Today’s socialists are bursting with self-confidence, more precisely, with that easy self-confidence that comes from knowing that your opinions are fashionable, and that the cultural momentum is on your side. If ‘history’ is a battle of ideas between people who believe in completely different ways of organising a society, then history is well and truly back. Those of us on the other side of that battle better act like it.
Jim Geraghty corrects Trump’s false claim that prices have recently been falling. A slice:
While 3 percent inflation is considerably better than the 9 percent peak of the Biden era, 3 percent inflation can indeed steadily eat away at your purchasing power. A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked whether the Trump team was satisfied with 3 percent and warned, “at some point you have to admit all these add up to a persistent inflation problem. At a 3 percent inflation rate, the value of a dollar today would be 73.74 cents in ten years.” At 2 percent, that dollar is worth 82 cents in ten years.
The Democratic romp in this week’s off-year elections highlighted voters’ persistent frustration about inflation and the cost of living. The White House has taken note. Unfortunately, its first reflex is the same as that of the Biden-Harris administration: Blame corporate price gouging. That approach didn’t turn out well for Democrats in 2024, and there’s no reason the GOP should expect better results.
“I have asked the DOJ to immediately begin an investigation into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation,” President Donald Trump said Friday on Truth Social.
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Trump is a very different president from Biden, but this episode shows a parallel. Both governed to please their base. But a base-pleasing agenda is politically vulnerable if it’s accompanied by inflation. Solving that problem requires a deeper rethink than unleashing regulators on the food supply chain.
Here’s Wall Street Journal columnist Joseph Sternberg on Kevin Roberts on Tucker Carlson. A slice:
How do you solve a problem like the “groypers”? The question is tearing apart sections of the American conservative movement after the Heritage Foundation last week rushed headlong into the wrong answer. That institution’s hapless president, Kevin Roberts, would have done better to hop on a plane to Europe for a study trip first.
The groypers purport to be a movement of disaffected far-right nationalists, predominantly young men, under the sway of charismatic podcasting personality Nick Fuentes. Mr. Roberts plunged into hot water last week when he announced that he wouldn’t cut Heritage’s ties with Tucker Carlson after Mr. Carlson gave Mr. Fuentes a platform to air a sampling of his antisemitic, racist and misogynistic views uncontested. Mr. Roberts argued that to disavow Mr. Carlson would be to give in to a form of cancel culture, and insisted the conservative movement should remain a big tent.
Stephanie Slade tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)
I don’t think I agree that nationalism is racism. I do think nationalism is like black magic: People who think *they* will be able to control *it* are often clueless about the forces they’re playing with.
GMU Econ alum David Hebert documents a recent example of civil society.
Steven Greenhut warns that “California’s aggressive regulations put burgeoning AI industry at risk.”
