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Should Americans look back nostalgically on the economy of the 1950s and 1960s? If so, what lessons should policymakers learn from this time period, and how can they be applied to boost economic opportunity today? On today’s episode, I’ll be discussing these questions and more with Jim Tankersley.
Jim is a tax and economics reporter for The New York Times, where he writes about the state of America’s middle class and the decline of economic opportunity across much of the US. Previously, Jim was the policy and politics editor at Vox and an economic policy correspondent for The Washington Post. He is the author of the recently released book, The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of America’s Middle Class.
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The host sounds like a frightened child in discussing immigration. He stated off by carefully alluding the progressive criticism of this book. At least the author was willing to confront it straight-up. Is the Hoover institution so left wing that they have scared their fellows into hard-core progressivism?
I live in Mcdowell County WV. I have experienced the deviating impact of elite decisions on middle class jobs. A Mcdowell coal miner could make from $50,000 to 100,000 a year. The mines provided the training. The elites decided to eviscerate the industry. Nearby, the furniture industry was eviscerated by elite decision to let China and other Asian countries destroy the American production. Read Factory Man, by Beth Macy, a lefty journalist who decided to report truthfully and not deny reality of the Appalachain furniture industry. Read Victor Davis Hanson on conditions in the Central Valley of California. Get out of your office. Don’t be afraid of left wing opprobrium.
After some reflection, it seemed, at the beginning of the show, the host was frightened of the possible reaction of his peers for even considering the arguments of this book. Apparently, if a scholarly work can be interpreted to be helpful to a “populist” (Trumpian?), it is dangerous to discuss it, even if the author disavows such interpretations. The fear, the trepidation, the obsequious nature of this pander to progressive thought-control frightens me as much as the host is frightened of left-wing peer disapproval.