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Feb 9
Why Biden's Vision Matters — For America, And for the World
The Challenge of Turning America Around — And What It'll Really Take to Do It
By now, the same old stale debate's broken out. Politics as a sport. Biden's a doddering old man! Don't run, old man! He can't win! He shouldn't! What a disgrace. Hello, does anyone remember substance? Forget these jokers. I'm going to put my economist hat on and teach you why Biden's vision for America matters. Teach, because I think that Americans aren't hearing the full story, at all, really, the coverage is so abysmal. This isn't a sport. It's about the future of a nation. It deserves to be treated with a little respect and dignity, no?
To begin teaching you why Biden's vision for America matters, I'm going to start with a question. Why is it that Biden commands by now the respect and admiration of world leaders from Trudeau to Macron? A respect Trump had completely squandered for America, respect that had to be earned back? I don't say that like a pundit — to teach you you should suck up. I say it so that you reflect on it. These are senior statespeople. They are some of the most eminent figures the world has, and their countries have. Why is it that they…look up…to…Joe Biden?
When I say "look up," I'm not kidding. They do. That's a fact. Europe's scrambling, racing, to copy Biden's agenda. Canada is, too, even though it's behind. The effects of Biden's vision — and we'll discuss just what it is — are seismic. Biden's vision is that consequential. Australia's going to race to copy it soon — it has to, it can't be a dirty, fossil-intensive economy forever after all. China's already bewildered and more than a little panicked. Biden is changing a) the global economy, b) the world order, and he's doing that by transforming c) what the future is about.
Those are big words, so let's go back to the fact that leaders from Macron to Trudeau look up to Biden. Again, look up to. They openly champion copying Biden's agenda. When their opponents accuse America of "protectionism," — and we'll come shortly to why — they're the first to say, no, we need to do this. Exactly this.
Let me translate that for you in plain English. In just two years, under Joe Biden, America's become a world leader again. That's historic. Nobody thought that could happen. Not Trump, not pundits, not intellectuals, not even those with a pretty good track record of predicting the future, like yours truly. It seemed that America's best days were long behind it. But now? Here's the world, looking up to America. That's not because of Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's not because of Donald Trump or the Supreme Court or Elon Musk. It's because of Joe Biden.
Credit should be given where it's due, and the very first thing that I have to teach you is that Americans need to give Biden credit — a lot more credit — for already making America a world leader again.
Now. What am I saying? Have I drunk the kool-aid of irrationally sunny optimism?
Far from it. I'm not saying that America's troubles are over. I'm saying precisely the opposite. Let me continue my story.
Why do some of the world's most forward thinking leaders…look up…to Joe Biden?
America is a profoundly troubled nation. It's beset by crisis on every front. And there's a reason for that. No American President in the last five decades or so has had a vision for America. For what America should be, do, create, build, grow, enact, become. None of them. I know some of you are going to think they have, but they haven't. Let's discuss that, because it's important that you understand this lack of vision, and how it's at the heart of America's decline.
How did America become a profoundly troubled nation? Well, let's think back in history. After the last World War, America was clearly the world's leader. It had a Golden Age — no, certainly not for everyone. It was still a segregated nation. Economically, America made stunning gains, and those economic gains paved the way for civil rights in just a few short decades, because of course you can hardly have democracy without prosperity. And then, around 1970, America's post-war Golden Age came to a swift, sudden end.
Why was that? It was for a very, very simple reason — one hiding in plain sight. Around 1971, America went from being a net exporter, to being a net importer. Now, there's nothing wrong with being a net consumer — for a while. At some point, the balance has to shift back, because, well, otherwise, you end up in a) debt, b) poverty, c) stagnation, and d) political trouble, which is usually fascism, that follows. But in America, the balance never swung back. America just kept on…consuming and consuming…more and more…to this very day. And so it grew more indebted, while its economy stagnated, jobs disappeared, downward mobility accelerated, and the Dream finally died, as the middle class became a memory, a minority, a thing that didn't really exist anymore.
Why, in turn, was that? Why did the balance never swing back? In this case, the literal balance — of trade? Because for five decades, since 1970 or so, America hasn't had a President with a vision. Now. I'm going to explain this as simply as I can, but it's still a bit complex, so buckle up.
