Why would this "working stiff" prototype need defending if his life is perfectly normal? If anything this prototype usually wants to be left alone and hates the government. With that said, without Democratic policies the "working stiff" wouldn't have job, his children wouldn't get a decent education and he might not even have health care to stay healthy enough to keep working. The better question is why do Republicans have an issue with everyone who doesn't fit a certain prototype. The Republican Party has become a cult that subscribes to the idea that only some Americans should have opportunities.
Because a perfectly normal life is hard going (that you would even see fit to ask that question is baffling). Doubly so if you are unfortunate to be in a major metropolitan area where the cost of living is sky-high. A big reason why people ridicule the sanctimony of Democrats acting like they are valiant defenders of the masses: look at how little they have done to deal with the fact that places like the Bay Area are rapidly becoming totally unlivable.
"That restaurant is so overcrowded nobody goes there anymore." Yogi Bera
So do you deny that the cost of living in the Bay Area is unreasonably high?
I think his point is that in that sense the Bay Area is a victim of its own overwhelming success. Supply and demand and all that. I'm sure that some Municipal housing and Zoning codes could be modified to encourage more development to try to lower housing costs at least somewhat. However, if you're trying to say that the main reason Bay Area Housing costs are so high has to do with government over-regulation, as opposed to the fact that essentially every well-paid educated person in the Western Hemisphere tried to move there in the past 20 years - - ironically, supply and demand - - then I think you're off base.
Good thing I didn't try to say that.
So then, what is your point?
Polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the trajectory of the Bay Area driven primarily by the cost of living and housing, and indicate that nearly half of people living here want to leave. If the Democratic Party's press is accurate, then I would imagine that they could take advantage of their monolithic power in our cities and in the state of California to make life better for those of us outside the tech industry and tackle the serious problems we face. Instead I see a solid consensus around me transcending party lines that the situation is bad and getting worse. It makes these glowing endorsements of liberal policy ring quite hollow.
Some problems just don't have solutions.
There is a partial solution based on significantly increasing density.
However, by and large, the Bay Area has two choices:
1.Significantly increase the amount of home construction to (hopefully) reduce the housing prices and increase the amount of traffic and pressures on public amenities.
2.Discourage population growth by not building new housing developments in order to reduce this pressure on public amenities, and have even higher housing costs.
A lot of people who are used to more suburban living don't seem to like very high density.
There may be some things that San Francisco could do, as Vancouver has done, to make it very difficult for people not living in the area to own empty homes (basically using it for investment purposes) by mandating that they either rent out the homes or pay a speculation tax, and this certainly can take pressure off of housing demand. However, ultimately this issue of 'pick your poison' can't be avoided.
The public, lying politicians and especially lying pressure groups like to tell the public that they can have lower cost housing without increasing density or pressure on public amenities, but they can't change reality.
So your contention is in essence that there exists no magic cure and due to fundamental mechanics of populations the Bay Area is likely doomed to suffer from severe dissatisfaction even as general economic metrics look good here. I don't really disagree with that. Note that the post I initially responded to had a basic gist of "things are alright, Democrat policies make life good". It's a very pollyanna view of how policy works out, and my thoughts in this thread are in reaction to that.
I notice often on Atlas that people adopt this sort of view and then are befuddled that voters don't overwhelmingly prefer liberal politicians. The people I know who find themselves struggling to pay their bills, even if they are very liberal themselves, are generally more pessimistic about the prospects of government to change things for the better. They certainly won't subscribe to the idea that if your life is perfectly normal then you're fine and don't need help.
I was referring to the Bay Area specifically and not to the United States in general.
I personally would certainly argue that liberal Neo-Classical economics does both provide 'the greatest good for the greatest number' and that over time it provides greater good for greater numbers.
I discussed this same thing with the slavery issue in the Bible. At the time of Ancient Rome they did not have the wealth to keep prisoners of war, so they could either kill them or allow them to be made slaves. I'm certainly not going to say that the money couldn't be better spent elsewhere, but the U.S has 2.2 million people in jail at any given point in time, and it's not that a significant cost to the treasury.
