My biggest issue with the green new deal is that it isn’t technologically feasible to convert our entire energy output to wind and solar. Two big problems here and they are very big problems.
Wind and solar aren’t dense. To put it in perspective, to replace one large power plant with solar, get in you car, look one mile left and one right. Drive for 30 minutes at 65 miles per hour. That’s how big the solar field needs to be. Wind power is even less dense. Sure, we can put half a million wind turbines off our coasts, but is that what we want? We have 8,600+ power plants in the US.
Even if you did this, we still have an intermittency issue. The sun goes down every day and some days are partly or fully cloudy. The best industrial battery storage provides 10 hours at immense cost. To be safe, a power grid would need to have 50 to 100 hours of storage. The cost for 10 hours of batteries for the entire US energy grid would be about 4 trillion$. So at a minimum you are at $20T in battery cost. But it gets worse. Batteries last 10 to 15 years tops. Solar panels last 25-30 years. So you need to spend the $20 trillion twice. The cost per KW hour would go up 10x over current costs. How could a middle class family afford that?
If the dems want to get serious, I would take them serious. This is just plain fantasy.
BTW - Sweden reduced their per capita carbon footprint in about 15 years to the lowest in the industrial world with the only scalable economical renewable. Nuclear.
53
As somebody else said a few days ago, the problem with the new generation is that it is stupid. Generation S. Includes some old folks.
They believe that the world will end in 12 years, or at a minimum Miami will be under water then. They think it's possible to outlaw planes. They think solar and/or wind will one day be as efficient and effective as fossil fuels (never). They think global warming, or climate change, are existential threats. They have zero understanding of science, nuclear power in particular so they never mention it. They think government controlling the entire economy is just fine, because, you know, we'll have the experts tell us which way to go.
They know everything, and they understand nothing.
This is Marxism-Leninism, 21st century, US style. These are the same people who took over Russia because the misguided bureaucrats running the Czar's government let them, thinking that they can't manage Russia without them. Big mistake. Manage they did, and 100 million dead people and 70 years later, their social experiment forged in those days' equivalent of the NYT went up in flames, as predicted.
Well, we are not arrogant Russian bureaucrats, so we'll hand out rope to let Generation S take it long enough and far enough to hang itself.
Roughly November 2020.
Can't think of a better gift if it were Christmas.
29
Wow. Brooks is so far gone at this point, he probably believes the "Finish The Wall" MAGA doublethink.
15
The smug is strong with this one, but then, this is David Brooks, Darth Vapid when it comes to practical matters that he sees only through the impenetrable black helmet over his ability to learn.
The Green New Deal is indeed naive and shallowly idealistic. So it its author. But for Brooks to pose as a spokesperson for the free market while the GOP grabs Koch dollars, socializes coal, rams waste back into a de-carbonizing economy, and flagrantly tries--and gloriously fails--to end renewable energy in the cradle is just a lie.
Bad news, David. What this young Congresswoman proposes to happen via legislation is happening already, in a stampede, in the private sector. The Right's visceral hate for regulation has absolutely zero effect on the private sector's understanding that 1) wasted energy is wasted money; 2) self-regulation serves as well as government regulation; and 3) the incentives are realigning themselves. You're right in your dim fluffy principle, but then so is that that meme about the stopped clock being right twice a day. Lucky you. AOC is right too. This is needed and it's going to happen. The ones who are spectacularly wrong are the elitists who want to return to the free market of 1950. They can't buy that again no matter how much they spend.
34
David Brooks hasn’t had a new idea in years and now that he’s associated with the party of Trump he panics when Democrats are the ones who are willing to Marshall our forces to make the type of large scale transition we will have to make if we want to fight climate change and succeed as a democracy rather than a fascist state run by a nationalist and his corrupt lackeys.
18
Going overboard is not the proper reaction to the nation's current position. Finding the money to help State's accomplish such monumental/Herculean tasks would be an interesting and worthwhile endeavor for out "leaders" in Washington.
The ideas espoused by McCloskey are what America should strive to achieve. Remember that it is the first three words of the Constitution of the United States of America that hold the key: "We the People..."
3
@Peter M Blankfield
Oops, typo: should read "...our leaders..." sorry for the oversight.
Mr. Brooks, can you stop the political fear-mongering long enough to think about the major problems the world is facing because of climate change? In the realm of global warming and the myriad of worldwide horrors it will cause, there are no "elites". Even the military agrees that it is an issue that endangers our national security. Why shouldn't the Federal government be involved? This is like a war. Even the migration issues we are witnessing around the world and fighting about here is related to pressures exerted now by climate change. It will only cause more wars, displacement, desertification, food shortages, and weather disasters and loss of animal/insect species.
We have to live on this planet. The science that tells us that it is much later than we thought. We humans (not Rep or Dem) have to do something bold to address the coming catastrophe. If this plan can be combined with providing jobs, building infrastructure and becoming a leader in alternative energy then I call it a win, win ! Government is the only entity that can accomplish this as the leader of a coalition of partners including business and non-profits while exerting pressure on other countries. Some states and business are trying to work towards mitigating climate change issues, but we need the Feds to bring all factions together in a coordinated effort. Only large scale and bold steps can work now. The time for incremental measures and tax incentives alone has long ago past.
24
David Brooks was wrong about Iraq (Backed W.) and has been for base many times since. For insight read Paul Krugman’s (Nobel Prize Economics) editorial on the Green Agenda, the same subject, to see Brooks is wrong again!
10
Yes, it would be amazing to start with carbon taxes and other market incentive realignments. But the GOP that Mr. Brooks magically sees as drifting left (what?!) has made these verboten. What else is available but to blue sky (pun very much intended) further left solutions?
9
David, how old are you? No, that is a snarky question. If all you can remember happened after Reagan, you might think that the the Democrats are taking a radical shift left.
But if you were alive in the 60s or even the 70s, you'd know that the Democrats are shifting back towards center left. The GOP shifted so far to the right that when they looked left, they saw Ghengis Khan standing there. Any shift seems radical when Ghengis Khan is a tad more liberal than your party.
The ideas of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and the leftmost wing of the party are a white paper - a set of ideals that they want the nation to strive for. It is not unlike the white papers of the right which wanted a Court that supported unfettered capitalism and a base that saw liberal values and urban living as the action of the anti-Christ.
The right is worried because their pipe dreams are being enacted and wonder if the left can pull it off.
But for the time being as the left wing asks for Medicare for all and free college, the rest of us could recognize the reality of the problems and look at practical solutions. Can we lower the medicare age, and charge premiums? Or allow people to buy into state and federal employee plans? Can we offer low interest loans with generous terms that are not money makers for banks but real boosts for education? Can we look to invest in making industry and energy less toxic?
Stop pandering to the FOX crowd. The Dems are not socialists; just agents of change.
21
Well maybe, if the Republicans had allowed the ACA to work the way it was designed instead of sabotaging different parts of it, we wouldn't even be talking about it right now! Grrrrrr.
14
I do not think it is a paradox that the hard left embraces a totalitarian mindset. The political continuum is not a straight line, but rather a circle where the far left and far right meet at the apex of iron-fisted control. The conceit of a politician such as Bernie Sanders or OAC is to portray their policies as kind-hearted and costless while masking their secret belief that they are somehow smarter than you and entitled to order your life.
My hope is that the American people will prove to be too collectively smart to fall for this nonsense.
Thank you for an astute article. This type of wisdom is needed sorely today.
8
@Stephen K. Bannon
Excellent post.
5
@Stephen K. Bannon
Seriously? You think that the left "embraces a totalitarian mindset”?
We've never gotten closer to totalitarianism than where we are right now. And that is due in large part to your support of puppet tyrant-king President Trump.
We now have a president with no desire to consult with experts, whether they are military generals or top climate scientists, who wants to build a wall against the advice of engineers, scientists, security advisors, and the wishes of the majority of Americans, and who listens to no one—not even you.
Why does the right believe that chipping in to support the US military is good, but chipping in to support basic healthcare and community college degrees is bad? If it’s possible to raise the money by chipping in for something that the majority want, then it is simply a matter of picking one line item in a budget over another.
Note that the Green New Deal mentions several times how plans will be created:
“(3) a Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses;”
Do you see much transparency and collaboration happening with the current Republican administration? Neither do I. Transparency and collaboration are not hallmarks of totalitarianism.
18
I like David Brooks because he isn't a Freedom Caucus wannabee. He's a smart, thoughtful journalist. He's wrong here, though. There's nothing Elitist about a Green New Deal. This is a scope project -- a forward thinking resolution from which process will evolve. If we don't start, we'll never get there and certainly won't find an end to the urgency that's required of this subject. He'll come around. It's the right thing to do at the right time in history -- we have a decade to turn back destruction. Surely, any rational mind would sign onto this resolution.
12
David Brooks is back to his usual cherry-picking about the demon Left.
The Green New Deal isn’t the big scary “elitism” monster. President Trump is the big, scary “elitism” monster. And the elites have just profited handsomely from his tax cuts while everybody else goes “meh.”
The Green New Deal simply builds on Congress’ constitutional duty to regulate interstate commerce and promote the general welfare.
Do we need highly polluting cars, trucks and planes? The “50 laboratories” conservatives call the states are doing a terrible job for their citizens especially in the south. Red states have high crime, high poverty, high unemployment, racism is rampant, incomes are lower than average. Nearly every high gun violence and murder rate state is a Red state.
So the Green New Deal is simply Washington investing in the Green revolution that the world MUST undertake if it is to survive.
David Brooks, through his whining about “centralized decisions” and dismissing it as big, scary “elitism” is really another author of “American’t, the lazy Right’s answer to everything.”
9
What partisan garbage. David, go cry somewhere else about the demise of your party of racists and criminals.
13
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been elevated into a media star by both the left and right. She gets as much coverage in the conservative leaning New York Post as in the New York Times. A day doesn't go by when she is not the object of attention--and derision--on Fox News. The object of the right is to portray AOC as the soul of the Democrat Party, and so out of touch with mainstream America. Because AOC is a media star, some Democrats foolishly put her upfront for a radical progressive wish list that they know could not be sustained by today's political and economic reality. Trump and Republicans could not be happier.
5
David, It's hard to continue reading after the second sentence: a bit of slight of hand. Either you are implying I don't know that you are comparing trough to peak in the business cycle (instead of peak to peak) or you don't know that yourself. Either way, not a good start.
3
Climate change has reached critical!!!!!!! This is no joke, we are destroying this planet. Just this week there was a report on the state of insects. Sit there and criticize, instead of helping to craft an emergency plan, which is vitally needed, and you might as well push more coal production. Oh wait, that's what those lunatic Republucans are doing. It's insane. Come on David, seriously, stop hindering and start helping.
4
Mr Brooks,
I like your last sentence, yet I would through something in about looking forward, far forward, to the day when the Earth will be so hot that the debate will no longer be between capitalism and socialism, but the survival of the human race on a rapidly warming planet.
But go ahead and flog your old arguments. Time will tell.
8
"As many conservatives have shifted leftward..."
My eyes glaze over at this childish exaggeration by Brooks. Have a debate about Green but let's not start it pretending conservatives have moved left so progressives must now be "reasonable" too. Conservatives have moved so far right as to have supported a Trump, who makes even Nixon look moderate and Nixon was no moderate.
That said, progressives logically want government to step in to thwart huge corporations from creating a third 1880's or 1920's Gilded Age. Only the federal gov't has the equivalent power of an Apple or a Google or Exxon.
And that said, when novice AOC starts talking about this massive a program, it's like an ambitious high school senior first getting in charge. Simply stop her: she's a back-bencher with an odious penchant for the spotlight and literally 0 experience at 29. Why does the press fall for the person with the largest megaphone: she's Trump's polar opposite and his perfect twin.
11
University elites is a woefully fuzzy term. And way off base, given that universities generally are being starved by state legislators.
Universities, who isn't aware of this, are becoming trade schools.
What's elite about the millions of part time instructors that are
replacing tenure track positions? As a graduate of the exceptionally endowed University of Chicago, he risks hypocrisy, and only implicates himself with his use of a blank term that borders on being a slur.
4
Mr. Brooks, you are a smart man, but in today's column you seem like the class clown shooting spitballs at the smart kid in class while he presents an important science project (possibly saving the world by doing something about climate change). You don't have anything to add, so you accuse him of "elitism" and "trusting the power of the state". Why why why attack him when he may well be taking the last opportunity we have to preserve civilization? Do YOU have a better idea for doing it?
And to call a group of people elitist when YOU get invited to all the best parties in DC, with all the "serious" people, is more than a little rich.
14
Hoover Dam, Mr. Brooks? Was that elitist?
Heck, I’d be happy to name the Florida route of the proposed high speed train the “Trump” line, once “trump” is gone. In the same spirit of Hoover and the dam FDR got built.
But not one centavo for that wall, although I must say, that wall - as “trump” would want it - would be the most egregiously epic example of “elitism” following your “logic”.
9
The Green New Deal is a sensible step in the right direction, and Brooks is off the mark. Capitalism has hollowed out manufacturing in this country to the point where we can’t build a functioning railroad car or a screw for an I Phone. In the meantime, we’re getting beaten by China which uses central planning and state owned industries to achieve extraordinary results. China now has a network of high speed trains that the US desperately needs, and yet we are unable to build a modern transportation system. This is due to the failures of capitalism. One example. In the 1970s we abandoned thousands of miles of railway in a country of 180 million. Now, in a country of 300 million we need those rights of way back, but they’re gone. Capitalism without planning is wasteful, and workers suffer under ever worsening abuses fueled by slavish devotion to the bottom line. Sorry David, but volunteers at a local soup kitchen isn’t going to fix what’s broken with out capitalist system.
10
The two major problems of our times are: the obscene concentration of wealth and power, and the impending catastrophe of climate change. Both are direct consequences of global capitalism. Any attempt to tackle these beasts will require boldness and courage way beyond the normal political soft shoe. The Green New Deal is a worthy first draft. It has the advantage of addressing head on both challenges at once. As for elites, strong government intervention, motivated by popular will, is the only force strong enough to oppose the elites of global capitalism. They will not give up power without a fight, even as democracies wither and the earth cooks in its own atmosphere. Modest efforts will go nowhere.
5
Looks like Brooks is trying to resuscitate his reputation with the right wing by exaggerating claimed problems with Democrats. The so-called Green New Deal may be over the top but there are plenty of moderates out there, essential to a Democratic victory in 2020, who have to have attention paid to their doctrinal preferences. Sad to see Brooks blundering.
5
Mr. Brooks, this technocrat delusion is your personal nightmare as it’s framed. It is not the vision or strategy of those who advocate for and trust in a New Green Deal to end exploitive and unsustainable hyper-capitalism that is exemplified by Great Britain’s exit from the European Union.
It is the path out of hyper-capitalism to a much more productive mix of socially responsive government and economy that controls costs, quality and risk management for working class tax payers. Not the selfish investor and corporate class. We already had a model moving in the direction of a New Green Deal before the Republicans lost their minds, integrity and actual love of country and its people. Now we’re having to tract and destroy obscene obstacles to care for the environment and people. So please stop making up hyper-capitalistic night terrors and tell the truth to your readers about the real value of social welfare, social justice, the pursuit of equity and the beginnings of the end of an American economic system that had a short run, approximately 4-500 years held up now by lies, manipulation, exploitation and greed at the top. It has been falling apart since the end of the worst human exploitation (US slavery and Jim Crow) in Western Civilization. You don’t have the trust, period, of emerging Brown and Black workers and voters; and emerging voters.
So stop peddling partisan fake analysis lacking integrity; and go back to the school of truth and honesty and effective economies.
5
I have to say, I find many of the comments so much more worthwhile reading than this column. Also, I happened to know Mr. Brooks' realtor and the home he relatively recently bought. It's huge and luxurious. No wonder, he's worried about tru fairness and re-distribution of income.
4
Too bad boomers like Brooks simply don’t have enough votes to control America for oligarchical capitalism anymore. It’s nice that globalzation has lifted hundreds of millions of non-Americans out of poverty. Too bad the oligarchs who’ve run globalization to make themselves very rich could care less about this fact. Too bad also that tens of millions of American workers have been deliberately impoverished by these same oligarchs in their race to the bottom of world wages for their fun and profit. Too bad, above all, that the emerging young American majority that will replace Brooks and his fellow dying boomers at the ballot box as the geezers die faster and faster simply don’t see the world from the oligarchical elites’ perspective, as Brooks does. Brooks and the boomers’ 15 minutes is about up. And it’s a good thing, too.
3
Oh Brooksy. Here you are again. “In an alienated America, efforts to decentralize power are more effective and realistic than efforts to concentrate it in the Washington elite.” There is so much wrong with this sentence. Elected officials like AOC are “elite”? After you’re idiotic party elected a billionaire as president*? And who’s to say that, having watched the GOP do everything it can to use “elite Washington power” to enrich themselves and their cronies, that maybe the Democratic Party is thinking, Hey, maybe the federal government can actually do something decent for a change, if, somehow, we manage to put decent people in place wielding the levers of power? What a concept, huh, Brooksy?
4
It seems laughable that Brooks cites one article as justification for his statement that "Among conservatives there are now a bevy of thinkers who are trying to find ways to use government to reduce inequality...." Who is this bevy? It seems like every other Republican is still crying about socialism and arguing that free markets will fix everything if only we'd just cut a few more taxes. Give me a break.
8
Its laughable that David Brooks who has built a career on elitism is criticizing and lecturing the left on elitism!.
10
Have you noticed that the three Conservative columnists for the NYT (Brooks, Douthat and Stephens) write the same column day in and day out. It goes something like this: Yes, Trump is bad and I feel bad he hijacked my party. But Democrats are just as bad, so you liberals have to feel just as guilty.
Read carefully their columns from now on and you’ll see that this is the case. And this Green New Deal and the pro-Palestinian stance of few members have become the “proof” of their phony argument.
One could spend some time pointing out the flaws in Brooks’ reasoning, but why bother when it’s all a fraud. It would be like trying to rebut Trump’s tweets.
9
The Green New Deal is a starting place, like all big ideas, it's the beginning of sharing ideas, pro-cons etc...
But at least the Democrats are still reaching for new ideas... What new idea, that benefits all Americans, the country and the land have the GOP come up with in the last twenty years?
Democrats care about ordinary people of all colors and faiths, the land, the future for our children...
What do the GOP stand for, other than more profits, abortion, division, voter suppression and whiteness.
I'm white so need for the racist card here..
Seriously, what would America look like if it was truly ruled by the GOP, the likes of racists Anne Coulter, Hannity, Carlson, Fox News? Why do I choose them, they represent the forefront of Trump's belief's and GOP followers...
3
Conservatives haven't had a decent, innovative, forward thinking idea in over 30 years. Get the heck out of the way and let us repair the damage done by stupid, greedy, vindictive fools who would rather see us literally fry to death than challenge their rapacious overlords.
7
You are no longer the one who is explained to, David.
From now on, you are the one who explains.
1
Political elite? Excuse me? Where did you go to college, Mr. Brooks? And where did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez go to college? Is the "political elite" the freshmen class in the House of Representatives? Or is it firmly established in the Executive Branch? Just even looking at Mnuchin or de Vos or Wilber (let them take out loans) Ross, shows me in which direction the Republican Party is headed. They may talk the talk of "freedom" (right, when you have no healthcare and no savings, that's really "free") and they may blather on and on about bootstrapping yourself into the middle class, but they deny young people an affordable education, pollute and defile our own Mother Earth, snarkily dismiss educated people and, apparently, make a lot of their money by simply being Mafia dons. If there's one thing Republicans have absolutely no high ground on, it's caring about the middle and lower classes. Give your Conservative mind set a break. Capitalism worked when we were rising too fast in the world and we needed things like infrastructure, construction and cheap labor. But as Jay Gould (a Republican) famously said about the poor, "I'll hire half of them to work for me. Then just shoot the rest of them." Then we have the delightful Ronald Reagan trying to cut the cost of school lunches for the poor by declaring ketchup to be a vegetable. Really, Mr. Brooks? The Democrats are elitist? Get off you high horse and look around you.
14
After two years of Trump's bumbling band of incompetents and grifters--bring on the technocrats...please..
7
Not to worry about our planet. Mother Earth has the wheel, and she will chase those who live by the coast, herd them into the center and then burn them to a crisp. After that she will restore the planet and make it once again habitable for the few that remain. Earth will be splendid again.
2
This is a familiar trope in Brooks's columns: A stealthy stalking move to take down liberalism and perpetuate the status quo.
Using the rhetoric of reasonableness and politeness to disguise the dagger of sarcasm. Generalities, and condescension, tut-tutting that optimism and sweeping change are childish fantasies.
Same old, same old. Get out of the way, David.
6
Centralizing power? What? Something that would never occur to Trump and his oligarchs? These folks only appear to be elitists by contrast to the crude knuckle draggers currently in power, and their gutless sycophants in the Senate.
Heck, you're not reading the minutes of the meeting in progress, David.
7
In pretty sure the Democrat party is not left wing
3
Dear Mr. Brooks,
You sent me to the dictionary, I mean really "dirigistes". I take it you mean a bunch of brain-washed know-nothing know-it-alls.
I don't agree with you very often, but you are correct in calling this;
by the way what do you call The New Green Deal, a manifesto? a weird new deal? a cultural riff? extra likes on Facebook? political posturing? (probably the latter),
Anyway I am very suspicious of anyone who is so convinced of their indisputable "rightness" that they want to take over control of everything.
I have been around know-it-alls all my life, and you know what, most of them had a very loose grasp on reality, except for how it benefitted them.
6
The Left has gone bonkers. From Green Deal to their alliance with Islamism (Tony Blair to Sky News: “There is a kind of nascent alliance between Islamist type of politics and the left)- the Left is suicidal.
3
Gee David; Trump and the GOP can't even allow us to keep energy efficient Light Bulbs; undoing standards set in place in 2007 under George Bush.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/02/f59/withdrawal-of-gsl-definition-nopr.pdf
3
For Democrats to continue to flirt with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a sure way to get our man/child president re-elected.
1
Ah, the elite. Yes, they are not like you (or me). I prefer your ordinary billionaire or Fox host to the well-educated. The
drumbeat has started -- Socialism! Socialism! No price is too high to avoid socialism!
6
Memo to Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren, to Howard Schultz, Michael Bloomberg, Beto O'Rourke, and to all other "wannabe" Presidents, and to Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Whip Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader Charles "Chuck" Schumer, Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and all other members of Congress:: Please respond in writing, under oath, to the following suggestion: "To help low-income workers, save taxpayer $ and virtually eliminate bureaucratic "red tape" and fraud, Congress should "convert and consolidate" ALL federal welfare programs to a single monthly cash stipend paid through their current EBT card. To qualify, each adult U.S. citizen who asks for government assistance---including food stamps/SNAP, TANF, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), public housing/Section 8, WIC, Medicaid, and all other welfare programs, must file an annual income tax return with valid photo ID and register for work at their local or state employment office. Tax $ saved through elimination of current administrative overhead costs will go DIRECTLY to the recipients, cutting out all "middle men." To verify identity, the photo ID must include social security #, residence address, and date of birth. Fraudulent claims will be punished under federal law."
The green new deal is complete nonsense.
Drill baby drill and build that wall!
1
This is the direct result of Republucans taking everything from the middle class and giving it to the rich people. When you stretch the rubber band too much it breaks.
3
"But the underlying faith of the Green New Deal is a faith in the guiding wisdom of the political elite."
Would that Brooks would confine himself to his allotted 4 minutes of angst-ridden verbiage on Friday's News Hour.
5
From Public Intellectual, to Public Scold, to Public Cranky-Old-Man. The arc of Mr. Brooks' career has been swift.
I don't think Mr. Brooks has ever recovered from Bill Clinton's tax increase that resulted the greatest job growth in US history, contrary to antediluvian conservative economic orthodoxy though it was. (Of course, I realize the tax increase was not the sole cause of this exceptional job growth, but since Mr. Brooks said it would be the end of civilization as we know it, so I had to get the dig in.)
Mr. Brooks, if this gig with The Gray Lady doesn't work out, I'm sure some Koch bros funded conservative "think tank" will pick you up.
10
It is roughly time for the next population bulge to learn the limits of human nature the hard way.
2
Gee, what a choice: the educated (leftest) liberal
elitess or the anti-scientest dumbos that got us here, the worst misdistribution of wealth since the 1880 Robber Barons. Such a difficult decision.
9
If the choice is between the New Green Deal and the GOP's fascist corruption, I'll take the New Green Deal every day and twice on Sunday.
14
To Republicans, their "principles" (lower taxes, smaller government) are more important than America's citizens.
The Capital Market Economy/Welfare State has been successful in many nations. A balance of capitalism and socialism does not destroy individual responsibility, inventiveness or consumerism.
Predatory capitalism, as we have here, is a destructive disaster - generation after generation.
6
No, FDR did not lift America out of the Great Depression, the advent of WWII did. The economics of the New Deal were failing before America entered the war.
So, yes, Brooks is correct.
4
The economy was failing much more before the New Deal than it was after, by a wide margin. WW2 obviously revved things up, but pretending that the New Deal pushed things in a negative direction is just pure ideological delusion.
6
Seems to me that we built a national transportation system, went to the moon, developed computers and the internet, almost cured cancer, and continue to develop technology at an astounding pace.
Yet, reversing the damage caused by petro chemicals and rampant destruction of the environment seems beyond us. Living better and fuller lives, free from medical bankruptcy and ill health is too hard. Getting educated while providing day care for the work force is for those European socialists. We cling to our guns and religion and let the hand wringers like Mr. Brooks insist that we accept the status quo and be quiet.
No, Mr. Brooks. You and your republicans had your chance and you blew it with trickle down and tax cuts and grabbing all the wealth and power. Centralized power exists, and its in the hands of the few wealthy.
You reference the Washington elite, but forget that they are our elected representatives sent there to fight your mind set and your sponsors.
Shame on you for your narrow mindedness and admonitions that would keep us in serfdom to the gilded ones.
8
And the leadership in the GOP is not comprised of an elite?
8
It's better to be educated than ignorant.
It's better to be tolerant than intolerant.
It's better to embrace multi-culturalism than to be tribal.
It's better to be cultured than crude.
It's better to be thoughtful than knee-jerk partisan.
It's better to appreciate art, music and literature.
It would be better for David Brooks to write a piece entitled "How the right abandoned elitism."
9
We need a carbon tax and a progressive tax table. Bundling vague plans under a slogan is silly.
2
Ever notice the most leftist politicians have not so much as ran a coffee cart? And we are supposed to follow them when it comes to economics?
4
David Brooks is back on his old right-wing-elitist horse again. Oh how he laments any effort to stir the country from its current conservatism & right-wing idols. We don’t have any of the normal protections any democratic institution has: healthcare for all citizens, housing for all citizens, environmental protections beyond pure wealth potential, and individual protections for all citizens (not corporations).
6
Brooks, as been his usual since Trump was made president, over-reacts to Democratic and Independent thoughts. Just because there is "discussion" among and between the newly established House majority- that doesn't mean there is "consensus". Lots of ideas are flying out there - and I add - the new Democratic Congress is, in my mind, one of the best things to have happened in three voting cycles. New blood, younger people and a good deal of people willing to listen to ther constituents - not their party. You're a cry baby and whiner, Brooks. And I love MArk Shields - and pretty much dismiss you on the Friday News Hour. They need to replace you.
6
Give incentives for the private sector/private owners to go Green. Please don’t have the government do any of it. All my dealings with the government have been shocking in regards to the level of waste and incompetence. My neighbor worked for the government in purchasing and he said that if I truly new the level of waste I would be sick to my stomach.
2
Blah blah fancy words fancy words...
All I know is the Democrats at least want to try to confront climate change, and Republicans don’t. I go with the ones who try to solve problems, not the ones who don’t.
Couldn’t care less that their vision is imperfect because AT LEAST THEY HAVE ONE.
5
Doing your best to estrange the less educated from people who actually know how to do things again, huh? Just what we need - more alienation from the talent that might solve some of our urgent issues.
5
The four words Democrats fear most: You're on your own.
The four words Republicans fear most: The government will decide.
3
AOC and President Trump are two sides of the same coin. We are bombarded with lunacy.
3
Free market capitalism is all about water flowing downhill. Untended, it careens all over the place or gets captured by greedy entrepreneurs (the US). Overly constrained, it chokes (Cuba) and stagnates (Japan) and disappears into corrupt oligarchies (Russia) or political apparatus (China). Properly tended, it does some good (prosperity economies which invest in people rather than profit for shareholders - Canada and Northern Europe for the most part). Brooks is correct to be cautious, but is being knee-jerk stupid to condemn "giant government" run amok by "an elite" in control. Yes, there are huge challenges to gettingt it right, starting with clearing away the wreckage of Trump and his Republican bros. Thank God for Pelosi, AOC and their ilk are gearing up to take them on. Let's enjoy the ride. Stop playing with words, David, and start paying attention to the problems.
8
Capitalism has failed numerous times only to be bailed out by government. Government won WWII, put a man in the moon, created a great education system, rebuilt Germany & Japan, stopped Communism and much more. Capitalism? Capitalism has failed too many times and is inherently corrupt. Needs oversight. Brooks engages in endless debates and accomplished nothing but more debate. Let’s put people in charge that will at least try DO something.
6
"When they start making promises, watch out" Anon.
1
Oh, goody. Yet another column by an elitist conservative shilling for a fellow elitist conservative who's written the millionth elitist conservative plan to solve all problems in the known universe by "strengthening the family."
Conservatives believe in strong (heterosexual) families, and low taxes (for the rich). Those are the conservative solutions to every problem in the known universe. They have always been the conservative solutions to every problem in the known universe, and they have always been a colossal con.
6
The left embraced elitism when it forgot its working-class roots and threw in its lot with the bankers. Well, it turns out that when people have a choice between a Republican and a Republican, they vote for a Republican every time.
The party finally seems to have come to its senses. And that's scary for people like David Brooks, a quintessential shill for the economic elite, who knows a threat to his beloved GOP when he sees it.
5
Our left-wing liberal media, along with post-modern academia has seriously contaminated Democratic Party politics with elitism. This is what exactly make them perversely misunderstand Mr. Trump and his supporters. The Europeans who have a long history of looking down on American common folk as unsophisticated simpletons! And our liberal American cities, through the academia and the media, mimic the same elite European cultural chauvinism. These urbanites possess same type of conceit for what’s culturally American. And the Democratic Party has adopted that elite contempt for their fellow ordinary Americans who live outside their urban bluish-bubbles. They deplore their own country and people. And condemn their own culture, history, language. Historically─ for the urban Europeans America was rich, but it was an uncivilized, and barbaric place. And the liberal media’s perverted contempt for Mr. Trump and his supporters is the same hubris that made English Colonial officials refuse to shake hands with General George Washington. The left-wing liberals have come full circle: they have become the imperialists!
1
I love it when the newfound populists of the well-heeled money class refer to progressives as "elites." Sorry, David, nice try at Trumpspeak projection but we're on to you.