How did America react to the woes that set in the 70s, as a result of the post-war boom ending? It elected Reagan. What was Reagan's answer to America's mounting economic woes? It was "reactionary," to use a ten-dollar word. That means that Reagan harked back to America's founding myth of self-reliance, and told people — a certain kind of person, especially — that they shouldn't have to pay for those other people's kids' educations, healthcare, right down to roads, utilities, and retirement. You know what I'm talking about here — I don't have to spell it out. The Reagan Revolution killed two birds with one stone: it gave Americans an easy answer to their newfound economic troubles, and it was one that let them go back to thinking of certain groups of people as liabilities, layabouts, parasites. We could save money, by not investing in those people, who didn't deserve to have things like education and healthcare anyways, and that was how America was to fix its bewildering, new economic plight.
That wasn't a vision for America. It was a vision for some Americans, sure. When Reagan scapegoated some people as useless liabilities, we all know, today, as we knew then, who he was talking about. It was code, which let Americans go back to building something like a segregated society, under the banner of "freedom of choice." But that's not America — it's just some Americans. Dividing a nation. Promising some prosperity, by denying others.
Now. At the same time, Europe and Canada were doing precisely the opposite. When I say precisely, I mean it. They were building the great systems of universal public goods for which they're famous today. Europe was building high-speed rail, Canada, cutting edge healthcare, Europe, investing in its universities — free for all, Canada, in the same thing. See how different this was from what happened in America in the 80s? Europe and Canada had visions. For their countries. For everyone in them. Real visions — not just "hey, if we scapegoat those people, the rest of us can feel better, and maybe have a little more by denying them!" Again, that's not a vision.
The proof is in the pudding. By the 90s, Europe was beginning to roar ahead, and so was Canada. But America's woes were only mounting. Reagan's revolution hadn't really done much to solve America's basic problem, because it was…hiding…that very problem…under a veil of not-so-thinly veiled bigotry and racism. Yes, bigotry and racism. Remember AIDS? How many died of it, because the government scapegoated them? I remember that, because as a teenager plenty of my friends were gay, and they began to die. I digress. Europe and Canada roared ahead, while America didn't. That's because the Reagan Revolution didn't solve the fundamental problem: how does a nation that's importing and consuming more…and producing less…make it in the world? The answer to that is: it doesn't. It just has to borrow more, slides into stagnation, and eventually, eats its own seedcorn — hey, don't educate those kids!! — as a flimsy excuse for keeping things going.
Then along came Clinton. Clinton's answer to all this? He didn't have one, either. Instead, he did something even more perverse than Reagan, arguably. He doubled down. Clinton signed the trade deals which made China America's factory floor — and by the turn of the 21st century, America was dependent on China in a noticeable way. The global economy changed as a result of Clintonomics, in a perverse and genuinely weird way: America would borrow money…from China…to buy stuff…from China. China piled up huge amounts of American debt, in order to…keep on selling stuff to America. But China was a poor country. Why was it lending money to the world's richest one? Even a child should be able to see how backwards that is.
Clinton's Big Idea was a derivative of Reagan's. What was Reagan's? That America could "save" it's way to prosperity again. If Americans just stopped investing in each others' education, healthcare, retirement, and so forth, then, hey presto, savings would yield prosperity. Right? Wrong? Makes sense on the surface, but only if you don't understand the problem of the economy not making enough stuff anymore. You can't save your way to prosperity if…there's less and less coming in every year…as there was for most Americans. Clinton's idea was precisely the same, in economic terms: Americans could save their way to prosperity. This time, it'd happen not just by slashing investment in public goods — for those hated minorities — but also by Americans paying less for stuff manufactured overseas. But of course the obvious question was: what about the jobs Americans had? If you were going to save because stuff was cheaper because it was made by sweatshops — moral concerns aside, as gross as that is — fine…but what if your income came from making that stuff in the first place?
