The Problem with Nominating a Weak Candidate for President

I feel for President Biden. I really do. I feel for the Democrats. I really do.

I feel for AOC. Here's her little problem. She thinks that the senior Dems are all sitting around doing nothing but slapping each other on the back and downing some bourbon. But they need to Act Now!

“If the president does pursue and start to govern decisively using executive action and other tools at his disposal, I think we’re in the game,” she said. “But if we decide to just kind of sit back for the rest of the year and not change people’s lives — yeah, I do think we’re in trouble. So I don’t think that it’s set in stone. I think that we can determine our destiny here.”

Guess what Sandy. The reason that Biden and Democrats in general are in trouble is precisely because you chaps in one year have managed to "change people's lives." For the worse. A lot worse.

Americans are in trouble, Democrats are in trouble, lefties like you, AOC, are in trouble because in early 2021 instead of saying: wow, after all the money printing and checks-for-everyone last year with COVID we had better trim our sails and get the economy back on track before we start handing out more loot and plunder.

But no. In order to "change people's lives" dontcha know, you guys passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 with checks for all.

So businesses all across the land found that nobody wanted to hire on to work for them. You think that maybe that is a problem, Sandy?

And now we have inflation roaring into double digits like it did in 1980. Before you were born, Sandy, at the end of 1989.

See, the way I figure, Sandy, you were conceived just after the third GOP president in a row had been elected. Do you understand why? Because in 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected to "make it stop." Meaning inflation and crazy lefties. Then Reagan was reelected in 1984 with a resounding majority to keep that "morning in America" going. Then George Bush was elected, three in a row. That very rarely happens.

And then, on or about your 3rd birthday, Sandy, Bill Clinton was elected president as a New Democrat promising that, hey, we aren't like the spend-and-inflate Democrats of the old days. No siree. We are New. We are Moderate. We are different.

And then, in January 1993, on taking office, Bill Clinton suddenly turned around and said OMG, I just looked at the numbers and things are worse than I thought. So it's going to be pedal to the metal on tax-and-spend. I just hafta.

And do you know what happened next, Sandy? Next was the 1994 midterms when the Republicans won both Houses of Congress for the first time in over 40 years! The GOP gained 54 seats in the House! Imagine! It's easy if you try.

So now President Biden is releasing about a third of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But, but, but! I thought that fossil fuels were Over. That the future was electric cars and buses and wind and solar. 

What's the problem Joey?

Well, we know what the problem is. It is that Joe Biden didn't really "win" the Democratic nomination for president. He was handed the nomination by the wise men of the party. In part because they didn't want Bernie Sanders to be the nominee.

In other words, the wise men of the Democratic Party wanted to run with a man who could be sold as a moderate. Rather than a crazy lefty like Bernie.

Are you still listening, Sandy?

But, because Biden was handed the nomination rather than winning it in a fair fight with all the other candidates, he is weak. He can't stand up and tell the crazies to go fly a kite. And lefties have spending plans from here to eternity.

That's why we have had the budgetary train wreck of the last year, with Democrats trying to pass multi-trillion dollar spending bills when they have a 50-50 Senate and a 222-213 House. You don't get to pass pedal-to-the-metal spending with those kind of numbers. But when the lefty idiots and the Progressive Caucus are demanding action, well the old guard like Biden and Pelosi have to sound the charge and let the young enthusiasts do their Charge of the Light Brigade and learn a bloody lesson. Maybe.

AOC is all upset that the young people that voted for Biden and worked to get him elected are being pushed aside.

Could be. But let's do an Ike and make the problem bigger. Maybe the problem is with lefty ideologues like you, Sandy, and the lefty profs at all the universities, and the lefty media that censors non-lefty content. So that young people Literally Know Nothing, except what they learned from their lefty teachers and the lefty comedians and the lefty social media that censors all non-lefty content.

Maybe, Sandy, you and your pals like Saikat Chakrabarti have flown young people into a box canyon, telling them lies and fantasies about what politics can do for them.

And maybe next year all those young people are going to be wondering what hit them and how come they believed the half-baked lies of people like you, Sandy.

But I expect it will take a while longer before they really start to wonder. People don't just quit a cult the first time it disappoints them. Typically it takes years, because we humans tend to believe our priests and our shamans and our handsome political leaders. Until we are dying on the field or battle or starving in some crazy lefty famine.

Yep. Things don't look to good right now for Sandy and Joey.  But there's a reason for that. It is that Joey is too weak to do the right thing, and Sandy is too stupid.

