The Iowa Republican party is proposing draconian new restrictions on what food can be purchased with the state’s food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

This attack on the poor at the state level is coming at the same time as the national GOP has successfully blocked the continuation of the Child Tax Credit, a program which substantially, demonstrably reduced child poverty.

The GOP’s priorities are clear. They don’t want to reduce poverty. They want to police, control and torment the poor. The party that constantly touts liberty doesn’t want liberty for all. They want liberty for the powerful to impose their will on the most vulnerable.

READ MORE: 'Everyone in the territory is disenfranchised': Washington DC should replace Iowa as first presidential nominating contest

Republican ire

SNAP is a crucial safety net and the country’s most effective anti-hunger program. In 2021, it ensured that 41 million Americans — 12 percent of the population — could afford an adequate diet every month.

SNAP also provides valuable emergency economic stability. SNAP enrollment increases in downturns, putting money into the economy to combat recession and boost recovery.

Despite its importance, or because of it, SNAP has long been a target of Republican ire.

READ MORE: Mike Pence teases a presidential run in Iowa stump speech for Republican midterm candidates

Matthew Gritter’s 2017 monograph Undeserving: SNAP Reform and Conceptions of the Deserving Poor chronicles how politicians have moved to regulate food stamps in recent decades. They’ve tried to put limits on what foods could be purchased and to prevent people without disabilities or dependents from getting aid.

They’ve also pushed drug testing — an idea introduced by former KKK leader and Louisiana Senator David Duke, and instituted in states like Florida and Utah.

Gritter concludes in an earlier paper that the goal of these interventions appears to be to replace “a safety net of last resort” with “a costly method to impose punitive measures on the poor.”

“Evidence suggests that reforms will reduce enrollment without changing the circumstances that led people to seek assistance,” he says.

Iowa is the latest attempt to target SNAP.

Canned tuna and salmon

The new bill, House File 3, would put harsh limits on what low-income families could purchase in Iowa when receiving federal SNAP food stamp funds for healthy food options.

It would restrict purchases to those covered by the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which uses federal funds for food assistance to pregnant people and new parents.

According to the Iowa Hunger Coalition, “this bill would restrict SNAP participants’ ability to make their own food choices, take food away from Iowans, and increase hunger and food insecurity in our state.”

Families under House File 3 could no longer buy white bread, American cheese, coffee, snack foods, canned fruit and vegetables, bottled water, crackers and more.

They also couldn’t buy any meat except canned tuna and salmon. This despite the fact that meat, poultry and seafood is the top expenditure category for SNAP recipients, accounting for 19 percent of money spent on food.

The Iowa GOP also wants a limit of $2,750 on household assets for receiving SNAP benefits; the cap is raised to $4,250 in assets if one family member is over 59 or is disabled. Houses and one vehicle would be excluded. Children’s savings accounts would not.

These low caps mean that people could not save for emergencies, because doing so would mean they would lose SNAP benefits. Nor could they own a second vehicle — a necessity for getting to work in many rural areas.

Historic low

The assault on SNAP is ugly because we have just conducted a sweeping experiment demonstrating that no-strings assistance to the poor is wildly successful at lifting children out of poverty with virtually no downsides.

The expanded Child Tax Credit instituted in 2021 provided monthly cash payments to low-income families with children. It closed a loophole that prevented the poorest families from receiving assistance, and increased payments for everyone.

The result? Child poverty dropped to a historic low of 5.2 percent.

Lawmakers allowed the expanded CTC to expire.

Inevitably, child poverty rates went back up.

Lawmakers refused to renew the expanded CTC in part because, mirroring attitudes towards SNAP, they believed that the people receiving the money were not deserving.

West Virginia’s conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said he was worried parents would use benefits to buy drugs. He also wanted to institute work requirements for recipients.

But increasing restrictions prevents the neediest people from receiving benefits. It also may prevent people from working.

A study of those in line to receive CTC funds found that recipients believed the additional money would allow them to pay for childcare and increase their work hours.

Sure enough, in studies of the program conducted after it expired, there was no evidence that CTC payments reduced workforce participation.

Undeserving

We know that SNAP is effective at reducing hunger. We know that simply giving people money, without conditions, is an incredibly effective means of pulling children out of poverty.

