations, and his tearing up the treaty with Iran, prices for food, gasoline, and other items, including raw materials to produce goods will only rise. There will be even less prosperity for those not already well off.
As for the deficit, it is interesting to me that Republicans like yourself embrace the deficit when your Party is in power, in order to justify tax cuts for the wealthy.
I do agree with you that social media has actually lessened the ability for our young people to connect with one another on a personal level. Relationships seem to be with devices rather than people. I do not know how to put that genie back in the bottle. Further, I also do not think anyone has an answer for the opioid epidemic nor the rising number of suicides in this country. Are people just overwhelmed with everything?
If people have lost faith in churches, I would venture the ongoing scandals on a large scale involving the abuse of children over generations, has caused many to consider the hypocrisy amongst the unctuous running those institutions.
20
The kind of job where you can afford to leave mom and dad, support yourself, buy insurance, etc.--that sort of job is harder and harder to find. It's easy to find a low-paying job, but eventually you get tired of having 6 roommates.
All the entry-level and midlevel jobs that 20 and 30somethings used to work, they are gone. There are people at the top, and many many people at the bottom.
If Ross and his fellow GOPers are worried about birth rates, they need to figure out how to create higher wages.
But wait--that's not what the big GOP donors want, is it?
42
The last recession, if nothing else, was a great purge of workers over 50, with lasting consequences. Those people are gone and there is little to no way back. So - it's great that bankers and Wall Street are riding high again but there was and always is a cost and it will be paid again soon.
22
Just give those protectionist policies announced so disrespectfully to our allies and his predecessors at the G7 Summit, Trump just announced a sure way to recession and maybe worse.
Meanwhile, republicans who used to take a free trade position have buckled and democrats are almost silent.
Just wait for retaliatory reprisals from our allies. They will not forget what happened this weekend in Canada.
We as citizens shouldn’t forget President Macron’s statement that “ America first is America alone.”
21
Nobody who isn't poor or struggling to make ends meet cares about those who are.Those with health insurance don't care about those without health insurance. Nobody who retired with a good pension and a half-million dollars in investments cares about working people who have to keep working into their 70s because they have no pensions and little in savings. Nobody cares about drug addicts and depressed people except their own families because those people "chose" drugs and depression is just negative thinking and selfishness. It's now survival of the fittest, dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost. So there won't be any attention to these left-behind people when the economy takes off, or ever.
36
Everything you wrote is true. But you can't blame one party for what is really the result of a decadent value system. It's a problem in the society as a whole, regardless of political party.
14
I don't live that way, and I sure don't vote that way. I would gladly want my taxes to help the people who need the most. I vote for the Democrat in each primary who believes most in that concept. I struggled with nothing more than a HS diploma in the restaurant management field for about ten years post graduation before I lucked into my trade union. I'll always understand those breaks didn't land for everyone. Some never even had a shot. We need to look out for our country brothers and sistren. We should aim to build a society where that isn't seen as a burden, but an honor and a duty.
Don't think everyone is cold and heartless. You'll miss all the people who reject that as much as you do.
8
I disagree.
I know many liberals who are happy to pay more taxes to give people better schools and healthcare and drug treatment.
2
Thank God, oh, thank God, (ourselves?) the birth rate is declining. Our planet cannot sustain many more, especially as more and more of us desire at least an upper-class life style. If God is still lonely he can start life on other planets.
19
Ross: You were making some good points until you claimed there would be greater success if "the liberals could recognize their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric." What kind of damage to society is caused by preventing discrimination that is allowed to exist only because it claims an anchor in religion? For too long religion - a purely voluntary endeavor - has provided justification for segregation, mistreatment of women, torture of homosexuals, persecution of those from a different religion and an attack on scientific thought. You have it backwards. Religious institutions are what keep us from improving the structure of our societies. If you don't believe me, then go to any church, synagogue or mosque and retrieve the book resting upon that pulpit and read it in its entirety.
101
That line set me off too. What an unnecessary jab in the middle of a rosy picture he painted, even if he did ignore or barely paid lip service to the very different world seen through the eyes of lefties.
I'm a staunch atheist. I think all religion is nonsense that does more harm than it claims to do good. But even among progressive democrats, I'm forever seeing prayerful tweets and most people I know believe in a god,
With that in mind, liberals, in my anecdotal experience, have little problem with religion, but expect there to be a firm wall between the church and state. That only seems extreme to those who want no wall and indeed would like their religious based bigotry enshrined in U.S. Code. I don't know what world in which that is the mainstream view and ours is extreme outside theocratic regimes, a type of country I suspect is more popular than we know inside the American right.
Whatever the case, Ross is a good read and a conservative who doesn't set out to offend, which is quite welcome in these times. And even though I completely disagree with what policies would help the working and middle class, he genuinely comes across as wanting to see everyone prosper, as he defines it. I only wish that was the broad view of the rest of his party.
23
The problem with being a brilliant wunderkind opinion columnist at a mere age 38 is that despite the sophistication and the intellect, he can be as trapped in the “now” as any other young person. In additional to general incandescence, you also need to develop some rings under the bark to ALSO understand that things take time to happen, and they don’t happen through sudden transformation but by increments: social evolution is characterized more than any other quality by an immense inertia.
Having enough of those rings under the bark to qualify as decidedly NOT young, I never believed during the Great Recession or its interminable recovery that we had seen our best days as Americans, economically OR socially. So a lot of Ross’s column today is anticlimactic to me.
Automation eventually WILL obsolesce our labor, and if we wish to continue to improve life in a material sense and have the resources, leisure and will to continue to evolve socially, we need to start acting to create a very different world that will come under those dramatically altered circumstances. However, it should now be evident even to brilliant wunderkind opinion columnists that we’re not there yet, and a simple extrapolation of current trends should make it plain that it’s not going to happen truly soon. But what’s NOT evident is that we WON’T create that new world so long as we tend to the underpinnings of what enables TODAY’s material prosperity.
