Liberals Need to Be Radicals [View all]

[Autumn]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-04-liberals-need-to-be-radicals/


The agenda for Biden’s next term must go deeper to restore the American dream.

Media commentators are mystified about why Joe Biden has not gotten more credit for an improved economy, with inflation down nearly to pre-pandemic levels and job creation setting records. The reason is
not hard to grasp. None of the recent improvements have altered the basic situation of most Americans, in which reliable careers are scarce, college requires the burden of debt, health coverage is more expensive and less reliable, and housing is unaffordable.

The American dream of a good job, decent health care, homeownership, college education without crippling debt, and a better life for the next generation was once within reach of most Americans. Now, it’s far harder to attain. Even with a two-income family, the cost of good child care is excessive.

The remedies are all necessarily radical. Biden’s State of the Union address was directionally and rhetorically right. He called for containing Big Pharma to reduce drug prices, raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations to finance broad benefits such as housing down-payment subsidies and affordable child care, as well as protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare. But in a second term, and in his campaign to earn a second term, Biden needs to go a lot deeper.

Since Jimmy Carter, mainstream Democrats in the White House and Congress have been complicit in the corporate erosion of the American dream. They agreed to mixed public-private approaches that resulted in systems that were inefficient, lucrative to for-profit players, and impenetrably frustrating to ordinary citizens. Consider four emblematic cases of policy dead ends that now require radical remedies.

I believe that Biden is the only man who can fix this mess we are in.