So, I know I came off as super negative toward Biden yesterday, but it was mainly because of how the media treated his ideas, acting like he's spending all of this money on stuff, when in context it's just one of those "larger than life" things where his actual legacy is far more mediocre.
Still, I do want to say I do support Biden's infrastructure bill.
As you guys know, I'm anti work, and I'm really skeptical of jobs programs. I believe jobs are a means to an end, not an end to themselves, and I dislike mainstream framing of these issues. Same as with the universal prek/childcare thing. The centrists tend to frame these things in these weird "these things allow us to WORK harder!" type approaches to things, and that's just...no. To me, jobs are a means to an end, not an end in itself. We shouldn't celebrate creating jobs for their own sake in this quasi religious devotion to "the economy", which is how Biden is framing stuff.
At the same time, I need to remind people that while I don't talk about it constantly on here, we are facing a certain existential crisis, and that is climate change. If we cannot keep our greenhouse gas emissions under control, by 2100, our country, and the world, may very well be screwed. We're talking massive changes all around the world. Entire countries disappearing as sea levels rise. Dislocations and mass migrations. Famine, disease, etc. In the US, climate change could basically turn the northern part of the country into the southern part, and the southern part into Mexico climate-wise. This is not good. But, through technology, we can mitigate some of these concerns, while keeping our living standards somewhat. If we stopped spewing carbon and methane at the rates we are, and invest in sustainable energy and infrastructure, the worst of this damage could potentially be avoided. This is one of the reasons (other than the fact that Yang is a terrible politician with weak implementation of his ideas) that I ended up backing Bernie over him, despite my distaste for jobs programs. These ideas are fine, if we're getting something out of them that's substantive and tangible. And averting a global crisis is kind of a big deal. And given Biden's plan is just a scaled down version of that initiative, I support his idea.
We also do need to update our infrastructure. It was created back during the Eisenhower era, and it kinda sucked now and has fallen into disrepair. So I do support repairing and updating it for the 21st century. All of these ideas are good ones. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm on board with this stuff because he's doing what needs to be done.
However, and this is where I crap on Biden, we need a lot more done on top of that. I don't think mainstream democrats understand how dire many of the issues we face are for many Americans. And I feel like democrats tend to just brush it off, in hopes to appeal to a more moderate, conservative electorate that doesn't want change. The screwed up thing about rank, two party democracy is that the population can be gamed in certain ways where you can build coalitions that blunt any progressive initative to change the system, by loading both parties with conservative factions that don't want change. This leads to two conservative parties. Another problem with a FPTP system like this is you can have a system that works for 51% of the population, and consistently win elections, even if it sucks for the other 49%. So the powers that be are doing the bare minimum to placate the people and appeal to relatively conservative parts of the electorate while keeping the working class elements that should come together and form their own coalition divided among the two parties. And Biden is doing that. He's doing the bare minimum to placate his coalition of urban and suburban moderates who care more about their 401ks than if we actually solve poverty.
This infrastructure bill is a decent accomplishment, and given my distaste for broad jobs programs and work for its own sake, the price/performance ratio is about right for me. But, this should be a mere plank in a larger progressive platform. It isn't. It's his signature accomplishment. And he's making it out like he's FDR when he's not. Meanwhile he's acting like he's spending ALL THIS MONEY! (WOW! $500 billion or so, so like 2-3% of GDP, how progressive!), when in reality he's doing this distorted mirror thing to act more progressive than he actually is.
I just want to clarify that point.
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