6
How does Dave think anthropogenic climate change can be dealt without some centralized planning, decision making and authority? Oh wait I know...captains of industry will figure out how each issue can be dealt with and do so for the good of humankind! Dave should try reading the last gaggle of captains record on the oceans, the land and the species in them.
3
Hi David! Nice use of labeling to undermine the ethics and values behind the Green New Deal. Those “Elites” are coming to take your freedoms! You are obviously more thoughtful and intelligent than Trump, but isn’t your column a bit like his Be Afraid mongering?
And speaking of “Elites”, how is it that a New York Times/PBS/NPR pundit is not part of the “Elite”? So since you get to criticize from the inside, perhaps you could become part of the solution. I always appreciate your pragmatic side. The country has many problems that need to be addressed, a pragmatic view would see that the devil is in the details and figure out how to address them. The Green New Deal is an attempt to find solutions. Please let go of your reactive stance and respond in a way that recognizes the responsibility that someone in your “Elite” position has.
4
"For example, in the lead essay of the conservative journal National Affairs, Abby M. McCloskey notes that the family you are born into and the neighborhood you live in have a much stronger influence on your socioeconomic outcome than any other factors."
Really?!? No kidding?!? Soooo the single biggest thing you can do to ensure social mobility is choose your parents well?
2
Thank you for a very balanced column - a rarity in the NYT these days.
1
Alas the modern level of conservative ridiculous has even infected David Brooks. Capitalism was the genocide to the first people of the western hemisphere, championed slavery, fights fake wars, and created the GFC which put people out of work in the first place. Stocks on margin and toddlers as chimney sweeps were bad things; Socialism in Denmark did not enact any of the above horrors.
Ocasio-Cortez, former bartender, is now elite, not the Koch brothers manipulating elections, killing the earth. Sanders wants democratic elections and health care for all - how elitist! Encouraging solar is now morphed into elites telling you where to put an i-beam. David, you are the elite. You have a great job, a doctor and influence and you encouraged the fake war. If nothing else, the last two years should have told you criminals are in charge, breading more criminals, taking money from foreign criminals allowing journalists like you to be murdered by fanatic elitist criminals.
This goes beyond capitalism and elitism. America has become a mafia aristocracy. Nowhere do I see service to one's country like the Kennedy era commanded. The paranoias listed in this article clearly indicate it is time for the walls of the real elites to come crashing down.
6
"Today, Democrats are much more likely to want government to take direct control. This is the true importance of the Green New Deal, which is becoming the litmus test of progressive seriousness..."
Mr. Brooks really needs to get out more often. That is if he wants to opine about the real world and not his imaginary one.
This column has more fantastic and scarier monsters and goblins than Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter combined. Brooks sees a dark forest of mangled Black Oaks with shape shifting spirits scheming about healthcare, jobs, child care, education, infrastructure, income inequality, the bureaucrats of the ring, the horrendous Washington Elite, where pizza parlors are child trafficking fronts. The rest of us just see the Democrats.
I wonder if Brooks had a similar reaction when Newt Gingrich unveiled his "Contract with (on) America. Did it set his hair on fire? Did he think the sky was falling? Was Fascism forthcoming?
I'm surprised at Brook's Soviet Amerika panic attack as we're still neck-deep in the Trump nightmare with its deep reservoir of icky ooze and zombie Republicans steadily dismantling American progress and prospect.
And he's worried about Democrats talking ideas that address urgent real world problems instead of rearranging chairs on the Titanic?
We're drowning David. Not the best time to worry about what wine goes best with your coquilles St Jacques.
10
It would probably be more accurate to say "among marginalized conservatives, there are now a bevy of thinkers..."
None of these people are driving conservative policy, and none of them are in any position at all to start driving conservative policy in the foreseeable future.
The Green New Deal may have its faults and will be adjusted accordingly. But it represents government FOR the people, and the ordinary people of this nation could benefit from government policies, green policies that will ensure a safe environment for them and their children. On the other hand it seems to me that the GOP represents government AGAINST the ordinary people, with policies and policy goals that almost all aim to shorten lives.
6
I got caught up with everybody else here, commenting that GOP donors, corporations and PACs are the real financial elites controlling our government, and forgot to ask: just who does Mr Brooks think will save his island of Manhattan from rising sea levels? I can't imagine he'd want to move to the mountains of Vermont with the gasp-so-socialist Mr. Sanders, or to the marijuana-legal mountains of Colorado.
4
Business 101 teaches about “brainstorming “. A simple exercise in siting around a table and just throwing out all sorts of ideas. At least the newly elected are willing to give it a try. From the other side it’s more of the same old same old.
3
The "elite" are the billionaires and corporations that presently own the executive, judicial, and half the legislative branches of our government - thanks to David Brooks' political party.
5
"Over the past generation, global capitalism has..." led to unspeakable new levels of poverty in third-world countries; created an environmental crisis that will destroy mankind; increased the financial gap between the wealthy and the poor to an extent never seen in history; obliterated local and indigenous culture; and virtually destroyed the middle class. Now, did I leave anything out?
7
Yes, drove citizens to begin to rely more on mystics, priests, pastors and cultists.
2
I have not read the particulars of the "Green New Deal," but I have read "The Sixth Extinction" and plenty of other articles about the deep trouble humans on this planet are in because of the effects of climate change. It will probably take an effort similar to that needed to fight World War II to address this rapidly accelerating problem. In that case, I want scientists, people who have dedicated years to studying climate, ecology, environmental policy, and so on, to be deeply involved in finding solutions. If they are considered to be "elites," then so be it.
9
These are the same critiques that were made by conservatives and pro-market types prior to passage of some of the great pieces of legislation of the last century that have made our America more humane and livable: medicare, medicaid, social security, unemployment compensation, FHA, etc. Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but these arguments are tired and old.
9
The party of Trump concentrates both voting and decision-making power in the hands of the wealthy few donors (Adelson, Koch brothers at all) and their PACs, and large corporate lobbyists - and brags about deregulating smokestack emissions, licenses drilling in the Arctic, poisons our water supplies - threatening our planet.
Democrats like Senator Klobuchar (with her scarlet A plus, according to Brooks, proenvironment voting record) battle to overturn Citizens United, restore voting rights the GOP legislated away from individuals, and protect online privacy to keep elections democratic.
Just who, exactly, is causing a greater concentration of powers among the elites?
5
Foiled by spellcheck again: above comment should read Adelson, Koch brothers et al.
Thx.
1
But, Mr. Brooks, we already have a "centralized super-state" -- it's one that has prioritized corporate needs and wants over American's citizen's needs and wants.
See: new tax code, lack of quality child/elder care, lack of parental time off, precarious healthcare, etc etc etc.
4
Dr. Yamaguchi from The Institute stated that with a moderate influx of talented people, the government could easily carry out the New Deal Green as proposed by OAC, so I would have to differ respectfully from Mr. Brooks's pessimism.
2
AOC lost me forever when she included in her FAQs Summary her goal of the government guaranteeing income to those “ unwilling to work”. It was insulting: I held three jobs in my twenties to have money for college. My parents worked two jobs.
6
Does it really say that? Did you read the original document?
2
David Brooks, you wrote, "There were people writing such grand master plans in the 1880s, the 1910s, the 1930s. They never work out. " hmmmm. Not quite.
FDR's New Deal of the 1930s rescued America from last Republican Great Depression. And guess what, conservatives called him and his wife Eleanor "socialists". And how did America's Greatest Generation respond ? They reelected that "socialist" 4 times and most historians rank him next to Lincoln and Washington.
11
It's swell to be among the "elite"--having been born and raised in South Carolina, moved to Manhattan after graduating from the local university and working at an insurance company, and managed to survive the ups and downs of the publishing industry from books to magazines to websites, I don't particularly feel "elite," especially when trying to balance my social security allotment against my freelance earnings. But thanks anyway, David. (And I'll vote for anyone who wants to bring back trains, now that there's only one from NYC to SC, which arrives in the wee hours of the morning and isn't dependable about precisely when.)
1
I haven't read the "Green New Deal", so cannot comment on the merits of the proposals. However, what I will say is that perhaps this proposal has a lot to do with the younger generation in this country realizing that David's generation has jeopardized their future by not addressing climate change and the environmental catastrophe that will result from it. Perhaps we should indicate we want to a more "European" existence. People in Europe have challenges, to be sure, but they are generally more satisfied - they do not have to worry that an illness will cause them to collapse into poverty and bankruptcy. They don't have to worry about how they will educate their children. I would ask Mr. Brooks why the supposedly greatest nation on the planet, the product of capitalism, has an increasing rate of mortality, has the most expensive health care system in the developing world with the worst outcomes, and cannot seem to come up with plans for high speed rail and other forms of mass transit. That being said, we also need to look ourselves in the mirror because many Americans want these things, but have a great aversion to paying taxes. I'm all for the younger generation's willingness to shake things up. I don't think anyone is proposing we become "socialist" in the mode of Cuba or Venezuela. However, the socialism of Norway and Denmark and Germany looks pretty attractive to many people. You need to make bold proposals in order to accomplish anything.
7
The real elitism is when conservatives and neo-conservatives call for "market-based solutions."
Inevitably this amounts to leaving things in control of the corporate elite, trusting to crony capitalism not to do good work but to keep the money flowing into the right hands.
7
Reach for the stars, settle on the moon. Trump promised to do a lot of dramatic things if elected, but getting what you want requires congress and that usually means compromise.
In the end, the Green New Deal is a bold proposal that is a rough draft. The end product will likely look quite different, but the proposals that pass will be a continuation of Social Security, Medicare, etc.
3
Reach for the stars and accept the moon. Trump declared he'd do many things if elected, including that wall, but when the time comes, congress must compromise and we'll get something more rational, one hopes.
The same is true of the Green New Deal.
"The government would put sector after sector under partial or complete federal control: the energy sector, the transportation system, the farm economy, capital markets, the health care system."
The conservative alternative "would put sector after sector" in the hands of the Kochs and their ilk. Every former government public service would become a private industry profit center.
Choices...
4
Whenever I read thoughtful conservatives I am forever reminding of their acuity in recognizing the speck in the eye of progressives while ignoring the plank in their own. This year's theme appears to be, trust in Capitalism and the Free Market, it has worked and continued to work, and that all we need are moderate little tweaks to the system, which no doubt would be easy to implement if elitist progressive would be more compromising.
Capitalism has brought great gains to developing countries, but it is clearly failing in the United States and Europe. There is no conservative solution to the problems of climate change, economic inequality, and an escalating lack of faith in our societies institutions.
The years 2017 and 2018 concentrated conservative power to the greatest extent in my lifetime, and the energies of the free market have been as liberated as I have ever seen them, and yet the average American sees no future. I am glad hundreds of millions overseas have been lifted out of poverty. I truly am, and understand free trade and capital is a huge component of that. But here the rising tide has only lifted yachts and that has not changed for almost a generation. Most Americans feels less secure because they are less secure. You may be skeptical that government programs will improve people's lives, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe the conservative business class cares about anything other than their self preservation.
Blow it up.
8
Point taken. But if conservatives had not spent the last 30 years denying that climate change is real and claiming it’s either a hoax or a natural phenomena unrelated to human activity, you might be on firmer ground in your criticism. If capitalism is abandoned in the panic that’s growing about the need to address this problem you have only yourselves to blame.
6
"Over the past generation, global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history. Over the past 10 years, American capitalism has produced 20 million new jobs. The productive dynamism of capitalism is truly a wonder to behold."
I mean, could you possibly cite some sources for these claims?
(Aside from the last one, which is just an opinion, not a purported fact.)
Imagine for a moment an asteroid careening through space on a collision course with earth. And let's say this extinction event was no more than three years away. Let's further imagine that the educated elites who tend to dominate the sciences are those responsible for this devastating conclusion.
Would David Brooks - and the rest of you "moderates" - be whining about elitism and the dangers of centralized government? I'm guessing not; as with WW2, it would be all hands to the tiller, devoting every human resource to finding a solution if one was possible.
And yet here we are, motoring along blithely, ignoring in any real sense the near-certain loss of a habitable planet - insects are disappearing, for heaven's sake! - and Brooks suggests we turn to carbon credits. At this point, I am utterly speechless with rage.
4
Elitism? Seriously? The true elites are the hyper-rich that are funding the Republican Party for their own short-term and short-sighted gain. Expecting "market" forces to magically fix the mess were in; economically (if you're in the middle or lower class), ecologically (climate change will reorder ecosystems and affect our ability to sustain ourselves), and socially (what is wrong with our country that we cannot provide health care to those that need it and are unwilling to fund education for our children?) is absurd. What about the past 50 years would suggest that staying the course will result in a different outcome. Our economy plays to and rewards the worst of our traits, greed and self interest; better to make a profit than provide a livable wage. Every market fix will just result in new, innovative, workarounds. Let's take the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and declare our independence from a system that has resulted in a devaluing of the human condition. Whenever existing economic systems become destructive of the Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness of all People, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new system, organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
6
So even though the next generation have not read the last meeting notes, We can not stand by, we must take action. David is off on this. He wants to change everything at once, with his magic pen, it will not happen. We have to make incremental changes to the inequity fail that we see at this time. The change that is needed is not the "green deal" it has to be much more fundamental, education, job training etc... If we do those large "chock" changes to the culture we will get more of "trump" and I am not sure that the culture can tolerate it. We need to change our tax system, the rich need to pay more.
1
Excellent column. David argues for the balance many of us see as a more effective way to address pressing problems. I would add more to promote clean energy sources and efficiency to the carbon tax plan, in addition to stronger forest conservation--all areas the federal government has a role in and can provide more positive influence and incentives.
As a centrist, I often feel caught between two extremes. I'm somewhat tired of the Times' incessant obsession AOC. Those advocating far left positions are prone to make the same electoral mistakes that led to the disaster of Trump in 2016.
Those who advocate for dramatic increases in government control over all aspects of their lives should be wary of what they hope for. We balance our individual liberties with our need to uphold the Common Good. Capitalism and Socialism at the extremes are fraught with problems. The ideal is to achieve a balance that embraces the best of both philosophies while preserving our Constitutional freedoms and responsibilities.
2
Mr. Brooks,
All of your points are well taken. But neither you nor conservatives offer any compelling alternatives to address growing inequality and disillusionment with the status quo. Health care is a perfect example: Conservatives were unified in an effort to thwart, undermine and defeat health care policies designed to address real issues impacting American life, but never offered an alternative policy initiative.
If the conservatives and Republican's no longer have solutions, the default solution is that advanced by Democrats, whether it is extreme left or moderate. This country needs a functioning and responsible party Republican Party. The Tea Party schism and the allegiance to Trump are not signs of a functioning or responsible political party. And they demonstrate a lack of ideas: unable to articulate a coherence response to the Tea Party, they are subject to its extremism. Unable to muster a reasonable alternative to Trump, they are stuck with him as the leader of the party. In a vacuum of good ideas, in steps elitism, extremism, etc. We need a better Republican Party for the good of the country.
2
Federalism is the way to go. Cut down the impact of the Federal govt. and its taxes so that, if they are inclined, states can raise taxes and implement the programs that the citizens of the respective state wants. Let the Northeast have a social welfare state if it wants it, let Idaho and Utah have a minimal state if it wants one.
2
@Gregory: Great idea, but there’s just one hitch, and it’s a whopper. The states that scream the loudest for ‘small government’ and that vote most solidly for ‘conservative Republicans’ also happen to be the ones that chow down the most federal dollars per capita. Those dollars are not funded with the federal tax receipts from the residents of these states: they are funded by federal tax dollars paid by residents of ‘liberal, welfare states’ like California and New York. States like Kentucky get something like $3 in federal aid for every $1 their residents pay in federal taxes. Guess who pays in more than they receive... why, it’s us libtards.
If Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee et al. really and truly wanna go their own way, then please, go right ahead! But don’t expect the rest of us to continue subsidizing folks who bite the hand that feeds them. They will quickly discover they cannot survive; at least not without massive increases in local and state taxes, which have been kept low in an effort to mollify the wealthy and seduce corporate investment in their low wage and tax, lax regulation environment.
And by the way, the next time that lax regulation comes back to haunt these newly ‘liberated’ federalist states, they’d best not look to the federal government to come clean up the oil spills, festering toxic waste dumps, black lung and other man-made disasters that flow directly from their own ‘keep the dang guv’mint’s hands off my business’ policies.
1
You're honestly clueless!
7
This centralized government control of a National Economy has been tried before; in the Soviet Union. It was known as the Command and Control economy. It was a dismal failure. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez must have slept through her comparative economics class at University. How stupid of these people. Just plain stupid.
Thoughtful tax policy can steer private sector decision making and allocations of economic inputs and outputs.
W
4
Yet another facepalm-worthy rant from Brooks, who with unintended irony (1) whines about newbies lacking competence and warns about corruption in the shadow of ** this ** government (really??); (2) believes that under-regulated market forces will somehow help us avert the holocaust on our doorstep, when it was under-regulated market forces that entirely created the problem. Fitting, I suppose, from the self-appointed spokesman for limousine centrism and Fiscal Conservatism, where we wait to pay ten, hundreds of times more to solve a crisis we could have prepared for. Private industry is not there to protect us from what's coming. Only representative government can blunt the impact of what is about to happen. Feelings are not important now.
9
Once again Brooks (like Stephens) shows his complete ignorance of how real business works.
Capitalism is great, and capitalist solutions to climate change problems are desperately needed, but no sane capitalist is going to pour large amounts of money into developing possible solutions UNTIL they have some idea of how large the market for said solutions will be.
Without some government action, the market will never be specified and described in enough detail to drive the necessary research and development.
I am not a fan of the Green New Deal, but Brooks seems in favor of the Stephens-approved wait-around-until-private-industry-develops-something-cheap-and-on-scale approach. Without market information, ain't gonna happen.
And somehow or other, capitalist concerns are totally free of elites! Who would have thought!
4
@Susan Fitzwater I don’t see where David said that government has no role in the process. The point is that the Green Nee Deal is not the correct path forward.
2
Government regulations suck. Coddling the populace with safe vehicles, lead-free toothpaste and air traffic controls.
Stupid elites with their book learning and scientific method never created anything useful. Bah!
10
The Green New Deal is a collectivist Marxist fantasy. It has zero chance to be implemented. 1% of it has zero chance to get implemented.
But it is useful: the longer it hangs around the greater the certainty that Trump will get re-elected, and with a bit of luck Congress will be controlled by Republicans.
8
When half the people in the country don’t have $1000 for an emergency, the US is in crisis. Income and wealth disparity are at record levels. Our vaunted economic system is an abject failure and our corrupt government can’t deal with it. So when progressive Democrats, following in the foot steps of FDR, bring forth a new New Deal, I don’t want to hear any crap about elitism. Someone with vision and smarts has to do it. The naive, the gullible, the racists, the Republicans who support Trump cannot be relied on to fix anything. They need to be stopped, and if need be, steam rolled.
6
Ya know what David? I respect you, I really do, but your are wrong because you just can't get out of your conservative prejudices! FDR made it work and got us out of the depression. When I was a kid we went to the moon and paved hundreds of superhighways all over this nation. We also build bridges and schools and lots of other public buildings - all at government expense. And, we sent the children of blue-collar families to college and even graduate school without their wracking up intolerable debts so that now people like me can send their kids to college too.
Will some people take advantage of the system? Sure. They always do, but things can be done to keep that stuff to a minimum. It's the old "S" word that has you upset David, but don't be. Medicare works great. It isn't perfect and there are people who do take advantage of it too, but overall it means millions get health care they never could otherwise.
As a retired military officer I get medical care though the VA and local military medical centers. It doesn't always work perfectly, but overall I would say it is the equal of private medical care and one hell of a lot cheaper! Sorry if that "S" word scares you but that "C" word (Capitalism) is taking most of us down the road to financial ruination. And our nation is literally falling apart!
Human beings are basically selfish. Without government forcing us to care for one another it just doesn't happen.
12
@Sharon Freeto That’s just it. FDRs policies were not responsible for getting us out of the Great Depression. World War 2 Actually did that job.
4
Finally a sensible response. Half of Europe are social-democracies and they came out of WWII (granted after the help from the Marshall plan). But hey have prospered to the point of examples as Germany, Denmark, Norway, France ... to name a few).
2
@John So what is the alternative response? Another world war? No...I don't believe you want that - no one does - and that's why the Green New Deal is being offered. Waiting for a war to attack these problems is not an option. Having government intervene becomes necessary because private enterprise will get involved only if there is an immediate and identifiable profit to be made. This is when and where governmental action becomes essential.
What you call elitism is in fact rational governance which we have gotten away from especially in Republican administrations. Yes Roosevelt went to the professorial elite to staff his economic advisers. Do you remember Galbraith? They set up a system that brought us out of the great depression, saw us through WII, balanced wealth and created the great middle class, and vastly increased educational and economic opportunity. This all started to change under Reagan with a subtle propaganda campaign that has allowed the wealthy to keep and accumulate more and more wealth. Part of the propaganda is to call educated expertise the "elite" as though some how this is a bad thing and has resulted in a society that does not value education to the degree it once did and is consequently not willing to pay for good public schools. And now the poorly educated electorate is more and more prone to propaganda and disinformation.
6
Democracy is an increasingly fragile luxury. If our problems cannot be solved by either finding a majority consensus or "market forces" then the tyranny of governmental overreach will reign out of necessity.
Don't blame socialist forces for government overreach. It is the long forgotten noblesse oblige of the wealthy elites and the economic chaos perpetrated by investment bankers and crony capitalists who fail to "reinvest" their profits in the economic infrastructure (not to mention the sustainability of a finite environment) who are largely responsible. The warnings about socialism are hollow and false. The problem ass well as the answer lies in the reflection seen in our social mirror.
This social condition is a universal story that capitalism and democracy both have sought from their 18th century inception to remedy and have failed.
The rapid technological change currently underway may take apart the old order and set us adrift in a crisis of our own making. The challenge for the left is to curb its self-righteous judgements and seek pragmatic solutions that bind us together in a common effort to save ourselves from ourselves. An unbridled addiction to money and power by the ruling class must be reigned in by a committed majority. It may be too late for "rehab" but that is what is required.
2
Ooh! "Elitism"! After decades of defending the party and the policies that have led directly to Trump, oligarchy, and the grotesquely disproportionate distribution of income and wealth that sees middle class workers seeking two and three jobs while the 1% seek two or three yachts, David Brooks invokes the boogyman. To coin a phrase, that's rich.
Brooks wants us to let the arsonists who started these fires put them out, since they know so much about them. And we wouldn't want the fire department to become "elitist."
9
As many Republicans move even further right...The double standard is palpable.
Why is it when Dems look to expert opinions, it's termed "elite". Heh? If I need brain surgery, I hire a brain surgeon. If I need legal advice, I hire a lawyer. If I need environmental advice, I look to the scientists.
Why is that considered elite? Oh that's right, if I'm a Republican, "I just want something different". Doesn't matter how unqualified, under educated, or plain horrible the person is (think Trump), as long as it's not a politician.
David, the next time you need a dentist, I suggest you hire a gardener & "see what happens". If it's good enough for the Presidency, it ought to be good enough for your health. Just make sure you don't hire someone with advanced knowledge of dentistry - that would be elitist.
7
Okay David. How about this?...We put the .1% in control of everything. (they are) They continue to stockpile $$$ while investing in bunkers for when it all collapses. How's that for a plan for our future? How's THAT for running things? It's not a fantasy, it's a dystopian reality and we are living it.
6
The Elites on the Left know what the people need that's why they're Elites.
3
This article represent classic projection. It’s the right that suffers from a perverted form of elitism, especially Trump and his cronies. They see themselves as entitled and superior. Yet they are intellectually stultified and lacking in vision, curiosity or compassion.
6
I see that David is right in step with the rest of the right, in painting the Dems as the socialist menace.
A few mew young members get elected to the House, and suggest the Party move more towards the left, and the right quakes in its boots.
The right should be much more afraid of its own clique, the Freedom Caucus.
You know, the cabal that was elected by the lunatic Tea Party. They have been spent the last eight years trying to tear down government to the point that would make their own jobs redundant, at least at the federal level.
5
Sometimes, Mr. Brooks, when I read your columns--
--I bristle a bit.
Like now.
I recall (years ago) watching Milton Friedman talk about the Roosevelt years. The New Deal. The Great Depression.
He deprecated the rash of acronyms that (like little mushrooms) sprang up during the 1930's. People (declared Mr. Friedman, sadly shaking his head) were thrilled to join FDR's team as they strove to counter the baleful effects of a worldwide depression.
He deprecated the enormous federal bureaucracy that (like one enormous mushroom) sprang up in our nation's capital.
Well, Mr. Friedman--I don't know. The bottom line is: people across the USA were hurtin' real BAD, sir--and it was proposed the US government DO something about it. Or TRY and do something about it.
FDR had his foes, make no mistake. And--meaning nothing petty or invidious but a lot of these foes--
--(by some odd chance)--
tended to be rich people. Very rich people.
Mr. Brooks, I mean nothing personal or offensive when I say that, when (as would appear) a Republican-dominated Congress seems to shed tears as they contemplate the plight of poor people--or an ever-dwindling, beleaguered middle class--
--these tend to be CROCODILE tears.
Growing poverty? Oh yes. Job skills needed in today's world? Absolutely. Problems? Oh yes. Problems galore.
BUT--
--given the conservative track record over the last forty odd years--
--it'd be the LIBERALS I trust.
Sorry.
5
Wow, talk about perspectives and terminology. The "productive dynamism" of capitalism, delivering "jobs" when figures show most Americans couldn't take a $400 hit to the budget, for example. "Growth" is the perennial going to seed of ancient economic structures, lost in the modern global economy. The "left" is the remainder number of Americans not living in 1950 who haven't been able to get a word in for almost as many decades. "Elite", as far as I can tell, depends on your zip code, or some other reliable source.
As long as America continues to plod along like a demented Diplodocus with arcane visions of a better last Tuesday rather than a serious look at a very dangerous future, this will go on. The Green New Deal with be replaced with some other vision, (suggest The Really Nice New Deal as a tag) and so on. The point is that NOTHING ever really happens. Fix that, and you start to fix America.
2
David Brooks, this article is embarrassing. It is intellectually lazy. It is philosophically contradictory. It is historically inaccurate.
How about approaching these issues from our shared values rather than attacking democratic proposals? The criticisms themselves are sophomoric. Is an imperfect rollout really indicative of long-term success?
Take a deep breath. It is okay to agree with progressives and even (gasp!) socialists on a shared vision for a better tomorrow.
5
David, I usually enjoy your thoughtful commentary, but this opinion simply misses the mark. It is no more than the usual Republican condemnation of a proposed solution to urgent problems by exaggerating the possible pitfalls. Rather you and others in this camp should applaud the direction of these efforts. We can’t afford conservative inaction. Wake up!
5
David, you seem to have left out that this is a statement of intent.
The Green New Deal does not require that improving homes in America be done by government.
It does not require farmers to grow only the crops the government asks for, which the government will then pay for.
It would seek to rein in overheated and out of control capital markets, yes--in ways that benefit the general Welfare, via boring and sensible regulations like the New Deal put into place.
It seeks to repair, upgrade and update our crumbling infrastructure. We have too many bridges collapsing, too many roads falling away, too few homes able to access high speed Internet.
We have immense needs that have gone unaddressed for too long in order to give more tax cuts for the wealthy. This cannot stand if we are to remain a strong country.
Far too much of the US resembles a third-world country in terms of infrastructure, isolation and desperation. If we are to truly be a great nation, we need to prioritize the needs of all of our countrymen over the needs of the richest few.
That is what the Green New Deal aims for.
6
The governor of California just pulled the plug on the state’s high speed rail project.
If you can’t build one railroad between north and south California.......,,,
How can you do a whole country
71
@ned terry
Gov. Newsom did not pull the plug on the entire high speed rail project. The system from Bakersfield to Merced, which is already partially completed and would have been nearly completed if the Republicans in the CA Central San Joaquin Valley had not put up roadblocks continuously for years. It isn't the optimum outcome but perhaps in the not too distant future, the rail can be revived.
5
@ned terry America is far too rural to build an effective public transit for everyone. Individual vehicles for much of the land area of the nation isn’t going away and you cannot move them all into the existing major cities without massive disruption. Technology, like electric cars are starting to be produced for the masses and will become more popular. That’s the private enterprise system at work. Capitalism does the best job of selecting market winners and losers. High speed rail here is a loser.
7
@Linda Campbell So it fared about the same way as Obamacare, and for a similar reason. Republicans proving something won't work by breaking it. I would tell them, "No, that just proves it isn't a bblock of stone. Unbreakability is not the only criterion of value. If you don't agree throw away your worthless smartphone."
10
"As many conservatives have shifted leftward, so have progressives. "
Wait, where are these conservatives that are moving leftward? And "many"? No, I don't see that. I see many conservatives moving further to the right if anything.
David, these proposals are a reaction to our failed capitalism. Not that capitalism is not a great economic model but as it practiced in American today, it is not working. Why not bring that up? Shareholder value is the main driver of public companies today which means that any obligation to workers, long term planning and the community take a back seat.
We don't have a free market any more - we have crony capitalism where huge corporations and special interests buy access to power and profits.
So the reaction is this green new deal...
So as a defender of capitalism please dig a little deeper in your article than recommending a carbon tax or tax credits. Get to the root of what is wrong with our capitalist system and what we can do to improve it. I'm still waiting to read that article. What replaces shareholder value? Do we move forward with breaking up large corporations? What's next for capitalism?
5
I see you, thinly veiled Op-Ed to preserve the bankrupt status-quo that has failed so many ;)
The real Elite are getting edgy, and throwing out the smokescreens. The wealthy columnists with their highly-paid jobs and desire to preserve their lifestyle which remains blissfully aloof from the troubles of everyday people, with their social circle of influencers and politicians. Since when do The Establishment give up their own power without a good whiny op-ed?
2
Climate change is an emergency like the 1933 economy or WW2, Brooksie. You have to wake up to this.
3
@Villen 21
How do you know this is true? And how do you know that you know this is true?
I might be amenable to a healthy debate about the contents of the essay- if not for having to choke back the bile when David implies he is not one of the elites. Stop allowing America to dumb itself down!
2
David Brooks calling people elitist! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
3
David Brooks, he who goes on all-expenses paid first-class around-the-world trips, laments elitism. This is beyond laughable.
5
I can't stop laughing after reading this. Utter tripe that the far-right peddle to undermine somebody and something that they can't grasp, nor fully understand nor are they able to challenge based on merit. Brooks deserve's a seat beside Trump in the Whitehouse.
3
Good grief, David.
Will it always be 1984 for you?
4
not helpful...
3
At least the Left didn’t embrace stupid like Trump has.
3
We’ve already tried GOP trickle down. Didn’t work. The rising tide lifted only yachts, certainly not all boats. Let’s just turn and run from GOP philosophy. Any direction but 180 degrees is best.
4
@Mike
There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs.
