C (5:37)

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B (6:38)

When John F. Kennedy said we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, because they are hard. Two things I might substitute in Kennedy saying it, but I so do love doing a terrible accent. So two things. One, he has said decade normally in the past, but in that speech in Houston he did say decayed. But the most important thing for my purposes is that he definitely wasn't talking about economics. When it comes to economic policy, Americans almost never choose to do the things that are hard. In fact, they always choose to do the things that are easy. And I do have to say the Democrats are just as guilty of this as the Republicans. Writing about this phenomenon broadly is Ben Ritz, vice president of Policy Development at the Progressive Policy Institute. And in a recent essay in the Atlantic, he wrote, democrats learned the wrong lessons from 2024. And within this essay is the word that grabbed me. Sloppy ism. Love it. Welcome to the gist, Ben.

D (7:41)

Thanks for having me.

B (7:42)

So sloppy list isn't your coinage, but I give it the chef's kiss. Tell me what it is.

D (7:47)

So sloppyism is this new phenomenon where we're seeing a lot of the, a lot of the dynamics that have contributed to, I think, what a lot of people call the insurification of the Internet, you know, these low effort, this low effort content that's just thrown out there to, to manipulate algorithms, be very popular. It's low effort. It's not well curated. A lot of it's generated by AI.

B (8:14)

Right. That's slop. That's Internet slop. Yeah.

D (8:17)

And that's merging with populism, which is kind of an age old phenomenon. But that's found new legs in the Trump era of basically telling people what they want to hear, offering policy that sounds good in a sound bite, but if you actually implement it probably isn't going to work too well. And so when you take populist policies and you put it through that slop filter, that's how you get sloppy.

B (8:39)

Was right. So populism is giving the people what they want with a special emphasis on blaming elites. Elites are in the way of you getting what you want. And it's not that that isn't true or isn't true at all. It's just not the end all, be all of every explanation of how to achieve economic flourishing in America.

D (8:58)

Right, right, exactly. Certainly there are problems that are created by elites, but just railing against the elites does not in and of itself make a solution to a lot of the problems we face.

B (9:10)

So when we analyze politics, it usually goes like this. You can attack the elites and do well among your constituents, right and left, especially these days, or you could either not attack the elites or ignore that issue and open yourself up punishment as being in the thrall of the elites. That I would say, since you've been doing this and you could fill us a little in about your background and experience, has it ever been worse in terms of that dynamic than it is now?

D (9:42)

No, I think it's, I think it's been a, I was going to say steady decline, but I think it's actually been pretty rapid. I started doing budget and economic policy during the Obama administration and back then we had like high minded debates about the size and role of government. You know, there's a lot of mudslinging, but we're talking about real issues and I think, and real tradeoffs. And I think now it's devolved into much more. Who can you blame rather than how you can you actually solve a problem?

B (10:12)

Yeah, much of politics and political popularity is which party or which candidates has more believability or authenticity with the voter in terms of their antipathy towards elites. And so when it comes to Republicans or especially, especially Maga Republic, every Democrat will say, how could, how could anyone identify them as not elite? They're so clearly benefiting financially and they are elites. Whereas when it comes to Democrats, the Republicans will all say culturally they're part of an elite cabal. It's more of a cultural than wealth thing, although it is a wealth thing. Look at Nancy Pelosi. And here's the thing. They're not wrong necessarily. But what, how does that help me or you?

D (10:56)

Yeah, I mean, I'll say I think there have been certainly some issues, some economic issues on which Democrats have also had their predilection to elite preferences. I think we saw this with President Biden's kind of Obsession with student debt cancellation. Something that like very much catered more to what MAGA would call the, the elite class. But I, I think, you know. Really.

B (11:18)

Yeah. Let me just interrupt and say that kind of, I, I think that maybe shows how elite Democrats are in that they would not perceive that as a leader at all, helping kids with college debt. Whereas most, not especially non college educated Republicans would say, well, of course that's elite. You know, I'm a mechanic. How are you giving money to some kid who studied and then they'll throw out, you know, puppetry, Right? Never, it's never the good majors that are right.

