If This is the Best Liberalism Can Do, It’s Not Good Enough
by Umair
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. How’s everyone? Wherever in the world you are, I hope you’re doing ridiculously well. Welcome new readers, thanks old friends, and thanks again to all who’ve joined so far. Today we’re going to discuss…
Groan.
There’s this sort of interminable, exasperating, not-quite debate. And today we’re going to resolve it. Or attempt to. On one side, liberals, who go on endlessly, infinitely boasting how great the economy is, over and over again. On the other side, everyone else, sort of crying out, things are rough out there, and they kind of suck.
Now, before we resolve it, a little bit of meat to those bones.
That’s from the Atlantic. And from the Washington Post to the New York Times and way beyond, this sort of thing’s now become a trope or form or Genre Unto Itself: the economy’s booming, things are great, why don’t people, those fools, get it already?! In other words, the liberal establishment won’t give an inch, and just sort of keeps bellowing this line, as if saying it enough times will make people believe it.
But they don’t. When we ask people, their views on “the economy,” and I’ll come to why I put that in quotes shortly, are uniformly. Negative. Really negative. Just maybe 20% of people think it’s doing well, the vast majority are pessimistic, and that’s buoyed by all sorts of alarming stats about how people are actually living at the moment, like 70% of people feel financially traumatized, or are struggling to pay the bills, and so forth.
And so if you venture onto this thing called “the internet,” from Reddit to LinkedIn to TikTok, stories abound, and go viral every day, of just how painful times are. The latest is a TikTok trend gone mega-viral to the point of earning rejoinders from CEOs…about people…not getting large enough portions of fast food…and filming it all…for heaven’s sake…which is hardly a sign that things are any kind of wonderful out there.
So…what’s going on here? What we shouldn’t do is keep on playing out this debate, over and over again. Rather, we should try to resolve it. Here’s how I think I’d do so. It’s pretty simple, and it goes like this. Making sense of this mess? Let’s just take it face value. If we do that, we immediately sort of see something a little startling, which is…
To Liberals, This is The Best an Economy Can Be
Let’s just take them at their word. To liberals—and at the end, I’m going to remind you that I’m a liberal too—this is…what a good…great…economy is. The sort of overdone hype, to the point of Taylor Swift metaphors…it says that to liberals…this is maybe even the best an economy can be.
Just hold that thought in your mind for a second without disputing it, because we’re trying to think clearly. This is going to sort of maybe come off as a jeremiad, but I don’t mean it that way. I just want us to…think…clearly…about this mess.
So let’s summarize.
To liberals, this is a good, wonderful, awesome economy.
To liberals, this is all a good economy needs to be.
To liberals, this is the best kind of economy.
Each of those points matters. Why do liberals think this? Because they look at two indicators, more or less, and conclude that…if those are “right,” then “the economy is great.” If growth is positive, economy good. If unemployment low, economy good.
Now, it doesn’t take a genius to see that this is altogether too..simplistic. But never mind that. We’re not debating, we’re resolving. So let’s keep going.
What don’t liberals seem to care much about?
That real incomes are lower now than before the pandemic
That if real incomes are lower now, the economy’s not “growing” for the average person at all, but shrinking
And therefore, that said “growth” is phantom growth, where the top is getting wealthier by siphoning off the wealth of the middle and lower classes and social groups
That inflation’s at the heart of this fall in living standards
That most of the jobs being created aren’t ameliorating any of the above
And that all that has pretty catastrophic effects on well-being
Those effects, which we’ve gone into in plenty of other essays, range from the breakdown of social ties, to the rise of pessimism, anxiety, despair, to the loss of trust in institutions, and so on and so on—well known by now.
So. The point I want to make, first of all, is simple: to liberals, this is what a good economy is. In effect, liberalism’s saying: "this is as good as it gets, folks.”
But is that good enough?
If This is The Best Economy Liberalism Can Offer, Then It’s Not Good Enough
I don’t mean to be dramatic. I know it sounds that way, but again, 80% of people don’t think this is a “good economy.” They don’t think that because they’re struggling in many ways just to live sort of normal lives. And what all that says is something pretty simple:
If this is the best liberalism can do in terms of the economy, it’s not good enough.
And I think that’s both accurate and fair.
Because an economy isn’t just “growth” and “unemployment.”
Our notion of an economy must be deeper than that, if our politics are to resonate and count and matter to people. If all we’re looking at is aggregate statistics, and not even bothering to not just to disaggregate them, but to reality check them…all we’re doing is sort of distorting what the portrait of people’s lives is.
Think about the story of “growth” with me, which I tried to tell in those bullet points above. Liberals say, in this sort of now weirdly childish way, over and over again, growth means economy great!! But it’s not that simple, as I tried to explain. Average incomes lower than before the pandemic mean the average household hasn’t seen any of that growth. They’re poorer, and they feel that way, and so in that far more real sense, “growth” is a statistical illusion.
If we can’t even look that deeply into “an economy,” who’s going to care what we have to say about it? Aren’t we going to be wrong? And won’t people sort of reject and scorn us for preaching absurdities to them? If the average person’s income is lower now than it was just a few years ago, and that’s after decades of stagnation…I mean, come on now. If that’s “good,” then…what’s bad?
Let’s even imagine that 15-20% of “the economy’s bad” stuff is driven purely by politics, and that number of people are sort of just politically motivated to say it. Sure. But 80%? When the number’s that high, then there must be—must be—a very real problem before us. Either that, or something’s in the water supply.
So not being brave or wise enough to look beyond the surface leaves us in a kind of bind. We’re unable to come to positions that seem credible to people, which is where liberals are now. Sure, the 20% of people who are sort of wealthy and privileged and lucky enough to live lives of stability and comfort even in these troubled times might still believe things are great. But they’re not going to turn the tide for liberalism, are they? And make no mistake, that tide needs turning, because liberalism is currently dying a sort of swift and terrible death.
Does Liberalism Have a Future?
I said earlier that, hold on, I’m a liberal too. And I am. Maybe not in the narrow ideological-poltiical-party sense, but certainly in the philosophical one. I believe in…liberation. We’ve discussed all that before.
The problem for liberalism now is…well, there are many problems…but the big one is…what’s the point of it?