Just What is a University For?

Stop Press: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is re-instituting consideration of SAT and ACT scores for its student applicants. Said Stu Schmill, MIT dean of admissions:

“We believe a [testing] requirement is more equitable and transparent than a test-optional policy.”

So that's all right.

But really, what the Sam Blazes is university for? To learn a skill? You could get that in an apprenticeship or in on-line courses.  To build character? Yes, but that is such a guy thing. Clearly, the ladies are telling us, with all the talk of micro-aggressions and lived experience, that they don't like being challenged. They want to be baby-sat.

OK, then maybe university is to learn the wisdom of the ages. Well then, of course, there would be no right or wrong. No cancel culture or lefty professors from stem to stern. That was the idea, back in the day. Oxford and Cambridge made their young ruling-class scions study the classics because they wanted them to know about all the ups and downs and ins and outs of being a ruling class. No holds barred, because for them the name of the game was that to hold onto political power as the ruling class you needed to be smarter than the other guys.

Of course, university was also where they trained the priests in the state church. That was the idea of George Eliot's Fred Vincy of Middlemarch going to Cambridge. To become a priest in the Church of England. That would be higher status than his father Mayor Vincy's status as a businessman in Middlemarch.

Then the Germans invented the research university to make Germany strong enough to deal with France.

Today, obviously, the point of the university is to churn out good little boys and girls that all know how to be activists and get into the non-profit sector in NGOs and activism. You know, I think that would be cool if such an education were an internship. But to charge $60,000 per year? I think that the ruling class should pay for the training of its shock troops and not make the shock troops pay for their training. Of course, back in the day you had to buy commissions in the army.

But then I'm just a cranky old guy that never liked school, and got the hell out of education as soon as I got me a bachelors degree in civil engineering. And then became an autodidact by reading all the thinkers on my own.

Thing is: I think that education teaches people how to fit into the existing society in a nice little salaried slot in some bureaucracy somewhere. It might be corporate or it might be government.

But what if the future is different? What if the nice assumptions of today get turned upside down and the good little boys and girls dutifully prepare for a life that is Gone with the Wind? I suppose that's what a chap like Peter Turchin is telling us with his notion of "elite overproduction." Joel Kotkin is saying the same thing with his idea of "the coming revenge of the disappointed."

The question is: will the disappointed take their revenge on the ruling class? Or on the middle-class Commoners?

The best thing would be if they all signed up as activists in movements that attacked each other rather than ordinary middle-class deplorable America. Because, you know, when people are angry, they just want to draw blood. And don't necessarily think too clearly about who is to blame for their misery.

The other interesting thing is, of course, that the overwhelming majority of disappointed college graduates are probably women. And I don't know how women -- liberal women -- act politically when they want revenge. Like I say: women expect to be protected. When they are not they attach to a new protector. But how would that work in today's world? I just don't know.

No Liberals, Politics is Not the Answer!

Want to know the why of "gun violence" in black Chicago? It couldn't be, could it, that 

According to City of Chicago data, in every year from 1999 to 2009, more than 80 percent of all black women who gave birth were single.

I mean, imagine if poor women were pretty careful to keep the father of their baby around so that 1) they would have the financial support of the father and 2) the children would have a father around to teach them whatever it is that fathers provide.

Yes. Back in the day George Gilder wrote Visible Man about a teenage girl that had a baby and the father, a disabled ex-Marine, worked and supported her. Until she was old enough to apply for welfare and a gubmint apartment. Then she dumped him. I first wrote about this in 2011.

Then there is Ron Unz reviewing his California anti-bilingual education initiative of 25 years ago. Proposition 227 it was: "English for the Children." He was prompted to "do something" about bilingual education because he had read in The Los Angeles Times the following.

A group of poor Latino garment workers in Downtown Los Angeles had become so outraged at the refusal of their local Ninth Street elementary school to teach their children English that they had organized a public boycott.

Here are my takeaways on the issue from Ron's article:

• Republicans had opposed bilingual education for decades, but had done nothing about it.
• Experts said that the older you were, the easier it was to learn English.
• "schools were paid more money for every child who failed to learn English and financially penalized for those who did."
• "The official dogma behind bilingual education held that a young immigrant child required five to seven years to learn English,"

When the campaign got started, the anti-campaign (to keep bilingual education)

was a traditional, well-funded operation led by ace Democratic political consultant Richie Ross and a veteran campaign staff, backed by a field operation of thousands of local activists. It counted the public support of President Clinton, the chairmen of both the state Republican and Democratic parties, all four candidates for governor, every educational organization, every public and private union, and nearly every newspaper.