D (11:43)

But I mean even, even the good majors, you know, you, you get an expensive degree, but then if it's a good major, you're getting a high income out of it. It just takes a few years to pay off the debt from that income. But railing against the elites does not necessarily solve the problem. Some problems, as we said at the top, are elite driven. But a lot of problems are just problems and they require complex solutions. And just complaining about the elites isn't going to solve it. And I think that's what we're seeing a lack of today and trying to find those kind of.

B (12:18)

Well, it's not only just complaining about the elites, it's possibly passing legislation to attack the elites. So this wasn't the point of your Atlantic essay, but I know you have written about the wealth tax, which I'm interested in, just because many other countries have tried it and I believe it's always failed. So that's why it would be sloppy. List some that it's a pretty sloppy policy in terms of actually achieving the end. But by God, isn't it popular, man?

D (12:46)

It's funny you mentioned the wealth tax because that was actually in an earlier draft of this piece and we cut it down for size. But it's the, it's the same impulse, you know, it's, we've got these billionaires. If we just imposed a really big tax on them, we could fix all of our problems. And it's ignoring two fundamental issues. One being the administrative difficulty of it, like you're not actually going to be able to do this successfully. And I had a whole other piece talking about this in January. And then the other being, even if it did work and you got all that money, it is not going to solve all of the problems that you have been told this amount of money will solve. And so it's neither going to really make a solution. And even if it did deliver what it was supposed to that's not enough to do what you're being told it will.

B (13:28)

Yeah, it's so telling that you echoed the phrase that they use, which is if we could impose this tax. No, it's if we could collect the tax. And unbelievably rich and well resourced people by definition know how to get out of paying taxes. And if you don't believe me, look at the Rolling Stones moving to Mallorca or wherever they move to. So that's, that's a good example. The example in this essay is a couple proposals by Senators Van Hollen and Brooking Booker. Tell me about those proposals and why they're sloppy.

D (14:03)

So the Booker and Van Holland proposals, their details differ, but the fundamental concept is most middle class people should no longer pay income taxes anyway anymore. And that sounds great on its surface, you know, definition of sloppyism. It sounds good if you don't think about it too hard. Why should the middle class pay taxes? We should tax the rich more. That's their proposition. The problem is that if we're telling the vast majority of the country you don't have to pay taxes, that really limits what the government can actually do. And it's not like these are two senators who are going around saying, you know, government's too big, we have to shrink it. They also have a bunch of spending they want to do. And so, you know, the math doesn't math on that. It's very expensive proposals. And even if you could tax the rich to offset some of this revenue loss, you wouldn't be able to do all the other things they want to do.

B (14:52)

That line from your article, there is a mathematical limit on how much additional revenue can be generated from raising taxes on high income households. And offsetting Booker's plan would require consuming about half of it. The plan would cost $7 trillion. So it makes it sloppy. Is that, I guess the consequences are much worse than the benefits. But sloppy. Listen, or populism, they don't call it. Slopulism is popular. So there are a couple obvious thoughts occurring to, I would say most of my audience. One is, but the Republicans and the other is maybe a little more sophisticated, which is, well, what's the harm in proposing it and defining yourself as this champion of the middle class? And then you know that the, that the legislative process, such as it is, will take hold and you only get a tiny, perhaps symbolic version of it. But you win elections and you do all the other things you want to do. What's the harm of that?

D (15:53)

So the harm, and this is an issue that's asymmetric, it affects Democrats and Republicans differently is the Democrats want to be the party of government doing things. And if you make these promises that functionally are going to defund the government or can't be implemented, what you're doing is you're advancing a fundamentally anti government narrative. You are showing people either you're showing them that you can't deliver on what you're saying and they will not believe you when you then say, well now I want the government to do X, Y and Z, or if you are successful, you've now given away all the money. I think what makes the Booker proposal very sloppyless is not just that it's pandering to the middle class by saying I'm going to give you a bunch of money in a tax cut. It's also doing it in a very poorly designed way that is going to give some money to higher earners too and is going to be way more expensive while not advancing any of his actual identified progressive priorities. It's just a very low effort. I'm just going to do this thing because it sounds good, right?