This is also the main moral defense of capitalism. It isn't just that 'people can buy more stuff' it's that the increased wealth provides greater and more moral options for society.
In this case, as it is true for a society, it's also true for the individual. Over time, an increase in wealth provides people greater options and can provide them greater security.
Of course, that gets in to the notion of the 'destruction' that occurs in a vibrant economy. In the case of the Bay Area, it's a case of 'you must pick one or the other', in this case, all governments, to the degree they can, try to manage the trade-off between stability and creative destruction.
There is also, I think, no question both an irony and a ridiculousness to Trump and the Congressional Republicans benefiting from the dissatisfaction. It's the Republican policies of anti-union, tax cuts for the rich, social spending cuts and (some) deregulation that have many people feeling the sense of dislocation both economically and socially that helped elect Trump and the Republican Congress in 2016. Trump ran, at times, as a repudiation of these 'Reagan Revolution' economic policies, but the Congressional Republicans promised to keep them and do more, and, yet, they both benefited.
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For a defense and explanation of liberal neo-classical economics, I recommend reading "Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius" By economist and author Sylvia Nassar (Nassar also wrote 'A Beautiful Mind.')
There are a couple historical disputes with the book. Nassar claims that Karl Marx was basically a self-promoting layabout while Engels was the real ideas person. That Marx was a shameless self-promoter and a layabout isn't in dispute, but there seems to be a lot of disagreement with the idea that he wasn't also the greater intellectual.
Nassar, also claims that Alfred Marshall, the father of modern micro economics, was also the father of modern macro economics, as he disproved Malthusian based classical economics theory. Most economists don't credit Alfred Marshall for this, or at least, they dispute that was the central focus of his work.
However, the book is an excellent explainer of liberal neo-classical economics and its support for free trade, investments in infrastructure and people and other social spending and health and safety and environmental regulations as the best way by far of building an economy over time that benefits by far the most people.
The book also takes on the twin evils of populist nativist economics and the right wing so called 'economic freedom' which is really nothing but rent seeking by wealthy and powerful people. Of course, under Trump and the Republican Congress, we had both of these things.
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1.There is an underlying problem with your critique of Democrats: you aren't comparing Democratic policies to Republican policies, you are comparing them to utopia.
Actual Republican policies are either the neo-Feudalist policies of the Congressional Republicans, or are the populist policies of Donald Trump, that nativism, the (attempts) to interfere in monetary policy that have devastated the Argentine economy for more than 100 years now.
As with most things, these policies don't have effects overnight but they do have large negative impacts in the long run.
2.This is also true with the benefits of liberal neo-classical economic policies. What should be emphasized here are the positive feedback effects. A 2% annual real GDP growth rate may not sound like much, but it results in a doubling of an economy in real terms every 36 years. (Slow and steady wins the race.)
The reason this doesn't always appeal is the same reason, for example, why Argentina has followed failed populist economics for more than 100 years now: because demagogues who promise quick riches unfortunately sometime have more appeal than those who promise slow and steady growth through hard work and some short term sacrifice (deferred gratification.) This is true on the right with Donald Trump, and it's somewhat true on the left with, somewhat, Bernie Sanders.
For those who would falsely claim that Republican ideology embraces 'deferred gratification' I note, as I noted in another thread here, that Republicans and conservatives in general are great at sloganeering, 'the party of personal responsibility' 'the law and order party' to the degree that they actually believe they stand for these things, while being bad at governing, and not at all interested in living up to the ideals inherent in these slogans.
3.Finally, this is an article that details the macro economic impacts of systemic discrimination:
https://hbr.org/2017/11/the-insidious-economic-impact-of-sexual-harassmentSo, far from 'liberal identity politics' being of concern for only a small number of people for purely social reasons, in fact, systemic discrimination has fairly large negative economic impacts for society as a whole.