But conservatives don’t care. That’s because they’re not actually concerned with helping the poor.

They are concerned with policing them.

Conservatives want a poverty policy that is focused on preventing people from accessing benefits. The goal is to punish the undeserving. And all poor people are assumed to be undeserving.

The success of the CTC shows that poverty and hunger are not intractable problems. They are deliberate policy choices.

The wealthy and powerful impose misery on the poor because they believe desperate people are more tractable and less able to organize.

Or perhaps they attack the poor simply because they don’t like the poor and believe they should suffer.

In any case, the expiration of the CTC, and the Iowa GOP’s assault on the SNAP program, shows that neither the pandemic nor the 2022 midterms have changed Republican commitments. GOP politicians like to cosplay as champions of the working class.

But the truth is they hold people of modest means in contempt and relish the chance to take food out of their mouths.

READ MORE: 'This is on you': NRA-backed Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst blasted following mass shooting at Iowa church

Nick Bostrom is one of the most important present-day philosophers of philanthropy and charitable giving. This month he apologized for a hideously racist email he wrote back in 1995.

In doing so, he inadvertently showed that racism and philanthropy can happily coexist. He also showed that philanthropy is often deployed to buttress racism, and vice versa.

Sounding sage

READ MORE: Scholars and lawmakers are outraged over DeSantis’ rejection of AP African-American curriculum

Bostrom isn’t quite a household name. But he’s a central figure in the Effective Altruism movement, dedicated to rationalizing philanthropy.

Specifically, he’s known for his contributions to longtermism — a philosophical argument that future people are as valuable and morally important as present-day people.

He argues that we need to balance the fate of future humans in our ethical choices and philanthropy.

That sounds sage enough.

READ MORE: Russell Banks, John Brown, and the American soul

However, in practice, longtermism is obsessed with developing artificial intelligence and with bringing about a future in which countless billions and trillions of digital “people” can flourish in computer simulations.

As I’ve discussed at the Editorial Board, this quasi-religious science-fiction fantasy has led Effective Altruism groups like OpenPhilanthropy to donate more money to AI research than to eradicating malaria.

“I like that sentence”

Bostrom’s feverish speculations about the upsides and downsides of future AI have been enthusiastically endorsed by numerous self-styled thought leaders.

Elon Musk blurbed Bostrom’s 2014 book Superintelligence: “Worth reading. … We need to be supercareful with AI”.

Nate Silver did as well, claiming the book was “very deep … every paragraph has, like, six ideas embedded within it.”

Bostrom’s latest has received fewer accolades.

In early January, he learned that philosopher Émile P. Torres had discovered an ugly, racist email Bostrom had written on the Extropians listserv, a futurist forum he participated in back in the mid-1990s.

Bostrom decided to get ahead of the potential scandal by releasing the email himself, along with an apology.

The old email argues for the virtue of blunt, offensive communication. It then quickly descends into deeply vile and ugly racist bilge.

As an example of blunt communication, Bostrom writes the sentence “Blacks are more stupid than whites.” He then says, “I like that sentence and think it is true.”

He says that in his view, people who read that sentence will think he is racist, even though he is just plainly stating his own beliefs based on his reading about IQ.

He worries that people will think he is essentially using the n-word. Then he actually uses the n-word to illustrate.

Bostrom in his apology says, “I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago.” Specifically, he says that “the invocation of a racial slur was repulsive.”

He’s right; the invocation was repulsive.

But so was the claim that Black people are less intelligent than white people. And there, Bostrom’s apology is much less straightforward.

The supposed morality

Rather than simply repudiating the racist idea that white people are smarter than Black people, Bostrom hedges.

He says he now believes “it is deeply unfair that unequal access to education, nutrients and basic healthcare leads to inequality in social outcomes, including sometimes disparities in skills and cognitive capacity.”

He also says that it’s possible that there is a biological element to cognitive differences, but that it is “not my area of expertise.”

Bostrom goes on to insist that he does not support eugenics, as it is “commonly understood.” But he can’t resist suggesting that eugenic enhancements to fetuses would be ethical and cool, and linking a bunch of his papers on the topic.

In summary, Bostrom now believes that screaming the n-word on a listserve is bad, and that discourse should be more civil.

