"Work Won't Love You Back"

"The wide appeal of entrepreneurialism also demonstrates its malleability. The former New Leftists who embraced entrepreneurship in founding organic grocery stores or alternative bookstores could feel secure that their businesses 'were simply "faithful and uncluttered expressions of yourself,"' Baker writes, even as they, too, became bosses demanding more and more of their workers. On the other end of the political spectrum, the Amway founders Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel preached a New Right language of 'family values' by promising that their direct-sales model would bring families closer together, as in the idealized mom-and-pop shops of yore. Deindustrialization and high levels of unemployment did much to undermine what was left of industriousness as a work ethic in the 1970s and ’80s, but the appeal of entrepreneurialism to both the New Right and the New Left positioned it not just as the heir apparent but as a new logic for organizing society overall.

Nick Juravich at The Nation reviews Erik Baker's Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.

The Return of History

"I think that there was excess state regulation and state interference in economies that had developed by the 1970s. And so, you had politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that tried to roll back some of that regulation. They were supported in this by very prominent economists, like Milton Friedman. The problem was that [they] went too far and attempted to undermine all forms of state activity, even necessary ones, for example, of regulating the financial system. And as a result, we ended up with a globalization that increased inequality and led to substantial instability in the global financial system. And this, of course, provoked a populist backlash that you see both on the left and the right, which partially explains why we are where we are today."

In a 2022 El Pais article, Sergio C. Fanjul interviews Francis Fukuyama.

"To Restore a Fundamental Principle of Fairness to Our Economy"

"But the FTC's decision to stop enforcing it decades ago triggered a seismic shift in America. It gave massive chains like Walmart free rein to squeeze suppliers for unfair discounts. Walmart's expansion went unchecked; manufacturers consolidated and shuttered factories; jobs vanished; and thousands of small businesses folded, leaving hollowed-out Main Streets and food deserts in their wake. Outside of the collapse of US manufacturing, few economic forces have done as much damage to the American landscape in the past 50 years."

Ron Knox at The Nation discusses a revival of the Robinson-Patman Act.

"Trump's Economic Plans Would Be Disastrous on a Grand Scale"

"Obama came into office in January 2009, amid a global financial collapse and recession. He did notch seventy-five straight months of job growth. Trump did sign a tax law that mostly helped corporations and the rich get richer. (He even bragged about it in those terms at Mar-a-Lago, telling wealthy friends that 'You all just got a lot richer.') That law added $1.9 trillion to the federal debt. And if Trump wins, the cycle will repeat, this time with President Joe Biden overseeing the handoff."

Jill Lawrence at The Bulwark writes, "Trump Wants to 'Fix' Our Booming Economy. Don't Let Him Near It."

"But They Disliked Democracy and Taxes and Regulation Far More"

"The aura of evil around the Nazis can make everything associated with them seem exotic and remote. It may be hard for us to imagine how respectable business leaders could enthusiastically support Hitler's election campaign. But their motives were mundane and familiar: pragmatism with a dash of ideological conviction."

Benjamin Hett at The New Republic argues that "[n]early a century later, many of our business leaders are blithely repeating the experiences of their German predecessors."

"Collectively the Busiest Shipping Hub in the Western Hemisphere"

"The consequences will play out in the months ahead as pocketbook issues quite likely decide the presidential election. But regardless of the election’s outcome, we should understand that Southern California is never a place apart from U.S. politics and its dilemmas. Instead, these have deep roots in the region. And today, the region continues to invest in imports and real estate as vehicles for prosperity — even as the adverse costs accumulate in national politics."

James Tejani at the Los Angeles Times connects economic past and present via the San Pedro Bay.

"He Misled the Public, Mismanaged the Crisis, and Missed Chances to Save Lives"

"These are unserious people in thrall to a sociopathic clown. Trump's greatest test came in the final year of his presidency when the nation faced a true emergency and he failed spectacularly. The U.S. death rate from COVID far exceeded that of peer nations. That was not due to excessive lockdowns or masking. It was due to incompetence in the White House."

