Perhaps I’m taking too much of an American centric understanding of his opinion, but the political economy was in full swing during the Pandemic with vaccine subsidies, stimulus, followed by Democrats pushing through a social security increase, student loan forgiveness, and I think we extended unemployment for quite some time, along with rent assistance and eviction moratoriums, and that whole infrastructure deal. They want to do a bunch of other stuff too.
“A third possibility would be voters telling their governments to stop these policies by voting them out of office.”
In America we are about to go through a midterm where the Republicans will take back parts of Congress, effectively shutting down Democrats ability to continue that political economy. Our rhetoric and political climate is also setting up the foundation for another Trump presidency, and he won’t push for jack shit in terms of government programs (if anything, more tax cuts).
It’s a bipolar situation, we are either going to hit the breaks entirely on the political economy with the Republicans, or go full swing with it with Democrats, which I think will leave us in a stagnant place as we shift between both parties over the next 20+ years.
You are describing the past 20 years in terms of politics. Basically, we've had a sequence of relatively powerless presidents of both parties held hostage by a hopelessly divided senate and house failing to agree on much at all except printing more money to keep things going. Both parties have fueled their respective agendas with debt. That is indeed looking like it will extend into the near future.
I know it’s a lot to remember way back to the 90s, but the Clinton presidency was based on an aggressive program of deficit and debt reduction. It worked extremely well and without major inflation, to the point that the Federal Reserve chairman actually began to publicly fret about government debt levels becoming too low. But then in the 2000s it was completely reversed by a Republican President and away we went. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have accumulated debt since. But the lesson I took from this was (1) the US can reduce deficits if it wants to (and without inflation), and (2) don’t believe political rhetoric about spending or fiscal responsibility unless you see action.
Also makes me wish the Iraq war spending had been put into climate change prevention. Can only imagine how much better off we’d all be today.
“A third possibility would be voters telling their governments to stop these policies by voting them out of office.”
In America we are about to go through a midterm where the Republicans will take back parts of Congress, effectively shutting down Democrats ability to continue that political economy. Our rhetoric and political climate is also setting up the foundation for another Trump presidency, and he won’t push for jack shit in terms of government programs (if anything, more tax cuts).
It’s a bipolar situation, we are either going to hit the breaks entirely on the political economy with the Republicans, or go full swing with it with Democrats, which I think will leave us in a stagnant place as we shift between both parties over the next 20+ years.
Not sure if this is good or bad.