B (16:56)

And there in your answer is the answer to the first objection. But the Republicans get away with it. As you say, they're not the party that posits that our government can do a lot and work for people and make people's lives better. They're not. That's not their brand. So if they propose something that has the effect of not allowing us to, not giving us the, not giving us the latitude to be able to pay for government programs, many of them would say good.

D (17:23)

Yep, they would say good. And I also think if you look at it from the average voters perspective and you think both parties are going to do things that are going to make the government insolvent or are not going to be something you can deliver on. Well, would you rather have the party that's going to double down on the product you think that's broken or the one that's going to give you a partial refund you're going to go with the second one. And so I just don't think it's something that can ever play to Democrats benefit of not making an actual plan to make the government work.

B (17:56)

What's a good populist program that isn't sloppy list or maybe just a good. Maybe there is none but a good economic program that would fit in well with what the Democrats are trying to do in their theory of governance.

D (18:10)

I think. Well, it's, it's a difficult question because it took, I think, all of these programs, they took a little while to marinate and get popular. But I do think the Affordable Care act is an example of a program that has become popular. It did a lot to lower health costs. It expanded access. When it was enacted, the core problem that it was addressing, I mean, right now we're talking a lot about, like, how much. How much subsidies there are for health care and that kind of thing. But people may forget that there used to be a time where you could not get health insurance if you had previously been sick and your health insurance wouldn't cover treatment for it. We said that was a problem. We solved it. We did it in a way that was economically sustainable. I would say that has turned into a very popular and successful government program.

B (18:57)

What. What's a program that Booker and Van Hollen or someone in their position should be proposing for the future? That may or may not be populist. Maybe it's just good economics, but it's definitely not sloppy list.

D (19:10)

I think universal pre K could be an example of that. I think it's something that's. That's relatively popular. People think people like education, people like the idea of investing in, in kids. And economists like it too. You know, there's a lot of returns for, for making good investments in, in young people that'll pay dividends down the line. I think that's an example of a good pop.

B (19:33)

How much would it cost?

D (19:35)

It's something on the order of, I think, 300 billion over 10 years.

B (19:39)

Okay.

D (19:40)

Which is not 7 trillion, like, but like, that's, that's the, that's the important point there. Like, Van Holland's proposal would be, what is it, four or five times that and Booker's, you know, several more.

B (19:56)

Our leaders and our politicians should be realistic. They should be economically astute. They should know the limits of their spending. They should not propose things that can't get done. But our voters aren't like that. So if our leaders adhere to those precepts and our voters don't react by electing them, they won't be our leaders. What do you do about that?

D (20:20)

So I do want to answer the question you asked, but I also want to challenge the premise a little bit because I actually think we've seen instances of Democratic voters actually being ahead of their leaders on this. I think we do see oftentimes primary voters being more moderate than the candidates they're electing and caring more about this sort of thing. But there is still this fundamental issue of you can't expect a Voter to comprehend the entire federal budget and make trade offs themselves. I think that's a question for leaders and it really comes down to can you make the case that what it is you want to do is something worth paying for. I'm not going to pretend that that's an easy thing to do. But if you want to lead the country in developing these big bold programs like you have to sell it.

B (21:08)

Yeah, but my point is more that sloppy list isn't proposed because it's unpopular. In fact, there's a little bit, there's a little bit of a misdirect in terms of the AI Internet slop which is readily identifiable as garbage. Who wants this stuff? That's why we call it slop. Or sometimes slop is used to describe those bowls for lunch that are served in sweetgreen. You know, bowl of slop. But you look at it and it looks like. Whereas the sloppy list proposals are attractive, much more attractive than an AI picture where some guy has seven fingers on his hands. So I do find that. Yeah, go ahead.

