More on Piketty.
Kathy Geier: What Piketty’s Conservative Critics Get WrongThe Baffler: “A conservative backlash to Piketty was inevitable…
…the only surprise is that it’s taken so long to develop…. Send in the clowns!WCEG — The Equitablog
The Daily Piketty: Kathy Geier, Michael Bird, and Tim Noah
Brad DeLong
Piketty takes away the political justification that left used to move away from Keynesian policy after Carter. The right never claimed to represent the poor or disadvantaged... The left on the other hand made the claim that the reason they supported the .01% and deregulation was because it lifted all boats, current trade and capital markets equalized all, education would iron out the differences allowed social mobility. Piketty upended the Democrat party platform and the alliances. The question is 00 will the mostly white & rich California, Washington, Oregon and New England follow the Dems as they turn to policies that don't favor their very elite electorate. I see the risk as being Republicans use Piketty to jilt the tea party and try and gain the support of the parts of the dem base that simply don't like the social policies of republicans but like conservative tax, pro business and environmental policies of moderate republicans. The left wants the right to oppose Piketty so bad but the irony from the outside is that Piketty changes little on the right and makes it harder for the Dems to hold the middle of the country as they have to cede the far right policies they've adopted to alienate republicans to a radical fringe.
ReplyDeleteThe Democratic Party has already morphed into the moderate GOP post LBJ and losing the solid South that gave them an electoral advantage they could rely on. Then as the GOP turned harder right and campaign finance became more important, with large donors dominating, the Dems went for the fiscal conservatives with liberal social values, replacing the boll weevil Democrats they lost to integration with New Democrats and Blue Dogs. The difference between administrations now is the bases they need to cater to with some red meat now and then, but the core policy is the same.
ReplyDelete