Biden's Progressive Economic Policy Isn't the Apocalypse
Swings in ideological fervor are a common — and necessary — feature in our government and society; Republicans will have their turn again soon enough.
Time to give the progressives a turn.
Photographer: Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. is in the middle of an ideological paradigm shift. After decades in the political wilderness, progressives now dominate culture and are poised to dominate economic policy as well. To some, this represents a terrifying prospect. But alternating ideological programs are an important part of how nations advance; the progressives need to have their serve.
President Joe Biden’s economic program is the most strongly progressive agenda that any president has pursued since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in 1964. It would transform welfare benefits, spend large amounts on infrastructure, science, education, housing and the environment, transform U.S. trade and industrial policy, and make big efforts toward racial equity. If his agenda passes in anything like the forms being currently proposed, it will alter the entire shape of the U.S. economy. And that will come on top of the cultural dominance that progressives have increasingly enjoyed for a decade.