D (21:49)

I think there is a lot of similarity there. Right. Because if you, if you take a very quick look at the AI picture you might think, oh, that's a real picture. And then you study the details for 15 seconds and you see there's seven fingers there. I think it's the same thing with these proposals. Sure. Like the tax, you know, Cory Booker says the tax codes rigged for those at the top and in a lot of ways it is. Here's a tax cut for everybody else. Sounds good. Start looking at the details and wait. No, this doesn't make sense. I think there is a lot of overlap there.

B (22:16)

I like universal pre K voters want to see their politicians acting on their behalf and right now the watchword is affordability. I find a lot of the targeting of affordability issues to be gimmicks, sometimes even worse. On my show the other day I talked about local governance going against what is sometimes called predatory, sometimes called surveillance and sometimes called dynamic pricing. Without realizing that every time you bring the price of milk down 30 cents for your neighbor, the other way to do that is to just bring it up 30 cents for you. I mean every time someone benefit, every time someone is hurt by a high, higher priced hamburger, there is the other person that benefits from eating a hamburger before 12 o' clock and getting the lower price. But are there real affordability? I'm going right at affordability and not violating some economic principles with like price controls. Some real, I don't know if it's low hanging fruit, but actually plausible fruit to be plucked.

D (23:16)

I think the challenge is that there really isn't. I think that the you kind of have two categories for affordability that actually works. The first is what you just described where you make it more affordable for somebody, but that's going to come at the cost of making it less affordable for somebody else. That's a trade off and that's a decision leaders have to make is who are we going to be prioritizing here? And the second is there are ways that we can expand the supply of what's being produced. There are smart investments we can make. And I think Democrats actually tried to do this with the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation Reduction act, but those are not quick fixes. They take time to work out. And so over time you'll get more affordability, but maybe not in time for the next election. I will say there is one exception to that and that's the tariffs. I think the tariffs have made things unaffordable or certainly less affordable for American consumers without making things more affordable for someone else. And if we just got rid of them, I think prices would either go down or they would stop rising for a while.

B (24:17)

Well, in other words, the war in Iran, obviously they spiked oil prices. Yeah. So there might not be much you could do about affordability, but when the other party is doing a lot about affordability and that a lot is making it worse, then you could just not do that. So that will happen in the midterms, but I don't know if that's a long term fix.

D (24:34)

Well, that's the thing is like you can't, you can't make things affordable when policy is otherwise working. Like there's only so much the government can do, but there's a lot the government can do to make things less affordable. And we could stop doing and we'll

B (24:47)

be back in a minute with more of Ben Ritz of the Progressive Policy Institute to talk more of the sloppyism right after this.

A (25:04)

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B (26:10)

So we're back with Ben Ritz talking about his article that ran in the Atlantic. Democrats learned the wrong lessons from 2024. And I have noted that in terms of what people love, it's the big, bold, visionary, daring proposal. And I guess a $7 trillion spending plan to get a middle class tax cut might qualify, but it's a little too big. Right? It's big and bold, but it can't work. I don't know if free childcare gets to the big and bold. Let's give us the headline type label. Maybe on a municipal level it does, but not on a federal level. Tell me anything else that's really big that could work for the Democrats. That could be realistic. I know there was a Bernie Sanders proposal and when I worked out the math, it could be the case if this was the priority, that we could achieve free public university educations for anyone who wants one. What do you think of that?

D (27:09)

I think universal free college is something that we can do. There is the money for it. The question is, is that the best use of our resources? And I think that's a debate to have. I think going back to, you know, the student debt question we talked about earlier. Do you want to be using the government's resources to make college cheaper or are you going to be trying to find more non career paths for education?