Otherwise, he uses more civil discourse to soft-pedal the fact that he still thinks that maybe Black people are not as intelligent as white people, and is in favor of eugenic ideas that have long been associated with racism.

As part of deflecting from his actual immoral ideas, Bostrom appeals to the supposed morality of his philanthropic giving.

Perfectly congruent with bigotry

He says that his concern with environmental and health inequities which affect Black people has led him to contribute to charities “fighting exactly this problem,” including “SCI Foundation, GiveDirectly, the Black Health Alliance, the Iodine Global Network, BasicNeeds and the Christian Blind Mission.”

These organizations do valuable work. But using one’s contributions as a way to deflect or neutralize charges of racism is less admirable.

Bostrom is saying, “I give to charities that help Black people” the same way he might say “I have Black friends.”

The main difference is that “I have Black friends” at least shows that one can imagine a relationship of equality with some Black person.

Touting one’s charitable giving, in contrast, presents you as a benefactor, and suggests that Black people should be grateful for your largesse.

Bostrom points to his philanthropy to show that he does not harbor prejudice. But philanthropy is often deeply antidemocratic, and congruent with the belief that wealthy (generally white) people are best suited to make decisions for everyone else.

Émile P. Torres says that in his research on the longtermism community, he spoke to one researcher who said, in Torres’ paraphrase, that “only once he came to realize that some races are inferior to others could he muster sympathy to donate to help the global poor.”

Philanthropy is often inextricably linked to a sense of superiority and condescension, which is perfectly congruent with bigotry.

Unequal and unfit

Along those lines, now Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, writing in 2012 about the new politics of wealth, explained that super-rich donors love to give to their own pet projects — museums, symphonies, AI research — but hate being taxed to help support government services.

She warns that philanthropy “must not replace or, worse yet, usurp, public policy as formulated and implemented by our society as a whole.”

Private giving can make society more hierarchical, less democratic and less egalitarian when money is directed at the behest of the wealthy rather than in accord with democratic priorities. The conviction that wealthy people know best means that donors don’t listen to those who need money, and therefore often fail to help them.

Anthony Kalulu, a Ugandan who has spent much of his life in deep poverty, notes that less than 1 percent of development and charitable assistance goes directly to grassroots organizations in the global south.

Kalulu says that 99 percent “of antipoverty funding stays in the hands of the global development sector, which means western agencies.” Virtually none of the money reaches his impoverished region of Uganda.

Part of the problem, Kalulu says, is that western media, and western donors, tend to view Africans and people in the global South as less “legit” and innately untrustworthy.

That chimes very uncomfortably with Bostrom’s assertion — in his original 1995 email, and in his 2023 explanation — that Black people may be less intelligent than white people.

Bostrom’s philosophy and his writing are at the core of important philanthropic communities and movements. Bostrom also, in the past and currently, holds racist ideas about Black people’s intelligence.

Bostrom’s ethical commitment to imaginary digital people living in a future simulation is closely tied to his view that certain people in the present are biologically unequal and unfit.

No utopia

Effective Altruism is committed to contributing to the best, most effective charities — to using money in ways that will most powerfully help people.

But when philanthropy is focused on the preferences and the virtues of donors, without input from those affected by their donations, effectiveness, and for that matter virtue, is going to be badly skewed.

Racism is one of the most pernicious and intractable causes of suffering and inequality in the world. And a philanthropy rooted in racist ideas will not alleviate injustice and poverty.

Nor, contra Bostrom, will racist ideas lead to utopia, no matter how you run your simulation.

READ MORE: DeSantis requests course data on CRT from state colleges to prevent 'far-left woke agenda' from taking over

In 2014, if you made sandwiches at Jimmy John’s and quit, you were barred by contract from making sandwiches anywhere else for two years. You couldn’t work within two miles of a Jimmy John’s store that made more than 10 percent of its revenue from sandwiches.

Jimmy John’s sandwich makers were forced, as a condition of employment, to sign noncompete agreements — a legal clause preventing employees from leaving to work for a competitor.

Most people think that only highly paid employees privy to trade secrets or other sensitive information are bound by noncompetes.

READ MORE: FTC chair: Non-compete clauses 'inflict major harm across the economy' and 'drive down wages'

In fact, noncompetes are widespread in many industries, and their use, and abuse, has been growing.

