'All About Order'
The Sunday Night Reader for 6/12/22
No new subscribers yet in June. Help us get on that by sharing the newsletter. Thanks!
‘Contributing to’ Inflation
Rep. Rodney Davis’ communications director took a pot shot at Nikki Budzinski this week, blaming her for helping to spike inflation. Budzinski is running for congress as a Democrat in the Illinois 13, which isn’t even Davis’ district anymore. What the comms director said: “As one of Biden's top budget staffers, Budzinski helped the Biden Admin push their reckless, multi-trillion-$ spending spree, contributing to the historic inflation that's crushing middle class families today.”
What I said: “This is the ‘spending spree’ that contributed to unemployment going from 14.7% to 3.6%, right? This is the middle class that faces prices set by S&P 500 companies that made $880 billion in stock buy backs in 2021 and are expected to do more than $1 trillion in 2022, yes?
Here's a blunt force thought exercise to be sure, but...$1T across some 330M Americans is more than $3K per person that could be offsetting inflation via lower prices for consumers rather than sitting in my 401K or accounts that oligarchs’ great-grandchildren will never spend. $3K per 2.5 people per household is $7,500. The median American household brings in $67,500/year. $7,500 doesn’t sound like a ton, but it is about 11% of the median American household's income.
Inflation is indeed very high right now. But the equivalent of a 11% raise would take a *lot* of the sting out for a $67,500 household, wouldn’t it?
I know that these are international companies and that their shareholders aren’t all Americans. But it certainly illustrates the scope of what it means to have $1 trillion per year benefit shareholders exclusively rather than consumers.
Next we do the fact that capital gains taxes are lower than taxes on middle-class wages and that sales taxes are completely regressive. Then we do straight-up price gouging. Then we do backing democracy in Ukraine rather than oil from Russia. Suddenly, the OP’s ‘contributing to’ is doing a lot more work than it was at first glance.”
Everything impacts everything else. Put trillions of federal dollars into the economy, and there will be inflation, as well as new jobs, higher wages, and innovation that creates the next round of new jobs and higher wages. But there are so many other levers that influence those things. And we often assume nothing can be done about those other things. If a conservative approach to government spending is on the table to scotch inflation, then a progressive approach to tax policy and corporate responsibility are on the table too.
‘She’s all about order’
This long-form profile of Dianne Feinstein, then and now, is a great example of the stories Rebecca Traister consistently delivers on women and power in America. It treats Feinstein, who is in decline at the age of 89, with care and agency. It leans heavy on color that provides insight rather than just dishing. It respects the many positive impacts she has had. And it holds her to account for the ways in which her brand of incrementalism and institutionalism is currently failing us.
From this excellent piece: “Feinstein is now both the definition of the American political Establishment and the personification of the inroads women have made over the past 50 years. Her career, launched in a moment of optimism about what women leaders could do for this country, offers a study in what the Democratic Party’s has not been able to do. As Feinstein consolidated her power at the top of the Senate, the party’s losses steadily mounted. It has lost control of the Supreme Court; it is likely about to lose control of Congress. Children are being gunned down by the assault weapons Feinstein has fought to ban, while the Senate — a legislative body she reveres — can only stand by idly, ultimately complicit. States around the nation are banning books about racism as Black people are being shot and killed in supermarkets. Having gutted the Voting Rights Act, conservatives are leveraging every form of voter suppression they can, while the Senate cannot pass a bill to protect the franchise. The expected overturning of Roe v. Wade this summer will mark a profound step backward, a signal that other rights won during Feinstein’s adulthood, including marriage equality and full access to contraception, are just as vulnerable.
As the storied career of one of the nation’s longest-serving Democrats approaches its end, it’s easy to wonder how the generation whose entry into politics was enabled by progressive reforms has allowed those victories to be taken away.” Read more.
An Appreciation: American Animals
Through a mix of documentary and fiction, American Animals tracks a 2004 college rare book heist gone bad — as most college rare book heists presumably do. The actors tell the story, not as recreation but as full-blooded narrative film. The men they portray share their stories Errol Morris-style, directly addressing the camera.
It’s an uncanny moment to stumble upon this five-year-old movie, as it’s populated with young white men who stare into chaos and meaninglessness and find only violence, a desire to be exceptional, and more chaos. We’ve heard it before, but this approach is weird and compelling and sticks the landing. It’s as insufferable as Holden Caufield telling his mediocre tale, as numb as Meursault killing an Arab. A true expression of those who believe there is no reason for anything and think that means they deserve to be important. (Director Bart Layton’s The Imposter is also excellent. It’s a bizarre changeling story from the scam artist’s point of view.)
