Oren Cass @oren_cass Twitter profile

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Oren Cass

11 months

1/ It's here -- Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers. The culmination of three years of @AmerCompass work to develop a coherent and comprehensive alternative to the Old Right's market fundamentalism.

Rebuilding American Capitalism | American Compass

A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers, covering Responsive Politics, Productive Markets, and Supportive Communities.

americancompass.org

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

Thread (1/16). How is that our economic statistics suggest workers have been making slow but steady progress in recent decades, while popular perception is that their family finances are coming under increasingly untenable pressure? I've been working on this, here's my answer:

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@oren_cass

2 years

CBS sideline reporter stands six feet away from QB Joe Burrow for post-game interview, concludes with delicate fist bump, and then when the camera is supposed to have cut away goes in for the hug. #CovidTheatre

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@oren_cass

4 years

2/ Punchline: Popular perception is correct. In 1985, the typical male worker could cover a family of four's major expenditures (housing, health care, transportation, education) on 30 weeks of salary. By 2018 it took 53 weeks. Which is a problem, there being 52 weeks in a year.

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@oren_cass

4 months

Absolutely brutal Boeing story @nytimes . "What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing. A lot of people are looking at Airbus and seeing a company run by competent people. The contrast with Boeing is fairly profound.”

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@oren_cass

4 years

14/ Some might say: that's absurd, of course a family can't cover an entire health insurance premium, a 3-bed house, and college for two kids on a single worker's salary, that's not how anyone lives. But COTI shows that in the past a family COULD do that. Just not anymore.

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@oren_cass

4 years

10/ When we say "inflation-adjusted wages look good," we are actually saying "if you could take your wage back to 1970 and spend it, you'd be better off than you were at the time with a 1970 wage." I mean, maybe that's interesting. But it doesn't describe lived experience.

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@oren_cass

4 years

6/ A key assumption of our inflation-adjusted analyses is that old products are still available. Don't like / can't afford the $26K 2018 Grand Caravan, go buy the $18K 1996 one instead. Except you can't. Same problem is even more pernicious in areas like housing and health care.

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@oren_cass

4 years

5/ Fair enough. But, if you're a family that needs to buy a minivan, while it's nice that the 2018 Grand Caravan ($26,300 in 2018) has many features the 1996 Grand Caravan ($17,900 in 1996) did not, you still face the problem that you need an extra $8,500 to buy one.

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@oren_cass

4 years

8/ Again, fair enough. But we have to recognize that the median family must now pay more for health insurance and will not use the cure. Last 20 yrs, the typical family's health care consumption has gone up $2K, but their premium has gone up $13K. No wonder they feel worse off.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

13/ COTI shows that while the nominal median male wage rose from $443 to $1,026 from 1985 to 2018 (132%), the expected cost of his family's major expenditures rose from $13,227 to $54,414 (311%). He used to need 30 weeks of work to cover those costs, now he needs 53.

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@oren_cass

4 years

9/ So, start putting these things together, and you find a situation where major costs facing families have skyrocketed unsustainably in ways our economics is incapable of acknowledging. Then we gloss over the underlying assumptions and say "inflation-adjusted wages look good."

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@oren_cass

4 years

3/ Why do our inflation-adjusted data say otherwise? Because inflation does not assess affordability. You don't have to take my word for it. Here's a neat study by Nobel laureate Robert Shiller making the point, as cited by Fed economist Michael Bryan:

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@oren_cass

3 years

One for the history books, from the top of the @nytimes homepage: “The U.S. Is Edging Toward Normal, Alarming Some Officials”

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@oren_cass

4 years

16/ The point isn't to validate some specific policy agenda, but to introduce a new set of facts that should help inform the starting point for our debates. How to get higher wages? How to get lower costs? Let's at least acknowledge these are pressing and long-worsening problems.

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@oren_cass

4 years

4/ For example, our inflation-adjusted data say car prices have not increased since the mid-1990s. Obviously, that's not remotely true. What economists are saying is that cars have gotten better so the higher sticker price doesn't reflect inflation, it reflects higher quality.