Even interns

Jimmy John’s was forced to settle a lawsuit over their ridiculous, noncompetes. Others may also have to abandon the practice soon.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed a rule to ban almost all noncompete clauses. The FTC has made preliminary findings that noncompete clauses are an “unfair method of competition” that violate Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

READ MORE: 'Thrilling': Federal Trade Commission lauded for proposing a ban on employer non-compete clauses

The FTC estimates that the change would increase worker wages by nearly $300 billion a year, because workers would be freed to leave their old employers to find new jobs with higher salaries.

The agency notes that noncompetes are used in a wide array of industries; hairstylists, warehouse workers, doctors and executives are all forced to sign noncompetes.

Amazon has forced temporary warehouse workers to sign 18-month global noncompetes. Amazon has demanded that laid-off workers recommit to their noncompetes to receive severance pay.

Even interns have been forced to sign noncompetes — though the whole point of an internship is for interns to gain experience so they can work in jobs in the industry where they are interning.

They are now ubiquitous

A 2014 survey of workers found that about 18 percent of the workforce was under noncompete agreements. A 2019 survey of businesses by EPI put the number much higher. It found that about half of all businesses use noncompetes, and that those agreements cover between 27.8 percent and 46.5 percent of all workers.

Part of the difference is probably methodology. Many workers sign noncompetes as part of their enrollment paperwork, and may not realize it. So surveying businesses is a more accurate number.

But the increase between 2014 and 2019 is likely also an indication that noncompetes have become more ubiquitous.

EPI believes that the rise in noncompete agreements may have contributed to the longterm stagnation of US worker wages; real compensation for US workers has not increased in roughly 40 years.

Noncompetes may have added to the decline in labor market fluidity.

Commenters often claim that workers are less bound to single firms than they were in the past. But the truth is that workers have been less and less likely to seek new jobs since the early 80s.

The use of noncompete agreements and other restrictions on workers’ rights, like mandatory arbitration agreements, which deny workers recourse to the courts, may be making it harder for workers to leave one employer for another, according to EPI.

Workers generally have little power to refuse to sign noncompetes. The 2014 study found that only 10 percent of workers negotiate their noncompetes. About a third of employees are told about the noncompetes after they have already received a job offer.

Being bound to a noncompete increases the length of time an employee spends in a job by 11 percent —indicating that people stay in jobs longer because the noncompete prevents them from looking for better employment elsewhere.

One study found that in states that do not enforce noncompetes, worker wages in the same occupation were 4 percent higher than in states with noncompete enforcement. There is also evidence that noncompetes suppress wages even for workers who are not subject to them, and even in states where they are not enforced.

Noncompete clauses prevent employees from leaving jobs to create their own firms. High enforcement of noncompete clauses decreases entrepreneurship by 12 percent.

“Locking up workers”

These negative effects are not an accident. They are the very purpose of noncompete clauses. The goal of suppressing competition is right there in the name.

Businesses make workers sign noncompete clauses because they want to make it harder for workers to seek other jobs. The clauses leverage corporate power to force employees to sign away their future freedom and future choice.

Under noncompete clauses, workers can work for one employer in their chosen profession, or they can work for no one.

That’s obviously exploitative.

“Noncompetes are basically locking up workers, which means that they’re not able to match with the best jobs for them,” FTC Chair Lina Khan told the Post. The new rules would “force employers to compete more vigorously over workers in ways that should lead to higher wages and improved working conditions, basically injecting competition into the labor market.”

The proposed new rule would make it illegal for employers to enter into noncompete agreements with workers. It would also force them to end existing noncompete agreements and to inform all workers that these agreements are no longer in effect.

More freedom, more power

There are still many other agreements businesses can leverage in abusive ways to reduce employee freedoms. Businesses can still force employees to agree to mandatory arbitration. They can still enforce non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements.

Elon Musk can still make a meager severance package for ex-Twitter employees contingent on them never suing the company and never speaking ill of him for life.

Ending noncompete agreements would give workers much more freedom and much more power, though. It’s a major step on behalf of labor and shows a welcome willingness by the FTC to curb corporate overreach.

It’s also a reminder that even with the House of Representatives under the control of Republicans, the Biden White House has many tools with which to limit the power of the wealthy and thereby improve the lives of everyone else.