9
I share Ross’s concerns regarding the distractions to defining a better world that this berserker Götterdämmerung of ideologies causes. However, what I believe will happen with time is that increased prosperity and a settling-in of high employment and lessening income inequality will cause the country to move economically right (but not necessarily by an enormous leap).
During that evolution, hyper-liberals and hyper-conservatives, so focused on matters of social development on dramatically opposed axes, should become less convincing and eventually should disappear as material forces in our governance. This would be a good development, as it would allow us again to develop socially (and progressively) in manageable increments and to think about that new world that must come, how to make it happen and how long we have before it must be defined and implemented.
5
You have an incredible ability to tell a tale. That's worthy of NYT highlight. You also display an insight I don't see every day. Those rings under that bark must be pretty well defined.
Throughout your posts, you described a future that seemed rather hostile to the way the right views policy. But then you predicted a slight rightward economic shift. Left, right or up and down... It felt calm and improved from where we reside today. I'm just curious how you square a world that would seem at such odds with right wing ideology with the shift you describe. It's not to disagree but a curiosity that maybe I have a misconception in how things line up along the left/right axis. Those rings seem to carry much wisdom.
1
Matt D:
I've never sought to "square" what I believe with "right-wing ideology". I'm not a right-wing ideologue, and my comments (when not poking fun at others) merely articulate my own convictions. As an example, I'm as progressive on social issues as most in this forum, the only difference being that I want evolution to be steady, reliable and permanent, while many others here insist on transformative action NOW, and hang the ability to maintain beneficial change in the face of monumental social inertia. How much of Obama's "legacy" will survive after even four years of Trump and this Congress?
If we were to be governed by some "right-wing" cabal for an appreciable number of years, I believe we would destroy ourselves. However, if we're governed by what many in this forum ardently hope for, a "left-wing" cabal, we would also destroy ourselves just as surely, and more quickly.
What all those rings under the bark allow me to do (while curiously NOT allowing others in this forum to do who are so MUCH older than my 63 years) is develop an accurate bead on how history REALLY develops, from having directly watched so much of it unfold.
Douthat says, "The hope that material growth would heal our social problems hasn’t been vindicated so far."
That's an easy explanation. The growth has been way more tilted to the top.
In fact, it is just making our social problems worse.
28
Bingo. The vast majority of WORKING Americans haven't had wages keep up with the real inflation (the necessities that are too "volatile" for the CPI), so of course it wouldn't solve social problems. People struggling to get by tend not to be open hearted and joyful.
6
In my 60 years on the planet I have observed that when times are good people think they will continue forever and when times are bad they think the same. Neither are correct.
We have a person in the presidency that thrives on chaos, that is never a good thing as far as markets are concerned but if I could predict the behaviour of the irrational humans in the market I would be worth billions, sadly that is not the case. There are many issues and problems brewing that could change things quickly so hold on my friends.
17
Just like the idea that an ad with a man smashing his hand with a hammer will stop the opioid crisis, you are living in fantasyland, Mr. Douthat.
The people tearing at the fabric of our society are the Evangelicals who are propping up one of the most extreme unChristian humans ever, the name-calling, draft-dodging, genital-grabbing, tax-dodging, Russian-embracing President Trump.
There is a malaise spreading across this country. The slogan Make America Great Again seems like a sick joke.
Your constant denigrating of the ACA, Obamacare as you like to sneeringly call it, is so telling. How dare people want to have healthcare, want to be able to go to a doctor without mortgaging their houses, want to cover preexisting conditions. How dare people want to pay what other countries pay for drugs.
How Christian of you, Mr. Douthat, you who has healthcare.
The complicit Republicans, including you, standing idly by as Trump tramples norm after norm of our great democracy, is debilitating, tragic.
The idea that the Justice Department can only have Republicans investigate Republicans is outrageous.
The idea that Republicans can support a baker's right to protest, but call African American men bums when they take a knee in protest is outrageous.
I was rased a Christian, but as a progressive too. I was told to live and let live.
Yet in every column you have a slight against people who don't share your beliefs.
You Republicans are unAmerican in what you are doing to this country.
319
Regarding the opioid crisis, some pretty important people like the Sackler family (no doubt devout Christians who also fund the Republican party)--certainly deserve credit for doing their share to prop up local communities.
"The Family Trying to Escape Blame for the Opioid Crisis"
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/04/sacklers...opioids/55...
"The Pain Hustlers"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/02/magazine/money-issue-insy...
6
They have to denigrate ACA, it works.
7
Amen. Couldn't have said it better.
2
"The hope that material growth would heal our social problems hasn’t been vindicated so far."
For a guy with a serious religious agenda, Douthat does surprisingly little with this premise. Maybe he should consider that all this anger and despair reflect an existential crisis as well as a social one. Yes, greed at the top has meant that for many economic life has worsened: those at the bottom have been long neglected and, now with an all-Republican regime, they are being positively abused. But electing Republicans was not an original cause, simply a desperately inappropriate response to long festering problems.
Douthat should have acknowledged the presence of deeper causes. America no longer has anything that can be properly called a unifying national vision. Kennedy's Camelot and Johnson's Great Society may have been superficial, but they at least suggested a sense of public purpose. Now official America only offers its citizens endless overtures to individual material greed and the pursuit of sense pleasure, not enough to either bring people together or sustain individual souls.
Further, we fail to acknowledge the presence of an existential threat: the environmental exhaustion of the planet -- resource depletion, rampant toxicity and the resultant destabilization of ecosystems. It's happening everywhere at once but nobody outside of scientific circles talks about it. But acknowledged or not, subtle awareness of this existential threat is slowly eroding our peace of mind.