The most basic government job at entry pays about $19,000 year—plus insurance, plus retirement—which sounds pretty good to a fair number of people.
2
'I don’t know if it [The New Gren Deal] is socialism or not socialism — that’s a semantic game — but it would definitely represent the greatest centralization of power in the hands of the Washington elite in our history."
No, it emphatically is not semantics. Evil demands a title; if not it will only spread more quickly thsn otherwise by unrecognized incrementalism.
When a Government seeks to control the means of production, directly or indirectly, it is Socialism. And when a Government seeks to control the fruits of production, as does the current effort to restict and divert earnings and profits of corporations, it is Communism. The New Green Deal is at least the former and probably the latter.
3
@twwren: Is regulation of business conduct and standards "socialism" in your view?
@Steve Bolger Excessive Government regulation can accomplish the same thing as direct ownership by the Government. For example, Sanders current proposal to restrict stock buy-backs is a thinly disguised attempt to control the reinvestment of earnings and profits of corporations in order to engineer perceived social goals.
Unfortunately one needs to paint with a broad brush when commenting in the newspaper. I thought I might receive a reply like yours, which is not unreasonable.
Brooks: Unlike most Republicans, I agree that climate change is a problem and we must address it.
Also Brooks: Not like that! This solution is flawed and gives too much power to the federal government!
Also Also Brooks: No I will not offer any counter-proposals or provide any indication of the types of policies I would support. I will just shake my head and bemoan that democrats are "embracing elitism"--or was it socialism? I can't remember, but I know I don't like it so it definitely involves some sort of scary "ism"
6
I am SO tired of being called an "elitist" merely because I respect education, experience, and intelligence. My "elites" do not work for the White House or either house of Congress. Those "pseudo-elites" should be listening to the real elites...the nation's scientists and engineers...or they will never serve the common good. We should demand that they do that. If we hold government to a different standard (measuring how well it does its job), we may finally get what we pay for.
4
Contrary to what Brooks says, I think the New Deal worked out quite well and has stood the test of time.
Capitalism has served us very well in increasing incomes and wealth, but there is something about capitalism and the propensity of capitalists to seek monopoly and the capture of government, with a runaway sense of chasing higher and higher profits (stock market pricing drives this), which seems to derail capitalism every half century or so and require government regulatory and even more direct corrective action to protect the common citizens and put capitalism back on a stable course, which benefits society as a whole.
We are currently once again in such a reckless, runaway phase, when pharma bro can injure ordinary people by drastically jacking up the price of their drugs, just because there are no laws or regulations to prevent him from doing so and vulture capitalists can strip going business enterprises, including gutting workers' pension funds, to maximize their profits.
Capitalism is generally good, but it sometimes becomes beyond obvious that somebody needs to step in and bring the situation back under control. That somebody is the government.
7
"So long as nothing can be done, nothing will be done." David's column could be summed up with that sentiment.
The reality is, much of the Capitalist world does take care of people first, then business. Take for example, oh Europe.
Adam Smith knew of the evils of capitalism when he warned to be wary of laws suggested by the business class, as they would seldom be of benefit to the public.
Yet those same forces are the ones David is busy heralding as above being regulated and controlled by government, when it is clear (See Europe) that controlling those exact drives of business yield a better outcome for society as a whole.
5
I see so many commenters state the private sector market is failing with global warming. This is despite the fact that through 2017, The IS has seen a steady decrease in emissions, some of which have been the largest in the world. Pretty much all new capacity is renewable. Tesla is creating great cars and home based power systems which would not be possible except in a capitalist market. There are many additional companies working to bring products to the market as well including to average consumers. Solar power is becoming more popular than ever. I think this is s case of perception not matching reality. We don’t go from where we have been to zero over night. Germany and many other nations are still using coal and internal combustion cars too.
1
This bill would certainly move us closer to Socialism with its massive movement of resource control from the private sector to the public sector. I have seen schemes like this before. My response is always the same: consider the U.S. post office. This government "firm" has continually run at a loss even though it had monopoly control. We can argue about why this happened, but the fact is the losses were real and persistent. It sounds to me that this bill would move the U.S. economy towards becoming basically one large post office. Not much else needs to be said.
1
@John Hoftyzer Not to mention their great plan is to tax the private sector. The IRS can handle that job. We don’t need a New overblown bureaucracy to tax carbon.
1
"The authors of this fantasy are right that we need to do something about global warming and inequality."
"we need to do something about global warming" indeed!
This is an existential threat and time is running out!
2
"[T]he greatest centralization of power in the hands of the Washington elite in our history" was the creation of standing armies. Second--the Federal Reserve. The USPTO and a number of other federal agencies vie for the title.
I think this article probably fairly represents Mr. Brooks philosophy, so--although I disagree--I appreciate having his perspective.
The Green New Deal, at this point, is a discussion draft. Criticizing it in this manner amounts to an effort to get us to negotiate with ourselves. That's a fair tactic and well played, but I'm not biting.
I will admit that the GND needs polish and may not even be viable in its current form. But the direction of change cannot be softening of the goals: life on this planet is at grave risk.
So by all means, give us your ideas about making it more effective and feasible, but don't tell us that we can retrench.
1
I have to laugh every time a wealthy, cosmopolitan, well-educated media superstar like Brooks or Tucker Carlson stokes fears of "elites".
If AOC et al have spurred David to write fearfully of policy rather than recent pablum, they are probably on the right track. I shall look forward to progressively anxious Brooks columns as America becomes a greener and more equitable nation.
This may sound ad hominem, but I believe the social sciences and common sense will back me up in my suggestion that if a man says foolish things often enough, there's a very good chance he's a fool.
2
Ever since Nixon adopted his Southern Strategy in 1968, the Republicanazis in this country have relied on bigotry to win elections. This leftist who spent a lifetime doing honest manual labor, would just settle for electing our President democratically.
How many Republicans have called for this simple remedy to our greatest national problem? Think of the past 20 years with no "Dubya" and no Disgusting Donald. And columnists such as you helped pave the way for the current situation.
1
So elected officials are "elites"? Only where elections are fraudulent could one make this argument. If choosing one's leaders is one criterion of "elitism," then the word has little meaning, and democracy becomes a joke.
1
David: Who are the elite that have you so worried? Did you have your red hat on when you wrote this? College-educated scientists (the best kind, I think) are not elite...but they should be listened to if we have any chance of dealing with and surviving climate change. The "greatest centralization of power in the hands of the Washington elite in our history" is Trump turning the presidency and the GOP into a family business. It is not elitist to want to change this using governmental power. FDR did it during another emergency. It may need to be done again if this lunatic is not stopped soon.
3
Mr. Brooks, if you object to Big Government on principle, let's start by whittling down our military budget. For perspective, the Pentagon is really the Department of Offense. Defense is now largely the domain of Homeland Security. And regarding offense, we spend more money on the military than the next 7 nations combined. We outspend China 2.25 to 1. We outspend the dreaded Russians 8 to 1.
But let's not seek parity; let's keep our big advantage. Let's cut our budget by $200B per year. We'll still outspend China almost 2 to 1, and Russia by more than 5 to 1.
$200 billion would go along way towards solving some of our nation's problems, like infrastructure and combating climate change. We could even give some of it back to taxpayers, but let's target the middle class this time instead of the wealthy.
5
@Ken L: It is amazing how invisible huge defense expenditures are in our personal lives.
Maybe the point is to spur conversation. Just saying we should do something and waiting for market forces to fix it all hasn’t worked.
2
@Michael What about having the largest decreases in emissions in recent years screams failure?
Brooks ignores the fact that market forces have so far failed us. Ditto for health care.
5
@Daniel B Market forces have created the environment where the US has had the largest declines in emissions in the world in recent years. How is that failure?
2
@John
This is misleading data because it represents absolute, not relative numbers. Small changes in the world’s largest economy can easily lead to being in first place. 9 polluted lakes as opposed to 10 is still pollution. I don’t favor a government owned initiative, just regulations that incentivize green entrepreneurship.
2
Yea, the Green New Deal is a moonshot. And yes, some of its proposals seem fantastical, given our history - especially our history since the 1980s.
But I'm glad it's out there, and I'm glad Democrats are embracing it.
Why? Because we're so far off in the other direction that we need something bold, even if parts of it are unrealistic, to begin to right the ship.
The reality is that we live in a plutocracy - and given the corruption of the present administration, and the incredible power that the rich wield, it's not hyperbole to say that we've entered an oligarchic era of our own. All this while the majority of Americans are a paycheck away from ruin, and GoFundMe has become a necessity for Americans looking to pay for healthcare. It's a 21st century Dickensian dystopia we're building.
And frankly, incrementalism isn't gonna cut it. Only bold - unabashedly so - proposals will begin to rebalance things. It's either that or eventually, the proverbial guillotines.
5
The appropriate title of this article should have been "How David Brooks Embraced Ignorance".
One of the two political parties for at least the last four decades has pushed polices to enrich the super wealthy (lower income tax rates, normal income classified as capital gains, and lower corporate tax rates) all of which helped create an incredible increase income inequality, and Mr. Brooks writes denouncing elitism on the left for a bill - not law - but a bill, introduced by a hand of of politicians which the primary purpose was to address an environmental catastrophe.
I'm not arguing for the merits of the "Green New Deal" (I haven't fully read it), but the introduction of one piece of legislation does not constitute and embrace of elitism.
This article does however represent a pattern where Mr. Brooks largely ignores the destruction cause by the conservative party, to criticize literally nothing of consequence from the moderate party that has been much more responsible in governing.
7
@Sudhakar
Do you actually think the wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxes? A quick look at tax statistics from the IRS shows that the top 5% of taxpayers earned 36% of income, but paid 60% of all income tax collected. Bottom 50% earned 11% of all income and paid 2.8% of all income taxes.
Seems like the US government, by and large, is funded primarily by the wealthy and redistributing the wealth through entitlement programs to the lower income households (in the form of food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, etc.). The progressive income tax, even as it currently exists, seems to rely on the wealthier Americans. AOC and the socialists just want a bigger cut of this, however, to fund some of these outrageously expensive programs, tax rates will have to be raised not only for the very wealthy but for middle and even lower classes as well. There just will not be enough money in the millionaire class to fund all these leftist utopian projects.
Brooks is absolutely right about the Green New Deal. It is totally wrongheaded. It puts the cart before the horse. The source of our environmental problems is our uncertain and slow economic growth, not the other way around. When economy is efficient and grows, we have resources to deal with other problems, including environment. The document does not even address the problem of growth, to say nothing about offering a solution. It assumes that if we tackle environmental degradation, our economy will pick up. That's a lot to assume. The assumption is reminiscent of the trickle-down mentality. The problem of economic growth has roots in our inefficient use of our most important resource--the creative capacity of every human being.
1
This op-ed piece is another form of global warming denial. The climate change crisis requires a fully coordinated worldwide plan -- anything short of this will invariably result in total, complete planetary catastrophe. Brooks is essentially arguing that the crisis is not so bad and decisive, effective steps should not be taken to confront it.
6
I don't remember the mainstream left ever rejecting centralization.
3
"From Bill Clinton through Barack Obama, Democrats respected market forces but tried to use tax credits and regulations to steer them in more humane ways."
The problem is that this, for want of a better word, neoliberal approach was discredited in 2008 and in the subsequent years which exposed the inequities of the system.
Now Republicans have become Trump populists and Democrats are reverting to state intervention because it is assumed that the markets-based approach failed.
Moderates have to come up with a better message. The fact billions have been lifted out of poverty or new jobs have been created is of little satisfaction if your income has stagnated, or worse, and your factory is now located in China.
2
I would like the government to focus on supplying college education, healthcare, and opportunity for all its citizens to work and be recompensed justly.
1
Sorry but this essay badly conflates issues that simply don't go together. While I disagree with the tenor of the piece that more federal programs is a bad progression from the New Deal or World War II, the real thing that got my aggravated was the merger of that with liberalism and elitism. That's a trope that has been floating around for a very long time, at least since the days of Adlai Stevenson being labeled as an "egghead." The wisdom or lack thereof of federalizing certain reform programs has nothing to do with elitism. That's a canard that simply shouldn't be bandied about in this context.
9
Well, if the Green New Deal with its centralization of power starts gaining traction, the GOP can bring forth its plan to achieve the same objectives with a market approach. I.e. to solve climate change, tax CO2 at a rate high enough to drive it down to acceptable levels. Refund the tax as an evenly distributed national dividend. This legislation could be 10 pages if CO2 sources were taxed at the producer level, instead of the individual level. Let companies deal with their individual customers.
2
@Djt
The problem is that aside from a few conservative eggheads, the conservative response to the issues of climate change, income inequality and other major social issues has been silence. On the other hand, The State of North Carolina had no problem with overriding a local law in Charlotte that provided for the transgender use of bathrooms. Conservatives believe in local community control as long as the local community isn't more liberal than the State.
Global climate change is global: not local. Income inequality is baked into the economic policies of the federal government. Many of our most important critical issues are national or international; not local.
3
I guess the Republican could come up with a better plan to address climate change--- if they acknowledged the existence of climate change...
3
Mr. Brooks apparently believes that the below people are the "elites":
"indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as “frontline and vulnerable communities”) - H.Res 109 - Green New Deal
3
At some point, we just need to start ignoring right-wing flacks like Brooks. There's no point in engaging with them. They repeat the same tired and discredited ideas over and over, regardless of the evidence. Tax cuts lead to prosperity and lower deficits. Socialism will bankrupt us. No and no. The private sector, with its increasingly powerful and wealth oligarchs, has ruined the American dream for everyone except those who aren't already incredibly powerful and wealthy. They're in the process of organizing society so that they can collect rent off our work while giving us no job security or benefits in return. And yet, here goes David Brooks, talking about the virtues of the private sector! The private sector today looks more like feudalism in the middle ages than an actual free market, with the CEOs as lords and the rest of us as serfs. I welcome a plan for the government to disrupt that toxic dynamic.
7
FWIW, I started drafting legislation in my mid-30s.
When I started, and my directions were to figure out a way to accomplish an objective, I tended to write drafts that were overly prescriptive. Over time I got better at giving people a firm clear rule when that was necessary and giving them a less prescriptive directive to accomplish an objective using their best discretion under the law when that was the best way to go.
Also, many people, when they start doing that sort of writing, tend to pack the gist of what they want done into the meaning of broad complex terms. Then the people who implement or must comply with the law interpret those terms according to their own understanding and experience. That can lead to trouble. Better to use clear spare terms that are well-defined according to their usual sense and be clear about duties, discretion, prohibitions, timing, and sequence.
So perhaps some young people on the left need age and experience and opponents on the right who are acting in good faith, combining the possibility of cooperation with the instinct to oppose.
To Bill in Charlotte'sville: You are right on. Could I just further make your view palatable to most Americans by adding that we need to retire pure socialism and pure capitalism by calling for Social-Capitalism, or Socially Responsible Capitalism, based on our inaliable right of egalitarian communitarianism ? Isn't that what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution implicitly implied?
Sal Umana
2
Quite blatantly, the proposed Green New Deal is Soviet-style centralized control of the country. This is not a "democratic" socialist proposal. It is a totalitarian control-based proposal. Really do not see how anyone could sugar coat this in any other light.
How, exactly, did totalitarian control of economies and societies work in Russia, China, Cambodia, North Korea... This should not be the vision for America in the 21st century. That mainstream presidential candidates are endorsing this Stalinist power grab should make every American, not just Republicans, very, very nervous.
I fear we are about to enter a very dark chapter of our history.
4
@Hillary take it from someone who adamantly has studied the consequences for workers of Soviet-style centralized control: our current exploitation of labor and stagnation of wages parallels those workers experiences. While we may have protections for physical harm at work, the mental anxiety current laborers go through just to get by parallels the troubles of the Soviet era. In summation, quit concerning yourself about the byproduct of some socialist doom, because we already live in an aggressively repressive society for anyone lower than middle class.
4
Whenever the left tries something actually useful, the right trots out the “elitist” chimera and the “government inefficacy” gross exaggeration. We are literally inundated with evidence that the government does many things well and is answerable to voters. To whom is Amazon answerable?
3
@Tracy Brooking To everyone who buys things from it, as well as every stockholder in the company. Given the number of issues that the polls show the voters support yet the political establishment does not implement, I suggest that Amazon may well be more responsive to consumers than the government is to voters.
Brooks always manages to be disingenuous. Here, he starts from the very first sentence: "Over the past generation, global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history."
According to the World Bank, in 1981 2 billion people lived in extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 per day in 2011 PPP or "internationalized" dollars); by 2010, it was down to 1.126 billion, a reduction of 873 million people.
What Mr. Brooks elides is that 728 million of those people (83.4%) were in China. China is not "global capitalism". It is a hybrid society that uses aspects of both capitalism and socialism; for example, national production goals are set; large sections of the economy are publicly owned, far more than just the State Owned Enterprises; and the large banks are publicly owned. At the same time, there is a vibrant capitalist private sector.
It is interesting that Mr. Brooks decries any sort of centralized role when the success story he touts in the very first sentence is so heavily dependent on a centralized role.
Despite Mr. Brooks's infantile snark ("this from people who couldn't even organize the release of their own background document"), the Green New Deal proposal has ALREADY played a positive role. It has promoted a "think big / think huge" mentality for progressive initiatives.
We will need both local and national initiatives, and will need input from both the public and private sectors. Delete the snark, Mr. Brooks!
4
Global warming could annihilate humanity. An effort surpassing World War II may very well be required.
5
Mr. Brooks pretends he hates some "elite" trying to control the country, but never seems to have any problem with the corporate elite that has running things (badly) for the past 40 years. And when he talks about master plans from the 1930's he's talking about the New Deal. How has that failed?
6
even if the proposed Green New Deal were a secret plot by the federal government to take over everything, I think you miss the larger point: in the modern world, there are many problems and issues, including existential issues of survival, so huge nd complex that we have no institutions big enough or powerful enough to confront them, except for government, and that ability is itself questionable. the hidden hand of the free market is mainly interested in washing its other hand, or maybe buying some nice new gloves, but it has its own motivations and most of us mere mortals are just obstacles to achieving them, so I would not expect any help there, other than by coincidence.
4
"The government would put sector after sector under partial or complete federal control: the energy sector, the transportation system, the farm economy, capital markets, the health care system."
The conservative alternative "would put sector after sector" in the hands of the Kochs and their ilk. Every former government public service would become a private industry profit center.
Choices...
4
Mr. Brooks is right that the practicalities of the Green New Deal prevent it from becoming a reality. Even our best government employees and the decision-making boards and committees behind them are not capable of pulling off what is proposed here.
However, what congresspeople are good at is gathering us around good causes and good ideas. There are some of each here. Think of the Green New Deal like a concept car rather than a production model, and it's something I can get excited about.
2
Did global capitalism lift a billion people in China from poverty and hunger to prosperity and pride?
Did global capitalism build an incredible 21st Century infrastructure, and institute an enviable system of basic education and merit-based higher education in China?
Wonder why global capitalism didn't work magic in India, Indonesia, or Pakistan? Wonder why it leaves millions of Americans behind?
Indeed, the Green New Deal is a concept that may lead to excessive centralization. We must await the details. Much of the objective could be realized through a sensible federal tax scheme.
4
The problem with being a so-called centrist like yourself-and I mean this in two ways: one, a noble task for training dialectical thinkers, and two, do I have all the tools to teach real dialectic thinking.
Re Number two, dialectical thinking has a unique hidden crunch point that dictates that sometimes we have to figure out Who or What of the parties involved is intellectually more corrupt or lost in self-concern at a given time.
I will hold two parties up for this consideration: the deck of ultra-progressives trying to create the New Green Deal vs
the current occupants of the White House and their minions in the Senate and the House.
I will go for the Green Deal in any form over the status quo because they are less narcissistic and less corrupt.
I will go for the Green Deal because they are not simply lining their pockets.
2
David, all you are doing is complaining (as usual) and not offering any solutions (as usual). Are you proposing we continue to do nothing?
3
Oh, someone please get a fan for dear Mr. Brooks. He seems to be getting the vapors. Again. I would have thought his fears of an elite, in which politicians give “sweetheart deals to vested interests”, and wind up “getting corrupted and swallowed up by incompetence” might have been triggered earlier - say in 2007, for example. But back then the big shots mixing it up in the halls of Congress were apparently part of a “the greatest reduction in human poverty in history.” Who knew?
It’s funny how Washington is suddenly filled with “elites” whenever some poor schlub in government has an idea to help ordinary citizens.
1
David Brooks is one of many conservatives reactors who makes a tidy living telling liberals what, how, and why liberals think whatever they do. Of course, he knows nothing about it, but knowing something about it is not, evidently, a conservative value. He's "conservasplaining," if you will. It's just as annoying to liberals as whitesplaining is to Blacks, I suspect. Instead, I'd like to hear David's take on conservative history and ideas: the Powell letter of 1971; the end of the Fairness Doctrine; mass incarceration of Blacks in response to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s; the current denial of climate change and all other evidence-based science; the embrace of neo-liberal economic ideology as dogma despite its evident failure over four decades. These are questions where Mr. Brooks, who appreciates these things, can enlighten us. Talk about privileged, rich, white reactionaries. Write what you know.
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@JTE
Terrific suggestions.
Today, David stoops to Trumpian rhetoric, albeit using the best words: “The great paradox of progressive populism is that it leads to elitism in its purist form.”
A light snow is falling on my wall. The gate is locked tight. The footfalls of the guards give reassurance.
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If the right/conservatives were not so determined to exploit ordinary folks and concentrate wealth among themselves, this might be a valid criticism. However, since exploitation and wealth disparity has exploded, and the right/conservatives have so enthusiastically embraced the winner take all economy- what are we supposed to do. Just leave it to the wealthy? Wake up Mr. Brooks. wealthy conservatives care only about themselves. Trickle down is a myth and something needs to happen.
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Fire is one of the greatest human inventions. But as we learned in Cub Scouts, fire is a good servant but a bad master. It can cook your food and keep you warm or burn your house down and kill you. That is why, instead of building a fire in our living rooms we have hot water heaters, furnaces, and stoves. We make sure our fires are kept under carefully controlled conditions. We make sure fire is always working for us and we never let it do whatever it wants
Capitalism is a lot like fire. Like fire it can be a powerful force for good. But like fire we need to keep it under carefully controlled conditions. We need to make sure capitalism is always working for us and we should never let it do whatever it wants.
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Cause and effect.
I find it ironic that in order to increase shareholder value, the "capitalists" seem to be ushering in the conditions for a new era of socialism.
There was a time in America, not too long ago, before the "shareholder value above all else" society we live in today when the private sector invested in the communities they operated in and took care of peoples needs.
A time before globalization, automation and computerization. A time when people were still a needed commodity and had value.
Today, in the era of maximizing share holder value, we've been very successful at creating billionaires while at the same time taking away many of the protections previously provided by the private sector.
So who is left to make up for this? "Personal responsibility", make the best with what you have? Or, as a choice of last resort. the government?
The "new globalized economy" is the cause. And like the industrial revolution, it looks like it's here to stay. The private sector no longer is willing to offer the solution. So what other choice do "We the People" have?
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Mr. Brooks, the quote in your piece by Abby McCloskey ("the family you are born into and the neighborhood you live in have a much stronger influence on your socioeconomic outcome than any other factors") shows how clueless conservatives have been to the most defining socioeconomic factor in peoples lives. It may be more productive for you to wonder why it took Ms. McCloskey , and for that matter you, so long to come to this conclusion than to go on a tirade about progressive elitism. One possibility for this blindness might be conservative's faith in unbridled capitalism. By the way, the Green New Deal seeks to turn around the global catastrophe of climate change and particularly sea level rise that will be devastating to people all over the world. It will take the collective power of governments to address this challenge, just like it did to put a man on the moon.
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Yeah, the Republicans literally forced through a tax cut that benefits the richest 1% at the expense of the middle class (check your tax returns!). But it's 'the left' that's 'embracing elitism', ok.
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A Green New Deal featuring a guaranteed job for displaced energy sector workers is actually the Right's worse nightmare and that's why Brooks is attacking it as elitism. Newspeak at its finest.
Capitalism has required the government to bail out the banks so many times over the last 85 years that it seems normal to Brooks&Friends. The idea of government bailing out the working class, and the planet though strikes them as crazy. So who are the elitists?
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"As many conservatives have shifted leftward, so have progressives. From Bill Clinton through Barack Obama, Democrats respected market forces but tried to use tax credits and regulations to steer them in more humane ways."
Conservatives have shifted left? Clinton and Obama were leftists? What universe do you inhabit, David?
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"The productive dynamism of capitalism is truly a wonder to behold." Yes, we have gone from a chicken in every pot to an iPhone in every hand with an app that directs you to the chicken in a pot nearest you. People who are of the age that will take them up to the next century have every right to make climate change mitigation a big deal. Not just for them alone but their children. The generations that were lucky enough to take that giddy ride on the capitalism dynamo and indulged in conspicuous often vulgar consumption without regard to the collateral damage, need to step up.
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I disagree with David, but I commend him for raising the very debate we desperately need. What he labels, "elite," regarding climate change, many of us would label qualified professionals. They include the scientists with NASA and the UN who have been an integral part of published research. They include crack administrators who get the job done. Global warming is our Dunkirk. When Churchill discovered that wealthy Brits were vacationing in yachts off the English coat, he requisitioned these luxury craft and every other boat in the realm in order to avoid the catastrophe awaiting British troops. That is the intensity of the emergency facing us in global warming. Direct intervention -- not just incentives -- are the necessity. And any incompetence, corruption or compromising elitism can be weeded out in the process of addressing this emergency.
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@MidwesternReader
As Brooks points out the Green New Deal is "a fantasy." But it's even worse than that, pulling the Democratic Party to the far, far left. And it wou!d cost tens of $Trillion. Mitch McConnell is doing a clever thing; giving the AOC Bill a vote next week to get the Democrats on the record, especially those running in 2020.
7
We must stop using the term “global warming”. The Republican geniuses in Washington and their supporters can’t reconcile the idea of imminent climate disaster when they see snow falling anywhere in the world...... how about insisting on the term “climate change”.... might stop Trump's idiotic tweets....
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The Overton Window is just starting to get a better view of the left side of the landscape.
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The problem, Mr. Brooks, is that progressives need a cause. Preferably one which scares people.
Income Inequality didn't pan out as well as they hoped although I'm sure it will resurface.
Climate Change appears to be next.
The only cause they seem to ignore is the cause of the typical working class American.
Some of the Green New Deal is silly. BUT, as productivity and income of the upper echelons have increased, wages have stagnated. Prescription costs are through the roof. Leaders of industry have had their chance and demonstrated that they will never share the wealth with nor provide health insurance to the people who make the products. Time for universal health care and progressive tax. The cutoff for 70% should be lower than$10M per year. It's time to legally take back what Reagan gave away.
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David. The price paid by the many for the achievement of the industrial revolution and the electronic and digital revolutions that have followed has been and is immense. Capitalism without serious regulation is cruel and merciless and takes freedoms from the masses. It gives us the choice of products and brands but not in the ways we live or the qualities of our lives. Capitalism without a social conscience cares not a whit about health of education unless it benefits the corporations and the banks. You should know all this, having writen on values and character as you have. Stop bashing the left. Listen to them and dig a little deeper into the outcomes of the conservatism of your past.
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History often repeats itself, yes; but, sometimes newfound crises begot that repetition. This is an existential crises unlike any other before my generation's time, and trust me, I have read many of the minutes over and over again, as have my peers, and we may not flawlessly comprehend the trials and tribulations of previous master plans, but we understand them well enough to scoff at your vague assertions about their value.
Our opponent now is not some scorned and hateful enemy or some economic downturn that certainly will correct its course with time, but a literal catastrophe threatening our entire planet. Your laudable carbon tax suggestion will not prove enough, and as seen many times over, corporations love to fudge the numbers just a tad. We need large-scale change to combat this crisis now.
Additionally, I have no doubt that the trend of stagnant wages for laborers will not cease without overarching remediation, best done, as exemplified in past times of crises, by government safety nets and programs; I can guarantee you that no large corporation will do more than pay lip service to employee wages without proper prodding by the big bad government.
The Green New Deal, I have no doubt, will present its own trials and tribulations, but your band-aid, patchwork, underwhelming solutions will not divert our current course.
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“The great paradox of progressive populism is that it leads to elitism in its purist form.”
Now Mr. Brooks is just making stuff up for his conservative buddies. At the very least he needs a dictionary and a reality check. The first concept does NOT lead to the second.
Populism: a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
Elitism is the belief that a select group of people with a certain ancestry, intrinsic quality, high intellect, wealth, special skills, or experience—deserve influence or authority greater than that of others.
If reducing the number of people in poverty is your benchmark, then ummm, China seems to have done okay with over the past 20 years with a highly centralized system. Yes? No?
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You are assuming too much, Mr. Brooks, about capitalism and how it produces reduction in poverty. Actually, on our existing trajectory, according to World Economic Review, "it will take more than 100 years to end poverty at $1.90/day, and over 200 years to end it at $7.4/day. Let that sink in. And to get there with the existing system – in other words, without a fairer distribution of income – we will have to grow the global economy to 175 times its present size. Even if such an outlandish feat were possible, it would drive climate change and ecological breakdown to the point of undermining any gains against poverty."
LET THAT SINK IN!
This is from a piece where you can find a much more nuanced position, much closer to facts, see: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty?fbclid=IwAR1kyxzHJTvyTAuIn1RmhtyTwc2KXMnsic56hkxuPgtsJGv8XkdNNMlFuVY
David,
You should not take this to be a contradiction of your core thesis (about which I do not offer an opinion here), but American capitalism has NOT produced 20 million new jobs over the past 10 years.
The actual job creation over the past 10 years plus 1 month is 15.7 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
https://tinyurl.com/mme6d99
Of course, what capitalism giveth, capitalism taketh away. You really need to go back another year and include 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, in which 3.6 million jobs were lost. (2009, the worst year of the recession, lost a whopping 5 million jobs.) If you do that you reduce net job creation to 11.9 million.
Further, any economy should at a minimum create jobs proportional to population growth. The U.S. population grew by around 25 million since 2008 (wow), an increase of approximately 8 percent (wow again).
Total nonfarm employment at the start of 2008 was around 138.4 million. So we might reasonably expect 1.4 million new jobs since then JUST to account for population growth. That brings your total new job creation thanks to capitalism down to around 10.5 million, about half what you claimed.
It's important to get the numbers right, and to understand them, as I argue here: https://tinyurl.com/y4y4eaxx
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The real risk is that the argument over how centralized action should be will delay action by all parties.
This is a situation in which WHAT is done matters a lot more than WHO does it.
If private companies take the lead and render government action unnecessary, then great! If government pressure or direct federal action is needed, then so be it! One way or another we need results.
"There were people writing such grand master plans in the 1880s, the 1910s, the 1930s. They never work out."