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@oren_cass

4 years

[Insert compulsory SoundCloud joke. -ed] You can read the full report with technical analysis @ManhattanInst . And my narrative essay presenting the full argument has just been published by @AmericanAffrs . That is all.

The Cost of Thriving - American Affairs Journal

It sounds like an absurd riddle, or perhaps a kindergarten-level math problem: the median male full-time worker earned $314 per week in 1979, while his counterpart at the median in 2018 earned...

americanaffairsjournal.org

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@oren_cass

4 years

12/ I've created a measure I call the Cost-of-Thriving Index (COTI), comparing nominal costs to a family for housing, health care, transportation, and education with nominal weekly wage of median male worker. My new @ManhattanInst report details rationale, assumptions, sources.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

15/ Conservatives especially should be wary of taking comfort that massive government supports make up the gap. If you're thinking, "well, but of course we subsidize health care and college heavily," that's not a defense of the status quo. It's a blaring red siren.

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@oren_cass

4 years

11/ There are lots of good reasons to have our existing technical measures. Macroeconomists need them. But alongside them, we need a perspective that looks at the costs households actually face as compared to the wages that workers actually earn.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

7/ Another huge problem with health care, especially, is that everyone has to pay for shared risk. If a million-dollar miracle cure needed by 1 in 1,000 households drives up everyone's insurance premium, that's not inflationary. You now have access to the million-dollar cure.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

One of the major recent developments in American politics is the nasty divorce underway between the Republican Party and conservatives on one side and the Chamber of Commerce and big business on the other. What's causing the breakup? 🧵

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@oren_cass

2 years

Because "efficient" is the opposite of "resilient," not a synonym.

NPR Business

@nprbusiness

2 years

The global supply chain is amazingly efficient. So why did it break down?

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@oren_cass

2 years

Are we in the ballpark yet of something that might rightly lead conservatives to question whether corporate America is behaving in the national interest?

Meridith McGraw

@meridithmcgraw

2 years

Tim Cook secretly signed an “agreement, estimated to be worth more than $275 billion, with Chinese officials promising Apple would do its part to develop China’s economy and technological prowess through investments, business deals and worker training.”

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

As a particularly outspoken opponent of universal basic income, I would emphasize: Direct cash payments are the correct policy in this crisis and have nothing to do with UBI, whose entire premise (and greatest flaw) is that you know in advance you will receive it in perpetuity.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

Ivy League law professor thanks Joe Biden for unlawfully giving thousands of Ivy League law grads $10,000 a piece. Modern progressivism in one tweet.

Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️

@tribelaw

2 years

Good news for thousands of my former students. I’m grateful on their behalf, Mr. President.

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@oren_cass

5 years

Hypothesis: student debt holders are, on average, less deserving or in need of a wealth transfer than is the median American (who doesn't have a college degree). -or- This plan is less equitable and less socially useful than simply throwing $1.6 trillion out of a helicopter.

Faiz

@fshakir

5 years

Bernie Sanders is out with a sweeping new bill to wipe out all the student debt, providing relief for 45 million Americans. via @aterkel

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 months

We did a great @AmerCompass case study last year on how European industrial policy (Airbus) had triumphed in the commercial aviation market while shareholder-maximizing financialization in the U.S. (Boeing) had fared poorly.

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@oren_cass

4 months

"Boeing’s decision to build the Max as a variation of the 737 because it would be quicker, easier and cheaper than starting from scratch affected the plane’s design and development, playing a role in its troubling history."

Airbus Is Pulling Ahead as Boeing’s Troubles Mount

With quality control essential, Airbus gains in the rivalry between the world’s biggest plane makers by being seen as “competent.”

www.nytimes.com

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 years

1/ Let's discuss this remarkable article in @nytimes about the importance of universal daycare. No, not the @KathaPollitt op-ed from Sunday. An article from 1974 about conditions in the Soviet Union, which sound, well... see if this remind you of anything.