23
Yes! The US has never been a nation state hence its cohesive foundations are weak to begin with. These days, it's just a big business which calls citizens consumers. Consumption and growth are the state religion.
21
I’d suggest the opposite tack, on the culture war. Douthat suggests that “liberals end their post-Obergefell culture war” against conservative churches, which liberals have waged to defend the rights of minorities and LGBTQ people. Perhaps, recognizing that said conservative churches have suffered diminished influence and reputation, Douthat might suggest that these churches end their Trumpian hypocrisy, and focus on the Christian mission of aiding the poor, the elderly and the disaffected. Liberals are not the problem here, it’s the churches that have abandoned the cause of the needy.
130
So right, because each of those so called evangelical pastors need their own private jets which they get their congregations to pay for! Feed the poor NOT.
6
The desire to cut Social Security is not a Centrist position.
141
"Likewise America’s churches, whose weakening is part of the story of growing anomie..."
I was raised by two agnostics, I practice no religion, and I attend no house of worship. I am also an atheist.
Yet somehow I managed to maintain a marriage of 30+ years and raise two children who are now happy, productive adults.
Feel free to ponder the social, economic and cultural forces that are negatively affecting America.
But given religion's history of ignorance, oppression, and abuse, please stop claiming that "weakening" churches are part of the problem.
I think their demise is part of the solution.
187
"I was raised by two agnostics, I practice no religion, and I attend no house of worship. I am also an atheist." With experience zero, this is hardly a point-of-view that has anything valid to say about religion. On the other hand, regardless of where one stands on the spectrum of a diverse democracy, tolerance is a desirable goal.
10
I am simply claiming that religious observance is not a prerequisite for becoming a functioning human being. And I stand by my criticism of religion. Tolerance is indeed laudable. But it's quite amazing how often religions and religious people have been brutally intolerant.
3
This implication that Ross made was that the decline of religious participation somehow undermines society. These kinds of statements contradict casual observations and evidence. Look at Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands as models of unbelief with strong social support and low crime.
Ross, some of your economic assumptions are incorrect - I don't know it's uncharacteristic sloppiness on your part, or if you're trying to dissemble. Economic inequality is not decreasing (other commenters have linked to the correct figures), and there is little evidence that the surging economy is lifting all boats. This could change in the future, but it's more accurate to say that if you have attained some level of prosperity things are pretty good, and if you haven't, they're not.
Leaving that aside, I think it all comes down to an unprecedented - in my lifetime - lack of empathy and compassion in our culture. And it's not just about our partisan enemies, but about humanity in general.
I've been dismayed by the utter indifference of the American people to the fact that our government now separates children from their parents at the border, and imprisons these children in camps. Outside of the usual partisan news-cycle driven outrage (which rushes to the next outrage within 24 hours), there's been little to no notice by an indifferent American public. When something so cruel and inhumane barely registers with the public, something's really gone rotten in Denmark. I honestly don't know how we get it back (and given how easily much of American christianity has capitulated to Trump's cruelty and depravity, I don't think the answer is "more churchiness.")
77
"lack of empathy and compassion in our culture."
Er, did you miss the 246 years of slavery in our culture? The barbaric treatment of Native Americans? Jim Crow? Our Japanese-American prison camps? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Vietnam? Street riots? "Burn, baby, burn"? Widespread crime, white-, blue-, and street? Child abuse? Spousal abuse? School massacres? Bar massacres? Concert massacres? No wonder our suicide rate is increasing; our hypocritical, greedy, violent culture is historically toxic.
I'm confused by the inclusion of "declining birthrate" among a list of social ills. Given those social ills, many of which are (I believe) inherent to this biological accident called life, I think a declining birthrate is indeed a *bright* spot. It seems odd to include that among a list of social ills as if it is yet another of them. It is indeed a remedy for them. I think it's an excellent thing that we are choosing to force fewer and fewer individuals into a risky, meaningless experiment that they did not (indeed, cannot) consent to simply to give ourselves something to do with our lives.
I realize that Douthat and, well, most people disagree with me on this point, but I still think it's one worth offering in the marketplace of ideas.
40
The critique is that the "woke" and "enlightened" people choose not to have kids, but not the ones who shouldn't be having kids.
2
Seconded NT.
More people agree than you may think.
2
The declining birthrate is broached here, as it usually is, as a fiscal problem. The replenishment of Social Security funders to offset the retirees, to sustain a program that is all but a Ponzi scheme that isn't kept secret from the people pulled into it. It's a crass way to talk about family planning but hardly surprising, especially when it is done by a religious conservative. Cuz.. Jesus n stuff.
The economy is doing well but wages are not keeping up with inflation and wage theft abounds.
"The biggest players in wage theft are Fortune 500 companies, like Walmart, FedEx and AT&T, according to the Mattera and Shah report."
It's no wonder the suicide rate in the US has risen, Americans cannot afford health care, drugs, housing or even food in many cases. Hardly good times.
37
I was surprised by the claim that the income inequality "is going down" over "the last decade or so". So I read the CBO report referenced in the Bloomberg article, at
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/53597-...
Unfortunately, what the report actually shows looks substantially different. The "after-taxes-and-transfers" Gini coefficient (see the graph on page 32 of the report) indeed dropped significantly during the most recent recession. However, it has been mostly increasing since 2009. The situation is similar for other Gini graphs.
So, the "inequality is going down" claim is essentially an artifact of using 2007 as the reference point, a convenient choice because the Gini coefficient that year was particularly high. This is quite similar to the "discovery" of the global warming hiatus between 1998-2012: the temperature in 1998 was particularly high, so using that year as a reference "demonstrated" a pause. The animation on the wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus
illustrates this very nicely.
