Matt Y's Declaration of Independence

Yglesias speaks truth to audience; and two J.D. Vance links

First, here are two J.D. Vance links;

Matthew Schmitz on religious populism¹

Senator Vance last week at NatCon4

Now, on to my scheduled post.

Although I often disagree with him, I really respect Matt Yglesias for writing this.

the backlash against neoliberalism has, I think, mostly served in practice as a way to tell people that it’s okay to do sloppy economic analysis or say things that aren’t true. One of my most contrarian views is that accurate policy analysis is badly underrated, in part, because most organizations don’t actually have the capacity to do it. So excuses for sloppy thinking and denying the existence of tradeoffs tend to be popular.

It’s not just that I agree with him on substance. He also is showing that he is independent. He identifies as being on the Blue team, but he does not hesitate to criticize a popular narrative among Democrats.

If his center-left politics were a grift, he would not want to risk offending all of the donors in that “space.” But apparently he has F-you money from somewhere, presumably his substack.

I also am independent. My biggest regular check comes from Social Security, a little over $3000 per month. My monthly income from Substack is less than half of that. And what I get from Substack is more than what I get from all my other writing put together. I have no salary or office anywhere.

I don’t need the Social Security check, much less the rest. The point is that because my writing brings in so little money, I don’t have to worry about keeping sponsors happy. If I happen to write something that offends all of you or the powers that be at Liberty Fund or Cato or Mercatus, and I get cut off, so be it. That is what I mean by being independent.

Yglesias writes,

The Hewlett Foundation, which is relatively large and influential, runs an Economy & Society grant program that’s explicitly framed around critiquing neoliberalism. The program provides money to a bunch of progressive nonprofits, plus the conservative American Compass think tank.

Plenty of the people who’ve taken this money don’t particularly agree with Hewlett’s framing of the “neoliberalism” concept. But nonprofits need money, and if playing along with the grantmaker’s framing is the way to get grants, then they’ll do that. So in good neoliberal fashion, there have been a lot of incentives recently to invoke “neoliberalism” as a bogeyman.

Oren Cass (American Compass) is presumably sincere. But he only has a platform because of the sponsors who pay for it. As a public intellectual, he has no redeeming social value.

The unfortunate reality is that being a public intellectual or a policy wonk ends up as a grift. It’s not likely that you will find a donor who says, “I really admire your ability. I don’t care what you write or whose side you take. Here is a pot of money.”

The Myth of the Era of Neoliberalism

Yglesias writes,

The idea that for the last 50 years we've been on a manic quest for growth is confused. In reality, we’ve seen during that time period increasing levels of political influence wielded by people (mainly environmentalists and NIMBYs) who are skeptical of economic growth.

There was a period, beginning near the end of the Carter Administration, when regulations were reformed, particularly in the transportation sector. The goal was to increase competition and achieve greater efficiency. There was some success. But as Yglesias points out, overall regulation increased even in this period, primarily with environmental regulation, which was new in the 1970s.

“everyone knows” that the neoliberal era has been an era of deregulation, even though it’s also pretty clearly true that the overall scope of regulation is larger in 2024 than it was in 1974.

And

A recent American Prospect article co-produced with the Roosevelt Institute says that “neoliberalism has been disastrous for America’s political economy, as austerity, privatization, and deregulation have led to crippling wealth and political inequality.” But what austerity? Budget deficits have been consistently higher post-Reagan than pre. Deregulation we’ve discussed. There were certainly a lot of privatizations in the UK, but the United States never had large-scale public ownership of companies and in key areas — postal services, water utilities, airport management — we have less privatization than Europe.

The notion that we are suffering from an excess of market-friendly policies is the opposite of what I believe to be the case. But the advocates of more government intervention enjoy generous funding from the nonprofit sector, so they are not going to go away or change their tune.

The problem with donor-funded scholarship is that its quality is capped at a fairly low level. The people who work at the foundations that supply the grants tend to be young midwit progressives. The papers that get written reflect their outlook.

substacks referenced above:

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What was neoliberalism?

1

If religious conservatism is dead, then religious populism has emerged in its place. There are important continuities, but religious populism is more pronounced in its mistrust of elites, less concerned with observing their niceties, and more eager to challenge their priorities as expressed in America’s foreign policy commitments, trade agreements, and approach to immigration.

No one represents this shift better than Vance. His current elevated status, no less than his humble beginnings, gives him a unique window into America’s class divides. Since arriving in the Senate, Vance has become only more convinced that America’s elites are not to be trusted. “They’re actively scornful of the people who made me who I am,” he tells me. “My family and my friends and my community are very, very aware of this. They are very aware of the fact that even their own representatives don’t actually like them very much.”