READ MORE: Biden applauded for executive order targeting 'insidious' anti-worker practices

In one of its last acts of 2022, the Biden administration and the Democrats in the Congress passed a measure that reaffirmed their commitment to addressing the student-loan debt crisis.

The measure was buried in the Secure Act 2.0, an overhaul of the retirement system. That act was itself buried in the end-of-year $1.7 trillion spending package (known as the omnibus) that included $45 billion in aid to Ukraine and vital fixes to the electoral system.

Given those items, it’s not surprising that student debt got lost.

READ MORE: Joe Biden extends student loan payment freeze as 'baseless political lawsuits' threaten aid

Still, with Joe Biden’s debt relief package held up in court, the Secure Act 2.0 is a hopeful indication that the president and the Democrats continue to look for ways to help those crushed by student debt.

Debts literally doubled

Secure Act 2.0 includes a number of provisions to encourage savings and make retirement accounts more flexible. It raises the age at which workers must begin to take minimum distribution from retirement savings from 72 to 75 by 2033. It also allows older workers to increase the amount put away for retirement.

The act permits employees to withdraw $1,000 from retirement accounts without penalty “for purposes of meeting unforeseeable or immediate financial needs relating to necessary personal or family emergency expenses.” It also encourages companies to help them set up emergency savings accounts using payroll deductions.

READ MORE: Email error leaves millions of student loan relief applicants 'in limbo': report

The hope is that these measures will provide people with more of a cushion if they are faced with a sudden financial shock.

Another important provision requires employers to make their 401(k) enrollment opt-out rather than opt-in. Employees are automatically enrolled unless they specifically say they don’t want to be.

Finally, Secure Act 2.0 makes it easier for workers with student debt to save for retirement.

Average student debt for college graduates is around $30,000. One study found that students take an average of 21 years to pay off their debts. That means that people are paying off student loans into their 40s—when they should, in theory, be working to save for retirement.

One survey found that 84 percent of adults said student loans limited the amount they can put away. For those who were not saving any money at all, 26 percent said student loans were the main barrier.

Generally, employers match employee contributions to retirement accounts. If employees are paying off student loans, though, they may not be able to put any money into their retirement. That means they don’t get employer-matching funds either.

The harm from student debt is literally doubled.

Secure Act 2.0 treats student loan payments as retirement payments for matching purposes.

In other words, it allows employers to make matching contributions to employee savings accounts when employees make student loan payments. For instance, Abbott Labs started a program in 2018 that allowed employees to put 2 percent of their pay towards student loans and receive 5 percent of their pay from their employer in their 401(k). Some 1,900 employees have participated in the program.

Abbott’s savings plan predates the Secure Act 2.0. The new law formalizes structures for such savings plans, though, so employers setting them up don’t run afoul of the IRS. It will hopefully make it easier for more businesses to inaugurate these programs.

A broad constituency

The Secure Act 2.0 is at best a small effort to ameliorate the massive student debt crisis. Only 79 percent of Americans work at places with a 401(k) plan, and only 41 percent of those contribute to it. Even fewer people are going to work for employers who match student loan contributions.

As far as helping workers with student debt save for retirement, Biden has already done much more than Secure 2.0 by pausing student loan payments.

The payment pause began under Donald Trump in early 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Biden extended it throughout his two years in office. The most recent extension pauses payments through at least June 30, 2023.

Biden has also forgiven a substantial amount of student debt — or tried to. Using executive authority, he has erased up to $10,000 in debt for borrowers with less than $125,000 in income, and up to $20,000 in debt for Pell Grant recipients.

He’s also reduced monthly payments and drastically reduced interest.

Obviously, reducing payments, interest, and eliminating debt outright all would make it much more feasible for those with student loans to save for retirement. And the Biden administration has already approved 16 million people for relief.

Unfortunately, Republicans have managed to use the courts to stall debt relief, which is now on hold awaiting a hearing before the Supreme Court. As the Biden administration noted, Republican cruelty and petty intransigence “leaves millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo.”

On the merits, it seems clear that the federal government and the Education Department should have the authority to restructure loans. But the current activist conservative Supreme Court has already shown it is willing to ignore the law and even the facts in a case in order to arrive at Republican-preferred decisions.

The Secure Act 2.0, though, passed in an omnibus spending bill that received bipartisan support in both the Senate and House.