68
The same is true for wealth inequality. See figure 3 in https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statisti...
BTW this is a good reference for measuring inequality in general.
15
You have to imagine writing an article for the NYT, and your plan is to purposely cherrypick data points that don't inform your readers, but misinform them to lull them into accepting the worldview you hold. And then lament the decline in Jesus among Americans in the same deceitful piece. Man! These people are so foreign to me. They have no desire to confront the world as it presents itself. They twist reality to fit this hazardous rigid ideology that would probably be calling environmentalists "alarmists" as they campaign with this unchanged message in 185 degree summer heat in the year 2218. We've got to crush this cancer like it's waging jihad against us. I'm not so sure they aren't.
6
RD apparently did not read Thomas Piketty's book(s).
6
Mr. Douthat claims that "(Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric.)"
Well, I don't know of any liberals pursuing a post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions. In fact, I don't know of anyone -- liberal or conservative -- pursuing a pre- or post-Obergefell culture war.
(To insist that a wedding-cake baker bake a wedding cake to celebrate a wedding is NOT by any stretch of the imagination a "culture war".)
Mr. Douthat's opinions would be more convincing if they were backed up with facts, with names, with quotes, rather than with rants.
55
"Well, I don't know of any liberals pursuing a post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions." You have got to be kidding. Blinders are an amazing thing.
Wages are sluggish if not stagnant. In a truly strong economy this would not be the case. Bring up wages and then we can talk about mending the social fabric.
41
Why aren't wages rising?
Well, it's a sort of chicken and egg situation. People do not have enough money to buy stuff. We have just have 2 studies that showed if the typical American family had a real emergency & had to come up with some money, they couldn't do it. One said about half the people couldn't come up with $400 & the other that 2/3rds couldn't find $1,000. Now businesses are not going to produce stuff people can't buy. So they have to keep prices low, & they can't pay workers well & still keep the big profits they have become used to. If wages we higher, people would have the money to buy stuff, but that's the chicken bit.
BUT we have a way to break out of this circle. Its called the federal government. It can create as much money as it needs out of thin air. It can then get the money to the people who need it & will spend it by simply doing stuff that needs to be done, e.g. fixing roads and bridges, helping with education, research of all kinds, a new power grid, efficient transportation, etc., etc., etc. Thus we can break the circle & improve our lives at the same time.
What about inflation?
Prices are proportional to the amount of money in the economy (times its velocity), but INVERSELY proportional to the dollar value of the stuff we can produce. So if the money is spent doing good things, it will produce enough stuff to soak up the money. Excessive inflation is caused by something that prevents us from producing stuff, like shortages.
2
Who, pray tell, has been making "sweeping ideological changes" in the past eighteen months. Democrats? Progressives? The Deep State?
Who and what caused the Great Recession? Runaway social welfare programs? Government overreach and over regulation? Public employee unions (shudder)?
All this time I thought it was Wall Street, the banks, insurance companies and investment houses dealing in over-leveraged securities, specifically bundled derivatives.
Could the collapse of that mega Ponzi scheme have something to do with the profound social and cultural dysfunction we're presently experiencing? Might it explain why we have a thimble-rig artist and four-flushing grifter not only occupying the White House but establishing himself as suzerain of Douthat's beloved Republican Party?
When will the likes of Douthat remove the beams from their own eyes?
152
If only predicting suicide were formulaic, we would be able to prevent more.
This is about more than money. Look at some high profile individuals we lost to suicide - Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, David Foster Wallace, Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington. They weren't hurting for money. But there can be emotional voids which material comforts can't fill.
Social connectedness, including through church, doesn't explain the puzzle, either. The above individuals had loved ones and adoring fans, yet other people didn't keep them alive.
A common response to suicide is that the victim didn't seem like someone who would do that. So maybe we need to just move away from the idea that there is a prototype of a person who would take their life. It would be more helpful to make sure that mental health professionals are readily available, and without stigma, for everyone. And for people who have looked into that abyss but stepped back to speak openly of their struggles and journey, so that suicide is shown not to be a solution.
12
Arguments depend as much on what they leave out as what they include. What I find notable here is that we have no mention of the poverty rate nor of the negative externalizes caused by pollution. Lets start with the poverty rate. The last numbers we have for the rate are from 2016 where there is a decline of roughly 2% from 2014 to 2016, from roughly 14.6% to 12.7%. So why isn't this measure included in Douthat's accounting? Could it be that it shows an improvement under Obama and thus can't be used to burnish Trump's halo? Given GOP attempts to cut food stamps and other poverty programs we may see these numbers ascend, as they did during the Reagan Administration. Seems like a -preemptive move to shift blame from economic policy to issues like church attendance. As for pollution Douthat has never shown the least concern for the state of the physical environment. This is a characteristic that he shares with the rest of the columnists on the Times other than Friedman. Just yesterday the EPA ruled that it would no longer evaluate the effect of toxic products on the ambient environment. To simplify, if a detergent will cause a rash when you wear the clothes it has cleaned this will remain an EPA concern, but if that same detergent is found in the water supply this will no longer be a subject of EPA investigation or regulation. We might see 3% growth but this figure is misleading if it does not include the costs of environmental hazards to human health and biodiversity.
27
Please go meet some people living paycheck to paycheck with jobs (2 or 3) struggling to get by on less than a living wage while the bosses keep adding to their own wealth, demanding tax cuts, cutting benefits, deregulating the safety net, removing health care, etc.
While you're at it, go meet a few people with pre-existing conditions. Poverty is a pre-existing condition that makes health care insurance unaffordable a prices go up.
Social security removal is not center right, it's extremist.