Gee, I kind of think that the New Deal, the WPA, the TVA, Social Security, and all the rest worked out pretty well. Except perhaps for the millionaires (now billionaires) who hated FDR so much. The ones that Brooks now speaks for. The ones that have given him such a privileged and yes, elite, platform and position.
This opinion piece is so slippery and passive aggressive (hallmarks of Mr. Brooks' writing) that it cannot go unchallenged.
It's all very well to note that unbridled capitalism has raised people all over the globe out of poverty. Many now have $5 a day instead of $2, because global capitalists have shipped American manufacturing jobs overseas where labor is dirt cheap and life is the same. So, is that supposed to be the result of American political "elites" representing the American middle class? Or is it American political "elites'' representing global corporate "elites."
And we hear that scholarship money can now be used for vocational school. This is Republican innovation! Vocational school was widely available when I was in public high school in the 1960s.
The Republicans, for whom Mr. Brooks has long been a champion, are scared of AOC and Bernie and all the rest of the newly elected voices from the left who are not apologizing any more. The ridicule and denigration of progressive policies and individuals in failing. And it's about time.
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(part 2)
“The authors liken their plan to the New Deal, but the real parallel is to World War II.” Well, in either case the results for America were pretty positive unless you want to go back and get rid of Social Security and have Berlin as our capital.
“That Democratic Party is ending.” The beloved, by conservatives, party of Clinton and Obama! Now they SCREAM “socialists” (read “commies”)! Do you all never tire of this red herring?
“But the underlying faith of the Green New Deal is a faith in the guiding wisdom of the political elite.” Maybe just the scientific and academic elite and just people who love facts. Or maybe we just need to continue following the guiding wisdom of the self-interested , status quo billionaire plutocrats who would run the country into the ground for their own benefit.
Power to the People is the Republican governing theory? No, just a campaign slogan to the base to keep them "believing" they have a voice.
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Remove the beam from your own eye, Mr. Brooks—by which I mean to say, stop fussbudgetting over the fantasized rise of gawdless socialism over the back fence, and spend rather more time and energy looking hard at your own home’s turn to the wacko Right.
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If the 19th century axiom that child labor was absolutely essential to economic growth (and all the benefits felt to derive from such growth), could be left behind, could not an increase in minimum wage (indexed perhaps to the expenses of a 2 wage earner household, each working 40 hours per week) to live in a safe apartment, and have a bit left over to contribute, say, the maximum to their IRAs every year, be accepted as a minimum place to start with support? Add to that a private health care system where the 2 wage earners can afford health insurance or receive just enough of an allowance to cover this cost, and there should be a rather simple path forward to keeping the benefits of capitalism coming. But I suspect as in the 19th century the concept that the US economy can't handle the stress of such a minimum wage, will make this an argument unsuitable for discussion. Hard to believe the simplicity of this approach is felt to be a slippery slope to socialism. Was the end of child labor seen as such?
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Atlas is shrugging
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The Left composed of elitists? Who would have guessed!?
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This is what I think as well, more or less. But I wouldn't expect "progressives" to understand, or even try to. ... And by the way, here's that rabid rightist, that free-marketeer with no heart, Cass Sunstein, on why the imbecile in the White House was correct to warn about calls for adopting socialism:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-07/what-is-socialism-trump-s-closer-to-the-truth-than-democrats
The conservatives have forgone their claim to fiscal responsibility and the liberals are moving further and further out into the mists of socialism. We are indeed in perilous times.
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The Green New Deal is not going to become Law or even get to the Floor of the House.
I do not see this as a totally intellectually honest article by Mr. Brooks. Frankly, I see it as part of his ongoing struggle with the cognitive dissonance from which he suffers. That is triggered by wh"...What The Right Has Become...".
Brooks just cannot deal with it, so he looks for other things to write about.
It's a shame, really. But it is also really, really obvious. stunned
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Brooks trying to be nice. The ugly word for centralization of power by few elites is, you guessed it: Frank Stallone...I mean Communism.
How the left embraced elitism... and how the right embraced ignorance.
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David,
Glad to see you’ve come to the altar of carbon tax. Do you think you can drag Trump and Mark Meadows up the aisle? They think they need a wall now. Wait until a few hundred million of our human brothers and sisters are displaced by rising water.
Before these idealistic young Democrats are corrupted by corporate campaign finance, they will hopefully get in a few licks for the environment and greater wealth equality. Progressivism has had its back to the ropes since 1965. If you want anything—ask for a lot.
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With apologies to Eric Idle and Monty Python, David Brooks and the rest of his GOP apologists 'always look on the dark side of life'. And they play that tune over and over, again and again until everyone in the base unconsciously hums the same misogynistic and racist tunes.
What is the GOP after all without a villain, or an enemy? Modernly, since Reagan, give them a coastal elitist, a Muslim or a Latino, a Trade Union or a Socialist as an enemy or villain whom they can portray darkly to a gullible base and they are at their finest in creating an evil enemy of their victimized base.
Post Modernly and Since Trump, raging against a Communism and Russia is GOP verboten for David Brooks. What and who once would have been at the top of Brooks villainy list is now fashionably 'in' until Trump cashes in on his Moscow tower namesake. If nothing else, the GOP are all devoutly true to the profit motive.
Since the Reagan era Republican elites have been fashioning government and our society culminating in their ultimate triumph, TRUMP! We have listened to "conservative" arguments on the benefits of trickle down economics for forty years. We have listened to the so-called benefits of small government. We have listened to the evils of debt and yet the Republicans have given us nothing but debt to finance their wars and their tax cuts for the already too wealthy and Wall Street. They offer no solutions for health care. To hear Brooks talk all would be well and happy in America if we just held hands in our neighborhoods and sang Kumbaya will we handed out Pell Grants to the poorest among us.
The Republican Party is dead. Today, Republicans are consistently savaging the middle class to reward their oligarch bosses. They no longer govern but are opportunistic self serving power mad gold diggers.
Face it David, you are sitting atop a dead horse.
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So we should all do what Republicans are doing? Hide our heads in the sand and wait for the only planet we have to burn up? Accelerate the plundering and monetization of every single thing like the current administration is doing? Destroy our home because rich people want more and more and more? Pretend nothing is happening and deny basic science over and over until the willfully ignorant control everything? At least they have suggestions, at least they want to do something. Unless corporations can somehow make even more money, they will not willingly do anything that might risk their precious bottom line. Frankly small groups are not capable of the scope of what needs to be done to try to change the direction we are heading in, but let's all criticize those who are least trying.
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Right wing Republicans, like the columnist, are getting very nervous and certainly should be. A national consensus is organically taking shape from the “ground up”, particularly in our cities and states, contrary to Brooks’s communist-like, top-down central planning scare tactics. The public can expect many, many more of these desperate, false scenarios to be inventively spun by these truly “elite “ apologists as the waning days of the corporate/plutocratic extreme control of the nation’s wealth distribution and political agenda come into focus with the vastly overdue creation of an equitable federal tax system, a thorough protection of voting rights, the wholesale reformation of campaign financing, delivery of affordable and comprehensive health care, humane policies which protect and further, at last, the needs of middle and working class Americans, etc. etc. Republicans have only themselves to blame for their endemic greed and systemic callousness for anyone existing outside their “elitist “ orbit.
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This comes from an old guy of the Vietnam era. Within the government at that time were some really smart people. Robert McNamara was brilliant. William Westmorland was very bright. These and other folks led the country into “the jaws of death” as the poet Tennyson put it. You can have way to much faith in the technocrats in charge and it can lead to disaster.
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I think you have been reading the script from Ronald Reagan's Medicare commercials.
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" Simple attempts to realign incentives" to reverse climate change will work about as well as holding our breath. Only massive, and very unlikely, changes in the global economy and infrastructure can accomplish the necessary, and those will never happen before global ecosystem collapse drastically reduces the human population.
The current Democratic Party is too obsessed with purging the ideologically impure to accomplish anything beyond self immolation. The progressive Inquisition is condemning us to the reelection of Trump, and another six years of environmental destruction.
So the man who is a cheerleader for the true elite, the wealthy and super wealthy, thinks trying to save life on earth is "elitism".
Really David? Really? Do you drink water? Do you breath air? Do you eat vegetables or meats? Do you know that without the insects that are dying off at an alarming rate there will be both no birds or various other lifeforms that eat bugs, and there will be no plant life? Without plants, there are no fruits and vegetables; without fruits and vegetables there will be no cows, pigs, chickens, or other animals whose flesh most of us eat. How do you plan to survive? Cannibalism may do for awhile, but even that will be in limited supply.
This isn't about elitism; it is about survival. I know, I know. It doesn't need a wall so it can't be a real threat. But the awful truth is that survival really is at stake.
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Elitism, like fascism and racism, are terms directed at anyone whom the person using the terms happens to dislike. That is state of public dialogue in 2019.
The major concern ought to be incompetence, whether of the Left or of the Right. And both wings of the Democratic Party as well as the folks in the White House are incompetent.
Elsewhere, you 'reasonably' say yea, we should talk about global warming.
But that' as far as it goes - you just can't change your ideological stripes, can you brooks?
So jumping on the red scare 2.0 bandwagon in advance of 2020 elections wins out over any constructive engagement with a proposal to deal with a rapidly evolving global threat.
Piddling "carbon taxes"? 'Reds under the bed'? Think "bees," brooks:
"The Insect Apocalypse is Here: What does it mean for the rest of life on earth."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
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Great piece David.
Fantasy Land on steroids.
Scary indeed!
The real menace is not at the southern border, it’s inside the Washington beltway.
David Brooks is the Rudolf Nureyev of columnists. His rhetorical and logistical leaps are amazing. It is almost as if he dances about the subject as if the laws of physics or logic are no longer applicable. We do know he believes that anything centralized and concentrated is bad, unless it is business. He likes him some decentralized action to solve a common problem. I suspect the centralized and concentrated elements in our society will be able to attack these and defeat them "in detail." (Defeat in detail, or divide and conquer, is a military tactic of bringing a large portion of one's own force to bear on small enemy units in sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once. This exposes one's own units to many small risks but allows for the eventual destruction of an entire enemy force.)
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Mr. Brooks: I hear you. But given the enormous danger the entire world faces from global warming, and realizing that current efforts to fight it appear to be hugely ineffective and inadequate, something very big and very mandated must be done if we are to avoid the most catastrophic effects of the problem. Clearly, present measures are totally insufficient to the threat.
And, of course, the biggest economy of all (our own) is being directed by its present government to ignore the problem altogether. Even to ramp up fossil fuel use.
So, give these facts, what would you have us do?
It is past time to hit the panic button and command action from every part of society to face our relentless climate enemy. Only a strong and resolute government can provide (mandate, lead, enforce) the all-out assault on the problem that is evidently required.
Opinions like these from Brooks are why I continue to read this paper. I frequently find myself disagreeing with his headline or introduction, but by the end I am persuaded that we create real problems when we push solutions that have no clear foundation in the lives of Americans.
New thinking is unfortunately seldom popular, even less if you have good evidence to back it.
Dear David,
I was alarmed to read in your column that the green new deal would 'provide a job to any person who wanted one'. I normally trust your reporting but I went to the OAC-Markey text to see what it said.
Section 4H says 'guaranteeing a job ... to all the people of the United States'. You seem to translate this to government agencies hiring every worker that needed a job. Seems a bit of a leap, since it doesn't actually say that. Maybe you know something I don't about the authors intent, but this promise of jobs for all seems like most other political rhetoric as something that likely has a number of ways of approaching the objective. For example, why wouldn't the implementation consist of massive government-led stimulus of private employment (infrastructure jobs, new energy source jobs, etc.) backed up by a proposal like the guaranteed minimum income as a safety net?
Or for that matter, why do we even take the 'all' so literally. Maybe this means a massive stimulus phased over 10 years that (our) economists project will provide jobs for all who are willing to get trained.
This is ridiculous. Nowhere does the Green New Deal claim that "government alone will solve this." The proposal is vague (for better or worse). However, when I read it I imagined government investments such as extending tax credits to individuals that install solar on their homes. In my reading, a PRIVATE company would install the solar; the government would just provide tax credits (which are already on the books and should be extended). Similarly, governments could incentivize private firms to pursue actions that will reverse climate change. Instead of subsidies for drilling for oil, there would be subsidies for installing wind farms. I think David is seeing only what he is looking for, versus reading with an open mind.
I think that the reference to the “General Welfare” in the preamble to our Constitution leans toward some form of socialism at least in lower case. Some parts of our society are amenable to public works. We trust our Air Traffic Controllers with our lives. We can extend this trust further it seems to me.
War is the correct metaphor for the threat of climate change and the mobilization now require to defeat it after decades of inaction. Mr. Brooks, do you believe the European and Pacific campaigns overseen by General Eisenhower would have been waged more effectively via grassroots community efforts spurred by the proper government incentives?
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Elitism refers to the group that is in control.
Brooks seems to support control being used in “humane ways.”
If we define two elites in our society -the constituents of ALEC and the government as evidenced by Medicare, Social security, food stamps etc which can we count on to be more “humane?”
I value private enterprise. But it has limitations. It is not designed to be humane. It values cheating and deception and anythings of social value that it produces are side effects of its’ own primary purpose to promote its’ own wealth. Now this is does not make private enterprise a bad thing. It just makes it untrustworthy and in need of significant control and regulation.
Enter governement to balance creativity humane behavior. Even Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism, described this. The “Right” is like exuberant an teenager who think he/she knows It all, never make mistakes and that their parents (the governing body) know nothing.
The problem with the “Left” is that they are much better in advocating for big goals than describing good plans, including government-private partnerships to achieve those goals. The left is really deficient in being able to convince people of the importance of the “long game.”
The problem with us is that fail to experience paying taxes as being patriotic.
...maybe the US government might want to try and figure out how to balance it's budget and reduce the debt.
It's so easy to champion programs - a job for everyone that wants one - that sounds 'so nice'
Sorry, we live in a reality that a job for everyone doesn't exist.
Let's see if those Green politicians can figure out a way to avoid bankrupting out children - $21 trillion in debt - $965 billion deficit - deficits for several more years -over one hundred trillion in unfunded pension liabilities -
Let Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her Green Goblins figure out the truly difficult questions facing our Country.
Cutting costs means cutting jobs, not adding them.
If you've ever worked in business - you'd know. While the government isn't a business - it needs some fiscal discipline - somethings that is doesn't exist in Washington, D.C.
@JMS Actually, imagine if instead of food stamps, welfare payments, public housing vouchers, etc... we DID just give everyone a job. It might cost less and let us focus on achieving other long-term goals. The workers might fix potholes (my city could use this type of help), weatherize government buildings (saving taxpayer dollars on utilities), provide afterschool programs (~baby-sitting). We could actually TAX those workers, offsetting some of the costs AND we would get other benefits back, too.
1
@Jennifer
It’s much too complex - there are approximately 95 million people looking for work in the US - according to a Jan 10th article by CNN - 62.7% of the workforce over the age of 16 are looking for jobs - employing everyone is not realistic. It’s political hype.
The total insanity of the whole enterprise, and the way it was rolled out will insure another 4 years of Trumpy Bear. What is more disturbing is the defense of this sham by the comments. Why in a whole of vast technical expertise and growth that has freed so many to pursue so much, does the government need to be so involved. The Chinese are implementing their surveillance and meritocracy. We are soon to follow.
What Brooks and other Conservatives find hard to admit is that unregulated capitalism eats democracy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What you get is plutocracy that looks like democracy because it still has elections, but the people elected to office too often represent those who have paid for the election — and that has not been the middle class. What we get from Conservatives is dissimulation and faux argumentation. All a camouflage for their drive for more power — political and economic.
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Granted, capitalism isn’t pretty. It isn’t supposed to be. Like nature itself, it is often cold, cruel and harsh. Recessions and depressions are the equivalent to tsunamis and earthquakes. There is a food chain in which some excel and others fail. Those who cannot compete or who do not have the stomach for capitalism need to accept that even at its worst, it is head and shoulders better than every other economic system.
@From Where I Sit
Great defense of the nineteenth century. Richardo would be proud, maybe even Malthus. However, capitalism is not a force of nature. It is a human construct to spread risk among investors. We can and should control it. Even Adam Smith warned against the power of monopoly and believed in progressive taxation.
@B. Rothman. not just conservatives have been complicit in this plutocracy...
This is semantics at its worst. First the GOP misuses and misappropriates "socialism" to the extent that it loses all meaning (even Brooks admits that "I don't know if it's socialism or not"). Now Brooks and others are trying to do the same thing with "elites" and "elitism." Favoring greater power in the federal government IS NOT "elitism." Neither is supporting the implementation and enforcement of uniform nationwide standards or the creation of new federal programs. The Green New Deal is simply not "elitist" in any common sense of the word.
It's also absurd to say that the progressive wing of the Democratic party has "embraced elitism" by prioritizing popular (and populist) policies that are intended to help all Americans.
If this platform is "elitist" what is the GOP platform? You know, the platform that deifies tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations because they are glorious "job creators" and that advocates for "deregulation" that helps large donors and corporations at the expense of small businesses and local communities. Are we really supposed to believe that platform doesn't embrace elites but the Green New Deal does?
Brooks is usually careful with his words and thoughts but this column is embarrassing. The most frustrating part is that he can make his point (that the GND proposes a considerable expansion of the federal government, which is bad) without resorting to inaccurate labels such as "elitism."
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Where are the voters who weren't already motivated by anti-Trump fury that now say that "with this new Green New Deal I'm voting and I'm voting Democrat!" Come forth ye and speak. There should be many of you because many moderates and independents are running away for all the reasons Mr. Brooks alludes to and more.
It never ceases to amaze me that the Democrats will claim that President Trump represents a unique danger to the country one minute, and then embrace policies that make him look preferable in comparison the next.
Ever since the Regan Administration, the American middle-class has been sold the "prosperity is your divine right" myth--the wealthy are used to illustrate how laissez-faire capitalism could bring riches to the average person. My friend Ken has been a true believer for 25 years. Ken came from a poor, broken home, joined the military and served in Vietnam. Although quite intelligent, he suffers from self-doubt. His career track was a series of jobs that were beneath him. Ken loves the thought of wealth and he worships the wealthy. He recounts false stories of how Trump gave his own money to the poor and he hangs on every word of the extreme Right media pundits. Ken spent his whole life scraping by, but feels that some day he will be wealthy too; as if believing would make it so.
There are a lot of people like Ken in the US; unaware of the "advantage multipliers" of the super-rich and slavishly devoted to the dream.
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Decentralize power. Let states make their own rules about pollution, about food inspection, about government sanctioned racial segregation, about the Bill of Rights?
It is not about "centralize" versus "decentralize." That is a smokescreen argument. It is about what policies are socially constructive and what policies serve small interest groups (the real elitists) at the expense of the rest of us.
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Republicans have their wall, Democrats have their New Green Deal.
Like Trump's fantastical Wall, the Green New Deal is an exercise in negotiation. Like the Wall, it addresses a need - boosting working and middle-class quality of life. The Wall does it by excluding "others" and rewarding "Americans". The GND claims to do it by leveling the playing field for all.
Dems are simply doing what Trump has done — throwing as much at the wall as they can and seeing what sticks.
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If republicans had not obstructed reasonable and relatively painless solutions to the climate change and other issues since 1990's, the "Green New Deal" would not be necessary. So the blame for these kinds of schemes that will be inevitably implemented, in mid 2020's is my guess, when the full horror of climate change finally dawns on the scientifically illiterate and ideologically blinkered public falls squarely on the Republican party. Not electing Al Gore as president in 2000 may have "doomed" America to "Socialism". You reap what you sow ... it is no use whining now.
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This column is asking the people to believe noble lies. The biggest one is for people to accept their low status because the wealthy have high status because they are better.
Brooks wants people to take pride in their submission and then uses twisted logic. Though it is impractical, guarantying everyone a job is not elitist it is leveling. Embedded in this logic is that authority, rank and, inequality is good when it is deserved. Never mind that that 60% of the wealth of the 1% is inherited and many support fascistic right-wing causes. We have the Koch Bros and think ilk telling us how we should all live.
@Mark Smith
It used to be called the Gospel of Wealth; now it is just called Libertarianism.
“Among conservatives there are now a bevy of thinkers who are trying to find ways to use government to reduce inequality, promote work and restore community.”
Yes, David, of course this is the seminal focus of both conservatives and neocons — and the Republican Party will very likely follow this admirable path forward also.
Everyone can easily see that conservative capitalists in corporations as well as Congress and the Presidency are already working hard, ‘very hard’, to ‘expose’ the deceit of those very few mis-guided businesses which use the new humanistic tools of ‘creative destruction’ inappropriately to look for and exploit opportunities to merely make high faux-profits by seeking out and capitalizing in areas where essentially all seeming profits are only produced by dumping massive “negative externality costs” on ‘others’, like our government, ‘we the people’, our children and grand children, our fragile environment, and our entire little world.
My how often the average people and the Democratic Party do not fully understand (and even criticize) the great advantage that fields like “financial engineering”, new weapons development of our leading ‘Defense Contractors’, and modern fossil fuel exploration techniques are used to “Make life better through plastics” (in the oceans).
David, we can all be proud of the fantastic ‘growth rate’ of our Disguised Global Capitalist Empire, as Professor Robinson points out in his, “Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity”
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The rich have had their chance many, many times to "Make America Great Again" and failed. Only the Democrats have implemented programs of substance and worth to help our
citizens. And only they will implement them in the future. The republicans have no souls and are sickened with greed.
Elitism is not the enemy but does at times need to be "tempered". Overall good intension's will be successful for
our Nation in the future. Not the ultra rich's schemes and
cons that they are known for today. They have met their match and it's me for them to go away.
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Okay, for ten years - as stated in the GND - we'll do everything it says: high-speed rails to all becoming vegan. Just us in America, as stated in the GND. After the decade, what's state of the warming and the ice sheets? Have we stopped it? Reversed it? Remember, just 325 million of the world's 7+ billion people have participated. Is the world saved?
@Teller
You are assuming that everyone else around the globe consumes and waste at the same rate we do. They don't.
>>>Over the past 10 years, American capitalism has produced 20 million new jobs.
A standard cliché to extoll capitalism. But over the past 10 years, while 20 million jobs were created, the US population increased by about 20 million people. There is nothing wonderous about this.
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@jt There is also nothing wonderous about creating ever larger government bureaucracy for its own sake.
As in the rest of the world politics are going to the extremes. In the USA first to the right and now to the left. I am a democrat but will not support these new cadre of folly socialists.
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@bruno
If you can define what is "socialist", let's hear it. If you can devise a way for all of us to continue to consume and waste at will without becoming another of the large mammals on the edge of extinction, let's hear it.
How will you solve the dire issue of weather disruption? Surely, you have the answer. I know I don't.
The picture above Brooks's column tells the story: tons of serious-looking elder statesmen and one freshperson Representative, who (aided by the Eastern elite media's almost sexual fascination) is leading the old gents down the primrose path. Could we maybe--just maybe--call time-out on amateur politicians from the Bronx?
There is nothing nobler than a writer who says that their own ideas are "activist, but humble."
Here, David Brooks contradicts himself, yet again. He lampoons "radical" children in past articles, who want bottom-up change and then he writes an article about how we are placing too much faith in the "political elite." Mr. Brooks, this is not the "elite" calling for change, it is those who feel that your generation owes it to mine not to leave the Earth as a flaming ball of plastic floating throughout the galaxy.
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To me it's just staggering that Brooks thinks that a column in the "conservative" journal of National Affairs, projects any influence upon any "conservative" politician in office.
Was the column written by the gun lobby or an evangelical Christian, or FOX news? If not, it's a meaningless waste of ink. How ironic that Mr. Brooks can so easily find flaws with Democrats but can's see that his "Conservative" Republican party has ended. He doesn't even realize that McCloskey's article speaks to no one wielding power in his former party.
So perhaps, as Brooks says, "that Democratic Party is ending", but at least they are proposing new ideas that can be debated. If Mr. Brooks wants to debate them, and actually thinks some of the ideas make sense, he best consider starting a new political party, or join the Democrats.
Today's Republican have no interest in anything green - except the almighty dollar, guns, and abortion.
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I often look to Mr. Brooks' for thoughtful conservative opinion, even though I'm on the other side of the political spectrum, but this column seems better suited for use in critical thinking classes as an example of the "straw man" argument. Sloppy and pejorative use of the word "elites" is only the most obvious flag for that philosophical and rhetorical fallacy in an article peppered with them.
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David Brooks compares this plan to the WW II mobilization. Late he says it can't work (looking at precedents). But the WW II mobilization DID work, didn't it, David? The idea is to take climate change as seriously as the Nazi threat. Objectively, isn't that necessary? And seen in that framework, a national and international mobilization are the LEAST we can do. At the moment we're fiddling while Rome burns. The modest approach Brooks recommends in the face of the climate change juggernaut have echoes of Herbert Hoover.
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David Brooks seems to me to be a columnist who writes many anodyne columns in order to lure his readers into his diatribes attacking any leftist policies that may be proposed. A pretty good strategy but I don't think it will work anymore.
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Elitism is the purview of the uber rich. The definition of the word does not even relate to the left. You and other radical, right wing conservatives use it as a pejorative term to deflect attention from your immoral exploitative policies.
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Maybe if any of these modest plans David extols hadn't been branded as big government socialism in the past we wouldn't be staring down the barrel of something much closer to actual big government socialism. It's the boy who cried wolf. The right has done such a good job of branding every government intervention as socialism that once actual socialism comes around, nobody takes it seriously anymore.
If the Republicans are actually serious about preventing socialism in America, a good first step would be to take a look at the socialist policies they can live with else they get the ones they can't.
David,
As you state here: "Among conservatives there are now a bevy of thinkers who are trying to find ways to use government to reduce inequality, promote work and restore community".
To hasten this inquiry I would suggest that a few of the leaders of this conservative group (including yourself) visit Finland, Germany, Sweden and any number of countries with social democratic governments. They have been solving these problems for the last 70 years.
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@Paul Robillard The primary energy source for Doric nations is hydro. Although this is indeed a good source of energy, it is not likely to used to produce a significant amount of America’s energy needs. 10% or less makes sense.
@John @Paul Robillard is talking about governing approaches; the energy source you reference has no bearing on their governing model. BTW, we could provide 100% of our energy needs with wind energy generated in Texas, North Dakota, and Kansas.
Pretty sure we've already got a massive centralization of power in the hands of the elite: the unelected economic elite. And Brooks finds it shocking that we might centralize power in the hands of people we elect (and can then kick out in the next election) to enact policies that we need, like fighting climate change? His analogy to WWII makes sense in some ways: we have an existential threat that needs to be fought with a massive coordinated effort. I'm good with that.
"But simple attempts to realign incentives, like the carbon tax, would be more effective and more realistic than government efforts to reorganize vast industries."
The time when simple attempts to realign incentives might have been effective passed 20 years ago. Climate change is a planetary emergency, which is echoed in report after report coming from the scientific community.
You're correct, the mobilization reflected in the Green New Deal would be akin to what occurred in WWII, and would be needed on a planetary scale to be successful. It's the single largest challenge facing humanity, something that the private sector can't and won't address. The effort requires concerted government coordination and management, and it needs to begin immediately.
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@Bruce Frausto The government is what failed us during the Great Depression. They were never the solution to our problems as has become the mythology of the left.
For crying out loud. The Democrats are the elite? Just because some of them went to college? Look at the Republican ranks. Look at the fact that hardly anybody can get elected to Congress without being a millionaire already. And we call this representative government?
And before we talk about sweetheart deals, can we talk about the last "reform" of the tax structure? You know, the one that punishes the middle class by taking away deductions for home ownership and that gives a big sweetheart kiss on the lips by way of another huge tax cut to the upper 1% (you know, the "struggling" class?).
And then there's the sweetheart deal for all the corporations who are seeing regulations cut so that pollution rises (and still, I don't understand why the Trump administration is so set on poisoning their own kids and grandkids, unless they plan to build them bubbles in which to live--oh, maybe that's what that tax cut is supposed to do!)
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@Denise Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even if you are right that many Democrats are not currently elite, the party leaders would be if granted such broad power over the nation and its economic activity.
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I have not studied the "green New Deal" but if it is as Mr. Brooks says it is, then I agree with him. In fact I like his alternative ideas. A carbon tax to start dealing with the climate problem, tax tweaks to encourage donations to non-profits, provide national service program jobs as starters/filler jobs for those that would benefit from them, and fund grants to pay for forms of advanced education in the practical fields. Now just add higher tax rates for higher incomes to start helping with medical care for all, and then we really have something. Call it practical socialism?
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I think the best use of government in combating global warming is in sequestration and storage of current carbon from the atmosphere. This is a non-productive task that they could manage. Aside from that, why grow bureaucracy that will take years to establish and will most likely just come up with taxation and forcing the private sector to solve for?
Mr. Brooks, President Nixon created the EPA, cozied up to Communist China, gave us affirmative action and is the only president in US history to seize control of the US economy with his wage-price controls. Please name a "conservative'' -- or even a "liberal'' leader of either political party who approximates Nixon's record. The hard truth is that Obama was a moderate governed to the right of Nixon -- and only looked "liberal'' because the GOP has mainstreamed the John Birch agenda of the 1960s.
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@Frank Obama was certainly a moderate Democrat and his direction actually made the party sane. Democrats could use leadership like that now.
@John the point I am trying to make, John, is that none of the Democrats promoting more leftist ideas are in a position to advance their agenda. It’s disingenuous of Mr Brooks and the president who paint the Democratic Party with such a broad brush based on the conduct of so few.
@Frank I think you are right in that to an extent. Democrats going for their gold will only lead to further inaction by government due to gridlock. This is why moderate policies would be preferable as they have greater odds of passing.
Sorry David, but the Democrats moved right under Clinton and kept going. The new progressives are really just going back to the bold thinking under FDR, Kennedy. etc. The Right (and that includes you) have masterfully framed every Democrat as a scary leftist for decades, making "liberal" a dirty word. Enough already. I hope the activist younger generation actually start voting and taking this country forward.
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@LFK Kennedy was certainly a moderate. His policies were more in line with Obama and Clinton than with FDR. FDR was fortunate to be in power at a time when his policies failing didn’t hurt the nation. World War 2 and the decimation of European manufacturing made this possible.
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Let's remember that David Brooks idolizes the people who called Medicare "socialism."
If you don't agree with Brooks premise that Medicare is socialism -- just like the right wingers say it is -- then David Brooks would call you an "elite".
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This should be easy to understand.
Trump has an authoritarian personality, and his perverted nationalism has an authoritarian spirit. Even if comparisons to 1930's Germany are exaggerated, it is this aspect of Trumpism that most disturbs people. If nothing else, he is seen as a bully.
NOTHING is more likely to cause anti-authoritarians of both right and center to reluctantly support Trump than a threat of authoritarianism from the left. Authoritarians always believe they are exercising power on behalf of the people, but the label sticks regardless of good intentions.
