Tag: new deal
We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong
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Americans don’t trust one another, and they don’t trust the government. This mistrust is so pervasive that it can feel natural, but it isn’t. Profound distrust has risen within my lifetime; it is intensifying, and it threatens to make democracy impossible.
Many readers will say, “Of course I don’t trust the candidate who tried to steal the last election, or the party
Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History
If there is one statistic that best captures the transformation of the American economy over the past half century, it may be this: Of Americans born in 1940, 92 percent went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50 percent did. Over the course of a few decades, the chances of achieving the American dream went from a near-guarantee to a coin flip.
What happened?
One answer is that American voters abandoned the system
This Public Utility Has a Path Toward Clean Energy. Environmentalists Hate It.
On November 10 of last year, at a place called Paradise in western Kentucky, the Tennessee Valley Authority blew up the cooling towers of a large coal-fired power plant. The three stout towers, each 435 feet high, buckled at the waist in synchrony, then crumpled like crushed soda cans. Within 10 seconds, they’d collapsed into a billowing cloud of dust.
To anyone who watched the demolition happen, or saw the footage online, the message was clear: TVA, a sprawling,
Democrats Need to Sell the Reconciliation Package
With the finish line in sight (if still stubbornly out of reach) for the Democrats’ massive social-programs and economic development bill, the party now faces the challenge of focusing the attention of its key constituencies and the public on what remains in the package, not on what was cut in the exhausting legislative maneuvering.
To meet the objections primarily of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, party leaders underwent a grueling process of shrinking
Jeffrey Goldberg and Nancy Pelosi Q&A
Nancy Pelosi is juggling a series of looming deadlines. House Democrats must avoid a government shutdown and federal default, and they need to reach a consensus on advancing President Biden’s agenda through two different bills. This week, Pelosi announced that she would move to vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Thursday, even as progressives vowed not to support it unless a $3.5 trillion spending bill also passes. But despite the bind that Democrats are in, the House Speaker
The New Deal Program That Rewrote America
For a long time now, the New Deal has been our best—sometimes it seems like our only—model for an American government that sets aside obeisance to unfettered capitalism and comes to the aid of its people. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made no apologies for this approach, but he did try to explain it. “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity,” he said in 1936, accepting his party’s renomination, “than the consistent omissions of a