B (27:36)

Yeah, that's, that's another major concern. We're probably pumping out too many college graduates for too few jobs that actually require a college degree. But it could be pretty popular. It's still very much seen as an essay.

D (27:47)

I don't know if we should, but I certainly think that's more affordable than some of these tax things.

B (27:52)

Is no tax on tips sloppulism?

D (27:55)

I think no tax on tips is sloppulism. I think it's. That doesn't mean it's implausible. I mean, obviously we've enacted it into law. It's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as these policies. It's a couple hundred billion dollars over 10 years. But you know, it's. When you look at the details, there are problems there too. I wrote a piece about this last year. As a result of no tax on tips, you're going to have onlyfans content creators paying lower taxes than nurses. And is that what people had in mind when they voted for this policy. Probably not like it was meant to be a pro working class tax policy for people in the service industry. But I think it's also created a lot of inequities and we should be thinking about ways to help the working class Americans that's, that's better designed than just the quick. Oh, that sounds good. Let's say no tax on tips.

B (28:49)

Yeah. To be fair, many onlyfans content providers will dress up as nurses for an extra untaxed, untaxed fee.

D (28:57)

That is, that is true.

B (28:59)

Yeah. However, don't you think at this point, when Trump came out with the proposal, a waitress in Las Vegas told me he was derided, he was mocked. Do you think most Democrats now say to themselves, I wish we had that one?

D (29:13)

Yeah. I mean that's, that's part of the problem is I think, I think he's really good at finding kind of those, those quick, sellable policies. And the question for Democrats is going to be where to draw the line. Like the truth is, are Democrats going to not be able to make the government work by having no tax on tips? No. If you just give away no tax on tips, they can still find ways to pay for everything else they want to do. They can't do that with the $7 trillion tax cut. And the question is, if you move towards him on this and this and this and this, where do you draw the line?

B (29:47)

Right. You could have a couple small bad ideas. Well, the big bill do is as you write, major trust funds for Social Security and Medicare are projected to be depleted before the end of the next President's first term. Doing nothing for these programs. The preferred approach to many Democrats for the last 40 years would mean allowing automatic benefit cuts as high as 12% for Medic and 24% for Social Security. So as far as the politics of this, just saving or shoring up those programs, which is to say spending on them. Right. There are some things you could do at the margins with the ages to qualify, but it's mostly spending money to shore up the programs. Do you think that's enough of a winter winner for Democrats? We are not really overhauling society and we're not not going with free universal pre K or free college or a middle class tax cut. All we did was save and shore up Social Security and Medicare.

D (30:44)

I think this is a big landmine coming for Democrats and Republicans too. But I think Republicans know it's going to be a landmine for them. And I think Democrats may be less so. You know, you're Talking about one of the biggest tax increases in history just to keep Social Security and Medicare where they are after our party having told generations we don't need to do anything with them, they're perfectly good just the way they are. And I think, you know, we've seen this phrase kind of come up in the discourse, more total boomer luxury communism, like this idea that we are, we're making government cater exclusively to the interests of wealthy retirees at the expense of workers. And the idea that we're going to impose another big tax on workers to, to shore up those programs without giving the workers anything in return, I think we could see that become an issue in ways that people aren't expecting right now.

B (31:41)

Yeah, I've not been privy to that part of the discourse, and it's an arresting phrase, but I'm not sure which adjectives modify the others. In total boomer luxury communism, it's very clever. When I ask Democrats about this, what about the financial solvency of these funds? Often they yell at me and say, all my life people have said this and all it is is a canard. And it's only been a canard because they do, to borrow a phrase, kick the can down the road. Right. Just to analyze it for us. And in case anyone listening has said, yeah, I have heard that, and it's never really a problem. What's the ground truth on the potential insolvency of these programs?