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@Mark R. I don’t think this opinion piece is asking anyone to accept Trump as the way forward. There is lots of ground between Trump and AOC or Sanders. None of the three are by any stretch of the imagination, the greatest thinkers or leaders of our time.
Brooks, like every soft-spoken conservative pundit and every loud-mouthed Republican politician, goes out of his way to make outrageous claims about the coming apocalypse og the Green New Deal.
As it stands, the Green New Deal is a concept but barely out of the 'boy, wouldn't it be great if...' stage.
A talking point, in other words.
I'd like to see it fleshed out with some actual proposed laws. Then Brooks and the hysterical right will have something to criticize.
"Over the past generation, global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history. Over the past 10 years, American capitalism has produced 20 million new jobs. " You lost me right from the beginning. There couldn't have been any factors other than " capitalism? " 20 million new jobs couldn't have resulted naturally from population growth over that time? Advances in science, agriculture, and medicine might not have had something to do with declining poverty? I could just as easily argue that the improvements you note occurred * in spite of* rather than as *the result of* capitalism, and my argument would have as much support as yours. You made some good points elsewhere, but they were weakened by this unfounded tribute to the wondrous benefits of capitalism.
David, let's get serious here. You're taking "Green New Deal" suggestions explicitly and literally, whereas in my opinion they are intended as talking points and have already opened up new discussion widely.
There are two basic ways to move the needle toward Green: government direct intervention and tax policy. The latter makes more sense in our capitalist system and allows for more ready innovation. I.e. cap-and-trade.
But the Republicans simply say new taxes are off the table, leaving little choice but to suggest new government programs.
I predict "Green New Deal" will become "Green Tax Policy" in a few months and combine sticks (cap-and-trade) with carrots (tax credits for going green).
Reports of the death of capitalism have been much exaggerated and there's a great deal of money to be made in fighting climate change. But it requires government to "lean in" on climate change. It's hypocritical to say this is new, in fact our tax policies have heavily "leaned in" on fossil fuel production for, like, forever. Remember the oil depletion allowance? We could something in reverse about rapidly writing off investments that reduce carbon emissions.
But not with the Republican Senate and President sticking their heads firmly in the sand when anyone mentions climate change. Voters are moving against this.
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@Paul Rosenberg.
If "Green" Policies were actually good for the country, then the government wouldn't have to force them on people.
Not sure why David Brooks states the Green New Deal would be run from Washington. It would more likely operate like most federal programs, that is, administered by state and local governments. And, as with most federal programs, there is usually a lot of input from state and local government and private stakeholders.
I am always amazed at the conservatism of American culture and its cult-like ideological belief in capitalism and private initiative. I am sure that it is in large measure due to luck that the US has had in terms of resources, large internal markets, and geographical security.
I turn, I look at the Russians who have had none of these advantages and are also crippled by a resulting ideology. This one involving a dependency on strong government control and little faith in individual initiative.
In both cases, these ''extreme'' ideological positions prevent these large countries from modernizing and taking their place as balanced and progressive nations in the world. How sad!
Nonsense. The only way to cut carbon is with heavy-handed, centralized control. Which is how every other country in the world has done it. (Most of which are Western democracies).
There are some problems localities can solve, with local non-profits. I support one in my small city. (Shout out to Boca Helping Hands!). These do great work as autonomous institutions in their little principalities.
But, United States emissions rates will only be curtailed by United States action. Federal regulations are needed to curb what is coming out of US factories, US cars, and US planes. Boca Helping Hands is great at many things, like providing groceries and job training to those in need, but it is not going to curb US emissions rates.
Climate change is a national problem and a global problem. Just like defense. The DOD gets a blank check from conservatives. The same reasoning should support curbing emissions - it is a national problem and a global problem. (And, it's also a defense problem: there are already climate refugees and climate-based conflicts). How nearsighted do you have to be not to want to pull every lever to preserve mankind from this?
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Oh this is very "rich," a warning about left elitism coming from a voice on the American Right, the Republican Right, who ushered our nation into both the Age of Inequality, driven by financial elites, and into the Age of Climate Disruption, with no amount of documented growing damage able to slow down or ameliorate corporate capitalism's impacts on the CO2 levels - in time.
May I recommend New Yorker Richard Smith's book on why capitalism, and Green Capitalism, mind you, became "The God that Failed" to stem the damage?
May I note that most of us on the graying left read H. Stuart Hughes splendid book "Consciousness and Society," in part a Cold War warning about late 19th century thinkers that elites come to dominate all successful social and economic movements, even the most radical of them? Are you saying, Mr. Brooks, that financial and educational elitism do not dominate the American Right's think tanks and publications?
Are we to forget that our Democratic Republic foundations were poured by colonial merchant, financial, agricultural and legal elites and designed to head off populist movements from anywhere on the political spectrum?
The New Deal was federally funded because the states and localities had no money; the projects were locally designed, vetted for honesty by men like Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins, with very little corruption.
A quick cabinet contest between FDR and Trump will decide who was and is elitist: Marriner Eccles and Harry Hopkins?
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Ironic to see the headline given that I've read Brooks for years and the underlying, and often explicit, presumption in most of his writing is: "first, everyone act and think like someone in the upper middle class; second, that will solve our problems; third, no redistribution to lower classes -- they just need to think differently but we can't possibly get them more financial resources."
Here I am, stuck in the middle again. The Economist magazine recently pointed out that the Green New Deal is not based on conventional economic reasoning: it addresses the urgent existential threat of the climate disaster. Normal market processes won’t accomplish the changes on the scale that we need. Since my heart is on the left, where government is a latent force for good, I get this. However, my head is conflicted. The Green New Deal is a hugely ambitious in aiming to address all of our biggest problems in a massive expansion of government activity: stop global warming; rebuild our infrastructure; create well paid jobs in local communities; and reduce wealth and income inequality. I support working toward all these goals, but let’s address them in smaller chunks. For instance, most economists like the idea of a carbon tax because its incentives cause reductions in fossil fuel use efficiently, working through the market. A revenue-neutral version of this, which rebates a flat amount back to every taxpayer, can be effective in reducing carbon emissions and is also a progressive way to redistribute (a small amount of) income. Distortions and costly mistakes are much less likely with this kind of policy.
Elite / Elitism - OK so you want to take any negative conotations that go with elite - have a party - a Republican party. You can have it all, bring back coal, imaginary factory jobs, states that that are "red" and boast the highest number of uninsured because their Republican leaders thought it was more important for THEM politically than to insure their constituants. They wouldn't even consider improving on what was there - nah let's just not participate in progress.
Elite - the top/ the best. That is the definition I choose and what we should at a minimum want & try to plan for the nation. A Green Revolution "lead" by the govt not necessarily run and micro managed. We can certainly lead in a way to try to lift everyone rather than say - let's dig more coal & your grandkids can pay to clean up the mess later. I think our grandkids would rather benefit from a Green Revolution than dig coal. I'm sure there'll be bumps along the way but do you want to throw it out like "Obamacare"?
No thanks & our grandkids say no thanks. The party I see that is "Elitist" is the GOP where only the very top earners and corporations (corps are people too?!) reap the benefits of the greatest achievement by Trump and GOP - the TAX bill. Elitist is the GOP that couldn't care less about insuring more people but think it's OK to insure fewer. Elitist is when you want less government but only when it's to benefit a few rather than to have the back of all the people in the country.
GOP=elitist
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The Green New Deal exposed what conservatives have always suspected - that liberals don't really care as much about the climate as they do about an opportunity to centralize power in the federal government. If it was really about the climate there wouldn't be such opposition to nuclear power, nor to natural gas which has dramatically reduced CO2 from power plants in the US.
In the end we won't do much about climate change, not because Republicans don't believe in it, but because Americans don't think addressing climate change is worth the cost - particularly if American sacrifices are offset by China and India.
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I think it is possible for individuals to unexpectantly do great things but it seems to me that our government has a different composition than say 30-50 years ago- a wierd combination of syncophantic corporate clones ( mostly white males) and greater diversity. Im not sure this group is up to the task of engaging better government- for one- it would seem they cannot get along or compromise, for two, it takes tremendous moral, ethical capable leadership devoted to the greater good-which this would seem to be quaint in this day and age
It is simply irrational to try to fight global warming/climate change without the use and wise expansion of nuclear power.
The United States Navy has steamed hundreds of millions of miles under nuclear power without any nuclear incident. This is what can happen with highly trained, exacting standards, and dedication to a mission. And those Sailors that work near those reactors (especially those in submarines) receive less radiation than their families at home (due to the ocean above them shielding them from cosmic radiation).
If a person thinks global warming/climate change is an existential threat, they must look at nuclear power. No number of solar panels and wind turbines will meet the energy demands of a global population of nearly 8 billion people.
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@Jon I don’t disagree. Nuclear energy has a smaller carbon footprint than solar panels.
Where we're headed in the next 2-4 years is into a very politically fractured country. Not left vs. right, or haves vs. have-nots. Nothing binary here. It will be thirds. One third will be the "progressive Democrats", with their Green New Deal and all its centralized Federal government control. Bernie Sanders is probably its best embodiment - not necessarily its leader. One third will be whatever Trump represents. I can't call it conservatism. It's really socially conservative control plus a kind of crony capitalism plus a populist/nationalist overlay. Donald Trump owns this electorate. The remaining third is what pundits are calling the "center", which these days borrows a little from old time Republican liberals and moderate Democrats. Howard Schultz made the only move so far toward this group. It wouldn't surprise me to see a real third political party come out of all this. I think you can look for one of the next two Presidential elections being decided in the House of Representatives and all its attendant discord. Good luck, America! We knew ya when...
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@Michael Lindsay actually more than 50% will be the non-voting public, if you go by the last election. What do they believe? We don't know, they don't vote.
Wow, David. Republicans were fine with immense centralization of power under W, the "Unitary President" with his signing statements, torture authorization, surveillance overreach, and elective war crimes, but now that centralized power might be used for the benefit of the masses and the environment there is a problem?
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In Washington state, in 2017 voters rejected an initiative for a carbon tax, defeated by a coalition of right-wing anti-tax sentiment and left-wing preference for a green new deal. Though a more recent green new deal initiative also failed (after massive oil-company advertising), it's becoming clear that the center right has handed this issue on a silver platter to the left. Even those who are not actively opposing climate action are complicit in their silence on the issue.
@Jim Whitehead correction carbon tax initiative was 2016
Its a crock you offer here, David Brooks. Climate Change is an emergency and requires a massive centralized responae that cannot be achieved through the trickle down good will of private capitalism. How has that worked so far? Not at all. It has worked only to reverse the lukewarm measures we did take to combat the man made forces effecting climate change. And if you beleive the data, we don't have much time left. In fact the harm proves to be accelerating.
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@Jane Gundlach All the government has is taxation of private businesses to do the work. Nationalization would take decades to get started and get any results. We are already a nation that is generally reducing emissions. The vast majority of new electric capacity is renewable. No new coal is being built, Electric cars home solar systems are gaining lots of ground and are coming into their own technologically.
@John No one is suggesting nationalization. This is a red herring to scare us away from any action that would threaten the dinosaur energy industries.
I haven't shifted left, David. I've been out here in left field my whole life, just waiting for the American cattle to finally notice the green grass I've been standing in.
Now, I'm and old man, kind of amazed that AOC and the young have caught on. Finally!
Hopefully, enough of my contemporaries have gotten diabetes or lung cancer and died, so that America can get a chance again - before its too late.
Dump the Christian religion. I did. They have become the problem. The Churches of the Republican Way.
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After the display of utterly ignorant voting in the last "presidential" election, a return to elitism may be just what the doctor ordered.
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Calling it a “New Deal” doesn’t make it one. And it hardly inspires confidence in Democrats who claim similitude based only on a name, absent any details or historical context. This smacks more of PT Barnum than leadership. In sum, just a progressive laundry list, used to justify further confiscatory tax policies.
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@LTJ
Confiscatory tax policies gave us the EPA, clean air and water. They also gave us the inter-State highway system. Social Security and Medicare which have saved millions from poverty and lack of basic health care. If you don't want to pay taxes, visit Somalia, India, Venezuela, Brazil, or any other corrupt country where people suffer and die uncared for and unmourned.
Where is the “bevy of conservatives thinkers trying to find ways for government to reduce inequality, promote work and restore community?” Remember Reagan: “Gov’ment is the problem…? Of course, Pell Grants could be used on a wider bases, but conservatives have been trying to eliminate government assistance to students everywhere except in creating more “for-profit” colleges. You’re getting just like Trump—making up facts.
While Republican conservatives wrestle with semantic differences over “socialism,” a bullet-train 3,000 miles from China to the EU over land is being considered. That means that a modern Silk Road could connect the two largest trading blocks in the world. Does either block care whether it’s communism, socialism or capitalism?
Conservatives live up to their name totally and fully
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Gosh, David, I can tell you really want to be a champion of climate justice. If only those pesky "elites" and those meddling kids would do so without disrupting the status quo, amirite?
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And thanks to the Green New Deal, there's finally a proposal to the left of a carbon tax to make it seem "reasonable" (which it is) rather than leftwing nuttiness by the estimates of the both-sides approach of the news media.
Your columns are usually a waste of time with fancy words. You are the king of false equivelancy. You are a conservative and you probably lean republican. Yes, I also do not like some of the Green New Deal but for the last 50 years your party has no solution for any of the problems we face as a society xxcept tax cuts and preach small government but never deliver on it.
Are republicans conservative on budget deficit? I think they used to be. You know when that was? It was when they were in the minority. As soon as they came to power deficits did not matter also for them.
You should go and complain more about how broken the republican party is because we need another good party.
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David, this must be tongue and cheek, no? The tax cuts for the, "elite" were given to us by the republican party. The creep into my bedroom and how I choose to identify is brought to us by the R's. I think you need to "go back to school" and realize which party wants government to work for them at the expense of the majority.
2
Your columnist writes that "Today Democrats are much more likely to want government to take direct control." Gee, Mr. Brooks, I wonder why they would ever want that?
2
The authors of the Green New Deal forgot the first rule of politics: the value of a simple message. They should have focussed on aggressively attacking global climate change by creating good paying jobs and stopped there. That would have been powerful. Instead, they tossed in every lefty wish list they could find, leaving the other guys with a smorgasbord of juicy stuff to attack.
1
@Dave Cieslewicz
The other guys have attacked every good social program since the New Deal. They are feral capitalist dinosaurs. I wouldn't trust McConnell to hold my purse. Of course, the poor in Kentucky have no purses worth holding, especially since coal mining is going to be replaced with natural gas. Will McConnell pay for job retraining and better education? Of course not; he stays in D.C. or NYC. He could not care less for the poor who keep him in office.
What about the oil and gas lobby elite? What about the Dow Jones elite? What about the Republican elite?
4
“How the Left Embraced Elitism”
It should read -How the Left Embraced Socialism-
Face it, after all this ‘russian collusion’ phantom accusations, its democrats who’ve tilt so far left, they now identify more with communism. Just one look at elected candidates like the new darling of the party, Ocaccio-Cortez, is turning many Americans away from the democrats and siding with Trump instead.
Your friends in conservative circles will appreciate this one. However we're currently being ruled by the richest, most self-dealing and most corrupt REPUBLICAN administration on record. The GOP Senate are in the pocket of big oil. Are they "elite" David or just your brethren?
It is too disgusting to even comprehend that we find ourselves in this climate situation because your brethren refuse to let us move forward and yet you still get to wag your finger at Dems for attempting to find a way forward. I know. I'll call the plan "elite." Repulsive.
5
What did the left do when "poverty" virtually disappeared in the USA?
The glommed onto "inequality".
It's a perfect solution for hate mongers because "inequality" will always be with us.
They forget (or never understood) that inequality was the foundation of every hate movement of the 20th century including Nazism and communism.
@acule
Do you support inequality, or are you against it? Just asking for the sake of clarity.
(part 1)
Brooks takes as a starting point that the Green New Deal, barely off the printing press, wouldn’t just be a “federal-government led” effort but would morph into a Soviet-style government plan which he goes on to paint in feverish Republican anti-elitist, anti Democrat terms. He sets up so many straw-man arguments and then tries to knock them down, falling back on many answers that have got us to where we are today.
“Over the past generation, global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history.” I would counter (for the sake of argument) that Knowledge and Science were just as important over a far longer period for those results. The verdict on pure capitalism is mixed and still out in my opinion.
“Among conservatives there are now a bevy of thinkers who are trying to find ways to use government to reduce inequality, promote work and restore community.” Really? Are they anywhere near positions of power in the current government?
“As many conservatives have shifted leftward, so have progressives.” What??? Again, where are these left-leaning Republicans? Jeff Flake?
1
@Richard
I agree. 2000 years ago, Brooks would have been called a Sophist. That is still a good description of David Brooks, a Sophist published by the Times. Must be a part of that "both sides" thing.
1
"The federal government could support a voluntary national service program by paying people, once in their lifetime, to work for a year at a local nonprofit."
This is already a thing, David, but I wouldn't expect an elite journalist such as yourself to know. It's called AmeriCorps. The stipend is set at the poverty level, far lower than the $30k that Ms. McCloskey suggests, but even their budget has to be fought for year after year. It's a great program, but since it offers a measly wage, no health insurance, and no guarantee of a job, it's not a great route out of precariousness. Bold reforms laid out in the Green New Deal are necessary because "humble" approaches only lead to more of the same.
It's laughable that you, a Times journalist, would try to label AOC, a former bartender, elitist. You're straw-manning.
3
@Riley
David works in a City loaded with bars, hangouts for the many different elite factions. I lived and worked there for a few years; the bar/bistro scene was where a lot of deals get made. Odd that David would look down on a young woman who worked behind a bar. It was a job, and she worked; that does not make her a drunk, or stupid, or incompetent. In fact, if she was good at it, she worked harder than David who now phones in stale opinions.
Brooks is banging the same drum as all good right wing pundits. What have republicans done to address income inequality, global warming or infrastructure decay to name but a few problems facing this country? Nada. Nil. Zilch. Zero. Big ole' goose egg. Please be quiet.
3
Dear god.
We’re witnessing the disintegration of the planet in real time and you are dithering on.about “centralizing power?”
We’ve witnessed the greatest shift in real assets in the history of civilization and you’re playing semantics with the word “socialism?”
Arrgghhh!
Thoreau said it best, if the object of a shirt factory is NOT that men and women are well-clad, but rather that the factory is enriched then all that’s going to happen is the enrichment of the factory. You only hit what you aim for, so you best aim high.
If human dignity, worth, and security are simply side-effects of your precious “American-style capitalism,” then you’ll be a long time waiting for answers from its boosters.
The planet is on its knees, like a Jordanian pilot set alight by crazed zealots and you actually think conservatives are moving left? Ignorance is one thing, we’re ALL ignorant. But this willful ignorance that fully 40% of the electorate has embraced will be the end of us all. The planet is arguably past the point where our institutions will hold up. You best reread the green new deal and brush up on your science and history while you’re at it.
2
Our population is too large. In the coming century more and more jobs will be down with robots. Jobs will be scare. Our birth rate hasn’t fallen and it should be continued. These voices of idiotic government cradle to grave support will not cease. Add in the damage to our environment and the desire of 2nd and 3rd world countries to become 1st world will continue to strain the planets resources.
1
Here's the thing--even when the Democrats try to use what had been a Republican solution to ameliorate a problem, the Republicans eviscerate the attempt as socialism--"Let the free market handle it!"
Maybe a little bit of the real thing wouldn't be such a bad idea.
1
@lgg
McConnell seems to have forgotten that Nixon started the EPA. Of course Reagan tried to dismantle it when he removed Carter's solar panels from the WH. Reagan did not support community health centers in CA or nationally. He was a Grade B actor, a spokesman for Borax, and afflicted with Alzheimers before he left office. However, I would not describe him as mean; he was not a Mitch McConnell, or a Trump. Mitch is corrupt and mean, as is Trump.
I agree with David Brooks that more central 'power' will not avert catastrophe. The tragedy of 'Free Market' capitalism, beyond its inability to share the 'more' it depends on, is that more will ultimately destroy human, and much other, life on our limit setting planet. It is only in the last few years that we have realized the nature and reality and magnitude of this problem. Our response so far is failing, To survive we must build upon the best of conservative values, which properly protect and strengthen what 'works' for the benefit and wellbeing of all. But our actions must also develop, and put to work, the progressive actions and investment which will be needed to survive. To survive we will need to be both creative and cooperative. Centralized 'power' and 'control' will never be the solution. The correct goal must be enough ( power and resources) for all, rather that more for some. Success will depend on the energy and creativity of the young supported by the experience and resources of the older. We need a 'New Green Deal' vastly stronger than the old 'New Deal'.
1
@mfh3 We need a New Deal nothing like the old New Deal. We need new technologies to provide much of what we have now but in a cleaner manner. This technology is on the verge of major breakthroughs thanks to capitalist investment into companies like Tesla that is producing not only electric vehicles but also home power systems and solar installations. This corporation would not exist without capitalism. The change is coming and it’s coming faster than it would take the government to nationalize energy and produce any significant results. The government is more likely to just tax carbon and stifle the economy.
@John
Do you not know that our taxes support government R&D, used by private enterprise for free. Pure science is best developed by the Federal government, trial and error with no rush by private investors.
"They assume that congressional leaders have the ability (to not give) sweetheart deals to vested interests..." Another way of saying the US desperately needs campaign finance reform, which Republicans under Mitch McConnell have managed to obstruct.
1
Don't forget that the fossil fuel polluters have been adamantly opposed to anything that interferes in their gravy train. There is not a carbon tax because they have controlled the narrative, because they have owned the GOP and cowed the Democrats. Radical restructuring may be the only way we deal with the selfish rich and their indifference to the future.
2
Conservatives amuse me. According to them there was no climate change until we mismanaged the earth into a climate crisis. Supply side, trickle down economics would mean boundless prosperity until we managed ourselves into a great shift of wealth to a few. Globalization was going to mean prosperity for all until we managed ourselves into the hands of a thief who promised to bring manufacturing jobs back... Then they tell the rest of us that they and they alone have the smarts to manage us out of this crisis. They are the adults in the room who should be in charge. You know, that dog just doesn't hunt any more.
3
This is silly. The Green New Deal sets forth a series of goals. Yes, its proponents are mucking around trying to figure out how to get there. And yes, they start at the federal level. But these same goals have driven California policy for years. For example, we now have a per-capita carbon footprint less than half that of the rest of the country. We've accomplished this by deploying a wide range of measures at all levels of government and private enterprise, from tax subsidies at the state level to rebates by electric power companies to county-level subsidies for energy-efficiencies home retrofits. The Green New Deal merely takes what we've been doing -- very successfully -- and makes it available to folks in other states.
Please, conservatives. If you're willing to admit that global warming is a real problem, then suggest your own solutions. Stop spending all your time shooting down solutions you don't like. And if you're not willing to admit that it's a real problem, then you're part of the problem.
3
Mr. Brooks is going off the rails with demogougery and fearful nonsense.
No, the Green New Deal is not a government “takeover” of anything. Why is it that anytime the left proposes using sensible regulation to deal with important issues it’s falsely labeled as a “government takeover”??
But, when the right proposes much more odious proposals like dictating to women exactly when and if they have control over their own bodies, or virtually selling the government to business interests or heaping ridiculous tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires and corporations they are falsely called as helping “middle class Americans”.
Please.
Global warming is THE most important and dangerous event the country is facing. MUCH more threatening than any war. The effects have manifested into pain, agony and destruction TODAY, with surely much worse effects in the future.
The tragedy is that a whole political party and the head of that party, Trump, are in deep, deep denial.
They will go down in history as the reason the Earth caused widespread destruction, poverty and death.
3
When all else fails, raise the specter of elites! Funny how we live in a country where the top 1% of the people hold more wealth than the bottom 90% and yet David is terrified of creating an elitist system through a stronger central government? How more unbalanced does the system need to become before we say the (rigged) markets have failed and its time that there is conscious overview and direction to address the problems we face?
Talking about community level responses do NOTHING in the face of large corporations and the wealthy who own the media, own parts of our government, and see their will be done at the expense of the rest of the United States. To focus on community distracts from the greater abuses done by the powerful in this country and is a call for ignorance.
You want to stop the elites? Stop allowing unlimited funding of campaigns. Reinstate the fairness doctrine and stop labeling opinion as news. Start taxing people at levels that make sense understanding that extreme wealth inequality creates sick societies. Punish those that commit white collar crimes at the same level you punish non-violent perpetrators. Prioritize the many over the few. Defend the weak as much as you defend the wealthy. Decide clearly what you want this country to be and work to those ends instead of allowing economics rule every action. Employ rank choice voting.
Pathetic how easily David accuses the Left for being elitist when his policies created the actual elite.
9
The elite in the country are those running Big Pharma and raising the cost of life saving drugs beyond the reach of most people. The elite are those destroying the environment, destroying healthcare, increasing rentals and throwing people into the streets. Extreme capitalism on steroids has ruined the country. We should favor Nordic counties blend of both capitalism and socialism.
3
I fear Human Greed which is what has happened in the past decades, whether in Government or Private....
1
Even though April first is over a month away, I cannot accept that Mr. Brooks column today is serious. While I almost always disagree with everything you endorse, until today I've always believed your views were predicated on empirical knowledge and have never perceived you as inherently uncaring. Because of that, I cannot believe that you are as historically illiterate or as mean-spirited as this essay suggests.
Political conservatism in the United States was, is, and likely always will be, anti-democratic. So too, unbridled capitalism. Given this, the notion that for one who leans politically right as you do to try and cast an effort to improve the lot of the majority of Americans through affirmative government action as undemocratic would be laughable if it wasn't so inherently cruel.
4
The only real choice we have is where to centralize power: in oligarchs or in elected representatives. All else is derivative.
The wealthy elite are like any group of people. There are some wonderful and well-meaning folks, and there are power-hungry folks. In my observation, capitalism centralizes power largely in the latter category of people.
Because the thing is, there is a correlation between power-seeking and wealth-seeking. No one in this group needs more money. It's just a game; the goal is the score: net worth. And for what? A bigger house? A longer yacht? An America's Cup team with their company's name and logo on the sails?
Do we really want to centralize power here? Because that's what we've done, and look what it's created. It perpetuates itself on false hopes, on lies and fantasies, like a casino forever sucking every penny from the destitute.
1
Are we really talking about elitism or is the question really that Democrats have embraced expertise and evidence based policy making?
In the US we have a visceral reaction against nerds. It's ironic that the biggest movies in the world right now are based on characters and stories that being a fan of when I was a kid got you relentlessly mocked yet people still think you're a nerd or a wacko for believing in things like climate change and wanting to rely on the expertise of scientists and engineers and other experts (insert educators, economists, and so one) to help us solve problems.
1
There is nothing wrong in elitism if it is based on merit and achievements. The alternative is idiocracy, which we can all see in action now. Enjoy, Mr. Brooks!
1
I am so sick of the right wing propaganda use of the word "elite", as some type of fear mongering tool against progressive and new ideas. The GOP shows every day through their policies that they could care less about the working class in this country let alone those living in poverty, many while working multiple jobs.
They give money to the wealthiest in the form of tax cuts, then cut our healthcare and critical investments in our country like education and infrastructure. Republicans are literally gutting this country for the benefit of a select few, if that isn't elitism than I don't know what is. Their leader is the epitome of entitlement, having inherited millions, going bankrupt multiple times and leaving small businesses high and dry in the process, spending his life lying about how much he is worth while he buys gold toilets for himself.
I am not saying that this Green Deal is exactly how we should approach the very real problems of climate chance, pollution, and badly needed investment in our countries infrastructure. But pulling out that term "elitist" to try to scare people away from the only party that is making any real attempt to help the poor and working class or to address climate issues is inexcusable and David Brooks should be ashamed of himself. Maybe instead he can help Republicans come up with some real solutions themselves instead of made up nonsense like a non-existent border crisis they are wasting our time and money on.
2
Mr. Brooks - Capitalism has done its very best to create jobs and destroy our planet. isn't it time to allow our government to merge its funds with capitalism to create jobs and save the planet? The New Deal of Democrat FDR saved our country from the depression by using federal funds on a social safety net and to regulate unrestrained capitalism. And what did the GOP call him: a Socialist! FDR's programs such as Social Security were opposed by the GOP as Socialism.
So here we are 80 years later as our planet faces an existential threat and you and your GOP call programs to save it "Socialism". Get a new trick please. this dog won't hunt anymore!
2
Only an “elitist “‘could write this column. Climate change is already affecting poor (not elites) in our country, but the most important aspect of all this is: WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR DEBATES LIKE THIS. “ There will be no economy on a dead planet”— even children understand this and the urgency of climate change— look at the teen movement in Europe!! They get it— we are out of time for inaction and debates. The New Green Deal is a start— but ultimately this will be up to the people and our children and grandchildren and not politicians— especially politicians in the US where it is quite clear to any aware person that the money involved in US politics which elects and re-elects current politicians will not allow our politicians to act on this issue. No politicians OR an economy on a dead planet and time is running out. Cap and trade???!! Look at the science— that is not enough, we need radical action. NOW. the New Green Deal outlines a start at least.
6
Mr Brooks, take a ride in SF BART or NYC subway or NJ Transit, especially on any day when it is raining or snowing (like today) - you will see things close to apocalypse and you might learn a thing or two about the magic of predatory capitalism in action. Which is that actually nothing works!
2
In that case I'm thinking Mr. Brooks wouldn't have approved of much that President Eisenhower did either.
1
Hm...so now the rich are "populists" and college educated liberals are the elite. How convenient!
Mr. Brooks seems not to realize that the Green New Deal is intended as the opening salvo of a much needed and too long delayed discussion about saving our environment.
1
I, for one, want us to take drastic evasive action on climate change. You say you're not playing semantic games, but why can we build interstate highways, send a man to the moon, and pour trillions into the military-industrial complex, but if we try to change a lightbulb you panic?
2
Mr. Brooks. You are now promoting the idea, the smaller idea, of a carbon tax. Do you not see the effect here? You ridicule this attempt and by doing so, so strongly, put your conservative bias on full display. If this were a Tea Party proposal, I wonder what you would say. Climate change is one of the really big issues, the scary issues - yes - like the prospect of a nuclear war. It requires big steps, not little ones, steps that you feel would be so much more wholesome, and "of the people". Why are not those smaller proposals flourishing? One reason is that one party could care less about such things (kind of like the national debt - nobody cares) and chooses to follow a leader who lies with abandon, deregulates with abandon, and is leading this country and the world down a path of global environmental chaos. (Drill, drill, drill...) You seek, for some reason, to find everything wrong with the Green Deal, in concept and in terms of what in your view is practical and possible in this gridlocked environment of inactivity. Sometimes you have to try to break the mold. Do you really feel that little steps are adequate? Maybe you do. But let me point out again, this is the first time I have seen you support a carbon tax as anything reasonable. Maybe the Green Deal is a symbol and impetus for action. Maybe it is a way to bring the Environment on to the table for legitimate consideration. Maybe this is a big deal. Your visceral reaction may be proof of that.