Some Republicans, at least, are willing to acknowledge that crushing student loan payments are bad. Saddling teenagers with debt so severe that it makes it impossible for them to ever retire is cruel, nonsensical policy.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the GOP is going to be a partner in further efforts to roll back student debt. But it does indicate that there is a broad constituency for student debt relief.

Good but not enough

Employers should take advantage of Secure 2.0 to provide matching contributions for employees making debt payments. The Supreme Court should let Biden’s debt relief plan go forward. And Congress should consider proposals to zero out college tuition at state schools.

College should provide people with opportunities, not close them down. The Secure Act is a step in the right direction.

But we need more than a step.

READ MORE: Bernie Sanders demands Congress reform 'absurd' health care and education systems in 2023

Joe Biden and the Democrats are desperately trying to salvage the Child Tax Credit expansion, which pulled millions of children out of poverty.

Reducing child poverty is especially beneficial to families in red states, where poverty is most entrenched. Yet opposition to the expansion has come from Republicans and from red-state Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Pundits and Republicans often claim that Democrats are out of touch with the working class and need to cater more to rural red-state voters. Yet it is red state politicians who are working tirelessly to impoverish children in their own states. In this, as in many things, the GOP is not the party fighting for red states. It’s the party fighting to immiserate them.

READ MORE: 'Absurd but also dangerous': WaPo Editorial Board torches Ron DeSantis' war on COVID-19 vaccines

A most hopeful policy

As I’ve said before in the Editorial Board, the Child Tax Credit — or Social Security for children — was one of Biden’s most successful and hopeful policies.

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) was instituted in 1997 in limited form. But the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 turned the program into what was essentially a sweeping basic-income provision for poor families with children.

Annual payments increased from $2,000 to $3,600 per child under 6 and $3,000 per child ages 6-17. A loophole excluding parents with the lowest incomes was closed. And checks were sent monthly, rather than at the end of the year in a lump sum.

READ MORE: Trans rights, anti-trans laws, and the American imagination

The program only lasted for six months. But in that brief time, child poverty cratered. Food insufficiency went down by a quarter. Three million children were kept out of poverty for each month the program continued.

Then the CTC ran out and could not be renewed because of opposition from Manchin and the GOP. Quickly, 3.7 million children fell back into poverty.

Manchin’s opposition is especially painful because West Virginia has the fourth-highest child poverty rate in the nation; 23.1 percent of children live below the poverty line.

Mississippi has the worst poverty rate for children at 27.6 percent. Louisiana is second with 26.3 percent. Others in the top 10 are Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, South Carolina and Tennessee. The only blue state on the list is New Mexico, in third place at 25.6 percent.

Reducing child poverty is obviously good in itself. But there is reason to believe that the policy had strong additional benefits, especially in red states where child poverty is most entrenched.

The libertarian Niskanen Center projected that the expanded credit could increase consumer spending by $27 billion since families who received the money were not in a position to save it, but would quickly spend it on necessities. They estimated state and local tax revenues would rise by $1.9 billion.

The consumer spending boost would be greatest overall in large states like Texas, Florida and California. But the states that would benefit most proportionally were those with the lowest average incomes like Mississippi, Arkansas, and Idaho.

More like excuses

Despite the fact that red states would likely see disproportionate benefits, Republicans are still opposing the CTC while Democrats are attempting to find some way to renew it.

House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said that Democrats were trying to include the CTC in a bill intended to make it easier for businesses to get a tax write-off for research and development expenses.

Meanwhile, Biden has indicated a willingness to negotiate with Manchin, who has insisted he would block the CTC program unless it has work and income requirements.

Manchin says he’s worried the CTC will lead people to stop working and will encourage laziness. But it’s not clear why we should punish children because of the behavior of their parents. And in any case, there’s no evidence that the CTC reduced employment among those who received it.

On the contrary, employment declined after the CTC was withdrawn, possibly because parents could no longer afford to pay for childcare or lost access to transportation.

Manchin and Republicans have also expressed concerns about the possible inflationary effects of CTC. This is a case, though, where we know that the neediest people — children in poverty — are substantially helped by the policy. An increase in inflation seems like a small price to pay for pulling children out of poverty.