What…then? Clinton didn't have an answer to that. Neither did America's economists, who, foolishly, incredibly, backed all this. The results were depressingly predictable — even a kid could have foreseen what was to come. Huge, huge numbers of jobs — and by that I mean stable, good ones, careers, with benefits, futures — were destroyed. But those were exactly what had led Americans to upward mobility, which was now fading. Take those away — and…bang. This was the age of the Great Hollowing Out. It's when the Rust Belt suffered some of its worst losses. When the heartland's heart was ripped out, communities in despair, poverty spiraling like a gyre, "deaths of despair" beginning to explode outwards.
This wasn't a vision for America, either. What was it? It was a vision for the world, maybe. Make stuff in the cheapest way possible — doesn't matter how those people are mistreated, in some distant country, doesn't matter what corners are cut, doesn't matter how the planet suffers, because now you have to ship stuff by the supertanker around the globe, when something as simple as a broom used to be made in every state or region or town. This was something more like a childish fantasy of power, buttressed by more than a little short-sightedness. Like I said, anyone should be able to see that saving your way to better times is all well and good…but only if it doesn't cost you your income to begin with. If it does, that's a false economy.
So Clintonomics failed, too. Then came the beginning age of America's age of turmoil. Bush Junior arrived, and soon enough, he had to fight a War on Terror. I'll leave aside the wisdom of all that, as tragic and horrible as 9/11 — it's enough to say, yes, terror and fundamentalism are wrong and bad, and there were better ways to fight them. Bush was followed by Obama, who found himself in a strange position. He was an orator for the ages — but he was curiously incurious intellectually, pragmatically. He was a Clintonite by another name, with a modern gloss — again, he believed in the old shibboleths of markets, privatization, individualism, and made those the very real pillars of his politics. Obamacare was his signal accomplishment — a strange market-based system for healthcare that, while it might have been an improvement on just letting the "free market" (read: monopolies) rip…hardly did much to solve America's abysmal healthcare. Obama's Presidency, again, did little to nothing to solve America's real problems, and the middle class continued to decline.
And that declining middle class presaged the rise of a figure like Trump, because when societies go through troubled times, they turn to demagogues, who revive old bigotries and hatreds, scapegoating minorities for the woes of the pure and true.
That's a lot of history. Too much, probably. But I want you to see the point. The one that isn't being made. No American President had a vision for America in the last five decades. Not one. Not Reagan, not Clinton, not Bush, not Bush Junior, not even Obama. All these figures had plans and ideologies, some were dumbstruck by circumstance, and some even had their heart in the right place. What none of them had was a vision for America.
By now, you should understand that I mean that in a precise, formal, almost technical sense. America's Golden Age had ended at the precise moment in history it went from being an exporter to an importer. That should have said something. The link is obvious when I point it out, no? And yet for the last five decades, Americans have been told to believe that they can just go on…consuming…endlessly…mindlessly…thoughtlessly…and it doesn't matter what their society makes, creates, builds, grows, transforms, seeds, sows, harvests. That America can be a nation of consumers, who import everything, without making much of anything.
Sure, here and there, there's a success that brings to mind the now-gone Golden Age — Apple and its iPhones, or maybe Google. But the central idea has by now permeated the America mind so deeply that most don't even stop to question: sure, we can on consuming and importing, endlessly, without making, creating, building as much even remotely proportionately.
This is a retelling of exceptionalism. It's a kind of "privilege" — a word I don't like to use, but in this case, it applies. The story Americans have heard is that they're special, entitled, privileged — they're the only people in the world who can consume and import, without having to make and produce, just because, well, it's their natural, inherent right to walk into Wal-Mart and just have tons of stuff sitting there in a Super Bowl sized stadium of a store, that's all made in China. Or Viet Nam. Or Pakistan. Or wherever. Doesn't matter. Those people are producers. Us? Americans? We're the consumers. We get to enjoy the stuff the world makes, and that's our main, real, primary, only job, our role in the world. We're special.
It's easy to see why this story is false. Sure, the world is happy to make stuff for Americans to import and consume. But the price has been incredibly steep. America's grown indebted, massively, as a nation. It's people have grown indebted to the point that the average American now dies in debt. It hasn't been able to invest in public goods, because preserving that inherent right to consumption by "saving" — which just means investing less in society, so I can keep my levels of consumption up — has taken priority over, say, everyone having healthcare or higher education or high-speed transport or other universals which are basic rights by now in Canada and Europe.