1
David, are you saying the New Deal itself didn't work? And after all, these are ideas, something more tangible than the silence from conservatives. I don't understand your hostility to sincere efforts by thinking people (your elites, I guess) to address very serious problems.
1
This is all rhetoric. What matters is does it work and is it the best solution out there.
The desire to create a highly centralized superstate is much less an actual threat than Brooks' habit of easy, reality-distorting bogeyman.
1
The big government plan to change the country was called reconstruction. Talk about that and why it failed!
@robert mishlove
It never had a chance to work, because it was controlled by local Dixiecrats who marshalled the forces of illiterate sharecroppers against black people. It wasn't until MLK, Freedom Riders et al in the '60's that black people in the South got a fair shake. And the South is better off for it.
This is an old rightist meme, going back to the 1930s at least. Any benefit provided by the government is a slippery slope towards Stalinist serfdom. The history of the European welfare states since WWII proves that this is nonsense, but the right can't give it up.
1
I find it amusing when modern American conservatives, who are full-on corporatists, decry "centralization" of power.
It appears that they prefer power to be "de-centralized" in
a half dozen transnationals.
Nevermind that they never, ever, address or provide alternative solutions to the problems the "socialists" want to solve.
4
@Jerseytime That’s a difference of approach. Not everyone believes that these are issues for government to solve.
“It is the state mobilizing as many of society’s resources as possible to wage a war on global warming and other ills.”
Well thank god that somebody is taking climate change seriously, commensurate with its many Maydays of alarm!
The authors of the Green New Deal are rightly thinking big, thinking ambitiously, thinking proactively. The Deal represents a massive and much-needed investment in our future—in our children’s future, if they are to have one.
Conservatives like Brooks characteristically only ever offer banal criticisms about centralized power, speaking as if government is some alien monstrosity to be feared rather than a useful instrument that’s both BY people FOR people.
Yes our government can be messy and yes it can be utterly frustrating. But with the genuinely frightening specter of climate change upon us, who or what will save us if not (in part) the ambitious, precedent-setting legislation of our federal government? Conservatives are, to say the least, dangerously behind the eight ball on this one, and their persistent denials and obfuscations threaten us all.
3
You can't start from a reasonable, already compromised position when you are negotiating. That would be naive. You need to dream big, throw them out into the world, and see what will be supported. With a divided Congress none of this will be achieved now. --- But when it comes to dealing with Climate Change, you can not dream too large - the dollars we spend now will prevent untold dollars for remediation later.
1
@Bruce Maier
As FDR said, "I welcome their hatred". That is how I feel about corrupt pols like McConnell; and so should AOC. So should the kids and teachers from Parkland, or the families who lost kin in the ballroom massacre, and the Jews who lost families in the synagogue massacre. McConnell's hate and corruption does not represent the best of us. My parents and family members who won WWII with the Brits would not give McConnell any more respect than they gave McCarthy and Roy Cohn. None. They would have no respect for a grifter who avoided the Vietnam draft with fake bone spurs. Student deferments at least kept young people in school, rather than being swept up in the Dulles war to save French plantations. As I recall, he shouted about the Chinese taking over South Vietnam run by a corrupt General Ky, as opposed to Ho Chi Minh who fought French exploitation. It was a civil war, and not our business.
Just think if all the trillions of dollars spent on wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan both for arms and the after care health issues of brave American soldiers had been spent on free college education for all, universal health care, and environmentally sound reconstruction of our infrastructure. All of this plus a tax system which appropriately taxes the ultra rich would have created an America with a huge thriving middle class as well as more humane treatment of the poor. This is history now, but Mr Trumps plan for further concentrating money in the hands of the rich at the of a diminishing middle class will devastate our country. Perhaps the the Green New Deal is too extreme but perhaps some modified form of it will be our savior.
3
@Eddie Cohen M.D ecohen2 . com
The GOP is too extreme to be dealt with in moderation. It is a rotten Party now, led by pols like McConnell who pass tax gifts to the rich in the middle of the night. No public Hearings or debates. And where does McConnell stand on Trump's debt to Russian financiers in London. Putin knows that money was laundered and deposited in Deutsche Bank to save his stooge from another bankruptcy. Trump has no independence from Putin.
I read the minutes of the last meeting, and the master plan therein for the most part worked out great. The New Deal transformed the country for the better, and continues to do so through not only what was built, but through social security and any number of other innovations. Keynes was right and still is, even if a dreaded socialist. Hayek, Friedman, Reagan, Thatcher and Brooks are still wrong, misreading almost all the minutes from post-WWI Vienna until this column today. Carbon trading?! We're way past that solution. That old market-magic has led to environmental disaster (no pricing of externalities) and the resurgence of fascism as a cure for disorder.
2
@stuart The New Deal failed miserably and was bailed out by European countries that could not compete for many years after the end of World War 2. The vast majority of New Deal policies have vanished, not because they were great, but because they failed.
@John - really? failed? The Hoover Dam failed? Ahwannee resort in Yosemite failed? Social Security failed? I intend to collect on mine next year, after paying in for my entire lifetime.. Dream on, boy, they buoyed the economy, and some of those that were killed in the nineties we want back, I am talking about YOU Glass Steagall..
2
@John
Really? I really like my Social Security and Medicare. I really like the pension received from 22 yrs with a large multi-State corporation; it has allowed me to purchase a supplemental Plan for SS. As a native San Franciscan, I love the murals in Coit Tower and other public buildings, paid for under the New Deal. No doubt those who escaped the Dust Bowl for jobs in shipyards liked FDR and his fight against fascism. The New Deal did not fail miserably; it saved us from a Depression and starving families. It saved the Mississippi Delta and the poverty stricken people who lived there. The New Deal was based on the concept of freedom from want and freedom from fear. Trump loves fear and anger; he feeds on it and fills some empty place inside; he needs rallies with his cult wearing MAGA hats. He is the neediest most pathetic President I have ever experienced. I am not in favor of hordes streaming across our borders; however I would be in favor of supervised and monitored aid for the corrupt countries these people are fleeing. If they had safety and jobs at home, they would stay there. They are poor, hungry and afraid for their children. Let's not repeat the actions taken against Jews who were fleeing Hitler and death.
Unfettered capitalism does not work. Neither does centralized government control of the economy. How about a regulated capitalism with some manditory ethics training for the morally challenged business class?
1
Has David actually read the House resolution submitted by Ocasio-Cortez? Over and over, it emphasizes local community involvement in planning. That fits with the Democratic Socialist strategy of devolving power when possible, as opposed to top-down control and rigid central planning.
No question, bureaucracy will be required. Without government regulation and enforcement, clean air and clean water aren't going to happen. It's too profitable to ignore the environment to cut costs and increase profits.
The wonderful benefits of capitalism in raising raising masses out of poverty (although some people got raised a lot further than others) have had a huge cost. It's been made possible in great part by not incorporating the true cost of production in prices. Natural resources have been extracted without consideration of the effect on the environment. The vast quantities of CO2 released since the Industrial Revolution have never been factored into the price of goods and services. Now the bill has come due.
When people condemn the inefficiencies of socialism, they ignore the fact that in this respect, minimally-regulated capitalism has been grossly inefficient to the point of being unsurvivable.
I would take conservative objections much more seriously, if they took the threat of climate change and environmental destruction more seriously; if they proposed a strategy to meet the threat that didn't depend on supply-side economics and the magic of the beneficent free-market.
3
In today's London Times there appeared an opinion piece in which the author wrote about Learned Helplessness. It is a theory developed by Martin Seligman in the 1960s following a series of experiments with dogs. He placed some dogs in a position where they received pain in the form of electric current. The dogs were confined so they could not escape the pain. The dogs were then placed in pens with a low wall they could easily hop over to escape the pain; instead of doing so they simply lay down and accepted the pain as they had learned to do. The greatest danger of the New Green Deal is that government will teach us to accept greater and greater levels of pain without response.
@John Milton Coffer: I feel like the Trump administration is teaching us to accept greater and greater levels of pain without response.
2
@John Milton Coffer the greatest danger is we will not be able to stop our human inpact on the earths climate, and our grandchildren will be experiencing water wars, drought, famine, enourmous human migration, and poverty, while the natural world and all it's beings just expire slow deaths..I can give up a freaking plastic straw for that, even a plastic bag and ten gallons of oil a week. We are a LONG way from fascism, we are closer to anarchy, under Trump, and even those fascistic societies that exist today like Burma are not focused on climate change.
2
"Over the past generation, global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history" ...
And yet we are facing what is possibly an existential crisis where the costs of "global capitalism" are finally being tallied and it doesn't look pretty. Add to that the undeniable fact that "global capitalism" has concentrated the benefits in an ever dwindling number of people while it spreads the costs over the vast majority of humanity.
Rose colored glasses aren't really that becoming Mr. Brooks. Neither is ignoring the "inconvenient truths".
2
His idea that --once in a lifetime!--people can work for a non-profit for one year as some kind of solution is absurd and insulting. Many of us work in non-profits throughout our lives because we believe in the work (not because we're getting rich doing it). Non-profits don't need 'tourists' playing do-gooder for a year and creating ongoing staff turn-over. Non-profits need stable workforces that are respected and paid well; they do important work. It's not a sabbatical from 'real work.' Brooks probably finds the idea of working at a non-profit 'charming.' Who is elitist?
2
Brooks believes the Green New Deal "would definitely represent the greatest centralization of power in the hands of the Washington elite in our history." Maybe, but why not? Conservative Elites from Reagan to Newt/Clinton to Bush/Cheney to Trump/Ryan have made Shareholder Value into the greatest power grab in the past 27 years.
Let's look at history. Previously the greatest power grab was FDR's New Deal. The result? Social Security, Medicare, 40 hour work week, GI Bill for affordable (read FREE) college and home ownership, and led to the modern interstate highway system. These are in trouble because centralized Conservative power in Congress and the White House led to lightly regulated "free market" capitalism. Then capping SS and Medicare payments for the top earners despite folks living longer, reducing income taxes on the wealthy, corporations and capital gains by blowing up the national debt, and no increase in gasoline taxes despite a 10 fold increase in the price.
I for one am willing to give the Green New Deal a chance.
2
Actually David, it takes none of the horrendous bureaucracy of which you speak. It just takes a tax code designed to reward the directions we want to go, and to pull the traditional subsidies that entrenched polluters in the oil and coal industries have bought for themselves over the years by funding the elections of those they do not need to bribe.
American ingenuity is capable of doing this on its own, if it is properly motivated. You just need to give the "military-industrial complex" a new set of marching orders bu pointing it to the profits, and to end the rentier profits of the old guard.
You are thinking command and control organization. What is needed is hydrodynamics. Put the rocks in the right places, and the river does the work for you.
3
@Howard Eddy
I wonder if David has ever visited the empty military bases in every Congressional District? These bases could house a new generation of workers for a better environment and social structure. We pay to maintain these empty spaces. Is there another WWII I missed?
I'm a little confused by all this elitist ...central power stuff...etc.
The reality is we have problems that absolutely need to be addressed. (global warming, record income inequality, corrupt tax system, etc...) If we don't start soon all of us will suffer painful consequences.
These problems can not be solved by individual or community initiatives. They require big government action. We need moral and qualified people in our highest offices and certainly not what we have now.
2
"Among conservatives there are now a bevy of thinkers who are trying to find ways to use government to reduce inequality, promote work and restore community." Problems that conservatives had a huge role in creating through their aggressive promotion of neo-liberal policies that rewarded capital at the expense of labor. But of course, in America only conservative (mostly white, male) can advance solutions.
1
"Pell grants could be used to pay for vocational and apprenticeship training and not just for college. The federal government could support a voluntary national service program by paying people, once in their lifetime, to work for a year at a local nonprofit. The tax code could be tweaked so that people with no income tax liability could receive a cash credit for making charitable donations."
These sound a lot like “federal government-led mobilizations” to me, Dave. What's your complaint?
1
The flaw in this piece is the lack of acknowledgement of the limitations of American-style "free market" capitalism as contributing cause of our current political and economic throes. While it is right to acknowledge the effect on poverty (well, at least as defined by statistical if not real terms) and jobs, it also needs to be acknowedged that its creation of massive wealth disparity between the lucky few and unfortunate many makes job creation and statistical poverty aversion almost irrelevant to the well-being of a huge number of Americans. Hence, our current poitical nightmare. While parts of the "Green New Deal" may in fact be naive and fanciful, it at least acknowedges that the status qou dictated largely by financial markets will only make matters worse for the vast majority of Americans that can't participate. For Mr Brooks to pretend that American-style capitalism wil correct itself and extricate us from this quandary seems an "elitist" thought its truist sense.
3
Global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history by redistributing wealth from the working class West to low wage workers in China. If that weren't so there would be no Donald Trump. At the same time elites (economic elites) were creating a global labor market they were protecting their own professions from global competition. If human poverty were to be reduced on their dime it wouldn't have happened.
1
Coordination problems typically require top-down solutions.
@C Stark
Unfortunately, we have a corrupt Administration, as well as a corrupt Senate Leader. Great hope in Nancy Pelosi to fight against the huge 5.6B boondoggle "Wall". What does the untraveled, uninformed guy in the WH know about our Southern border? It appears that the people who live in El Paso don't want a Wall; they do business every day with neighbors in Mexico. The landowners on the border don't want a Wall. They don't favor Eminent Domain, as Trump would use it. No doubt walls and gates keep the wrong people out of Trump's golf course; that might be his only real experience with walls.
Certainty is part of the social addiction of those who believe a government of their design is the answer to all social problems. Both on the left and the right. To avoid the corruption David warns about these designers might be tempted to fill congress with androids. But who would decide their programming?
@Howard Winet
Fortunately for my parents FDR believed in putting a safety net under Americans; they were middle class Democrats who supported FDR. They also supported his alliance with Churchill; their generation fought WWII on two fronts and won. They supported Truman and Medicare. Again, my father had health care through the can plant where he was a manager. My grandfather was a landowner in the Central Valley; he supported FDR and Truman. Certainty about health care allows people to move jobs; it allows individuals to start small businesses, even if they can't offer affordable health care. There is nothing negative about certainty that you can access basic health care; there is nothing positive about the fear of a medical bankruptcy. I graduated from UC Berkeley, and am amazed you live in a place where your retrograde social point of view must put you in the minority. When the flu devastated the campus I spent some time in the campus medical facility. Perhaps you can afford Alta Bates Hosp., not everyone can.
Still waiting for capitalism to solve global warming, disaster site cleanup, nuclear waste storage, cell phone coverage in rural areas, internet in rural areas, food safety, bank failures, disaster relief, etc.
How much longer before the "elites" realize it just isn't going to happen?
5
Oh come on David, relax. I don't think the government is going to expropriate and nationalize industry any time soon. What we do have is an aspirational ideal so that we can at least begin the conversation about the MAJOR changes as a society and a country that we will have to make if we are to save ourselves from disaster.
2
The Green New Deal is aspirational, not a blueprint. As an American, it's depressing to visit other developed countries and find first-class metro rail systems, high-speed trains and the like, which allow people to travel from place to place without flying or driving and then come home to the U.S and find almost none of that. Or to listen to citizens of other countries describe their lack of worry about healthcare bills or services because their government guarantees healthcare, which we don't. Or find that owing large sums of money for being educated at the university level is almost unheard of in many developed countries. We need fixes for these faults in our society and a federal government approach is one answer or at least part of one. Some fixes should be local, or at least come from states. Unfortunately, the uneven state response to making more Medicaid dollars available through Obamacare is an example of how state politics can defeat a good idea, so the availability of care is dependent on where you live. But the Veterans Administration and the military are examples of extremely poor management by federal entities. Medicare is just the opposite, despite claims before it was enacted that the feds would botch it. Medicare overhead is lower than that of private insurers, countering the claim of inevitable "bureaucratic waste" in program management. I say let's embrace the goals of the New Green Deal and then debate the means to reach them.
5
@Casey Dorman
I recall riding trains in England, France, Spain et al; first rate travel experience. Rode trains in China, again first rate, efficient and crowded. It got you where you wanted to go, no complaints. The U.S. could use better land travel via trains; we don't need to fly or drive everywhere, adding to pollution. I drove I95 from Westport to Stamford, a nightmare with cars and semis. Whenever possible used a shuttle to and from Metro North. Now I live in Sebastopol, no public transportation, no taxis and no car service. My daughter drives me around, because I am retired and way past the age where I have the reflexes needed for safe driving. Public transportation is what most civilized countries provide, no matter the size and location of the town.
There is a lot to like about this column, so why does DB have to go and ruin it by setting up the straw man of the "elites?" There are lots of elites who believe in market capitalism, probably most of them. The real problem that DB worries about is hubris, and there is plenty of this to go around, elite and non-elite, right, left and center.
Those "elites" gave us the Glass-Steagall Act which kept our economy safe until Bill Clinton and the Republicans thought better. Those "elites" gave use the EPA which prevents industry from putting a Love Canal in every neighborhood. And the last time I checked, Medicare, a very popular and efficient system supports a PRIVATE healthcare industry. Hardly elitists. I'll take these elites any day over the knuckle dragging Republicans and their wannabe corporate Democrats. When you say the Democratic Party is ending, you are right. The Democratic Party IS ending. Ending its disastrous flirtation with Republicanism and returning to its roots of representing the workers, the environment and the vast majority of the people of this country instead of their corporate masters. And it scaring the bejeezus out of Republicans and establishment Democrats beholden to their corporate money train.
2
AOC says, “Climate change and our environmental challenges are one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, not just as a nation, but as a world."
The exact same could be said of her "New Green Deal."
1
@rpe123
Climate change is a real fact, as attested to by scientists all over the world. Greenhouse gasses are trapped up in the ozone; glaciers are melting, ocean temperatures are gradually rising. The air is bad in large parts of China, India and a few other places. The air does not respect land borders, as Japan has found out with polluted air coming in from China. We need to take a look back at the Industrial Revolution before the EPA. There are now factories spewing pollution in the mid-West, again.
Brooks like all others critical of progressive policies shows no real policy alternatives beyond a vague reference to a carbon tax. He says conservatives care about inequality but where are any policy plans to address it. What we got is the only major accomplishment of Trump and Republican Congress that being a tax reform favoring big business that has increased the deficit and inequality! Brooks does not even mention health care except to imply Obama care was right path which of course Republicans continue to condemn with no alternative. Now when progressives propose bold plans to move us to a one payer system or at least a government option and an expansion of Medicare sages like Brooks say they are all elites who do not understand the heartland. Simply put where are your policies Mr. Brooks as nice words about local communitarian philosophy gets us nowhere in fighting the forces of capitalist excess and inequality.
3
To quote a conservative favorite guy, Warren Buffett:
"...There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won. We’re the ones that have gotten our tax rates reduced dramatically.
If you look at the 400 highest taxpayers in the United States in 1992, the first year for figures, they averaged about $40 million of income per person. In the most recent year, they were $227 million per person — 5 for 1. During that period, their taxes went down from 29% to 21% of income. So, if there’s class warfare, the rich class has won."
This quote was 8 years ago from 2011.
It has only gotten worse.
For decades the ELITE rich have gamed the system, telling the 99% that trickle down works.
We have 30+ years of data to prove that it doesn't.
For 30+ years, conservative ELITES have told us that deficits matter, when a Democrat is in power.
The minute Republicans put into place Trump's tax cut for the 1%, adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit, McConnell and Ryan said we couldn't afford social programs, that they needed to be cut to pay for the tax cuts.
The 99% have had it with the ELITE 1% telling them lies, with the Heritage Foundation and other ELITE "think tanks" telling them lies.
The government executed the transcontinental railroad, implemented the Marshall plan, sent men to the moon and back, established vaccines to eliminate polio, did the defense R&D that led to Silicon Valley.
You are obviously scared, Mr. Brooks.
The ELITE should be afraid too.
4
America is a ship of fools.
Brooks says, "economic growth alone is not enough." But growth is itself the problem. The fact that none of the punditocracy see that is a testament to what was once called "conventional wisdom."
The New Deal hopes to address global warming and income inequality. But there is a much simpler way. Put an end to population growth.
The primary cause of global warming is population growth. World population has doubled since 1970. Other things equal, that would imply a doubling of greenhouse gases.
And what happens with population growth is that the cost of unskilled labor goes down, so the rich get gardeners and maids and chauffeurs, while the wages that can be demanded by the poor go down. And to top it off, the population growth adds to congestion and pollution in the largest cities.
In my short lifetime I have watched Los Angeles develop from a desirable home in the neighborhood of the Hollywood stars to overcrowded ghettoes with freeways that are perpetually clogged, the residents forced to live under a noxious layer of smog.
Amazingly, nobody notices.
More economic growth is touted as the solution. How about more use of family planning? How about not glorifying the life of Octomom, who with six children already, got fertility treatments so that she could have octuplets.
Yes, we need to stop illegal immigration and provide family planning to the third world.
But liberals declare that message as racist and bigoted.
2
@Jake Wagner Yes, to all you say, and I would add that few fellow commentors have yet to mention the 17 year war on--and I do say "on" and not simply "in"-- the MidEast we have been waging, with no goal or "victory" in sight. So, I would all "global warring" to "global warming, etc....
Let's read the "minutes of the last meeting" regarding the excess influence of "Greed" on this Government during the "Indian Wars" and how US and Native American's blood and treasure were spent to protect the theft and exploitation of Indian Territories by wealthy whites.
So here we are again with the same capitalism that Brooks seeks to promote as the solution to all of our problems. We've had the "oil wars" in Iraq and Kuwait, we've had the presiden rattling his saber in Iran and Venezuela.....who will be the next victum of capitalism's wealth-thirst?
The global solution is to minimize that influence by reducing its profits by promoting Green Energy and Efficiency as quickly as possible.
1
There are critical times in American history when centralizing power to solve problems was necessary and worked...and it certainly wasn't looked at as some kind of elitism. The Civil War, the Great Depression, WW II, civil rights and Great Society legislation of the 1960s, the Great Recession.
Think about it Mr. Brooks, if Lyndon Johnson hadn't insisted on giving African Americans federal legal protection to vote, poll taxes and other deterrents may still be in force. Without Medicare to help our elderly citizens in declining health where would be today? And, believe me, Lyndon Johnson had read the minutes of the Great Depression. He also lived it.
Issues such as global warming, student debt, and systematic inequality...the Abby McCloskey point about who your family is and what neighborhood you grew up in largely determining your future...cannot be solved without centralized thinking and direction. And somehow, some Republicans, however few, are going to have to find the intelligence, patriotism, and will to admit this and join Democrats in doing something about it.
It is not elitism or systematic socialism in any way, shape, or form. It is a majority of our elected officials in Washington, DC, coming together to solve acute problems that cannot wait. If we leave these enormous issues to private industry or the individual states they will not be solved.
2
And yet we trust the government with national defense, and it seems to get the job done. The space program, computers, the internet, satellite communications, and hundreds of other innovations started out as government programs, many of them related to the military in one way or another. And once the basic research is done, private industry takes it, finds commercial or consumer uses for it, improves it, makes it more efficient, and creates jobs. Well, at least it used to do that. Now the preferred business model involves using technology to avoid hiring as much as possible, and any non-skilled employees you do have to hire are not in the U.S. Is it really inconceivable that we could harness those same economies of scale for something other than defense? I imagine we'll see the same bureaucracy, inefficiency, and crony capitalism we do with defense spending. But that doesn't mean we won't get a benefit from it, just like we see benefits from military spending. Why are conservatives so willing to give the DOD a pass, but scream about every wasted dollar if it's anything else?
3
David wrote:
"Today, Democrats are much more likely to want government to take direct control. This is the true importance of the Green New Deal, which is becoming the litmus test of progressive seriousness. I don’t know if it is socialism or not socialism — that’s a semantic game — but it would definitely represent the greatest centralization of power in the hands of the Washington elite in our history."
The "greatest centralization of power?" Including, say, the government takeover of the economy during WW II?
Including, too, the original New Deal after which the "Green New Deal" is named? Both of these takeovers occurred at times of great crisis that required great action.
The point of the Green New Deal is that we are facing a true existential (that word is over-used, but here it's warranted) crisis for civilization and indeed for nature itself. A recent IPCC report says we have a mere decade to make sweeping and, frankly, unimaginable changes to the global economy to avert climate catastrophe.
Do we engage with this immense necessity, or do we not? And if we do, there is no way to avoid encountering critics such as David Brooks, whom I often admire, complaining about centralization of power.
In many ways the magic of unfettered capitalism has gotten us into this mess. We can certainly incorporate market mechanisms into whatever solutions we implement, but it's time to stop dicking around and get on with it. Massive government involvement is unavoidable.
1
I both agree with and also disagree with David Brooks in this. I am a fan of his columns and especially agree with his focus on human psychology and what motivates us. But I’m also very concerned with climate change and my Missouri license plates reads “TAX CO2”. But it is clear that the world is increasingly at risk from global warming and we need to do much more than just taxing CO2. And we can’t ignore valid concerns about the impact of taxing carbon will have on lower income people. Witness the “yellow vest” protests in France as proof. So while the Green New Deal does represent a bold and comprehensive move to deal with climate change and economic injustice, I feel it is needed. What other choices do we have?
1
Elitism? Yes, of knowledge, understanding, history, abilities,, skills: yes, what people get from education -as education used to be and understood. People who understand that government is the highest kind of service that the educated can give to their communities and nations in exchange for their education. Sharing the human heritage preserved in universities for that heritage to serve the public interests. Yes, elitism, elitism of the mind and the heart, knowledge and generosity. That is what the movement to establish the Civil Service aimed to do only to be dismantled by people who saw government jobs as compensation for political support. Able public servants were replaced by political hacks, from janitors to presidents of nations, what a sorry example the US has become.
2
@Lara
Political hacks aptly describes Trump's Cabinet. It doesn't really describe him, as he has no interest in politics, including the office he holds. He likes the rallies, and AF One staffed with servers, French fries and burgers. Millions already down a rat hole flying him and the SS to and from private golf courses. He is not a hack; he is just a rich freeloader, a grifter who sloshes around in the perks our taxes provide. He has no redeeming qualities as a person, or as a President. Way past time to junk the Electoral College and go with a national vote; that would have gotten us a qualified, educated person in the WH, with the added bonus of a live in diplomat. We can no longer afford stupid leadership in the WH; we can no longer afford corrupt leadership in the Senate. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon would not recognize the current corrupt mess. Side note to Hillary haters: She donated the money she collected to down ballot races; she did not create a family slush fund, as did Trump. That has now been shut down in NYC and in FL; the "Trump Foundation", what a joke. A whole family of grifters grabbing all they can while they can.
Anyone who has studied applied socialist policies in countries like Russia and China comes to realize that elites push these policies to secure and increase their own wealth and hold onto power, not to share wealth through better productivity. Centralization of economic levers as the Bolsheviks tried during Lenin’s New Economic Policy showed what a disaster such a move was. A bunch of educated, urban ideologues (Lenin and his ilk) with no idea how farming communities functioned, destroyed major infrastructure in pursuit of their idea of equality.
In many areas of the world where local, indigenous societies have existed for millennia and knew their immediate environment intimately, they tended to be successful at husbanding resources and cultivating interrelationships between plants, animals, water, and soil. The aboriginal Australians that have tended areas most people would find deserts have been successful in feeding themselves and sustaining ecological systems that gave back to them for thousands of years.
Centralized economic and political power can never know all of the variations in environment and human interactions. The idea of a “Green New Deal” sounds attractive but let’s remember that humans tilled the soil of the Great Plains for generations until their abuse of the land ruined the diverse but fragile Plains environments and resulted in the Dust Bowl that destroyed agriculture and forced thousands to flee and thousands more to die of dust-borne illnesses.
1
Several exaggerated claims by Mr. Brooks, but I do think a carbon tax, properly implemented, is a big part of the answer to reducing carbon emissions. Taxing something tends to encourage finding ways to reduce it. A carbon tax need not have a net regressive effect: couple the carbon tax (phased in gradually) with reduction in other consumption taxes.
Of course, much else needs to be done regarding taxes, such as increasing the estate tax, and increasing top-level income tax rates. But that would meet resistance from Republicans who wish to protect their elite donors.
2
May I recommend two books? I'm going to, anyway, in the full knowledge that no one will bother to take my recommendations.
1. The Uses of Pessimism, by Oxford philosophy Prof Roger Scruton. Even if you are a fellow conservative, you will not agree with all his points; but he has a fierce, incisive intellect that you will be forced to engage with.
2. The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer. A classic from 1951.
Both warn of the dangers of idealistic zealotry, and particularly of grand plans for Utopian goals.
1
@ACW yeah, just leave things as they are instead, because everything is great. Oh wait, is it? Look around to see for yourself, take a ride in BART or NYC subway for starters. Very instructive - close to apocalypse in fact.
@anna Ummmm ... I didn't say ANY of the words you have put into my mouth. Please choose some other straw man to whack at.
Your apparent assumption I'm conservative would come as a surprise to everyone who knows me, though I confess to being a moderate (and a former socialist ... one in fact who has done the reading, rather than just latching onto a vague idea and a few slogans).
Of course we need change. Even the intellectual father of modern conservatism, the Irish statesman Edmund Burke, said change is necessary and inevitable.
We are not 'close to apocalypse'; I went to college in NYC in the latter half of the 1970s, so I have experienced the NYC subways and streets in the days of 'The Warriors'. And also worked in the city for 20 years in the 1990s and 2000s. Such a statement can be made only by the very young and idealistic, who have no experience to provide perspective and are comparing the present reality with some imagined, usually unattainable 'should be' condition. If the perfect is the enemy of the good (Voltaire), then the ideal is the enemy of the possible.
Hysterical hyperbole, extreme rhetoric (particularly without marshalling evidence to back it), and reckless vituperation do not serve your cause well, even though they are in fashion on both left and right nowadays. Get thee to a library. Ground your arguments in history and logic. Then we'll talk, meaningfully.
@ACW and also, please get thee to a college campus to talk to young people about what THEY see as today's realities, preferably a community college in NYC. By the way, I have a PhD in social science so you talking down at me does not work. I not only read philosophy but PUBLISH on philosophical topics, including on utopias, agency and social imagination.
"Show me where a man gets his bread, and I'll show you where he gets his opinions". This paraphrase of Mark Twain is so appropriate for Brooks, who has always been paid, through labyrinthine channels, by the fossil fuel companies. Apparently, Brooks isn't reading about the mass extinction of more than human life forms, rising sea levels, increasingly violent and costly weather events, the conflict generated by ecological refugees, political anarchy fueled by rising temperatures and declining agricultural productivity. There should be a new class of occupation called " communications hypocrit".
1
So Mr. Brooks, I don't know where your idea of elitism comes from, perhaps from your own ivory tower, but putting forth a plan to improve and rebuild America is anything but elite. Your criticism of the plan because the government will be the engine of change and improvement defies logic - those are some of the fundamental reasons for government. And exactly what ideas do you, or Republicans, or conservatives, propose to improve the lives of all Americans? Another tax cut? Repealing ACA? Repealing environmental regulations?
