economy – Between Hell and High Water

The Unnecessary Scarcity We Tolerate Is Tearing Up the Country

By Mike Koetting October 28, 2025

I’ve been thinking that Abundance, the Ezra Klein-Derek Thompson book, has the right idea but the focus is too narrow.

The Klein-Thompson book starts with the observation that scarcity is a choice. It then proceeds to assume that the way out of the scarcity trap is to make it easier to create more stuff so that all may experience the abundance of what our technology can produce. This clearly has an element of truth. They correctly identify bottlenecks in our current production of social goods and they are right that there is no political appetite for “degrowth.” So power to their suggestions.

That said, however, they miss the urgency of the situation. A large chunk of the population is furious. Trying to remove obstacles to creating greater supply of desired goods, while laudable, is simply not a solution commensurate with the degree of anger in the body politic. I think Michael Hirschorn, in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, has a better handle on where we are: “Trumpism is more than politics. It’s an emotional gas-main explosion, from people who felt unheard, patronized, left behind.”

Government Statistics for Policy

Curated by Mike Koetting September 30, 2025

I’ve been on vacation the last two weeks, so I don’t have a new post. But to fill the vacuum that would otherwise be created in the universe, I am posting this collection of relevant quotes on the above topic.

The Short Happy Strike of the Longshoremen

By Mike Koetting October 22,2024

Well…I am tired of the election. I don’t think I have anything more to say about it until it actually happens. Anyone reading this knows what I think. None of us have a clue how it’s going to end. Neither do all the pundits, who at least get paid for making up the same stuff that I would. We’ll just have to see.

On the other hand, it’s hard to talk about anything else. It’s like trying to have a conversation on the side of the runway while three dozen Boeing 737s are taking off, with of course, the possibility that one will crash.

Nevertheless, I am going to talk about something else—the longshoremen’s strike that streaked across the American consciousness and is already forgotten because it turned into a non-event. Before I get into the main part of that discussion, I can’t keep myself from making one election related point: the longshoremen got a huge raise because they had a strong union and because the White House weighed in as a real, working ally. In office, Trump did everything he could to undercut unions. And, while he was full of bluster about what he would do for workers, he never delivered squat, particularly in comparison to what Biden and the Democrats have delivered. Any argument by union members for backing Trump for economic reasons are wildly suspect. I have argued elsewhere that there are real economic issues in the society and that the current economic successes don’t scratch all the valid itches. But still, if you’re a union guy and you say you support Trump for economic reasons, you’re either lying or are deluded about what can possibly be accomplished by policy. (A recent book by Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol, who was one of my mentors in graduate school, argues that what has so badly eroded Democratic support from labor is that the weakening and dispersion of American manufacturing has not only depleted union membership but more fundamentally destroyed the sense of working-class culture that was important in creating union solidarity. This surely contributes to the confusion as to who is really on their side.)