D (32:22)

The ground truth is we have known since the 1990s that these programs were going to start running deficits in the 2000s, and they were going to run out of their previous surpluses around the 2000-30s or early 2000-40s. We've known the entire time. And so if somebody is saying in 1990 we're going to have a crisis in 2035, and you get to 2010 and nothing's happened, that doesn't mean anything. Like, we didn't hit the date yet. Now we are actually getting close to the date, and it is now within, you know, as I said, the next president's first term. And so I think people who think that just because nothing happened when nothing was supposed to happen means nothing will happen now. I think they've kind of got their heads in the sand.

B (33:06)

Well, the argument is, yeah, but then you pass a spending bill, and maybe that was easier in times when interest rates were, you know, 2%.

D (33:12)

So that's the thing is there was a big question in the 2010s when we were spending a lot of money on deficits, but we had low interest rates and low inflation. People thought, you know what, maybe deficits don't matter. And we have seen since 2021 in the post Covid era that no, there is now, there are now constraints. We're having higher interest rates than we have, you know, with the exception of just after Covid, they're still at multi decade highs. Now federal government is spending a trillion dollars a year on interest payments, more on interest payments relative to the size of the economy than ever before, more than the military.

B (33:49)

And that's even with the $200 billion approval.

D (33:52)

Yeah. And now we're increasing military spending. We're adding the cost of the big beautiful bill to it. So I think there is a real question that even though the bond markets have been okay historically, if now we're running these, these massive deficits and then we're saying oh, and we're going to borrow the money for Social Security and Medicare indefinitely, I think that's when you see the bond markets react.

B (34:15)

So last thing I want to ask you, and I've asked you versions of this, you are an economics expert, you advise, you're, you're with the Progressive Policy Institute, it's a think tank. You're a wonk. You understand how economics works. You also understand enough about politics. I've seen you on panels talking about this, but I just don't see a way around the fact that there is no margin in realism or leveling or really understanding where our balance sheet is headed. I don't see a way for politicians, Democratic politicians, forward looking politicians who want to be hopeful. I don't see a way for them to actually acknowledge and embrace this and also appeal to the public. Do you?

D (35:00)

I'm not going to be so naive as to say if they just try and tell the truth, it's definitely going to work. What I will say is number one, Bill Clinton did it and it, it worked out well for him. And I would say it's been a while since anybody really tried this. And so I think the first thing is it's worth trying. And the second is if you don't do that, then you have to be prepared that all these other things you want to do aren't going to happen. You might be able to pitch individually a program or two, but the entire Democratic agenda is not going to work unless we have figured out how to get people on board with, with our vision of government.

B (35:40)

So if you're a once in a generation political talent at a time when there aren't too many cross currents and your rival party doesn't represent the possible death knell of democracy. You're saying there is a chance.

D (35:51)

I'm saying I can hope that a lot can happen in seven years. But no, I'm not going to lie. Like, it's, it's bleak, but at the very least, I feel like we could stop making it worse.

B (36:02)

Ben Ritz is the vice president of Policy development at the Progressive Policy Institute. His recent piece for the Atlantic is democr Democrats Learned the wrong lesson from 2024. I got to tell you, it should have been titled Democrats Don't Give in to Sloppyism.

D (36:17)

That was the original title. They changed it.

B (36:20)

Are you serious?

D (36:22)

I think, I think it's technically Democrats have a Sloppy Listen problem. But yeah, the Internet Archive, you'll see the original title.

B (36:29)

Not saying I could be consulted by the Atlantic as a headline writer. I'm just saying on this one, the sloppy is showing, showing itself. Thanks, Ben.

D (36:38)

Thank you.

B (36:45)

And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produced the gist. Kathleen Sykes runs our substack. There's a great post up today about the Pit and all the white people who. Well, some of them are nice if they're doctors, and if they're not, some of them are okay if they're patients. But if you find an asshole on the Pit, I don't want to give it away. It's a written substack piece that I ask you to subscribe to at mikepeska.substack.com Jeff Craig runs all of our social media videos and Ben Astaire is our booking producer. Michelle Pesca is the CBSO of Peach Fish Productions. And thanks for listening.