2
In 1961, John F Kennedy launched the "man on the moon" project in response to the Soviet Space Program. NASA was charged with the task of creating the program, and in 1969 the Apollo space program successfully landed a man on the moon! Government has dealt well with many other major crises, such as the Great Depression and World War II. Today, we are dealing with another great crisis, climate change, which, if not dealt with soon, will seriously disrupt our lives and threatens to ultimately destroy the planet. The immediate threat comes from emissions into the atmosphere, most coming from energy usage. The Green New Deal is one plan to deal with this looming catastrophe. Perhaps it's not the best - maybe it overreaches. But it's certainly a start. Rather than shred it to pieces, wouldn't it be better to present an alternative Green New Deal? Carbon taxing is simply not enough, and it often hasn't worked well. Do we need an agency whose sole job is to deal with this crisis? Government support for research into renewable energy sources? Government subsidies for alternative power sources and for electric and solar powered cars? Training programs for new jobs in green industries? Working with other countries to support new approaches? The US needs to take a leadership role in the fight to save the planet. I hope that David Brooks will come to understand this need, and describe his own ideas for a Green New Deal that will save the planet for our children and grandchildren.
3
Nov. 16, 2018: Brooks decries the populist "war on excellence."
Feb. 11, 2019: Brooks decries "power in the hands of the Washington elite."
Guess the desire for "technocratic planners" to plan is hollow if the plans aren't to Brooks' preferred specifications. Shame that we have to run such plans past the conservative elites to gain traction nowadays, too.
2
Nothing new here., on two fronts From Cromwell's "not what they want but what is good for them," there has always been on the left a streak of moral elitism from leaders like Robespierre and Lenin who were sure they knew what the people really needed. And whatever else a Green New Deal accomplishes, it promises to provide not only blue collar work for the people installing solar panels and retrofitting buildings but -- more importantly -- prestigious and secure office jobs for educated young people now burdened with student debt and underemployed in the gig economy.
As for 'centralizing power' unfortunately we have tried voluntary restrictions, and it just gives the for-profit world more time to profit and pillage. All we have invented, in human evollution, is the rule of law, so in solving the climate crisis, we must resort to law - the Civil War came d own to passing a series of law that required freedom for all (or perhaps should we say, more than before.) It is law that it comes down to.
Alternatively, one could have the non-written system that China has adopted, with your internet personas and connections becoming the way the state will judge and control you, and the state can change their mind on a whim, because nothing is written. We could go that way, David, would you prefer that - Amazon and Google would probably profit enormously..
No, it is the rule of law we must rely on, so don't you unlearn the past and try to pretend that other types of systems (such as voluntary compliance) - will work. They don't. And I don't want unwritten rules like in China..
1
Brooks is once again giving in to his propensity to label for this or that, and to use that as a foundation for a column. Today it's
the left and elitism. What will it be next week?
It's so easy to dismiss just about anything by finding a moniker to hang on it. It grabs people by the lapels, shake them up, and energizes them against this or that.
Brooks column proceeds to discuss all of this by including "socialism or not socialism" (more labels) in his tome, and to his credit, also discusses some policy specifics. But his use of terms like "left" and "elitism" are cheap shots at dismissing some meritorious suggestions, and always seem like red meat thrown to the conservative faithful. He seems to have forgotten that so many politicians over the years have staked out relatively extreme positions as negotiating ploys, always having been willing to accept less, and even far less as a bargain for incremental progress.
American history has been written on the backs of big ideas and ideals, including giving women the right to vote, the New Deal, sending a man to the moon, and the civil rights movement. Such proposals have been lodestars and have made the country better and stronger.
Ocasio-Cortez's proposal is just another example of this. Yes, to some it may seem extreme, and even antithetical to American ideals. But there is merit in some of her proposals, and to give her credit for trying, it's thinking writ large, something lacking in our national leaders of late.
2
Hmmm....more centralization by the — Oh My Word — ELITE (tsk, tsk) vs. Outright Chaos. The Country will have a major tough decision in its jaws come election time again. What in Sam Hill should we the voters do????? Nothing has ever worked so well for the GOP — and of course their elite (oops) donors — as doing NOTHING. Or in the case of our dear leader, President Trump — BREAKING as many things as possible. Maybe the desperate electorate should give the GOP another chance — to save the planet, give the middle class and its children a thriving chance, return pride of decency to being well, a decent American again, and make truth (dare I say it) more sacred than the a whopper! I have to say though (something about Russia) there is probably some fat chance of that happening. Therefore, personally, I’m putting my bucks — on the ELITE!!!! (But please keep this hush, hush — it’s so embarrassing.)
You lost me @ dirigiste .
1
Funny, both the New Deal and WWII mobilized the entire country with out new Pentagons for technocrats and they managed to bring us the Hoover Dam and threw art and beautiful stone stairs on climbing trails as extra.
And stop with the hysteria already. This is just discussion trying to figure out what we want to do. That is what your lot said to us when you were considering giving guns to teachers and what not, remember?
4
David's first paragraph is utter nonsense. Capitalism produces millions of deaths around the globe through, famines, wars, crimes.etc.. Capitalism is predicated on having losers, because without them there are no "winners". We need a system that honors all life and has as its objective caring for each other.
After his first paragraph I think Dave had some kind of breakdown. What a load of gibberish!
3
@tbs Hey, I'm no worshiper at the the altar of capitalism but I think its human nature when organized into centralized states that has produced all those millions of deaths you refer to, not capitalism (though capitalism has contributed). Let us not forget that Mao and Stalin orchestrated some brutal famines of their own, sans capitalism. Replace the word "Capitalism" with "Religion" and you would be closer to the truth.
Wow...
Solyndra on steroids...
Always knew if the DOE and FDA could get their heads together – it’d be like over-the-counter bottled lightning...
Metaphorically, this has some directional merit...
Literally, it is utter nonsense...
So, you all can either do some early-course corrections – or I’m just going to take a later Transatlantic Acela...
Even Benito couldn’t run train like this...
PS
Even for WW II, David – a guy named Edsel had a lot more to do with building our US war machine than a guy named Franklin...
George Washington warned us of the dangers inherent in political parties. Our nation's recent political history offers proof that Washington had a point. We have one party that has steadfastly worked to block the initiatives of the other for the last 10 years. That party now holds the executive branch and the Senate. It's no wonder that we Progressives are frustrated.
However, there is merit in Mr. Brooks' opinion. Big government can present dangers to a democracy and has a level of inertia that can be difficult to redirect as needed. We would be fools to ignore that. Though I share many of the Progressive objectives, I have lived too long and studied too much history to be comfortable with the more radical elements of their proposals.
1
Like others of your ilk, David, you don't like to acknowledge that government can be and often is a positive force in peoples' lives.
BTW, you do realize you are one of the "political elite," don't you?
1
[The tax code could be tweaked so that people with no income tax liability could receive a cash credit for making charitable donations.]
It is bad enough that allowing tax deductions for charitable contributions is a backdoor for funding churches. Now, Mr. Brooks proposes an almost direct contribution from federal funds for religious purposes.
1
I’ve searched academic papers and historical treatises, among other sources, for a shred of empirical evidence showing it has been capitalism per se, rather than technological advancement, that has led to reductions in poverty and the other myriad benefits Brooks claims for capitalism.
Haven’t found an iota of proof. I’ve heard the pop culture argument that, “well, yes the technology was there, but if not for the profit motive, it would not have spread far and wide.”
And when that argument is met with the question, “Ok, that’s an interesting suggestion. Do you have any evidence for it? Any specific examples?”
The response?
Crickets.
*****
So right from the start of this essay, you know it’s going to be a statement of faith by an erstwhile conservative desperately clinging (out of bitterness, perhaps?) to what little is left of his world.
Better go back to your history books. You literally have everything wrong.
1
Brooks is playing with words. The "elite " to which the right wing refers is a negative stereotype of college graduates supposedly residing mainly on the east and west coasts and who are therefore out of touch with the populace as a whole. The New Deal marshaled the resources of the federal government during the FDR administration to benefit the middle class and the disadvantaged. Philosophically and in action, it was completely opposed to the corrosive and corrupting concentration of wealth and power that characterizes the so-called "populist" Trump administration.
402
@Alan J. Shaw
Another way to define "elite" would be our politicians of both parties who have sold out to corporations and the ultra wealthy for campaign cash. I'm with you on using the forces of the federal government to benefit have nots and the working classes a la FDR. But "we" will have to hold the Democratic leadership's feet to the fire to accomplish anything, as they are part of the problem.
21
@Alan J. Shaw You can remove the sneer quotes from "populist"; not only because they are redundant (the adjective 'so-called' means the same thing) but because like it or not, Trumpism is a populist movement. 'Progressives' or 'liberals' or whatever they're calling themselves this week like the term 'populist'. Just as political movements all claim to speak for the 'people' but exclude from the 'people' anyone who isn't of their party (leading to such absurdities as Lenin's followers calling themselves the Bolsheviks, or 'big party', when they were actually in the minority, because anyone not on their side didn't count), the left ignores history. Populism includes such right-wing and hard-to-classify movements as Father Coughlin's Social Justice (!), Huey Long's Share Our Wealth, Wm Jennings Bryant's Free Silver, George Wallace's Independent Party. Trump is a populist. You cannot deal coherently with the movement he represents if you do not understand it, and you cannot understand it if your analysis begins by misdefining it.
13
@Alan J. Shaw
Nevermind that Brooks is a full member of the elite he critiques.
Or that his party fully supports the elites of the big corporations and uber wealthy.
24
Poppycock!
Government provides services needed by citizens. Climate change is more dangerous than the forces of WWII. Climate change sees no borders, no treaties, no laws. The only way our grandchildren will survive is to face the menace (put Hitler's face on it if you like), accept the fact that is real and deadly, get our heads out of the sand and start acting smart.
Playing Chicken Little and claiming that the government is going to take your farm and your home is childish. Ego and poor planning are disastrous. There was plenty of time to abandon the Titanic and those who got a seat in one of the few lifeboats survived. The "unsinkable" belief condemned most to a horrible death. The United States and our planet are not unsinkable.
5
Elitism is in the eye of the beholder, I would say. Unfortunately, both parties have been basically "bought" by corporations and th 1%, operating in an elite sphere that benefits these constituencies. As for centralizing power - giving more to the government - what could be worse than the situation the rest of us find ourselves in now? So many jobs are "gig" - no benefits, no pensions, often not even guaranteed hours, and wages that are less than "living". As for funding some of these new ideas, we could chop the military/"defense" budget in half and have a large pile of cash right there.
5
Free College
Free Medical Care
High Paying jobs for everyone
No pollution
Get paid to not work
Two scoops of ice cream before bed
Freaking Awesome!
Anyone that thinks James Madison elite dictated Republic has the economic system to reduce pollution enough to stop enough global warming is swinging at pitches way outside the plate.
Count the yachts and private jets. As Brooks takes glory for stopping poverty. Mr Brooks wants you to stay with the old failing "limited supply of money". Elites are bad humans but so posh within luxury they think they are right by going by the book.
I've been in ecology since 1967 when I first became a stock holder in Filteron International and traded that Ecological Science until Standard Oil of Indiana lied about testing on the emission of the Filteron. That was in 1971 and where today's Exxon bean getting the information they knew of in 1974 and the famous Rex Tillerson aka Wayne Trapper lies.
Mr Brooks and his elites are of the moment and the next suit, tie and shirt hell buy and wear.
The elites aren't conservatives. John McCain had 8 houses when he ran for President and Mitt Romney had 5 houses when he ran for the Oval office. Conservatives are the greatest polluters and planet destroying individuals we have.
Oh by the way, football is a huge contributor to global warming. Huge contributor but what the hey Jerry Jones has a yacht. I think the rich should personally be held responsible for getting their own garbage to the landfill and be refused the socialist sponsored garbage business. Yes if you ever paid a water bill then you participated in a democratic socialist program.
1
David Brooks:
Your assertion about captialism's triumph ion job creation and prosperity neglects to correctly name the economies that produced it- to wit- MIXED ECONOMIES.
Without government organization, spending, taxation, credit and willful bailouts of capitalistic excesses, there would be no prosperity.
There would be ruin. Our MIXED ECONOMY has time and time again taken actions that have saved the precious "free-market" from excess, greed and fraudulent takings by unscrupulous actors.
Pure capitalism does not exist as the nation-state level, it co-exists with public spending and public goals.
Tell the truth and it will set you free of Republican Dogma that has embarrassed you so much for so long.
3
Scare mongering at its best! Mr. Brooks seems to be trying to "unseat" Rudy Giuliani as Henny Penny by screaming the "sky is falling" more loudly... Local organizations can't deal with issue like increased greenhouse gases, concentration of extreme wealth or healthcare anywhere nearly as effectively as creating national policy that all communities must follow. Why is creating a "level" playing field with rules and regulations that establish desired outcomes such an anthem to conservatives? Isn't that the situation where capitalism serves the entire society the best?
3
Is this a joke? David Brooks is criticizing elitism? And centralization of power?
2
This past Sunday a Democratic senator or House Representative from Colorado announced he's joining the pool of the candidates for 2020 and he proposes that we should keep 2 health care systems:
1. If you like your current insurance plan through your employer, keep it;
2. If you like the government-funded "Medicare for All" program, join it.
I find his health care idea good and moderate, and I want to see him more often in the primaries season.
And I'd like to see more of Mr. Howard Schultz's plan for America, too.
Socialism or not, let's see if we have the good fortune of the Nordic/Scandinavian people's!
1
Brooksy, you droll scamp. I stopped cold when you proclaimed, with nary a trace of irony, ". . . it would definitely represent the greatest centralization of power in the hands of Washington elite in our history." My dear boy, what do you think has been happening the past 25 years. Most rational observers recognize the greatest centralization of power in our history has already occured. Those at the very top (the top 1/10th of the top 1%) control more wealth than the bottom 90% of the country. Not recognizing this bone simple premise renders the rest of your comments flaccid, sad, and ridiculous.
4
@Ungrateful Welp
I not only totally agree with you (Sorry, Mr. Brooks) -- but enjoyed this comment and the knowledge that there are other rational observers out there, after all.
You once stood for something, but you really have no idea who you are anymore, what you represent, or what you stand for ... and your writing has been the victim of that identity crisis/tragic disillusionment.
Blind ambition is the stuff of American greatness. Not the nonsense of this essay.
It's increasingly more obvious in every one of these half-hearted and false narratives - that you continue to force against reason and judgment - the passion and the faith is gone.
It's time to switch to the right side of history, or quit.
Capitalism didn't do jack. Capitalism got us the great recession of '08. Massive government spending got us the 20 million jobs.
1
Ah, Dave. Once the subject if off tRump, back to your old antics. Bare your conservative fangs at the horrific thought of collective action. And do your best to call names and confuse the subject with penny ante--THEY'RE GONNA BE ELITES!!! And not to be trusted since the profit motive isn't their guiding principle!. Let's talk about the real elites--Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, silicon Valley. Those corporate elites would be A-OK if the environment turned to sludge, the population strapped on VR glasses, dosed up on meds, and traded collective action for heroic individual debt-slavery and eco-cide.
1
I'll take elitism over the rank, vicious bigotry, rigid ideology, and Christian sectarianism of the right every time.
3
Arrgh! My blood pressure cannot withstand a column by David Brooks titled, How the Left Embraced Elitism.
This is the man who has written (repeatedly) about how society should care for its members but he mocks a group that wants to do just that.
1
How the Right Embraced Idiocracy
Hundreds of thousands of planners? You mean, jobs? "Elite universities"? I suspect that it was an elite university that taught you how to condescend with words like dirigistes.
Whose fantasy is this? "progressive populism leads to elitism?" The alternative gave us Brexit and Trump. That's not elitism? Or you just prefer that kind. The kind that tells educated people how stupid they are. How they just don't get it because it's not about the facts.
1
You know Mr. Brooks, you are a respected columnist by lefties as well as the non-fascist right. But let's get a few things straight: 1) capitalism is an economic system, not a political ideology nor a social system. By itself, capitalism relies on greed and it demands as much sacrifice from society (i.e. human beings, natural resources) as it can possibly squeeze without completely self-destructing. It's amoral nature is why there are regulations. 2) Lefties are not anti-capitalist. Lefties are only anti unregulated, unfettered capitalism. Lefties are for capitalism so long as it works for the betterment of the whole. 3) Lefties believe in three things: free education of whatever kind one chooses whenever, wherever, for everyone. It is the only way to turn a coal miner into a solar panel installer. Lefties believe health care is a right, not a privilege. And any capitalist should agree since a healthy worker is a better worker and a better worker makes the capitalist more money. Lefties also believe the private sector, focused on short term profit, isn't going to address climate change and if that isn't addressed you can kiss capitalism goodbye.
Parenthetically Mr. Brooks, you and all columnists are elites ("dirigistes" indeed!). So it behooves all of you to be careful of tossing out the word "elite" as a criticism. Would you prefer your doctor be trained as a roofer?
It's called Communism and it was spelled out very clearly in a little manifesto about 180 years ago.
1
I read this piece with utter astonishment. I have one word to describe it, Nonsense!
1
Maybe we could flip this on its head to say "How the Right Embraced Racist, Outdated and Ineffective Policies in a Radical Bid to Return America to the Nineteenth Century"
1
Brooks, never mind the left! We’ve got enough fraud, corruption and hypocracy from the right to merit your comment for a few decades to come. You spread yourself so thin worrying about liberals that it’s difficult to take you seriously sometimes. There’s an elephant in the room...a very large, orange elephant. That’s the real issue.
It's just a big list of big ideas for coming to grips with the environmental calamity that awaits us. No one is so ignorant as to believe its points chissled in granite.
Certainly no one insideThe Beltway.
Who could be so ignorant?
Who would pretend to be so ignorant?
1
It’s hilarious that Republicans are now throwing around the “socialist” boogeyman as a tactic to veer voters away from the left. Especially considering they’re the first to ask for (“socialist”) government help when they blow up the economy (see world financial crisis).
Socialism in its simplest form, is a system where things are owned by society as a whole. Parts of this exist in every modern society on the planet today (roads, schools, services like garbage pick up, police, fire services, water treatment, healthcare - if you live anywhere but the U.S.)
What base voters of the Republican Party need to understand when they hear these terms is, every single study ever conducted on socioeconomic structures, shows that if you’re born into poverty, you’re odds of remaining in poverty are high. If you’re born wealthy, the opposite applies.
Those who are in favour of democratic “socialism” only (ONLY) seek to level set the most damning areas that drive these circumstances in perpetuity, by investing small amounts of a massive tax pool, into these spaces (health care, education, housing, welfare). The central idea being that, if everyone starts from a very similar and fair baseline starting point, MORE people can and will pull themselves out of poverty. This is supported by an embarrassing amount of facts and evidence to work.
“I don’t know if it is socialism or not socialism — that’s a semantic game”
2
And so little David, the humble neo-con shepherd, triumphed over the Goliath of Government Regulation.
"Help! the socialists want to take over and control government and our lives!"
1) David...Monsanto+Kellogg's+Coca-Cola..do they have a great deal of control over the lives of most humans? And the government?
Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche. Exxon, Shell, BP. Google Facebook, Twitter. Apple, Microsoft. Do any of these entities have control over our lives?
If yes, you're correct. Now why is this not problematic, while centralized government is? Would you say that corporations are MORE likely to act with the welfare of the public in mind? If so, read the language of corporate charters which PROHIBIT acting in the public interest if earnings are jeopardized. Government (GOP notwithstanding) doesn't have that constraint. What's the payoff?
2) Now...let's play...identify the "elite"!
Harvard prof
David French
CEO
LeBron James
Stephen Jay Gould
Kim Kardashian
David Brooks
Contractor worth 20 mil
Huckabee of choice
P.H.D. adjunct prof (liberal!!)...26K w/no benefits
Owner 2 BK franchises
Susan Sarandon
Kinda slippery eh?...not like FOX world, where "elites" have it in for Real Americans.
The dictionary tells us: elite...noun
1. a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.
"the elite of Britain's armed forces".
So--who do we want fighting our next war-Navy Seals or Hogan's Heroes?
Who can best address global warming? Scientists, specialists, experts, or Trump, James Inhofe, and Rick Perry? Jared? Joe the Plumber?
1
Well then let's empower one man, a special man, a man with a magic gut, a man who never studies or consults, a man chosen by God, a man who knows all, an infallible man. Let's make him dictator for life, have all power and wealth as well reside in him and rid ourselves of these elites who attempt to work for all citizens.
1
Mr. Brooks, your ivory tower allegiance to conservative principles has blinded your rational thinking. Yes the capitalist engine has produced millions of jobs, so what's the problem? Why's America so angry, angry enough to elect a lying incompetent to the White House? Why are the oceans rising, the forests burning, and 100 year floods occurring every 5 years. Why? Because your Conservatives have become the elites that rule the country and much of the globe. Look in the mirror Mr. Brooks. Your bright. Insightful. But blind to the fact that your ideology formulated in your college years are elitist.
When we were raising our two daughters, whenever a new program was being propsed, I always taught them to ask a simple question: Who Decides?
Who decides the rules, the programs, the participants, etc?
And then, why are they better at deciding than you?
1
Thank god Brooks is still the only voice of reason on this board. Progressives are the least practical people I've ever met, and completely ignorant of all the unintended consequences of every one of their merely-nice-sounding "policies." This centralization of power would cripple our economy. These dunces even said that there would be jobs for those who don't even want to work?! And they'd retrofit every building in the US. AOC doesn't know the first thing about buildings. I work in property casualty insurance, and all the people who are knowledgable about them are in the private sector. Why would they want to share that knowledge with the federal government? What's in it for them? The private sector pays them based on their work. Government cannot do that. I am happy to watch this party implode, and it's fresh face to look like a moron before she even reaches the age where she can be president. She won't be able to live down her gaffs. The green new deal is a doozy!
"There were people writing such grand master plans in the 1880s, the 1910s, the 1930s. They never work out."
So the implementation of the Social Security Administration, the FDIC, the NLRB, the SEC, the TVA, the CCC, and the USHA were all failures?! Then how does he explain their long-term success?
Once again, Mr. Brooks proves that his own elistist interpretation of history is deeply flawed. How very, very sad!
1
Ocasio-Cortez is like a gift from heaven to the Republican Party.
AOC is like a teenager who has some good ideas, but is unsophisticated, naive and unwilling to listen to criticism.
Climate change and income inequality are both serious issues that need to be addressed but creating a vast, inevitably political bureaucracy is not the answer.
Like the Republicans with Trump, the democrats with a large assist from the media, is giving this woman far too much say.
It is neither in her interest or ours.
1
Oh heavens.....the left has embraced elitism.....while the right worships it.
3
All of this is to say that conservative captalists are not an elite.
1
brooks would know, the r's wrote the book on elitism. funny how sycophants don't complain until they see it in another place.
2
David Brooks accusing someone of being elitist!? A too-ironic case of the pot....
2
When you unwrap this piece, it’s the same ole GOPropaganda without the spelling mistakes and invented stats.
Ah yes, the free markets will save us. Ah yes, Democrats are socialists (read: Stalinists). Ah yes, the best thing about America is The Capitalism; God save The Capitalism!
These people got us where we are today. They inherently lack the vision to see what is next.
2
Could we have a column on how the Right got taken over by Russia?
1
"Elites"? Come on David, these are practical people attempting to address a monumental problem!
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez went to BU. You went to the University of Chicago, George Will went to Princeton, Ross Douthat went to Harvard and Bret Stephens, like you went to the University of Chicago and to LSE! Who is the elite here, pray tell?
And another thing. Republicans and conservatives utilize the great power of the federal and state government to enrich the rich and impoverish the poor; to destroy the environment with their rapacious hunger for fossil fuels; and to impede progress in the sphere of public transport. See e.g., the Koch Bros.
However, as others have noted, at least you acknowledge that we have a climate change problem on our hands, and that it demands a solution. The rest will come out in the wash!
"The elite universities would have to be transformed into technocratic academies in which the children of the rich were trained so they could be dirigistes for the state."
I don't think that "elite" universities, Ivy League for instance, would require much transformation to facilitate the "children of the rich" being "trained" so they could be "dirigistes for the state." Those moneyed "elites" have been ensconced in that role for quite some time.
My hard copy "Merriam-Webster" dictionary does not list the word "dirigiste." One online dictionary coupled "dirigiste" with "heuristic." Here is what I found on a website called "condition.org." "Dirigiste heurism then, is that form of government which incorporates 'the discovered phenomenology of the configuration space' (science and mathematics) and 'codifies' that phenomenon of discovery in such a way (government) as to provide for its own heuristic restructuring as a function of the implicit (genetic imperative) 'best well-being and viability of the organism-whole'."
Mr. Brooks, it seems as if you chose to use the term "dirigistes" in lieu of "movers and shakers" to perhaps, jin up a little class conflict.
1
I get the gist of your article today, but it is not accurate or well presented.
You allude that the Green New Deal is more akin to WWII than the New Deal then to go on to talk about how the universities will have to crank out thousands of people to direct everything.
You have not read your history.
In many was the production run up of the second world war was driven from the bottom up. The top set goals, the bottom figured out how to do it. Two examples.
The USA needed airfields and lots of them to train the thousands that would come. Did a central planner build them. No, The Army Corp of Engineers identified sites. Then they sent in an officer often with a suitcase of cash --- lots of it to get the project going in weeks. One man, one bag of money. He organized the locals to get the job done and they did.
A second example. The Feds needed to make U-235 but the centrifuges would use all the available nickel leaving nothing for the rest of the war needs. In the end a shop foreman in the Chrysler works who did Nickel Plating figured out that they could plate steel and did not have to use solid nickel. Bottom up solution that the elite did not think of.
You like the Green New Deal people both have not read the minutes of the last meeting. We can Embrace a new set of maco directive, just like WWII. But then we leave it to the private sector to do it. Of course if they do not then they risk being taken over just like in the Second World War.
1
Say what you will David but what happened in the 30s led to great prosperity for e v e r y o n e for 50 years until in 1980 one of your idols told us that government is the problem. That is exactly the problem in the last 40 years, empty conservative ideologies.
2
Leave it to Brooks to find a label to attach to something the Left is pushing. When the community does not have the will or the means To improve things who would Brooks suggest take up the banner.? When Social Security was born many attached an ism to that.When FDR did the New Deal there were Chicken Littles of the day who cried the sky was falling. It took the federal government to end human bondage in the south.It took the federal government to end segregation also in the south. Were the federal troops who helped desegregate schools in the south to of the Elitest. Whenever an idea comes down pike that would benefit the people you can be assured The Right will call it elitest or socialist. It would be wise for Brooks to remind the Right what communism is because The Rights leader has a new BFF named Vlad.
2
"I don’t know if it is socialism or not socialism — that’s a semantic game — but it would definitely represent the greatest centralization of power in the hands of the Washington elite in our history."
Splatch! Coffee officially spit out.
Are you kidding me? What exactly sort of Kool Aid are they serving over there in Chez Brooks? Dude. The greatest centralization of power in the hands of the elite is in place RIGHT NOW. Ok, I will grant you this elite doesn't live in Washington DC, but that's just a technicality.
Never before in the history of the modern world have we seen more people less empowered than today. You literally have a situation where the mega rich control EVERYTHING whereas the rest of us most squabble over the scraps.
From housing, to healthcare, to education---almost every tenet of modern life is out of reach for most Americans.
I have plenty of arguments with AOC and Bernie but they don't begin with an assertion as wild as yours.
We are living in an "let them eat cake" era---and people are ANGRY. You picked the wrong time to write a column bestowing the evils of centralization of power. It is yet another example of your patrician and elitists background that renders you completely divorced from the reality of most people.
2
Mr. Brooks, a one man wrecking crew, yet again takes out his sledgehammer while the blueprints are still on the table.
1
Yes, we know that Republicans don't represent any "elites" and truly help average working people. (Not)
2
I get so sick of David Brooks for chiding progressives for all of their flaws real or imagined. A little introspection is due Mr. Brooks. At least the progressives still make an effort to dream and strive.
It's kind of like smoking cigarettes, after a while you know you have to quit but it's so hard. You're addicted and quitting seems so radical and so painful. Eventually, you understand it's a matter of life and death.
1
I wish Mr. Brooks would stick to subjects he knows something about. These doom and gloom predictions are no more credible than his small government, low tax utopia conservatives have been pushing for 100 years.
Let's see.....The communists(pure socialists) ran Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China for decades.
Things didn't turn out so well....right?
But maybe the USA can go 'half' Communist, with the government making 'half' of all economic decisions.
Wouldn't that be OK?
Or am I missing something here?
Just as previously with Josiah Royce, Mr. Brooks conceals that the intellectual he quotes with approval at the end of this column was a reactionary and a bigot.
For the record: Weaver was a Southern Agrarian who thought progress in civilization had gone off the rails in the 14th(!)century. He further thought that blacks in the South-in his words, the "alien race"-were better off as slaves that as free
citizens.
Mr. Brooks should consider his intellectual authorities more carefully.
1
A Green New Deal can open an overdue discussion that offers a third path - beyond socialism and capitalism: The Second Income Plan.
The late Louis Kelso, inventor of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan - ESOP - used by 11,000 companies, recognized the need for an answer to automation and in the process outlined an approach to economics that can end poverty, sharply reduce inequality, and provide every individual with the purchasing power needed for a healthy economy.
Wise implementation would include a Universal Basic Income which otherwise has no chance of becoming law. This would be temporary, as Second Incomes supersede it. The combined program would have no net cost to the Treasury, as rising incomes would repay loans that launch The Second Income Plan.
Worry about stock market gyrations can be eliminated by Nassim Taleb's suggestion in his book The BLACK SWAN for 85-90% of individual investment to be in ultra safe Treasury Bills and the rest in a wide assortment of high risk ventures.
BLACK SWANS are highly improbable events with enormous implications. Positive BLACK SWAN technologies can replace fossil fuels much faster. They include cheap and easy conversion of vehicles to running on water instead of gas, diesel or jet fuel. Also, engines have been invented which need no fuel - and self-powered air conditioners requiring no refrigerants.
New science is attacked as impossible. See aesopinstitute.org to learn more about SECOND INCOMES & breakthrough technologies.
The GND is Hubris of the highest order. The Gods do not tolerate Hubris.
In my experience, Democrats can be just as crooked as Republicans, even Democrats with education and inherited money.
Brooks once again indulges in his signature move by tagging the elitism of the Left as an existential threat to the nation while saying not a word about the manifest elitism of the Right. It is a loser's game to expect Brooks to transcend his core convictions as a conservative Republican.
1
David, David, David,
Where do you come up w these ideas? Why not take a 6 month sabbatical and live in the world headquarters of Green Tech --- namely Silicon Valley. Yes, the Valley is rich, and somewhat elite, but also highly intelligent and Democratic...do you realize 94% of residents in Palo Alto have college degrees?
The Valley's Democrats are people w passion and drive committed to the common good, repulsed by elitism.
