Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Can’t We Stop Yammering About Paradigm Shifts?

Sure, Biden’s pandemic relief law is a big deal. But it isn’t a break from decades of U.S. economic consensus.

March 24, 2021 at 2:00 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

It’s still right-side up.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

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President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic relief and stimulus law has been hailed on the progressive left as the beacon of a new era in economic policy, in which the neoliberalism that has defined Republican and Democratic policy-making for decades is being ushered out the door.

Biden himself claimed that “it changes the paradigm.” A writer at Vox agreed, and even gave it a name: “post-material materialism.” David Brooks, no lefty progressive, argued in the New York Times that “the whole paradigm of the role of government in American life is shifting.” Many conservatives agree, but they tend to bemoan it instead of celebrating.