Check out women who can't get birth control or family health care because your "religious" buddies care more for the unborn than the born, mothers, and families who need affordable family health care. Those "precious" fetuses aren't yet poor babies being raised in disadvantaged circumstances, riddled with low wages, inadequate infrastructure, and the criminalization of poverty. If you can't see them, they must be perfect. Once the baby is born, it's one of "those people" to be excluded from the halls of privilege.
God forbid any restrictions should be put on access to high-powered killing machines. That "sacred" right, like the rights of the unborn, trumps all other rights, such as clean water and safe housing and reasonable safe working conditions with a living wage.
If you blind yourself to the condition of 90% of the population, your story is true. Have you compared rents to income lately? Done the numbers ($10/hour is $20,800 per year before deductions)?
Try the Gospels!
373
"Those "precious" fetuses aren't yet poor babies being raised in disadvantaged circumstances, riddled with low wages, inadequate infrastructure, and the criminalization of poverty." Lots of great people in our society have come from "disadvantaged circumstances, riddled with low wages, etcetera, etcetera." It is a sign of the befuddled intellectual climate of our time that abortion is the answer.
3
Nice selective quote. Here's the rest:
"Check out women who can't get birth control or family health care because your "religious" buddies care more for the unborn than the born, mothers, and families who need affordable family health care. .... If you can't see them, they must be perfect. Once the baby is born, it's one of "those people" to be excluded from the halls of privilege.
"God forbid any restrictions should be put on access to high-powered killing machines. That "sacred" right, like the rights of the unborn, trumps all other rights, such as clean water and safe housing and reasonable safe working conditions with a living wage."
2
I think the point was the Evangelicals only care about children until they're born.
29
"If the economy is really cooking for the first time in twenty years, well, then let it cook."
This is classic right-wing, simple-minded ideology. Think back to the 2008 crash engineered by GWB and the cabal that deregulated the banking sector and blew up the middle east while adding trillions to the national debt. President Obama and progressive adults spent years repairing the damage and pointing the economy in the proper direction. Enter the "conservatives" with an obscene cartoon character of a president intent on tax cuts for the wealthy under the cover of patriotism and "America First".
We sill see what is left for rational adults to repair this time.
193
Well, I agree with some of what you say Alan, but you get the main cause of the 2008 crash all wrong.
Actually, the reasons for the crashes of 1929 and 2008 were similar. From 1919 to 1929 we had federal government budget surpluses. This meant the government took more out of the private sector than it put in. The resulting shortage of money caused people to turn to banks to borrow. Private debt exploded. This put great stress on the banks which as private debt got bigger and bigger, finally crashed in 1929.
In the 1990's our trade deficit expanded. By about 1996, the amount of money flowing out of the private sector, indeed, out of the country exceeded the amount flowing in from the federal government via the federal deficit. Except for a brief period in 2003, this outflow continued until 2008. Again the shortage of money in the private sector caused private debt to explode, and the banking sector became way overleveraged. Only huge infusions of money from the FED to the banks saved us from another 1929, but it sure wasn't pretty.
9
At the same time, how much money were companies like Apple and Microsoft putting into banks and stock but backs? I'm willing to bet it was sharply more than the trade deficits. At the same time, increased GINI would have a similar effect.
Surely you are aware that the primary reasons for the trade deficit are American companies using foreign contract manufacturers to put goods for the American market.
Another point, surely the huge increase in homes purchased for investment purposes rather than acting as primary dwellings would also reduce available money. You need to discuss the causes not the effects.
The 2008 crisis first setup was during the Clinton years by getting rid of regulations that kept banking and investments from being one business. The 1930s era Steagall-Glass act was abolished by a Republican Congress and a Democratic president in the 1990s. And it rolled downhill from that point.
8
I'm breathless with anticipation. Please explain how Trump has conceived, implemented and encouraged this economic miracle in only a year and a half. Not just for the very Rich, with the humongous Tax Cuts. But for the other people, the bottom 90 Percent. You know, everyone else.
Thanks, President Obama. Sure do miss you. Seriously.
433
Old Gloom-and-Doom is at it again. But examine closely what he’s saying. In this column, Ross Douthat cites a dropping birthrate as a disaster on a par with the opiod epidemic, worsening mental health among young people and increasing suicides. But is a lower birth rate that dire a problem? Is it really a problem at all? Certainly not for the female half of the population. Large families are a burden few women desire to assume--especially those of us whose mothers practiced the rhythm method, bore unwanted children as a result and lived miserable lives. Having smaller families is allowing women to flourish outside as well as inside the domestic sphere—in education, the arts, government, the professions. Social conservatives like Douthat may see our progress as a reason to complain. But we celebrate the fact that what used to be “ordinary forms of flourishing” only for men are finally coming within our reach, too.
100
"Having smaller families is allowing women to flourish outside as well as inside the domestic sphere—in education, the arts, government, the professions." It will take another generation or two to understand how a lower birth rate affects a society. Read the article in today's NYTimes about the current tourist industry crisis in Japan partly caused by not enough Japanese to fill the workforce. They are importing workers from China. Hello?
Declining birth rates are only a disaster for supporters of chritsian patriarchy.
9
Conservative pundits seem to be writing opinion pieces these days of the “See—the world hasn’t ended!” variety. They do this not because we’re feeling prosperous, comfortable and safe. In fact, we’re sitting atop a volcano that hasn’t blown yet while remarking how pleasantly warm the weather is.
But they’ve got to keep up the pretense that billion-dollar giveaways to billionaires haven’t hurt the economy, and that there’s no difference between being employed and being underemployed.
In fact, education is under attack, from within by Betsy DeVos and from without by poorly funded schools that prompt teacher strikes, along with the occasional mass murder of students by insane people with guns.