Have you ever studied the characteristic of your party, the Republicans?Seems to me, and most of the world, that Republicans are much more elite, uneducated and not as rich as Democrats....I'm pretty sure Pew wd back me up on this.
2
Brooks isn't normally this hysterical. It seems like all of the right wing pundits got the same message: scare everyone to death about this Green New Deal. Tell everyone it will turn us into the Soviet Union, N. Korea and Venezuela. For goodness sake David, it's a vague, non-binding resolution. Get a grip.
1
Wait...what?! Look up elite in the dictionary and you'll see David Brooks' picture. A former editor at the Weekly Standard, he is part of the neocon elite that promoted the Iraq War and the philosophy of regime change around the world because America's ruling class knows what's best for the globe's 7 billion inhabitants.
The elite that David belongs to believes in invading countries to take their oil and give it to U.S. companies. They have their own version of socialism -- privatize the gains and socialize the losses. Allow corporations to keep all the profit from their activities, but have the poor and middle class pay for the negative impact.
1
Ahh. Time and events have served up an opportunity for Brooks to stop writing about education, non profits and the need for civility and cooperation in society.
The former Brooks emerges anew with charges of "leftist elitism" to make his GOP soul feel useful once again.
1
Wow. The first sign the US may not spiral into an autocracy at the hands of GOP sycophants groveling at the feet of BIG Corp Donors and suddenly Brooks is back to his day job slamming the Left's earnest attempts to solve big problems without - gasp- checking with old established whitey. And the gall to insult the "next generation" for desperately trying to solve a global crisis with bold solutions.
We grew up witnessing the failures of the fraudulent centrist capitalism. Speaking of failing systems. I'll trust a big new idea to mobilize our country's resources over your quibbling that might make a dent sometime between 2100 and spontaneous fireballs over Manhattan. I'm worried that my kids will know how our species ends, so, frankly, a centralized behemo-government sounds nice compared to the alternative. And besides, what options did the "last generation" leave us anyway?
1
@Chris Nold ...and what do you think "old established whitey" adds to the hopes for dialogue on such an important issue as how to solve big problems? This is the kind of race-baiting scapegoating that makes it hard for people to come together. It's been a tool used by both parties to divide us--and it has worked. If the GND avoids this, more people may take them seriously as fresh new thinkers.
Classic Brooksian sleight of hand. You managed not to mention Venezuela, a heroic exercise of restraint! But the disingenuous bit about not knowing whether or not the target of your critique should be called socialism is followed by a straw man worthy of Fox News.
This and the usual conservative boiler plate about millions of new jobs—meaning, of course, that the decline of “family values,” not economic factors (rapacious capitalism, greed, and the resulting environmental degradation), is the primary cause of mass discontent: pure fakery.
1
Mr. Brooks has descended yet again into his republican hobbit hole with this article of "no you can't" and "isn't worth trying" followed by a "not worth it anyway".
It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is for republicans to tear something down and make it hard for Democrats to actually build something up. See Healthcare 1776-2010
Keep up with this draconian thought process of yours Mr. Brooks but don't stand still; we 20,30 and 40 somethings are going to run roughshod over the GOP failed polices and ideology on our way to a more perfect union.
AOC is merely the beginning of a new wave. Hang on GOP...it's going to be rough ride.
2
Looks good on paper David. But not so. They said the same things of FDR in the 1930's. Then, like now, it is the only way forward. I would have listened to you 30 years go. But your Republican buddies already blew it and looted the Treasury. Stop shilling for them and get on board with Democrats. The life you save may be your own.
2
I'm seeing lots of "science denier" comments hurled out by people that are clearly math deniers.
David Brooks, perhaps unwittingly, has described the dark evolution from pure socialism to communism. Human nature is such that bad actors will emerge and prevail until the weight of their oppression and excesses of their lust for power and wealth bring them down.
Pure capitalism has its parallels. Medieval Age kings and queens, Gilded Age Robber Barons, and the captains of industry and finance during our times have degraded capitalism to the point where environmental destruction, and social and economic inequality, threaten our existence with unsustainable distortions of wealth and income distribution, global climate change on an unprecedented scale, and unacceptable quality of life degradation.
We’ve seen Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Mao Zedong. We’ve also seen our Xi Jinping and Donald Trumps. And, of course, every stripe in between, from Idi Amin to Viktor Orbán.
In Canada and Scandinavia, we’ve seen that a controlled, well-regulated hybrid between the positive elements of both systems in which the primary engines of implementation and production are entrusted to private organizations which are subject to a reasonable and well thought through a regulatory environment works well.
Major social, environmental, scientific, technological, and infrastructure projects require prominent government leadership and participation. A well conceived and executed private-public collaboration based on the best of capitalism and socialism is the only solution.
I stopped reading in the middle of the first sentence. By then, it had occurred to me that you're wrong.
1
Brooks can cherry-pick all the statistics he wants. But he ignores the fact that more wealth continues to accumulate in the hands of a smaller group of people than ever.
How can one take seriously a writer who fails to indict his own elitism - the same ivy-league background enjoyed by that well-know purveyor of "left-wing" dogma: Trump.
1
"The authors of the Green New Deal assume that technocratic planners can master the movements of 328 million Americans and design a transportation system so that “air travel stops becoming necessary.”
Two letters, David: A.I.
Nothing can be viewed as a fantasy today. Nothing.
I find it so amusing that Brooks thinks he knows how to manipulate his audience. Just associate new program idea with one of the pre-existing tropes: "costly"; "elitist"; "latte-sipping." Whatever. Takes no thought; there could easily be some not so intelligent AI that could write this stuff.
I find it depressing that Brooks has every right to think he knows how to manipulate his audience. Because this stuff actually works, as he well knows. It's what he's paid for.
1
Yeah the last new deal was a real disaster. As was WWII (your analogy).
1
Look at the photograph of the veteran politicians obediently standing around the newfound oracle and her document that reads like something a stoned college freshman would author: high-speed rail lines across the oceans; guaranteed income for those who refuse to work; no eating meat or raising dairy cows; complete equality of outcome for everyone, regardless of skill or effort provided. And they're lapping it up, craven as always, eager to grant automatic citizenship to everyone in Latin America.
OMG, OMG! The sky is falling! People want to protect the environment and save the planet! People care more about keeping the planet livable for our children than they care about free markets! The horrors of it all!
This line made me laugh, and it proves how out of touch with reality Brooks is: "As many conservatives have shifted leftward..."
And does anyone else find Brooks' disdain for "elitism" ridiculously hypocritical, given that he's about the best example of coastal, privileged elitism as they come?
2
I'm fed up with all the tropes about how the left embraced elitism. I'm not sure which elite you are talking about. The elite of college educated people? The elite of scientifically qualified people? The elite of people who are intellectually capable of understanding the complexity of issues? Anti-elitism is essentially anti-intellectualism. Do we really want simpleminded, ignorant uneducated people running things? Trying to fix global problems? Get real.
1
This column blames the Democrats because "(This is a Congress that can’t pass a budget.)" Get real.
1
@Lori
Don't forget it's also the Democrat's fault we might be in for another government shutdown -- even though Trump claimed he'd be proud to own it.
Wow. The first sign the US may not spiral into an autocracy at the hands of GOP sycophants groveling at the feet of BIG Corp Donors and suddenly Brooks is back to his day job slamming the Left's earnest attempts to solve big problems without - gasp- checking with old established whitey. AND THE NERVE to insult the "new generation" for desperately trying to solve a global crisis with bold solutions.
We grew up witnessing the failures of your fraudulent centrist capitalism. Speaking of failing systems. I'll trust a big new idea to mobilize our country's resources over your pathetic quibbling that might make a dent sometime between 2100 and spontaneous fireballs over Manhattan. I'm worried that my kids will know how our species ends, so, frankly, a centralized behemo-government sounds nice compared to the alternative. And besides, what options did the "last generation" leave us anyway?
1
Which agency will control this or that? Bill de Blasio will be named First People's Commissar (a paragon of progressive competence after all), with AOC -- in the name of equality of the sexes -- in charge of the first 5-year plan. Adam Schiff will be in charge of the Thought Police. Bernie will be there for a while as the father figure (Marx is a little too over the top of course); but like Trotsky (and by coincidence like Trotsky a Jew) will eventually be forced into exile and be turned into a perpetual boogie man threatening the purity of the Party. He won't get the ax literally as what happened to Trotsky, since he's getting on in years anyway and won't be around long enough to pose any threat to the Inner Party.
I jest of course .... sort of.
There are occasions to take David Brooks seriously. This isn’t one of them. The piece seems hastily written, filled with conservative self-congratulation and sarcastic asides. Let’s hear AOC out and let the debate begin. Raising the specter of Big Eco-Brother is just silly.
1
"Today, Democrats are much more likely to want government to take direct control. This is the true importance of the Green New Deal, which is becoming the litmus test of progressive seriousness..."
Mr. Brooks really needs to get out more often. That is if he wants to opine about the real world and not his imaginary one.
This column has more fantastic and scarier monsters and goblins than Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter combined. Brooks sees a dark forest of mangled Black Oaks with shape shifting spirits scheming about healthcare, jobs, child care, education, infrastructure, income inequality, the bureaucrats of the ring, the horrendous Washington Elite, where pizza parlors are child trafficking fronts. The rest of us just see the Democrats.
I wonder if Brooks had a similar reaction when Newt Gingrich unveiled his "Contract with (on) America. Did it set his hair on fire? Did he think the sky was falling? Was Fascism forthcoming?
I'm surprised at Brook's Soviet Amerika panic attack as we're still neck-deep in the Trump nightmare with its deep reservoir of icky ooze and zombie Republicans steadily dismantling American progress and prospect.
And he's worried about Democrats talking ideas that address urgent real world problems instead of rearranging chairs on the Titanic?
We're drowning David. Not the best time to worry about what wine goes best with your coquilles St Jacques.
2
mr. brooks: you used the word 'dirigiste' in your column. and you're calling other people elitists? please.
David, David...now look what you've done. Please, read this - from one of the comments below:
"The left has gone into overdrive. This is what progressivism has always been about. Power and control. Thanks for the...explanation of this monstrous platform. The Leviathan is waking on the left."
Yes, David, I know you scrupulously demurred to label the GND with "S" word. But, somehow, what I'm sure you wanted to be a 'fair and balanced' representation of the GND paper has - surprise! surprise! - tapped into right wing hostility to 'Washington elites' and 'the controlling state' socialism.
Might have been your clever little effort to characterize this as rule by Washington "elites" - or maybe it was the bit about government charging into every house in America that did it.
Anyway, if your purpose had been to create a scaremongering spin on a progressive idea that would get Trump re-elected, you couldn't have done a better job.
But that wasn't your purpose...was it, David?
1
David's writing needs to be more tightly edited. Suggested edit..."Help! the socialists want to take over and control the government and all of our lives!" So I'm gonna go full Socratic here..
David...would it be accurate to say that Monsanto+Kellogg's+Coca-Cola, etc. have a great deal of control over the lives of most humans? And the government.
Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche. Exxon, Shell, BP. Google Facebook, Twitter. Apple, Microsoft. Do any of these entities have control over our lives?
If yes, why is this not problematic, while centralized government is? Would you say that corporations are MORE likely to act with the welfare of the public in mind? If so, read the language of corporate charters which PROHIBIT acting in the public interest if earnings are jeopardized.
2) Let's play...identify the "elite"
Harvard prof
David French
CEO
LeBron James
Stephen Jay Gould
Kim Kardashian
David Brooks
Contractor worth 20 mil
Sheldon Adelson
P.H.D. adjunct prof...26K w/no benefits
Owner 2 BK franchises
Thought-provoking, no? You can't jump to facile FOX-style elite bashing.
The dictionary says: elite...noun
1. a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.
"the elite of Britain's armed forces".
So--who do we want fighting our next war-Navy Seals or Hogan's Heroes?
Who can best address global warming? Scientists, specialists, experts, or Trump, James Inhofe and Rick Perry? Jared? Maybe Joe the Plumber?
1
Brooks is pedaling some vague Jeffersonian agrarianism, Can we stop pedaling this ridiculous trope, we are a enlightened citizenry of geniuses best left to our own local accord and government is inherently bad.
After flirting with a little independent thought (as a critic of the two year old in the White House), the old Brooks is back! Once again we hear from the partisan flak who whose solemn task is to badmouth "Big Government." What? Use government to advance the public good?! Horrors! That's best left to free markets. Sure, the New Deal saved capitalism from itself and set the economy on an upward trend that reduced inequality and strengthened the middle class. And, yes, de-regulation and reining in government under a succession of Republican and Democratic presidents (shout out to Bill Clinton) did cause inequality to spike, hobbled the middle class and left the working class in the lurch, but what the heck? Republicans and their bought-and-paid-for intelligentsia just know that free markets are better than Big Government. Goodness, if you make use of government to make life better for ordinary people, well, you're letting the Red Menace, er, socialism, in through the front door. And we mustn't have that. Brooks is a quieter, kinder version of Fox News. He doesn't shout and scowl like Hannity or sneer like Carlson, but it's the same song and dance.
1
Understand the bargain we make when discussing government influence. As the government's power over your local community increases, your power as a citizen over the government also increases. This principle functions on all levels of government. If my community council is given more power, I want greater accountability in exchange. Otherwise, the deal doesn't work.
Washington elites therefore necessarily become less elite as the nature of their power expands. At least if you belive in small-d democracy and representative governance. This concept is obviously anathema to little-r republicanism. Republicans explicitly limit the political agency of the average citizen. That's why expanded government influence is a threat to their political philosophy.
However, let me ask you this: Would you rather power in your community be held by an institution you have some power to control or not? From where I'm standing, large businesses and corporations are making decisions that effect my community all the time. I don't have one whisper of influence over their decisions outside of government.
I personally will take government over limited liability any day. Corporatism is not the neighborhood's friend.
1
Mr. Brooks loves to argue false equivalency between the tactics espoused by the right and left, except for this piece, where it would actually be appropriate.
The left is not alone in it's advocacy for centralized power that limits liberalism. The right has been leaning authoritarian now for decades, and in many states they have achieved strong central governments that are immovable through democratic means. Their position secured long term through gerrymandering and power grabs, they ignore the will of the people. One glaring example, in my home state of Utah: we voted to implement full ACA Medicaid expansion last November, and the legislature just passed a bill scaling that back big time. They took the popular vote, and squashed it.
In a less specific sense, one easily sees that conservatives claim our nation is "a Republic", not a "Democracy". I meet conservatives every day who make this argument. The argument that their representatives know better than themselves regarding public policy. It's difficult for them to understand that a Republic is a democracy; it's lost on them. Moreover, they too argue for increased federal power to act on the mythical problems of race based immigration.
Both sides, Mr. Brooks, are frustrated that democracy doesn't work for them. Democracy is broken in America because of corporate control of our Congress. End Citizens United, and you will have the liberal society you hope for, with free markets to boot.
1
I did a double-take when I read Brooks’ line about a bevy of conservatives trying to reduce inequality, etc. I’m sure he can find one or two people who call themselves conservative who might believe this, but Brooks, of course, doesn’t name any politicians on the right who have done anything to reduce inequality, restore community, and so forth.
Actually, the biggest accomplishment of the Republican Congress before the midterm defeat was to pass the giant corporate tax reduction bill. First reports are now showing that tax refunds for the middle class are reduced. How’d that happen, David, when the party of conservatism is trying to reduce inequality?
2
You either believe/understand the science of climate change or you don’t. However, the facts are clear and stark. Climate change is existential for our species’ way of life. And the odds of humanity doing enough quickly enough to matter are bleak. Therefore, any arguments that attempt to counter a genuine attempt to frame both the problem and the solutions are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. FACT: we won’t save our way of life unless we do something on the order of magnitude of the Green New Deal. Why is that so hard to understand? And almost worse, why wouldn’t we want to harness human energy for the common good, rather than continue to suffer the fractured and impotent direction our country is heading in?
2
You can tell someone is not confident in their argument when they start leaning on straw men, as Brooks does here. The 14-page resolution does not call for the government to give a job to everyone who wants one, or for it to oversee the renovation of every building in the United States. It specifically calls for the federal government to work through coalitions and partnerships, not for it to manage and do everything. Yes, the proposal calls for guaranteed employment for all, but given that we're already near full employment and are approaching a deepening labor shortage, is that really a crazy goal? What the Green New Deal says is that government has to prioritize protecting the environment and improving the health and well being of its citizens. These are common-sense goals, which is why conservatives like Brooks hate the Green New Deal and why we can expect them to continue dissembling about it.
3
The New Green Deal may not (yet) be comprehensively thought out in practical terms, but it is an intelligent attempt at organizing the nation towards justifiable right action. We are decades late in joining this undertaking, which, given the best of our history, we, by rights, ought to be leading.
Comprehensive planning cannot even begin until the dire warnings of the consequences of ignoring climate change marry up with capitalist enthusiasm in all its ambition. I hope it occurs to some of the young guns that the winning marketing strategy for this objective would be to make it synonymous with job creation, infrastructure renewal, and economic resurgence.
In other words: keep our (national) eye upon the (equitably-sourced) donut; not upon the (political) hole.
1
Brooks, I continually fool myself into thinking that you are better than this. That you might not be part of the republican plan to paint this as something other than a bold initiative to truly combat climate change and usher in an economy that can be fair to all. This is not doctrine. This is an outline that demands further discussion, not a hit job in the New York Times.
Carbon Tax? That's as courageous as you get? We're approaching ecological catastrophe. Wake up man!
1
"They never work out", says Mr. Brooks.
.
Really?
.
FDR lifted America out of the Depression, and saved the World (according to no less than Conrad Black, and The Economist).
.
When America was in great suffering, it built the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge; brought electrification to rural America; designed the Air Force that won the war in Europe; and laid the keels of the fleet that won the war in the Pacific.
.
They never work out?
.
FDR and Truman will always be heroes in my book.
606
@Richard Blaine
Conservatives have been making Brooks' arguments since the first person suggested we abolish child labor.
36
@Richard Blaine Fact: The U.S. needed to save the world in WWII precisely BECAUSE socialist policies had failed to lift the world out of worldwide depression.
9
@Richard Blaine
FDR and the New Deal not only lifted America out of the Depression, it set the stage for more than two decades of higher living standards for the middle class. As I see it, the Green New Deal aims to address two emergencies we have today: climate change and income inequality. Like the Great Depression, these current problems are indeed emergencies. They require dramatic solutions.
21
Wow. The first sign the US may not spiral into an autocracy at the hands of GOP corporate sycophants suddenly Brooks is back to slamming the Left's earnest attempts to solve big problems without - gasp- checking with old establishment. And what gall to insult the "next generation" for desperately trying to solve a global crisis with bold solutions.
We grew up witnessing the failures of your fraudulent centrist capitalism. Speaking of failing systems. I'll trust a big new idea to mobilize our country's resources over your quibbling that might make a dent in the calamity sometime between 2100 and spontaneous fireballs over Manhattan. I'm worried that my kids will know how our species ends, so, frankly, a centralized behemo-government sounds nice compared to the alternative. And besides, what options did the "last generation" leave us anyway?
1
Even if this were the case, which is worse; the left wing supposedly embracing elitism, or the right-wing actively embracing fascism? I know where my values lie, David. My father fought in WWII to combat the kind of racist, totalitarian, autocracy the GOP now represents and actively supports. The GOP has sold their souls to protect a corrupt and morally bankrupt president who is in league with Putin; an autocratic dictator who is an enemy of the United States and subverted our last election. If the tragic farce our country is suffering through under Trump weren't real, it would be too far fetched to be believed. But never mind, you go right ahead, David. Keep on flogging that false equivalency and feeling good about yourself. I think they call what you are doing whistling past the graveyard, or fiddling while Rome burns. Either way, the GOP has shown their true colors and they are orange, not red white and blue.
3
Quivering conservative in hand wringing, "will no-one think of the 0.1%" plea, as he sees the wheel beginning to turn, shocker.
2
There is a fundamental misunderstanding among modern Americans about the origins of our republic, its democratic institutions, and the constitution. Our government does not exist to build railways, educate, or employ an impatient generation. The simple motivation behind our government, which has allowed it to exist for over 200 years, is that it functions as a constraint upon society: it exists to regulate and protect.
"Both sides" would do well to heed the words of Thomas Paine, from 1776:
"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
1
Get with it David.
By “Green New Deal” they are in the most simple understandable terms telling us that:
The concept of pricing formulated and codified during the Industrial Revolution was done so to give ethical validity to the supplying of goods and services in the most efficient manner to those able to pay.
Planetary resource depletion and destruction (negative external costs) were never a part of the equation nor were ongoing irreparable unintended ecological consequences.
This Green New Deal calls for their recognition.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
205
@David Anderson
David, in your post one reads about "ongoing irreparable unintended ecological consequences" that the "Green New Deal" will call for "recognition" of; one supposes it also necessarily has some sort of repair scenario (of the "irreparable" part) in its midst of elitist propaganda.
Are you stating the Federal Government should take over the economy and repair the irreparable by doing so?
What might be the "unintended consequences" for that takeover?
4
@Kenneth Galloway
That post has some crazy spin in it. The green new deal isn't proposing to entirely socialize our economy and remove market influences, but it is proposing that the government put it's hand on the scale to make sure that cost externalities (which, as their definition reads, are not included into pricing) become incorporated, if your business practice will deplete the atlantic ocean of lobster the cost to our society of your proposal should be included in the price, because you are offloading a portion of the societal cost of your business externally onto public resources.
Governments are the actors in a free market that are responsible for external costs, a sufficiently motivated and informed public might be able to account for those but sadly we don't have a sufficiently motivated and informed public. Thus we, the people, would propose to delegate the responsibility of studying and incorporating the costs of externalities to an agency that can represent our shared goal. This is exactly why we have governments in general and is the reason why we have nice things, also it's the reason we have a military, an EPA, OSHA, social security and medicare.
Also, just a side note, the backsliding of environmental policies we've seen under GOP leadership is making this much more expensive for us in the long term - and if we continue to backslide it'll get even worse.
9
@David Anderson
Great point about the new and more important part of the pricing equation for all of us.
1
The scariest part of this "Green New Deal" is that none of the Democratic presidential candidates and none of the Congressional advocates have any experience running so much as a peanut-stand.
Those of us who have led such large-scale transformational efforts know that there is only one thing of which we can be 100% certain: that we will not get things 100% right out of the gate. Adaptive, spiral development is typically required.
These Green New Dealers apparently embrace the Frank Sinatra management mantra: "All or Nothing at All."
85
@Mack
Don't suppose you were as critical of someone who filed 4 bankruptcies. Seems like a typical GOP hypocritical statement to me.
75
@Mack So True, so let those experienced in running things bring us much needed change, like Wall Street and Zuckerberg and Ms. Lean In. Not to mention President Grifter.
They care for the bottom 90 perecenters. We know because they tell us so, as does Mr. Coffee Shops. He'll fix it all in a minute, as that's all the time he took in figuring it out for us so far.
52
@Nb
I’d rather somebody that tried and failed than never tried at all.
24
What a meaningless column. We have a crisis. And the progressive Democrats came up with a proposal - the only one on the table. Let's celebrate that there are adults thinking boldly working against science-deniers, the greedy, and the purely corrupt - all three manifested in the current president and his party.
@alan "Thinking boldly" by abolishing airplanes and cows?
No, Obamacare-more correctly called the ACA- was NOT " an effort to expand ... private health insurance markets." That's what it primarily was for Republicans, conservatives, and the private insurance companies they cater to. It WAS an effort to expand health insurance to millions who were without coverage in the current system.
"Socialism or not socialism" is NOT a semantic game. To frame it that way IS a game. Would you say capitalism or not capitalism, democracy or not democracy are semantic games?
C'mon David, you need to up your game.
2
In many ways, our lives are already controlled by centralized elites: the unelected corporate profiteers who are getting larger and wealthier by the minute, and whose major interest is in further enriching themselves. At least with government, which is our government composed of human belings, not some alien entity, if we are unhappy with the work of elected officials, we can vote them out. They are supposed to be public servants, not bought and paid for puppets of plutocrats. And yes, universities absolutely should conduct research and train students in the latest science and other critical endeavors, so that they may continue to be a source of expertise in solving pressing problems. Climate change in particular is an area in which we need coordinated national action; it affects us all and does not recognize state or municipal boundaries.
Those who think government cannot do anything right are, by definition, unqualified for government service. Thus, when Ronald Reagan said, "Government is the problem, not the solution," he disqualified himself from his government position.
2
This moderate Democrat totally agrees with your observations. Totally. As you well know, there were many problems with New Deal proposals, and the Court squashed those that were unconstitutional. But, as important as many New Deal programs were to making capitalism more responsive to the needs of Americans, World War II solved the economic problems of the country. The New Deal in some ways made us feel better and more optimistic at a very dark and difficult time. The Green New Deal is grounded in some fine aspirations but also reflects the framers’ lack of knowledge about the limits of socialism and its incompatibility with America’s roots and promise. I do not fear socialism because of former perceived or actual attachments to communism. I fear socialism because it is overbearing, ineffective, and arrogant. I much prefer to tinker with capitalism. I prefer to pay for my kids’ college tuitions because I do not want to pay for kids who don’t have a stake in the experience. I want the health insurance I want, but I am committed to access for all and to ensuring that people who cannot afford it get support. I would support a carbon tax but I don’t want people telling me I have to have a solar roof. In short, I want maximum freedom and commitments to health care access and to programs that ensure that everyone has health care because health care is a right. The AOCs of the world are making me apoplectic because they are arrogant, uninformed, and all about themselves.
153
@Mary
The mobilization for WWII that solved the economic problems included centralizing control over whole essential industries as well as food and gasoline rationing.
My question would be, given that climate change is an existential threat to our way of life, our civilization and the lives of millions of people, do you really think (this is an honest, not a rhetorical question) that "tinkering with capitalism" will be even close to sufficient?
I agree that a mobilization on the scale of WWI is needed because we need to transform both the entire nation's transportation and energy sectors within a decade.
That's what the best science tells us.
If the Green New Deal is not the answer, then an equally ambitious alternative needs to be proposed.
This is because climate change is an existential threat.
Really.
55
@Mary My parents had eighth-grade educations -- I attended a top-tier college and graduate school courtesy of the taxpayers. In the 40 years since then I've paid the taxpayers' investment back ten times over through higher taxes on my higher income. Not paying for other people's kids is short-sighted. Where are we going to get the next generation of highly skilled knowledge workers? Import them, while our own kids languish? Please rethink your bias against children of limited means. Many of them, like me, work twice as hard as your children to advance in the world.
59
@Mary I put solar panels on my roof. They generate enough electricity to power my home and my electric car. Given the urgency of slowing down global warming, I would have no problem whatsoever with a government that required every roof to have solar panels on it.
California passed a law requiring solar roofs on newly constructed homes. A good start.
35
Let's take a look at all the "grand master plans" of government that "never work out".
The TVA.
The CCC.
Social Security.
The GI Bill.
Medicare and Medicaid.
The Interstate Highway System.
Universal secondary education (not perfect, but 90% of us received great public educations which are the foundation of our successful careers).
The entire alphabet soup of federal agencies which keep our economy humming and (mostly) safe from predatory rogue con men (our Current Occupant excepted): SEC, FDA, EPA, FCC, OSHA, FAA, SBA, EEOC, NOAA, NASA, NWS, FHA, CDC, DARPA - I could go on.
The federal government is nothing more than "We the People" - working to "promote the common Welfare" (as our Founders put it).
The REAL "elites" are (as another commenter already noted) are ALEC, The Federalist Society, the NRA, the Chamber of Commerce and the extreme Oligarchs (Kochs, Mercers, Adelsons, et al.).
Our problem in the 21st century is not "too much government" - but far too little of it. And "We the People" are finally rising up and demanding the abolition of "crony capitalism" (where the richest One Percent own more than the bottom 90%) and replacing it with the things that ONLY "We the People" can do through Our Government (single-payer health care, the end to regressive taxation, the rape of our public lands for private profit, etc.).
David, this may be one of your most reactionary columns ever. I hear the Trump administration is desperate for ideologues like you. Check it out.
1
Great article. Global climate change is the insidious yet paramount issue facing mankind, and nature.Yet the Green New Deal (horrible branding for scientific based environmentalists) politicizes climate change by association with all kinds of unattainable mandates. It reminds me of the silly bluster & splash of Trump, just from the opposite aisle. It seems whoever screams the loudest controls the media narrative. This isn’t constructive. Everyday people; you & I, need to follow the example of Ginsberg & Scalia. They had very different viewpoints but were civil and even friends. That’s the tone that gets results.
We have this leviathan task of combating climate change to overcome. The biggest weapon is market demand. Every person has to care deeply enough (read the science) to make purchases guided by their impact on the atmosphere. Hybrids, eat less meat, solar, whatever you can do, now! We can’t wait for governments... they move too slow and scream too much.
1
Mr. Brooks, as the planet degrades, more of the population pushed into marginal work, reasonably priced health care out of reach for many, and no clear path to a better future, strong centralized measures will be required. It will be nothing short of a new deal approach that will save the common man. Just like capitalism failed America in the 1930's, it will do the same with the disaster of climate change. The rich will be able to ride it out. Not the poor smucks working 9 tp 5.
No phone, no light, no motorcar, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it's primitive as can be.
1
Rome is burning. The Republicans are busily fiddling. And Brooks nitpicking about how the fire department is too centralized. Thanks for the constructive advice, David.
Ah the real Brooks reemerges. The friend of wf Buckley and Barry Goldwater, the stand pat sneerer at efforts to ameliorate human suffering. Suffice it to paraphrase FDR on why Democrats often speak in many voices: there are many ways to go forward, but only one way to stand still.
It is laughable, while witnessing daily Trump how abusively consolidates and dangerously wields, his own power, to read something so alarmist about the power implications of Democrats' green plan.
“The elite universities would have to be transformed into technocratic academies in which the children of the rich were trained so they could be dirigistes for the state.”
Wow… that’s quite a leap, Mr. Brooks. Why don’t you come in off of that ledge and enjoy a nice cup of decaf.
The reason Ms. Ocasio Cortez and her colleagues are striking a chord among voters is because we sense that, finally, someone is daring to dream big and speak truth to power.
AOC and her supporters are not all wooly-headed dreamers seeking a pie-in-the-sky utopia. We’ve simply tired of the steady diet of false promises (trickle down!) and half-measures put forth by our legislators to address the most pressing issues of the day.
Climb aboard and let’s try to move forward together.
David is right on. This infuation with central government control for the greater good and the redistribution of wealth as a means of creating wealth flying not only in the face of American capitalism but the growth in the leading world economies is because of Capitism not despite it. Democrats have exposed their true agenda through the New “Green” deal.
“Today, Democrats are much more likely to want [the] government to take direct control.” Present democrats know what monster they are fighting against. In other words, conservatives pushed them to use more control and will then accuse them of dictatorship. A very old yet still efficient trick.
1
Since when were GS-9s "elites."