Mona Charen at The Bulwark calls for "a great remembering" of Donald Trump's actions in 2020.

As does Timothy Noah at The New Republic.

And at Salon, Heather Digby Parton remembers Trump's whole term.

The End of Reaganomics

"The old Washington Consensus was built on the premise that if leaders got the economics right, then politics would follow. Cheap consumer goods would keep voters happy at home, trade ties between nations would destroy the incentive to wage war, and the desire to compete in global markets would encourage authoritarian regimes to liberalize. Reality has not been kind to those predictions. Free trade upended American politics, helping to elect a spiteful kleptocrat initially opposed by his own party. The immense wealth Russia amassed by selling oil and gas to Europe may have actually emboldened it to invade Ukraine. Access to global markets didn't stop China from doubling down on its authoritarian political model."

Rogé Karma at The Atlantic proclaims that "[t]hese are the terms on which the debate is now being waged: not whether to restrict free trade, but where, how, and how much."

"We Presume We Understand It as Long as We're Not Asked to Explain It, but It Becomes Inexplicable as Soon as We're Put to the Test"

"As with climate change, however, the only thing more difficult than such an effort would be trying to live with the alternative. Whiteness may seem inevitable and implacable, and Toni Morrison surely had it right when she said that the world 'will not become unracialised by assertion'. (To wake up tomorrow and decide I am no longer white would help no one.) Even so, after 350 years, it remains the case, as Nell Irvin Painter argues, that whiteness 'is an idea, not a fact'. Not alone, and not without much work to repair the damage done in its name, it still must be possible to change our minds."

In a 2021 Guardian article, Robert P. Baird explores the "invention of whiteness."

"What Hath Neoliberalism Wrought?"

"The endlessly iterated message of this lobbying, Oreskes and Conway say, is that economic and political freedoms are indivisible. Any restriction on the first is a threat to the second. This is the 'big myth' of their title, and they show us, in somewhat fire-hose detail, how a lot of people spent a lot of time and money putting that idea into the mind of the American public. The book is an immense scholarly feat, but the authors insist that it is not just an 'academic intervention.' They have a political purpose. They think that one role of government has been to correct for market failures, and, if government is discredited, how is it going to correct for what may be the biggest market failure of all: climate change?"

At The New Yorker, Louis Menand reviews Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway's The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.

"Cold War II"

"Great powers, then, must not only have substantial populations and resources, but must also use them to support a world-class national industrial base in a prolonged and sustainable way. Neither state socialist crash programs that peter out over time nor bubbles and booms inflated by central banks in liberal market economies are adequate. To date in the industrial era, developmental states, both authoritarian like present-day China and democratic like the midcentury United States, have been more successful than communist regimes and free market liberal regimes."

Michael Lind at Tablet argues that we "are in a new era of global conflict."

"When the Cold War Ends, It Loosens Not Just the Motivation for Conservatives to Get Involved Internationally, but Also the Motivation for Them to Champion Democracy"

"We think of the end of the Cold War as reshaping the geopolitical landscape, but it also really changed economics and politics in the United States. There is a major recession in the U.S. at the time of the '92 election, and parts of California that have been propped up by government spending and the aerospace industry had collapsed almost overnight. There was this sense of uncertainty about what the world is going to look like going forward and who is going to prosper and who is going to fail. It's also at a pivot point in decades of deindustrialization and shifting toward a knowledge economy and a service economy. So things really were in flux, and I think the politics of the day reflect that."

Ian Ward at Politico interviews Nicole Hemmer, author of Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.

"The Week That Changed the World"?

"That opening paved the way for President J[immy] C[arter] to strip Taiwan (as the Republic of China) of U.S. diplomatic recognition in January 1979 and switch ties to the PRC. That allowed U.S. investors and manufacturers to take advantage of the economic liberalization within Chinese paramount leader D[eng] X[iaoping]'s 'reform and opening' policy that helped transform China from impoverished backwater to the economic powerhouse—and increasingly, the U.S. military rival—that it is today."