The anti-campaign tried to provoke a white backlash by portraying the measure as a giveaway to immigrants. And it messaged Latinos -- on Spanish speaking media -- to say "that the problems with bilingual programs had recently been fixed and that Proposition 227 would actually prevent children from learning English in school." 

But the measure passed with 61% of the vote, even though the anti-campaign had significantly reduced Latino support. 

Unz describes his experience talking to the Latino caucus at the California state legislature at the time.

At one point, I began suggesting that many Latinos didn’t like bilingual education, and [Diane Martinez] immediately interrupted and cut me off. “I know that!” she said, “Every election I walk door-to-door in my district, and everyone is always complaining to me about the bilingual programs. They all say that the system is no good, the classes don’t work, and their children aren’t learning any English. But they’re all stupid, ignorant immigrant parents, who don’t know anything about education. I’ve talked with the academic experts, and all the experts agree that the bilingual programs are successful.”

Guess what:

At her insulting characterization of her own Latino immigrant constituents, some of the other members of the Latino Caucus seemed to shrink down into their chairs in embarrassment, but none of them dared to challenge her harangue.

As Unz relates

Although the bilingual advocates were relatively few in number, they were fiercely committed to their programs and intensely focused upon that sole, overriding issue, expressing the sort of fanaticism that persuaded far larger organizations to steer clear of any direct conflict.

And so the Latino organizations in California kept out of the campaign and the Republicans stayed away, afraid that they would be tarred as extremist racist-sexist-homophobes. 

That's really the way that all politics works. Most people just want to live their daily lives and not get into arguments with other people.

But then there are the political activists -- and there is no politics without an enemy. The activists cow ordinary people and ordinary leaders who don't want to rock the boat. 

And so, you get a country bullied and bashed around by extremist political activists.

Like the "trans" issue.

Honestly. I don't know how we neutralize this power of the activist. Especially since all good little girls have been raised to believe that there is no nobler -- or more fashionable -- calling than to become an activist.

But politics divides, it make enemies out of friends and it makes people duck their heads to keep out of trouble.

And, of course it creates a political support system of "academic experts" who get government grants to produce the "science." In other words, they are well paid to support the activists.

And so every political issue reduces to "defeat the enemy, plunder the losers, and reward the supporters."

There's gotta be a better way.

After the American Empire

I've been seeing pieces that say, more or less, that if you don't hate Putin you're a traitor. Funny how the folks that were dancing toe-to-toe with Soviet Commies back in the day and saying that anyone that objected was a McCarthyite are now playing the Traitor Card.

Well, all I can say is, call me a traitor.

I think it is high time the US stopped trying to run the world and start to mind its own fences.

I'm sure that Vladimir Putin is a megalomanic. I suspect that Ukraine has become a puppet. Of someone. Because if Hunter Biden was trolling for million dollar bills in Ukraine with 50 percent for the "big guy" then I don't think we are talking about a sweet innocent virgin any more.

Look, it's only natural for a newcomer on the world scene to start throwing its weight around. As the US did in the Spanish American War in 1898. But, if you ask me it was pure imperialism.

But I fail to see the point of getting into World War I, President Wilson. Except that all the cool kids were dukin' it out in Europe. So, as any college president would do, the former president of Princeton decided he had to get in on the action. College presidents are so into cultural fashion, as we have seen in the last decade.

Then President Wilson decided that we needed a Carthaginian peace to teach Germany a lesson with the Versailles treaty that made the Germans into second-class citizens and set the stage for Literally Hitler. Thanks President Wilson. Only a college president could set up such a disaster.

So let's suppose we had to get into World War II. So that Hitler didn't conquer the world. Because we had screwed up in 1919. But would he have done so? What would have happened in his Russia campaign if the US hadn't been sending Russia lots of Dodge trucks for Solzhenitsyn to drive around in?

Anyway, after World War II we decided it was time to really teach the Germans a lesson so that they would never descend to aggressive nationalism again. Except that the occupying forces in Germany didn't have a clue how to run the place top-down, as Edward N. Peterson related in The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory. So by 1948 the occupiers just let the Germans take over their own country and ignite a Wirtschaftwunder. Anyway, we needed the Germans to help fight a Cold War against Stalin's Russia.

Anyway, no doubt we had to hold back Soviet Russia in the Cold War. I suppose, what with Europe absolutely devastated and all.

