The other day, I ran across a piece on Vox by Zach Beauchamp entitled “No easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to right wing populism.” This piece captures everything that has always bothered me about Vox. Today I’d like to dissect this piece and show you what I mean.
Tag: United States
How Bad Does Trump Have to Be to Match George W. Bush?
Former President George W. Bush has been out and about, charming people with his paintings and his inability to put on a poncho, all in a bid to get people to buy his book of paintings to raise money for veterans. It sounds nice, but of course Bush is the reason so many of these vets need money in the first place–they were wounded, disabled, and sometimes killed in the tremendously expensive wars he started. Yet because Donald Trump has moved the Republican Party so far to the right, Bush now strikes many people as a moderate, and it’s become increasingly common for Trump critics to pine for the 00’s and praise the Bush administration. This nostalgic narrative will likely become more dominant as the memory of the 00’s continues to fade. But today I want to tilt against this windmill and show how much work Trump will have to do to fail as hard as Bush failed.
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There are 2 Kinds of Strikes
Since the election of Donald Trump, there’s been some renewed interest in striking as a form of political resistance. Just this week, many women participated in A Day Without a Woman, a strike during International Women’s Day, and a general strike was held on February 17 to oppose Trump. These strikes have divided the left, with some arguing that they are not true strikes because the participants are primarily members of the professional class rather than the working class, while others argue that they play an essential role in mobilizing dissent regardless of which classes primarily participate. This debate over strikes is muddled because the two sides are using the word “strike” to refer to two very different kinds of political action.
Why the Republican Healthcare Plan Doesn’t Work
We’ve finally got the full text of the Republican healthcare plan. Unfortunately, the plan is likely to leave everyone dissatisfied–the right will be frustrated, because it leaves the basic structure of Obamacare intact, while the left will be furious, because the changes the Republicans have proposed weaken that structure rather than reinforce it. Here’s what the new bill does and why it works so poorly.
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We Don’t Need to Increase Military Spending By $54 Billion
It’s been announced that President Trump will seek to increase military spending by $54 billion, taking this money out of the budgets of other federal departments (the specific programs these departments would cut has not yet been decided). This is a significant amount of money–it’s enough to build the Trump wall twice over, and it’s nearly three times the size of the NASA budget. It’s nearly enough to pay for tuition-free college, which costs $70 billion. The cuts are still in the proposal stage–congress must pass a budget which incorporates these changes before they would become law. Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a moment to emphasize just how unnecessary and wasteful this is.
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Benjamin Studebaker 