Phelim Kine at Politico tries to "parse the lessons of the 50th anniversary of President R[ichard] N[ixon]'s historic trip to China."

And at The Bulwark, Mona Charen adds that "The Verdict Is In: Trump Wasn't Right About China."

"A Fight L.A. Has Picked and Won for 150 Years"

"Climate was what L.A. sold, and really, for years, that's all it had to sell. Far into the 19th century, L.A. was a scruffy village of dust and mayhem—but just look up, the new Angelenos insisted. Look at our fine mountains, breathe our air, fragrant (eventually) with citrus blossoms. Look at us—in shirtsleeves, in the winter!"

In the Los Angeles Times, Patt Morrison writes that Los Angeles "made its first fortune by selling winter."

"Boo Berry Is the Only Breakfast Cereal Mascot with Nipple Rings"

"For 50 years, these spooky cereals have haunted your breakfast aisle, creating a fanbase unlike any other. This is the story of where they came from, how they took off and what they meant to the world"

Brian VanHooker at Mel presents "An Oral History of Monster Cereals."

"'Freedom of Choice,' Blazoned by Realtors on L.A. Freeway Billboards Half a Century Ago, Divides America Today"

"White Californians overwhelmingly voted for the Realtors' proposition in November 1964, on the same ballot that Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater in the presidential race. The victory was so sweeping that even after Proposition 14 was ruled unconstitutional, Reagan adopted the Realtors' message as his own. The Realtors' use of the libertarian language of individual freedom to maintain social conformity has unified conservatives ever since."

Gene Slater at the Los Angeles Times writes that "[o]nly strong government action could have overcome the Realtors' legacy of racially exclusive suburbs and organized prejudice."

"Elections Are Usually a Contest Between People"

"'That being said, we still have to do the people's business. … And there are other societal challenges that get pushed to the side, at least temporarily, while this recall issue is debated. So all I'm saying is once this election is over, I think people of good intentions in both Republican and Democrat parties ought to sit down and see if they can't agree to reduce the questions on the ballot to just one question.'"

Emily Hoeven at CalMatters interviews former governor Gray Davis about California's recall election.

David Edward Burke at Washington Monthly calls for an overhaul of the recall process.

And Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times says that the recall campaign has ignored California's biggest problem: income inequality.

"Shows How the Ascendance of Neoliberalism Is in Large Part a Reaction Against Not Just Marxism or Workers' Movements but, Specifically, Keynesian Liberalism"

"What might a genuinely Keynesian American economy look like? Public works spending on bridges, roads, parks, levees, railroads, and transit would help repair our long-neglected infrastructure. Investments in scientific research (including basic science), medical research, and green technology would unleash virtuous cycles of growth and innovation. But Keynes wouldn't stop there. A strong believer in the idea that the economy should serve human needs—not the other way around—he would support funding for libraries, universities, and other regional cultural institutions, trusting that these institutions might help diffuse our urban-rural divides."

At The Hedgehog Review, Charlie Tyson reviews Zachary D. Carter's The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.

"Can We Have Come Full Circle?"

"Nixon announced his Family Assistance Plan in August, 1969 and fought for over two years for it, with limp liberal interest since it was, after all, Richard Nixon. More crucially there was conservative resistance in the GOP. California Gov. Ronald Reagan used 'FAP' to peel away Republicans from Richard Nixon. Reagan led the GOP move away from Nixon’s cash for the poor approach and toward the 1990s welfare 'reform.'"

John Roy Price at The Hill wonders if a revival is possible for Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan.

"Too Successful for Its Own Good"

"'They did not anticipate, and did not plan for the promenade to become the kind of economic juggernaut that it became by the late '90s,' Loomis says. 'What happened by the late '90s, early 2000s is that the promenade became so successful that the real estate prices just went skyrocketing, and at that point only national retailers could afford the rent that property owners were expecting. So, you end up losing a lot of the kind of local shops that gave the street a kind of local flavor.'"

In a 2020 Curbed Los Angeles article, Hadley Meares provides an overview of the recent history of Santa Monica's Third Street.