But I think, looking over the current Putin thing, that the Euros can handle this one on their own. I think the current situation is a great opportunity to say: hey, you guys are great, and you are closest to the action, so we'll trust you to do it right.

And then bug out of Europe and bring all the US troops home, and go to work on America. Of course, it will reduce the career opportunities for well-born young men to have careers in the foreign service. That might end up demoralizing the entire educated class.

Notice how nothing has changed. Today we have a new generation of the ruling class, and guess what: they have a top-down plan to rule America and Build Back Better towards a renewable future. Just like the ruling class had a top-down plan to run Germany in 1945.

Hey kids: Remember the Rules?

• Rule One: Don't invade Russia
• Rule Two: Don't invade China
• Rule Three: Don't do top-down

Oh yeah. Remember socialism? Top-down economic management by the experts? Treating people like Newtonian machines? And the New Deal? Top-down economic response to depression? And COVID? Top-down response to an infectious disease?

You know, you educated people, I am sure that you have read all the books and know that the current thing, the fashionable thing, is that mechanics and hierarchy and top-down management are so yesterday, darling. 

Today all the smart people know that the world works by "creative emergence." Something changes, maybe a butterfly in South America, and the whole world changes and we humans deal with it by adaption. Because the one thing we know that cannot work is a top-down program designed and managed by credentialed experts.

That's what I want for the next America. Creative Emergence. Adaption. Ordinary people running their ordinary lives, and credentialed experts keeping the heck out of the way.

Understanding the "Why" of the Current Crisis

Back in the day, writes Scott McKay at The American Spectator, we had a rough consensus. As in

the political consensus that has persisted for essentially all of our lives was established, to oversimplify the case, by William F. Buckley conservatives and Daniel Patrick Moynihan liberals. That consensus fueled an era marked by the welfare state, the regulatory state, the military-industrial complex, the education-media-political complex, and foreign adventurism for fun and profit particularly in the post–Cold War phase of the era.

But that consensus is dead: No more GOP Buckleyites, and no more Dem Moynihans. 

To guys like us, it seems like the left commands all the high ground. Sure, says McKay, but the left has a problem. Its crazy everything-is-oppression has led to the ridiculous moment in the Senate where a Supreme Court nominee dare not define "what is a woman."

McKay is an optimist. He writes that this moment will not tear the country apart, but rather prompt a political realignment, like Jefferson in 1800, Lincoln in 1860, and Roosevelt in 1932. In other words, Trumpism will win.

What? The Lincoln realignment did not tear the country apart? Ahem. 700,000 dead Americans might disagree with that.

Now I think that the Democrats have three problems.

1. Everything-is-oppression is a lie.
2. Politics-with-everything doesn't work.
3. Cancel culture is a sign that your agenda isn't working.

So let's unpack the three problems.

Everything-is-oppression I just read Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America where he recites the history of all the major ethnic groups in America. The key was not oppression, but the degree to which each ethnic group's culture was already adapted to individualistic life in the city -- before it hit the beaches.

The Germans already had a culture of responsibility. The Irish, Italians, and Blacks did not. Therein lies a tale. So when your politics is all about "we was robbed" instead of "how can we learn to thrive in the city" things ain't gonna go too well for you, because you have missed the point.

Politics-with-everything The problem with politics is Curtis Yarvin's maxim that "there is no politics without an enemy." He means that every political issue degrades into a battle against the enemy. Thus the everything-is-oppression agenda which is all about fighting the white oppressors. But human society is about social cooperation, and in the modern city, economic cooperation. If the other guy is an enemy, then that really limits the amount of social and economic cooperation.

Back in the day the New Deal coalition had a political solution with a government program for everything. The whole point of the Buckleyite GOP was to say, well, not exactly, and it got to enact some moderating economic policy in the late 1970s and 1980s. But in the 2010s the Obama people went back to government with everything, including universal health care. And, because blacks hadn't caught up with whites, they bumped up the government's racist policy of "diversity" into the Allies narrative of we Allies stand with the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors.

Cancel culture When a political movement lurches into a Cancel culture where people can lose their job for having the wrong opinion, it is a sign that the movement isn't delivering on its agenda. This is actually true of every political movement that goes beyond fighting off the Huns or the Nazis or the Commies. Politics is about the enemy, it is about war. If war is not an appropriate means for achieving something then the political movement will fail, and in the last phase of the political movement's existence it will probably be doing a Reign of Terror like the French revolutionaries, a Great Purge like the Stalinists, or a Cancel Culture like the Wokies.