Our infrastructure continues to decay, Republicans drool over all that money being wasted on Social Security and Medicare and our president kisses up to Russia while he’s taunting our longtime friends and allies with snarky comments about how unfair they’re being to poor America.
So, the conservative pundits say, since everything’s going so well on the economic front, let’s address the real problems of people not having enough babies, and that the stranglehold of religion seems to be weakening. And we’ve got to stop liberals from damaging the social fabric by opposing the traditional conservative abuse and marginalization of gay people.
So if liberals would just close their eyes and think of England, conservatives could get on with what they do best.
408
"Our infrastructure continues to decay..."
Disgraceful and so shocking, really. When President Obama left office all those shovel-ready jobs he bragged about and delivered on had produced pothole-free highways from sea to shining sea. There wasn't a rusting bridge, or even a dented guardrail, anywhere in this great country of ours. That, my friend, was leadership.
And now? A mere eighteen months since he left office and it's gone, all of it. From pristine infrastructure to decrepitude faster than you can say Vladimir Putin. That's why the upcoming midterm elections are so crucial! We have to get back to the silky smooth roadways we knew, ah, such a short time ago.
3
"Pursuing these new missions would also be easier if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions does its own kind of damage to the social fabric.)" And what culture war against conservative religious institutions would that be?
Does the War on Christmas count?
Does the Prosperity Gospel count as a conservative religious movement?
Does the attempt to change the laws to take away women's control over their own bodies count?
Does the discrimination promoted by conservative "Christians" against gay people count?
Does the turning away of refugees and the deportation of parents from their American citizen children by conservative "Christians" count?
It is farcical to believe that any of these so called conservative "religious" beliefs has had any impact on the increasing suicide rate. What is staring Douthat in the face is the obvious fact that capitalism without allegiance to morality and ethics is a dead end. Just spending all your time trying to get richer and richer with total disregard for the planet or its disadvantaged peoples is destroying our souls. And Trump has brought this into crystal clear focus with his attempt to build walls around America and just sit back and watch the world burn. Let me sum it up for Douthat: Trump to the World: Drop Dead. Now isn't that a depressing thought?
31
And which of Obama’s infrastructure bills submitted to Congress were even considered? I’m sure you also know that much of the money for infrastructure was cut from the Stimulus package for an unneeded tax cut the GOP was demanding. Add in the emergency money for state and local police, fire and emergency responders. Then again, Obama took on a silky smooth economy while Trump inherited carnage.
Father Douthat is rooting for a religious tent revival to Make America Great Again.
Ross should be happy....America's conservative religious cuckoos stood up and got counted in 2016 and conspired to appoint an anti-Christ to Make Christian Shariah Law Great Again, which he's in the process of doing...in between criminal indictments, raiding the national treasury, raping Mother Earth and feeding Mother Russia.
Nevertheless, the Obama recovery continues unabated, but eventually GOP trickle-down-tax-cut strychnine kicks in and kills the golden goose.
What's needed to help the vast majority of Americans are some simple progressive solutions to fix its broken economics.
1. Single-payer healthcare; cheaper and more effective than the current Greed Over People system
2. Single-payer, publicly funded campaign financing, thereby outlawing billionaire campaigns and public policy hijackings
3. Steeper income taxes on the rich and corporations to compensate for stagnant slave wages and obscene CEO wages: the average US CEO makes more than four times his or her counterpart in other countries; auto-parts maker Aptiv (CEO-worker pay ratio: 2,526:1), temp agency Manpower (2,483:1), amusement park owner Six Flags (1,920:1), Del Monte Produce (1,465:1), and apparel maker VF (1,353:1).
4. Time to implement a wealth tax; Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people.
More 1% tax-paying; less praying, Ross.
476
Thank you for the CEO-worker pay ratio figures -- which are obscene by any standard. It's mind-boggling how those CEOs justify this to themselves. It's an instructive window into the level of greed and indifference to the plight of others in today's hyper-capitalist economic order for anyone interested in the truth about trickle-down voodoo...
54
Agreed. And don't forget those Healthcare CEOs; 113 heads of 70 of the largest U.S. health care companies collectively raked in $9.8 billion in 7 years. The top earner was John Martin, the former CEO of the Gilead Sciences, whose take home total was nearly $900 million.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/26/539518682/as-cost-o...
Salaries for just one year, 2016:
* AbbVie CEO pay — $18.53M
* Abbott Laboratories CEO pay — $19.41M
* Amgen CEO pay — $16.09M
* Aetna CEO pay — $17.26M
* Biogen CEO pay — $16.87M
* Baxter International CEO pay — $16.65M
* CVS Health CEO pay — $22.86M
* Celgene CEO pay — $22.47M
* Cigna CEO pay — $17.31M
* Express Scripts Holding CEO pay — $14.84M
* Gilead Sciences CEO pay — $18.76M
* Eli Lilly & Co. CEO pay — $16.56M
* Johnson & Johnson CEO pay — $21.13M
* Merck & Co.CEO pay — $19.89M
* Mylan CEO pay — $18.16M
* Regeneron Pharmaceuticals —$47.46M
* Thermo Fisher Scientific CEO pay — $16.31M
* Vertex Pharmaceuticals CEO pay — $28.09M
* Universal Health Services CEO pay — $20.43M
52
Agree.
Let's turn the discussion towards how we make individual practice of community and human values the criteria upon which success is measured. Without a new citizenship/social standard - and matching behaviors - this does not get changed. We will all have to give something up...not just the 1%.
Until then, money remains one of the most dangerous drugs out there...the source of power in society and the scorecard of one's success.
22
"The deepest economic pessimists have turned out to be wrong, for now at least, about how fast the 21st-century American economy can grow and how many jobs it can create. But as the economic picture has improved, the social picture hasn’t.."
