The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.
Economists and financial analysts are not like steelworkers or people in other occupations. They don't get evaluated based on their performance. They can mess up every day of the week through their whole careers, and this would be just fine, as long as they messed up in the same way as their peers.
I don't think "Reganomics" will ever fully end. I mean, Reaganomics, to put it simply, was trying to get low taxes for wealthy people. And wealthy people are still there pushing for low taxes.
Opening a small business is a reasonable thing for you to do but should tax payer, should an ordinary worker have to pay more money in taxes because someone across the street from them opened up a business which might well go under? For a lot of people opening a business is a bad choice for them. Most small businesses fail. I understand people wanting to give it a try and everything but we're not necessarily doing them a favor to say, take all your life savings, borrow to the hilt, and then struggle for three years and end up with nothing. We're not necessarily doing them a favor.
I know many Europeans and I think many of them don't even believe me when I say that people in US don't have vacations. Obviously a lot of people do but there are many, tens of millions of people that don't and there's certainly no guarantee of a vacation. So paid time off is very valuable where people know they could get four or five weeks vacation, which is absolutely standard in Europe. Denmark has 6 weeks. So I think that's something that's very valuable, giving people time off.