Earth to liberals! An ideological frenzy like Cancel Culture is a sign that your agenda isn't working, not because your opponents are monsters but because your ideas don't work!

The point of politics is to mobilize the tribe or the nation to fight against a frightful enemy. If the problem is anything less than that, then politics is probably not the appropriate means.

And that is not just because not every problem is an enemy. It is that politics cannot get out of the circle of defeat the enemy, loot his granaries, and distribute the loot to the supporters. Needless to say, this agenda is always a wealth-destroying process. If you look at any government program, or any election, you can always reduce it to the enemy, the plunder, and the goodies for the supporters.

Want an example? The education system under COVID. The agenda of the teachers is to protect themselves from the disease-ridden students. The teachers are not saying, we will risk our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to teach the next generation of kids the knowledge and skills they will need to navigate the world. Not at all. They are saying, we will not teach these grubby kids unless we are safe.

As Eric Hoffer wrote: "What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation." One upon a time, universal education was going to save the world. Now it is a racket for teachers to get paid. See more in my "Age of Liberal Grift."

Stay tunes for more exciting episodes of The Next Regime.

Sowell's Ethnic America: Conclusion

After telling the stories of Ethnic America, from Irish to Germans to Jews to Italians to Chinese to Japanese to Blacks to Puerto Ricans to Mexicans, Thomas Sowell has a conclusion or two.

He starts by reminding us that "factors that advance or retard the progress of groups" are not necessarily moral or immoral. We are born into a group, for good and ill, and its culture may make things easier for us, or not.

It is... simply good fortune to be born into a group whose values and skills make life easier to cope with.

And it is equally important to understand what skills help, and why.

Is wealth important? But Eastern European Jews arrived with nothing, and are now in 1980 the highest income group.

Does politics help? But the Chinese and the Japanese avoided politics and now have higher incomes that average whites.

The open frontier? But the Scotch Irish were on the frontier and didn't do too well.

Education? But Jews, Chinese and Japanese rose by hard work before they got education.

But there are patterns and conclusions we can draw from the American ethnic experience.

Patterns

All ethnic groups have risen and thrived in the United States. But all of them have faced obstacles and suffering on their ascent -- that were less than what they experienced before coming. Even the African slaves in the US did better than Africans sold to the Arabs.

It makes a difference whether migrants came here as "sojourners" -- trying things out -- or as committed migrants. It matters whether people came here when convenient, such as Scandinavians and Germans, or as refugees like the Irish and the Jews. Or as captives, as African slaves or indentured servants.

What we call "white flight" is not new. When the Irish flooded into Boston and New York slums, the existing residents got out. The first blacks in Harlem were fleeing tough Irish neighborhoods in midtown Manhattan.

Strikebreakers? First it was the Irish, then Italians and Negroes were used against the Irish.

Education? Jews were passionate about education; Southern Italians were hostile to education.

Family? Both Jews and Italians had strong families, but Jewish families pushed their children towards upward mobility, while Italians felt they betrayed their family by moving into a wider world.

IQ? Lots of immigrants scored low -- even Jewish soldiers in World War I! -- but improved their standings with time and education.

Culture

National recovery after the devastation of war -- such as the Germans after World War II -- reminds us that "human capital" is more important than physical capital. Migrants can come to the US destitute and rise by effort and thrift despite impediments like racial prejudice.

Police brutality? The Jewish Daily Forward reported in 1907 that "the police in the Jewish quarter of New York are the most savage in America."

Inequality? Immigrants often start way "below the level of existing members of their own ethnic group in the country, but eventually rise to not only equal but surpass them." Often it takes fifteen to twenty years. This suggests that 

migration is a selective process, bringing the more ambitious or venturesome or able elements of a population.

And culture matters. 

Groups today plagued by absenteeism, tardiness, and a need for constant supervision... are typically descendants of people with the same habits a century or more ago.

And businesses formed by the followers of Father Divine of the Black Muslims typically do better than the "government-sponsored 'black capitalism' programs of the 1960s and 1970s."

And acculturation is a two-way process. Anglo-Saxon Puritans were overwhelmed "by the German easygoing attitude of good clean fun." American popular music owes everything to black jazz and blues. American political machines were invented by the Irish. Nothing is more American than hamburgers, frankfurters, pizza and tacos.

The "melting pot" is now disdained, but is working better than ever before. It is after people are assimilated that they begin to intermarry. 