In Soviet Union, Day Care Is the Norm (Published 1974)

Article describes day-care facilities in USSR; compares widespread programs in USSR to newly developing structured day care in US; some Soviet women express astonishment at idea that some Amer women...

www.nytimes.com

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

7 years

I have been writing about the Paris Accord since before it was negotiated, so I am issuing myself a waiver from my no-tweetstorm rule. 1/

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 years

I've said, "free trade, free markets, choose one." May need to add, "free trade, free speech, choose one." Fascinating to follow in real-time our discovery that our norms and institutions rely on assumptions that don't hold if we integrate our market with an authoritarian one.

Gordon G. Chang

@GordonGChang

5 years

#China has begun an aggressive campaign demanding complete obedience from all foreign businesses on political issues. Prez #Trump was right on Aug 23 to order US companies to consider alternatives to China. #Apple #NBA #HoustonRockets #ESPN #SaveOurDemocracy

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

Treating children as an inconvenience that prevents all parents from joining the labor force really is progressive canon at this point. This from Biden is eerily reminiscent of his claim during the primary that his childcare tax credit "would put 7 million women back to work."

Joe Biden

@JoeBiden

2 years

Nearly 2 million women in our country have been locked out of the workforce because they have to care for a child or an elderly relative at home. My Build Back Better Act will make caregiving accessible and affordable and help them get back to work.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

3 years

Angsty teens who think they’re sticking it to the man by wearing Abercrombie grow up to be Lefties who think free daycare sticks it to the suits.

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@robrousseau

3 years

free daycare is bad and no one wants it or likes it, according to this study from the Exxon Citibank Small Business Institute of Personal Freedom

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@oren_cass

4 years

Strikingly direct admission of blinders that economists proudly wear. Parents: We hate having to both work full-time. Economists: Yet that's what you do, so it must be what you want. This circular reasoning, unmoored from reality, underlies a frightening number of econ claims.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

This op-ed encapsulates perfectly the desiccated thinking that has led our society and economy astray. It is not "charity" to treat your employees well, even when you could get away with less. It is a core obligation of any institution that employs people.

tylercowen

@tylercowen

4 years

"The real contributions of Harvard, MIT and Stanford to the world are not the food-service workers they hire."

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

I have a lot of tolerance for politicos spinning data. It’s their job. But saying “wages up” shows a heckuva disdain for the reality facing working families these days. “Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.0 percent, seasonally adjusted, from July 2021 to July 2022.” -BLS

Jeff Zients

@WHCOS

2 years

Jobs up and inflation down. Wages up and gas prices down.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 months

I see your poorly drawn trendline ( @nytimes ) and raise you the mostly poorly drawn line of best fit in the history of major media opinion pages ( @wsjopinion ).

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

It's gratifying to see so many people saying that the right-of-center's future is multiracial, working class, and conservative. American Compass's mission ( @AmerCompass ) is to build this. If you're not familiar with our work, now might be a good time to get acquainted. Thread!

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

A warning from @tylercowen : If we tell companies they can't use supply chains that may have slave labor in them, "The losers will be U.S. consumers, who will face higher prices and less choice." 1/3

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

3 years

The GOP has been cutting taxes for 40 years. The federal tax burden is way down. Also down in recent decades? 🔻Economic growth. 🔻Wage growth. 🔻Investment. If you keep paging through a dog-eared 1980s playbook and can find nothing but tax cuts, it's time for a new playbook.

Rep. Elise Stefanik

@RepStefanik

3 years

Republicans are going to focus on economic growth and focus on how we’re the party of tax cuts and not tax hikes. We need to focus on job creation, not policies that create higher taxes, leading to job losses.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

Everyone knew. Everyone knows. Why would anyone adopt the default that young people getting stoned is fine for their brains until proven otherwise? This is the faux-sophisticated posing of "evidence based" commentary run amok.

