Joe Biden seems interested in redistributing income, but not in challenging the private power of his party’s favorite industries, EricLevitz writes
“Is that COVID on my hand or are you just unhappy to see me?” Photo: Frederic J Brown/AFP via Getty Images Joe Biden will mount an “FDR-size” presidency that remakes America’s energy grid, revives organized labor, turns housing into an entitlement, soaks the rich, and expands the welfare state while reaching across the aisle to find bipartisan solutions to America’s problems. He will get the U.S. to net-zero emission by 2050 while protecting Pennsylvania’s fracking industry.
When Joe Biden released economic recommendations two months ago, they included a few ideas that worried some powerful bankers: allowing banking at the post office, for example, and having the Federal Reserve guarantee all Americans a bank account.But in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda.
Some on the left look at these developments and conclude that Biden’s every gesture in their direction is a lie. Uncle Joe may sell “Social Democracy Lite” on the campaign trail, but once in office, he will govern like it’s 1995: There will be no green stimulus, only grand bargains on the deficit. No incremental expansions of social provision, only phased-in cuts to Social Security.
It wasn’t Biden’s call for spending $2 trillion in four years on climate projects, or his endorsement of turning Section 8 housing vouchers into an entitlement, or plans for paid family leave and child care that his campaign had to disavow in private conversations with its favorite Wall Street rentiers — it was his apparent embrace of postal banking, a policy that would enable the public sector to perform some functions currently reserved for private finance.
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