While the public square debates the differences and conflicts between groups, there is also the question of intragroup differences, sometimes generational, sometimes differences in acculturation and affluence. And intergroup conflict is often between similar groups, such as blacks and Irish.

Discrimination is a big question in our time, meaning everything from underpaying individuals to actual barriers inhibiting the development of individuals. But employer discrimination cannot explain income differences between, say Hong Kong Chinese and native-born Chinese Americans. Nor can the average employer distinguish between "free persons of color" and other blacks. And overt economic discrimination can be costly to "profit-seeking competitive firms" although less so for government, monopolies and the non profit sector. It is perhaps the most talented and the most brilliant -- the W.E.B. Du Bois or the Paul Robeson -- that suffers most from discrimination, and is most enraged by it.

The fact is that ethnic identity is a complex question. Some people wear it as a badge of honor; others are embarrassed by it. But, writes Sowell,

It cannot be a simple morality play. It is a story of similar patterns and profound differences, of pain and pride and achievement. It is, in one sense, the story of many different heritages. In another sense, it is the story of the human spirit in his many guises.

Yes, What Should We Reform?

The Zman is complaining today that back in the 1970s and 1980s our rulers more or less came together to do some reform.

[In] the 1970’s, before Reagan was a realistic option, a consensus was forming among the various elites of society around important reforms.

Mind, you, they still didn't like Reagan. Nevertheless they did do deregulation, as in airlines. And they did decide to fight inflation with Paul Volcker. 

But, when Reagan proposed a balanced spending and revenue cut, the Dems balked. And even though Bill Clinton promised to be a New Democrat the first thing he did was try to push through a government takeover of health care. But, the Zman points out, nobody actually voted for tax reform or regulatory reform. It was an elite thing.

But now? Wall Street seems to be packing the suitcase and heading for the border; business is currying favor with China and India; the military-industrial complex is just trying to stay alive; the political class? Nothing but old men trying to beat back the radicals, populist and woke.

And yet Joel Kotkin can write about how the Dems are a dumpster fire that is blazing higher and higher with nobody calling the fire brigade. What is going on?

Yes, what is going on?

Know what I think? I don't think things have got bad enough yet for conventional wisdom in the elite to move. I'm reading a history of the US occupation of Germany after WWII, and you know what? It was a dumpster fire. Everything we complain about now was going on then: Congress just posturing; various departments unable to decide on anything. President flapping to and fro without really engaging with the issues.

So if we assume that government is always incompetent and quarreling over silly issues, and just shoveling goodies to the supporters as usual, then, obviously, it  does nothing until things are really starting to get out of hand. And getting out of hand they were in the late 1970s.

And it was only when things were really getting out of hand that a Reagan or a Thatcher could get elected.

Know what I think? I think that the Trump win in 2016 was a bit of a fluke. The people got to elect their guy without the permission of the elite. And things were not yet in the dumpster.

The elite could get together and dump Trump in 2020 because it wasn't yet obvious that the elite had totally screwed up. We weren't to the point where the elite was saying to itself: wow, we better get our house in order or we might get voted outta here.

But it could be that by November 2022 and especially 2024 the elite is going to find itself really under the gun, and decide to forget its silly conceits like climate change and systemic racism and wokism, and coalesce around a sensible reform agenda.

But what reform agenda? OK let's do an exercise: a serious reform agenda and a possible reform agenda.

Serious Reform Agenda

1. Convert gubmint pension programs to universal Fidelity/Vanguard accounts.
2. Decredentialize and decentralize and deregulate health care.
3. Move mortgage financing to eventual max50 percent down
4. Make all post-elementary school education into employer-financed apprenticeships.
5. End child labor laws.
6. Hand welfare system over to tech billionaires.
7. Put Big Tech censors in jail.
8. End vote-by-mail.

Yeah, I know. It's craazy.

Possible Reform Agenda

1. Allow people to opt-out of employee side of FICA tax.
2. Mildly deregulate health care
3. Max 75 percent mortgages plus subsidized "down payment" accounts for first-time buyers.
4. Expand education vouchers
5. Tax breaks for social media that doesn't censor.
6. Voter ID.

Now, when you look at my Possible Reform Agenda it doesn't seem too wacko or way out. No like my wacko Serious Reform Agenda that would represent Real Change. It's the sort of agenda that responsible and moderate leaders could get behind without worrying too much about appearing too extreme.

So we really aren't as far away from a decent reform agenda. We just need things to get a bit worse first.