Malcolm Gladwell

@Gladwell

4 years

Who knew?

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

6 years

The wise person who accepted $450m for the painting can too. No resources were created or destroyed in the transaction (an asset swap).

Harold Pollack

@haroldpollack

6 years

The idiot who paid $450m for a painting could have covered the World Health Organization's TB, malaria, and reproductive maternal, newborn, child and adolescent programs for an entire year.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

7 months

1/16 The @WSJ has given me the space to make the thorough case for tariffs, so allow me to briefly outline the argment here. In a sentence, it comes down to a straightforward argument: Making things matters. 🧵

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

1. American corporations kowtow to Chinese censorship but gleefully criticize America. Hollywood rewrites scripts. Disney's ESPN axed coverage of Hong Kong. Nike declares itself "a brand that is of China and for China" while cancelling a shoe with the original American flag.

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@oren_cass

4 years

What makes NBA's relationship with China especially gross is that the "economic pressure" excuses relevant to other industries don't apply to them at all. It's not like, if they don't do biz with China, some German league is going to undercut them on price and take market share.

Jerry Dunleavy 🇺🇸

@JerryDunleavy

4 years

. @MegynKelly : “Why would the the NBA take $500+ million from a country engaging in ethnic cleansing?” @MCuban : “Becuz they are a customer of ours, & guess what Megyn? I’m okay w/ doing business with China...We have to pick our battles.” Starts at 41:35.

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@oren_cass

2 years

I wonder if it will be a problem for our society in the coming months that the bureaucrats, firms, and “experts” who we’ve granted power, status, and income in responding to the Covid crisis all have their power, status, and income tied to Covid remaining a crisis…

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@oren_cass

3 years

Climate change is serious and requires policy responses. Predictions of climate catastrophism are usually unserious. NYT four years ago: Catastrophic heat deaths coming, will kill mainly in the South. NYT today: Err, would you believe mainly in the North? [Reality: neither.]

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@oren_cass

3 years

If I understand MMT, money printing and deficit spending is great until it triggers inflation, and then policymakers just come together and raise taxes to pull the money back out, right? So this is the moment when MMTers start calling for big middle-class tax increases, right?

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@oren_cass

4 years

But the proposal isn't to punish countries that have behaved badly, it's to give them a choice: either ensure no slavery or lose the supply chains. Maybe they'll do something about slavery. Incentives matter! This is not among the outcomes @tylercowen seems to contemplate. 3/3

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

Long gone are the days of "what's good for our country is good for General Motors, and vice versa." Big business routinely behaves in ways that damage the national interest and distort our democracy. Americans, conservative or otherwise, are rightly fed up and seeking remedies.

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@oren_cass

5 years

10/10 He'd assume we lost the Cold War and our economic system had collapsed. "No, no," you tell him. "We won! And our economy has been growing by leaps and bounds! We're more prosperous than ever!" Then he'd shake his head, chuckle, and walk away. Because that's just crazy.

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@oren_cass

4 years

Further, it is relief in an economic crisis that we as a society are choosing to trigger for what we believe is our collective benefit; a crisis whose financial costs seem generally destined to land disproportionately on those less able to bear them.

Michael Brendan Dougherty

@michaelbd

4 years

It's relief, not a bailout. It's relief, not welfare. It's relief to prevent much less efficient bailouts and welfare usage.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

From my article yesterday @TheAtlantic : There's absolutely no reason to means-test these cash payments upfront using old data. It's less efficient AND less well targeted than clawing back payments to high-income households through tax code at year's end.

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@oren_cass

4 years

Notice how much further his argument goes than "don't worry about child labor, families only choose that if it's their best option." Now, even stripping outright slavery out of the supply chain is a mistake, because things will get even worse in countries that tolerate it. 2/3

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@oren_cass

2 months

It’s important to understand that for many libertarians, their open borders advocacy leading to a Qatar-like caste system in America is a feature, not a bug.