Mr. Ross. Have you considered the possibility that the reason for this disparity in economic/social outcomes is the statistical indicators you are using to form your argument that economic prosperity has returned are either misleading or completely wrong?
There seems to be a strong propensity to cling to rather outdated measures for economic health among the ruling class at the moment. They point to GDP growth, GDP per capita, to the unemployment rate, to the value of the stock market, and sometimes to wages (although those have not been growing in spite our supposed economic health for some peculiar reason....).
However, in an economy that is experiencing a vast gulf in inequality, most of these measures are highly misleading regarding the actual state of the economy for most people.
For instance, while unemployment may be low, the people who dropped out of the labor force are not included in the measure. Additionally, for those who stayed, far more are employed in alternative work arrangements or part time work which do not provide for a real cost of living.
Additionally, almost all of the GDP Growth that has been generated since the Financial Crisis has been captured by the top 10% of the income distribution.
109
The reason those indicators are misleading is this:
When you take an average (a mean) of a distribution, it does not reflect the reality of a distribution accurately if that distribution is highly skewed.
For instance: Let's say we look at the distribution of income in the population by Quartiles: Bottom 25%, Lower-Middle 25%, Upper-Middle 25%, and Upper 25%.
Let's say the wealth of these four quartiles (for demonstrative purposes only) grew by the following amounts:
Bottom - 3 Bottom-Middle - 6 Upper-Middle - 9 Upper - 27.
If I add up those four numbers I get 45. Divide by four, and GDP grew by a whopping ~11.65!
Except GDP didn't grow by 11.65 for the Bottom, it grew by 3. It didn't grow by 11.65 or the Bottom-Middle, it grew by 6. It didn't grow by 11.65 for the Upper-Middle, it grew by 9. And it didn't grow by 11.65 for the Upper, it grew by 27.
92
Thanks, Pete, for detailing this so well.
If any more pundits claim how well the economy is going because the unemployment rate is so low and the GDP is expanding so well, I'm gonna hurl.
These pundits are delusional. They seem to have no grasp of what the underemployment rate--how many people are working part-time or gig arrangements when they don't want to, or working jobs well below their educational/experience levels--is, what the actual median hourly wage is, or how the jobs that have been created are qualitatively much worse on the autonomy/wage/benefit aspects than the ones they've replaced.
These things might not matter much if we didn't have our social Darwinist/Calvinist attitude about things like a robust safety net and universal health coverage, but, you know, commercial rights, corporations are people, taxes bad.
The pundits ignore the inequality this has perpetuated, and then they wonder how Trump got elected. (One can only hope that the dismantling of our public educational systems haven't gone so far as to keep his voters from starting to notice how he conned them into thinking he's was going to do something about all this--hopefully the honeying campaign rhetoric won't hide that he's governing just like all the other oligarchs out there.)
15
This is just my opinion, but I think they know quite well that they are misrepresenting the reality of the economic situation and they are intentionally manipulating statistical measures to paint a false picture of reality.
They just really, really don't want people to throw them out, so they are lying and trying to put lipstick on this pig as much as possible and hoping naively that if they just say the economy is healthy enough times people will believe it. But this is dumb, because people are living it and they know.
The Financial Crisis fatally undermined their rule. The populist revolt was a reflection of this fatal undermining. And the final nail in the coffin will come with the next major economic downturn.
(Also I meant to say 11.25% growth in the above post, I don't know how I messed that up)
The thing we have been convinced to forget, in the last 50 years, is that economic issues ARE social & moral issues. Just as social policies entail monetary costs, every economic policy question--on trade, taxation, regulation, whatever--is an inherently moral question with direct social consequences. Allowing American corporations to abandon communities in pursuit of wealth abroad had social consequences. Letting banks gamble with deposits, or automobile makers ignore climate change, has social consequences. Dismantling the ACA so that Mr. Trump & his friends can take a few more cents home after taxes will have social consequences. The Republicans have been politically successful by promoting "laissez-faire" economics for its own sake, while the Democrats usually propose band-aids for the resultant social problems. Mr Douthat seems to want a bit of each. But both are letting financial interests frame the questions in these misleading ways. The result can only be increasingly unimaginable wealth for a few, and a roller coaster in which the lows keep getting lower for everyone else.
52
Ross, an excellent and thoughtful column as usual. One error, however, is to describe ending Social Security as a "centrist" goal. It has long been a goal of the Republican Party, along with dismantling all of FDR's New Deal. Centrists wish to retain SS and Medicare, but put them on a sounder financial footing by, for example, raising the cut-off point for SS taxes.
62
Ross said nothing about ending Social Security. He spoke to reforming it. Eventually, entitlements will have to be reformed--or ended--or something more radical implemented, because of the unsustainable math of too few workers supporting many retirees. The middle road is to make modest reforms, such as gradually raising the retirement age up to 70.
2
Yet employers will continue to offload senior employees in order to hire younger, more affordable replacements. How many 65 or 67 year olds have you seen successfully manage a career change? Raising the retirement age didn't work the last time and it won't work now unless the cap is lifted to support it.
In fact, raising the Social Security earnings cap would cover any upcoming shortfall. Nothing more radical needs to be implemented.
1
".....if liberals could recognize that their post-Obergefell culture war against conservative religious institutions..."
That's a very unfair characterization of the issues going on between the LGBTQ civil rights fight and the attempt of so-called religious institutions trying to force their beliefs down our civil throats. No-one on the LGBTQ side is demanding that the free exercise of religious practice be infringed upon. However, the religious side is demanding that they have the civil right to practice discrimination against a whole class of people they do not approve of. Witness this week not only the SCOTUS ruling in the wedding cake matter...on the heels of that a hardware store owner in Tennessee put a sign in his window "No Gays Allowed". So, tell me....who feels more threatened here in this so-called war?