America's troubles are about its place in the world. It's true that they're about more than that, yes. Am I crazy? Don't I see the bigotry and hate and injustice and rage and lunacy? Of course I do. But those are byproducts of a position in the world which is about spending more than you earn, being a net importer and consumer, not making, producing, sowing, seeding, creating nearly enough. Apple and Google aren't going to employ every American in a stable, upper middle class job — they're not even enough to employ California.
That is why Biden's vision matters. It's the first one America's had. In the contemporary era. Five decades for a nation to not have had a vision is a long time. That's longer, in fact, than the Soviet Union stagnated. America's been able to do it because it's post-war boom made it richer than that doomed nation. But even America's wealth and power couldn't prevent the obvious consequence of consuming more than you produce, and importing more than you export, for a very, very long time, which is that you grow effectively poor.
Biden's vision — and you should know this by now — is about undoing all of that. All of it. It's about an America that makes stuff the world needs again — microchips, clean energy, green manufacturing. In a big, muscular way. Why is Europe so alarmed and panicked by this? Because until, well, this year or so, its own efforts at most of that were what amounted to world leadership. Those efforts were good and nice and worthwhile — but also way, way too little, way too slow, way too late. The world's first green steel plant is in Europe. It produced its first batch…in…2021. Maybe you see the problem, and if you don't let me spell it out, the planet's already in serious trouble. Europe's copying Biden because he is beating it at its own game. And if he does, then America's fortunes change, too.
Remember the foundational myth of Reaganomics and Clintonomics — which was the same one? We can "save" our way back to prospserity. In theory, sure, but not if it costs the jobs from which you make an income in the first place. Not if it means starving investment in public goods so that you can keep your levels of consumption from falling so fast — because you need healthcare and education and transport, and a society does, if its to keep on having rising living standards, instead of plunging into chaos. Cutting your way to prosperity doesn't work. What you think you are "saving" is usually a false economy, taking from behind your back with the other hand. This approach has never worked once in modern history. To prosper as a nation, nations need to transform the levels at which they create, make, build, transform, sow. There is no other way.
This is what Bideonomics is about. It is about rebuilding an America whose economy resembles that of the post-war Golden Age. Only that nation is one that can have things like universal public goods, from healthcare to education to transport and so forth, because right now, Americans can't afford them. If I ask the average American to pay an extra 10% in taxes — hey, make it 20%, to hit European levels — so that everyone, including them, can have all those nice things, they'll look at me like I'm crazy. They can't make ends meet as it is. America's too poor to become the society it wants to be right now. That is why, as much as Americans say they want European style social contracts, they don't vote for them — they can't afford to.
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Bidenomics cuts the Gordian knot at the heart of American collapse. It promises to revitalize America in an incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and sophisticated way. I don't say that lightly, and I don't say things like that often. That's because its causality is correct. From a better economy comes a stronger society, democracy, politics. From rising living standards come newfound trust, confidence, optimism, all of which underpin the sense that you matter, that you'r not just a cog, a nobody, just like, hey, that demagogue says — who uses that sympathy to transform your sense of betrayal and futility into hate. It is — let me say it again — an incredibly thoughtful vision. It contends with the central problem, which is an America that's been made to become indolent, almost classically degenerate, in the Roman sense, consuming and importing far more than it sows and creates, and worse, has been led to believe that state of affairs can last forever, without producing stagnation, decline, and collapse.
Why do world leaders…look up…to Joe Biden? Now we can answer that question. It's not that he's doing something unexpected, or surprising, or even shocking. Trump did all that, too. It's that he's done something remarkably rare, especially in the world of politics. He's learned from history. Its mistakes. The very own ones of his colleagues. He is outgrowing the ideologies and fixities he himself grew up with. And striking out towards somewhere new, which, in a sense, is the road back home. Biden's vision is about restoring America's position in the world — which isn't about "Making it Great Again," but making it a leader again.
This story, the power of this set of ideas, needs to be far, far better told in America. This is something we should all understand. And maybe treasure a little bit, too.
Umair
February 2023
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