David J. Bier

@David_J_Bier

2 months

American workers got to sleep in their beds and not get hit by a cargo ship because immigrant workers went to work to fill potholes so that they could commute to work going to jobs with better pay and working conditions.

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@oren_cass

3 years

The new @MittRomney family security proposal is a significant development and exactly the sort of thorough and thoughtful policy innovation we need more of on the right-of-center. Debating ideas like these is the right way for conservatism to move forward.

Jeff Stein

@JStein_WaPo

3 years

NEWS: @MittRomney unveils plan to provide $3K per child, giving bipartisan support to President Biden’s major effort around child poverty Romney plan would also offer $4,200/year per child under 6 Expect it as amendment to Dems budget resolution today

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@oren_cass

2 years

There's a contradiction here: corporations genuinely committed to civic responsibility would presumably shy away from promoting racially divisive ideology, delisting books, undermining democratically enacted laws, etc. The "responsibility" being exercised is rather selective...

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@oren_cass

2 years

S&P 500 up double-digits in real terms, real wages down 2.4%. Great job everybody. What if, going out on a limb here, just flushing trillions of dollars into an economy doesn't actually generate sustained, broad-based prosperity?

Christopher Weihs

@chrisweihs_

2 years

On average, real wages declined 2.4% from December 2020 to December 2021 Workers have gotten effective pay cuts in year 1 of the Biden presidency

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@oren_cass

4 years

Likewise, free markets aren't the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Market fundamentalism can thwart that.

Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

4 years

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

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@oren_cass

2 years

2. American corporations mistreat American workers. Companies like Disney make employees train their H1B-holding replacements. Amazon has badly broken HR systems that underpaid workers and denied them benefits. Efforts at union organizing face retaliation.

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@oren_cass

3 years

I appreciate Amazon offering me $1 to accept slower shipping on my order. But I'd also like a button where I can accept slower shipping in return for them treating a worker well for the day.

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@oren_cass

4 years

American Compass ( @AmerCompass ) has officially launched. Our mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity. Read my introductory note at our new website.

A Note of Introduction - American Compass

Welcome to American Compass. Our mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity.

americancompass.org

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@oren_cass

4 years

WSJ Ed Board: "If Mr. Trump really wants to upset the swamp, he’d propose that every private investment made for the rest of this year be exempt from any capital gains tax." Swamp: "Yup. Nothing would upset us more. Please, not that. You wouldn't dare."

Opinion | After We Defeat the Virus

Another spending blowout will burden the recovery for years.

www.wsj.com

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@oren_cass

4 years

Just no way in real life, in these conditions, you'd have econ advisor obsessed with tax cuts doing oppo research on gov't disease expert while hardest-hit state's governor self-designs poster celebrating himself with phrase "forget the politics." Sorry, showrunners, I'm out.

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@oren_cass

2 years

4. American corporations abandon and offshore critical industries and technologies, weakening the nation's economy and national security. Intel outsourced chip production, Boeing offshored vital aerospace components, Google and others site AI research in Beijing.

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@oren_cass

5 years

6/ Back in 1974, Soviet citizens "express astonishment when they learn that an American father can support a family of two, three or four children without his wife's working. Many are surprised that American women would willingly have more than one child."

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@oren_cass

2 years

3. American corporations wield their economic power to undermine democratic processes, threatening secondary boycotts of businesses in states like Indiana, North Carolina, and Georgia to force repeal of duly enacted legislation.

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@oren_cass

2 years

5. American corporations use political criteria to censor conservative viewpoints. Amazon banned @EPPCdc president @RyanTAnd 's book. Twitter and Facebook blocked news coverage of Hunter Biden just before the 2020 election.

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@oren_cass

3 years

“I’m for globalization and a strong safety net” seems likely to become for the next generation of insulated but determinedly respectable professionals what “I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative” was for the last. -- The Once and Future Worker (2018)

New Liberals 🌐🇺🇦

@CNLiberalism

3 years

Look what came 🔥

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@oren_cass

4 years

🧵One institution stands out for breadth of conservative priorities it could advance: generating widespread prosperity, limiting government intervention, preserving families and ways of life, revitalizing communities, fostering solidarity. The labor union.