111
Ask Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker, if he was being fairly treated when the gay couple sued because he refused to make a speciality cake for their wedding. He was not going to go against his deeply held religious beliefs that marriage was between one man and one woman. He did offer to sell any cake or item in his shop. The gay couple declined.
His religious convictions were so important to him that he fought this battle in the Supreme Court and won. The justices agreed that his religious rights were being infringed upon and voted in his favor. This was a win for religious principles held by the American public and hopefully not the last.
4
That is NOT what SCOTUS voted in favor of... They basically punted on question of his right to deny service to a gay couple on religious grounds. They ruled the Colorado Civil Rights Board impugned his religious beliefs and decided the "language" they used to describe those beliefs undermined the entire case. This decision was a one off and has established no precedent.
The jobs boom is in menial service work. Amazon warehousemen, Uber gig drivers, Homejoy house cleaners, etc. Technology hasn't just rendered some people unemployable, it's rendered the Bill of Rights a quaint bit of outdated history. It's bankrupted half the newspapers in this country.
No average Joe can afford a $700 Financial Times subscription, or a $300 New York Times subscription, but have to rely on Facebook or fake news for information or live in ignorance as our political and educational elite seize opportunities to more daylight between themselves and the growing mass of overpopulated humanity on planet Earth.
81
What exactly do you believe the "educated elite" are explicitly doing to put more daylight between themselves and everyone below them? I am on of this hated group (PhD Chemist) and have been unable to identify any acts that actively seek to undermine anyone else in society. The fact that I spent eleven years in college full time after growing up in poverty should not relegate me to a hated class of saboteurs. If others choose instant gratification (drugs, sex/babies, no continued education) rather than carefully planning for a better life the consequences should be borne by them, not me.
14
Here's the problem: Your comment looks like something that could have been written by the kind of Republican voter to whom Obama would have chastened, "you didn't build that." Yet, my guess is that you almost certainly identify as a Democrat.
The swing voters of the Rust Belt ARE able to identify, in many instances, either the leaders or the ideas that they feel betrayed them. There was a time, as recently as the 1980s when the Democratic party firmly supported policies that were economically protectionist and unabashedly on the side of laborers. That fell to the wayside when DNC leadership embraced Republican ideas like NAFTA, aversion to tariffs and access to large pools of inexpensive, low skilled labor. Opposition to these policies in 2016 was embraced by only two candidates, Sanders and Trump, and by no mainstream candidate of either party.
My NYT digital subscription is $180 a year and worth it.
11
You nailed it in the first paragraph, Ross. You just described the most advanced society in history beset with moral despair. Now what? You cannot pass laws to end racism. There are still too many who are afraid of immigrants and who are themselves descendants of them! How do you legislate an end to hypocrisy?
44
"You cannot pass laws to end racism."
But we've passed lots of laws to make life more bearable for the victims of racism, and participate successfully in political life.
I agree that laws can't cause a spontaneous change of heart in those steeped in the cultural presence of racism, but they may eventually change the culture itself for the better. Foe example, I've seen no support for return to the use of child labor, or restriction of female voting.
6
Mr. Douthat makes some good points, but undermines them with straw-man arguments like the purported "liberal ... culture war against conservative religious institutions." Political liberals have no war with churches or religions; on the contrary, it's conservative evangelicals who are at war with those of other religions and no religion. In their fanaticism and obsession with abortion and homosexuality, they are pushing to eliminate the separation of church and state in this country, in order to impose their own cramped and distorted value system on everyone. As a liberal Democrat I have no issue in general with churches or religion; it's true that many of them do great and unselfish charitable work. To somehow blame the ills of society on a fictional hostility by us toward the religious groups bent on suppressing and even criminalizing our values does nothing to solve the social problems the article identifies.
205
And this does illuminate what really drives a lot of our division - projection in the minds of the insecure.
The underlying unease of the "conservatives" - those who look to 19th century social structures and technology - leads to their feeling of frustration and paranoia. The drive for self-preservation converts this unease into the projection of "liberals" - those who look to 21st century social structures and technology - as jihadists in the culture war.
In the long view, either progress will be stalled universally, as in the Dark Ages, or the U.S. and a few other societies will be converted into laggard societies. In the short term, economic tyranny and political oligarchy will create needless harm and suffering for society, for the benefit of a few rapacious individuals.
15
Well said! The fact that the U.S. Founding Fathers did see a pertinent need for "Separation of Church and State" cannot be underestimated. The more this Constitutional requirement is allowed to erode the more you are headed for a brand, new Spanish Inquisition.
12
When in doubt (which is essentially all the time), the only thing most of the media has is "both sides do it" - "both sides are responsible". What a complete lack of courage we witness on a daily basis, all for the race for clicks, eyeballs and subscriptions. We are so, so lost.
8
Contrary to Mr. Douthat's piece, these are not good times. Most Americans are underemployed. Most families are a couple of paychecks away from financial catastrophe. We see the rich becoming more rapacious, trying to get every last buck they can get their hands on. Our President lies to us on average, seven times a day. We see religious institutions embroiled in sex scandals. We see racism openly promoted by our hate groups and elected officials. All the while we stare into our "smart" phones or computers to see the latest gossip, "fair and balanced news", or the next thing we should purchase on Amazon. We have become morally bankrupt for the sake of so-called prosperity. We have become addicted to the world of things; the notion that prosperity and its accouterments will bring us happiness. That only satisfies a certain minority of persons. The rest of us will hunger for a world where we can live in peace and work together for the common good of all, rather than the few.
152
Spot on and well written - and not surprising, because we are in the age of narcissists whose only meaningful and valid point of view is their own. We get Mr. Douthat's flawed opinion as a perfect example.
12