America Needs a Conservative Labor Movement

Revived and reformed unions can serve the traditional Republican goals of empowering individuals and preserving communities.

www.wsj.com

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@oren_cass

2 years

7. American corporations gladly help China, but not America. Google refused to work with the U.S. DoD. McKinsey has a "public commitment to anti-racism" but advises Chinese state-owned enterprises. Tesla takes billions in U.S. subsidies and then shifts its export hub to Shanghai.

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@oren_cass

3 months

I'm genuinely interested in this question: why are the policies that are appropriate when daily crossers exceed 5,000 not also the appropriate policies when crossers fall below that number? This is not, generally speaking, how one enforces laws, if one wants the laws enforced...

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@oren_cass

2 years

An Institute of American Enterprise should focus intently on bad big business behavior, and what it portends for the future of a well-functioning market democracy. What say you, @MichaelRStrain , might our @BizRoundtable friends have something to answer for as well? [end]

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@oren_cass

2 months

1/ Political realignment is sending "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" cocktail party Republicans into the Democratic Party and the more racially diverse working-class Democratic base into the GOP. This means a radical shift for the politics of "big government"... 🧵

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@oren_cass

2 years

6. American corporations promote racial polarization. Companies from Wal-Mart to AT&T to Raytheon "train" employees that America is a systemically racist society and instruct them to understand themselves and their relationships in terms of racial conflict.

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@oren_cass

4 years

Progressives are demonstrating how their race-obsessed lens prevents them from even comprehending the emergence of a multi-ethnic, working-class, conservative coalition. But that won't stop it from arriving. My latest on The Commons @AmerCompass .

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@oren_cass

5 years

9/ Now imagine telling an American in 1974: 50 years from now, our families will face these same pressures and we'll embrace this mandatory two-earner structure and push toward this kind of national daycare system... it's what people want, and frankly we won't have a choice.

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@oren_cass

4 years

For @CNN , I comment on Biden speech: "Barack Obama's legacy looms awkwardly... The question for the Biden campaign and a Biden administration is: what will be different?... The 'hope' we remember; we should worry the 'history' will repeat."

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

Imposing a "public health" measure that you can't and won't enforce and expect three-quarters of people will ignore, because you want the benefit of cowing some people into compliance, is how you destroy trust, solidarity, and the rule of law in a society.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 months

The average family wants to have a parent at home with young kids. Why would the White House spend massive public funds subsidizing the preference of the highly educated progressive elite while leaving most of the country further behind? Oh, right…

Kamala Harris

@KamalaHarris

2 months

Make no mistake: President @JoeBiden and I intend to cap child care costs at $10 a day for the average family and make preschool free for all four-year-olds. To do that, we need Congress to act.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

8 months

When was the last time an @AEI economist called an executive's salary "clearly unreasonable"?

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

Calling your opponents "the party of Uber" would be a truly low blow, but I see this is meant to be a boast? Uber provides unstable, poorly paid, part-time work that is not a stepping stone to anything and almost never can support a family. 1/

Dan Crenshaw

@DanCrenshawTX

4 years

In 2020, remember this: Republicans are the party of Uber. Democrats are the party of taxi cab unions. Own your own labor, work where you want and how you want, and embrace innovation. That’s conservatism.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 months

The conduct of these "leaders" is incomprehensible. The "smiles and smirks" reflect an elite culture where linguistic tricks and clever lawyering are substituted proudly for morality and rationality. They've set fire to their own foundation and now fiddle while it burns.

Bill Ackman

@BillAckman

5 months

The presidents of @Harvard , @MIT , and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment? The…

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

7 years

For an in-depth discussion of this dynamic, see "Why the Paris Climate Deal is Meaningless" @Politico : 11/

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

1 year

1/ Cheerleaders for America's disastrous economic policies love dismissing the concerns of working families, who sense that middle-class security has slipped from their grasp. So @AmerCompass built a tool proving the economists wrong and families right: 🧵

2023 Cost-of-Thriving Index | American Compass

American Compass's annual Cost-of-Thriving Index tracks the catastrophic erosion of middle-class life in America

americancompass.org

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

3 years

A lot of genuinely creative and interesting contributions to this @nytimes series on "How to Fix America." My contribution: End the amusement park entitlement that is the American college.

DealBook: How to Fix America (Published 2020)

We asked top experts for one idea we could act on right now to make the country a better place. Here are their answers.

www.nytimes.com

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

Well-functioning markets are supposed to prevent shortages and unsnarl supply-chain crunches. Ours provide a casino in which to make money betting on the problems.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

Don't means-test cash payments upfront. Treat them as separate income category and apply steep tax rate based on AGI (2x the filer's top/marginal rate on reg income?). This will claw payments back after the fact, but only for those who actually earn lots of income _this_ year.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

Personal announcement: I will be leaving @ManhattanInst at year's end to start a new organization whose mission is to redefine the economic orthodoxy that guides the nation's politics and public policy. We will be launching publicly in the spring. 1/4

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 years

Sometimes I hear no one is really arguing “college for all.” So worth bearing in mind that in some segments of our society it is considered applause-worthy common sense to assert that a “moral society” is one in which “basic standards of dignity” “now shld incl college.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

5 years

Ultimately, living in a moral society, a good nation, means establishing some basic standards of dignity: - healthcare as a right - a living wage - public education that prepares for civil society + economy (which now shld incl college) - all people having power in the economy

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

1 year

Highly recommend asking the "free market" evangelist in your life why unions are coercive but employers are not.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

4 years

For Labor Day, @AmerCompass is proud to release a statement joined by a wide range of prominent conservatives including @marcorubio , Jeff Sessions, Yuval Levin, and @jdvance1 : "Conservatives Should Ensure Workers A Seat At The Table."

Conservatives Should Ensure Workers a Seat at the Table - American Compass

Statement on a conservative future for the American labor movement.

americancompass.org

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 months

You shouldn't be making economic policy if you regard U.S. Steel auctioning itself off to Japan's Nippon Steel as "the world investing in America" and "Foreign Direct Investment" that serves as a major driver of our prosperity. Unfortunately, that's most economists.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

3 years

“The true path to dignity is going back to school to get a better job” will look great on the tombstone of the relationship between progressives and the working class.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦

@Noahpinion

3 years

There's nothing dignified about taking a crappy survival job because you can't afford to take some time to look for a good one or go back to school to get a better one.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 months

1/ Can't be overstated how badly isolated libertarians are in this TikTok fight, and how much their kicking and screaming is hurting their credibility in the conservative coalition. 🧵

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

5 months

The whole American meritocracy and its institutions are living the adage that "wealth does not last beyond three generations." Built from 1940-70, stewarded from 1970-2000. Squandered from 2000-30 by people who took their inheritance for granted and were spoiled by it.

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

2 years

Perhaps more importantly, the business behavior that agitates conservatives and damages the nation goes far beyond innocently standing up for values. Here are some of the issues that folks like @MichaelRStrain apparently have no problem with:

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

8 months

Significant statement from @jdvance1 on US Steel, rejecting Friedman Doctrine that corporation's duty is merely "to make as much money as possible." "Patriotism is not self-dealing. Nor is a corporation reduceable to the net present value of its assets."

Opinion | America cannot afford to auction off its industrial base

The steel industry was but the canary in the coal mine, the first victim of what we now recognize as deindustrialization wrought by hostile foreign competition.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

3 months

👀 Teamsters max out to RNC…

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Oren Cass

@oren_cass

7 years

@politico Strangely, climate activists seemed enthusiastic -- almost as if they cared more about the optics of agreements than climate action. 13/

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