And if spending is a concern, we could couple the CTC with a tax on the wealthy in order to ensure revenue neutrality.

Republican objections sound less like reasons backed by evidence or strong moral principle, and more like excuses.

The politics of cruelty

We have a program that is proven to quickly lift millions of children out of poverty with virtually no downside. Why are people from states with the worst child poverty problems determined to kill that program?

The question answers itself.

Republican politicians have long devoted themselves to entrenching poverty and crushing those in need in their own states.

They oppose the CTC for the same reason that they have fought to prevent Medicaid expansion under the ACA, contributing to rural hospital closures and exacerbating the covid health crisis.

They oppose it for the same reason that they have repealed abortion rights, even though denying women abortion access impoverishes them and their children.

Manchin’s determination to keep children of West Virginia in poverty is in line with the longstanding and successful Republican effort to keep the people of Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia and other red states poor, ill and desperate.

Republicans claim to speak for authentic rural America. But the policies they promote very deliberately keep rural people and their children in desperate circumstances.

The people in power in red states keep hold of it by enforcing a brutal hierarchy. Poor people, women and Black people must be constantly crushed and humiliated to keep Manchin and his GOP cronies in office.

The politics of cruelty have a stronghold, and Republicans are not likely to lose power in Mississippi anytime soon.

But we should be clear that their politics are not based on some sort of true understanding of the needs of working people. They’re built on refusing to help those who need help in their state, and on forcing children into poverty.

READ MORE: North Carolina judges rule Republicans 'acted unconstitutionally' in strategic voter suppression efforts

Democrats lose because they abandoned the working class.

Pundits and politicians have repeated that since 2016. The Democrats are, supposedly, kale-eating coastal-urban elites who focus on culture war issues and alienate meat-and-potatoes, Boss-listening heartland Americans. That’s why liberals lose.

The liberals, though, just won the Senate run-off in Georgia, capping a historic midterm victory in 2022, which followed a 2020 presidential victory, which followed a 2018 blue wave blowout.

READ MORE: James Carville: Right-wing ire over Brittney Griner is because she 'is not white and is not straight'

Maybe the Republicans are out of touch.

The least and the most

Election data shows Democratic fortunes rising and falling with low-income voters. But Democrats lead with this demographic.

Moreover, the starkest differences between the Democrats and the Republicans continue to be race and age, not socioeconomic class.

READ MORE: Why a 'bitterly partisan Republican' or 'election denier' should not be the next House speaker: conservative

In 2012, Barack Obama won voters earning under $50,000 by 22 points. Hillary Clinton in 2016 only won them by 11. Biden improved that slightly in 2020. He won voters under $50,000 by 12 points.

Biden made significant middle-class gains, though. Trump beat Clinton with voters earning $50,000 to $99,999 by four points. Biden beat Trump with them by 13 points, 17 points better than Clinton.

Though the Democrats did remarkably well for a midterm this year, their numbers still eroded from 2020. They won voters earning under $50,000, 52 to 45 percent. But they lost voters earning $50,000 to $99,999 by 45 percent to 52 percent, according to NBC.

Republicans did best, as they always do, with the wealthiest. They won those with more than $200,000 income by 58 percent to 41 percent.

Those with the most money vote for Republicans.

Those with the least vote for Democrats.

It’s race, stupid

Education complicated the picture.

The Republicans tend to do better with non-college-educated voters. In 2022, they won them 55 to 43 percent while the Democrats won voters with college graduates, 54 to 44 percent. That’s an improvement for Republicans. In 2020, it was 50 to 48 percent.

A Post report pointed out that Trump in 2016 did well with non-college-educated voters, but these voters tended to have relatively high incomes. In other words, Republicans have particular strength with people who are high-earning and lack college degrees.

Many are white. They inherited businesses or wealth. Trump and the Republicans appeal not to those in dire economic straits, but those anxious about the erosion of racial privilege and status. In fact, the most striking difference between Democrats and Republicans?

Race.

The big demographic surprise

In 2022, the Republicans won white voters 58 to 40 percent. The Democrats won non-white voters 68 to 30 percent.

That’s right in line with 2016 when the Republicans won white voters by 58 to 37 percent, and with 2020, 58 to 41 percent.

The contrast with Black voters is dramatic.

The Democrats won them in 2022 by 86 to 13 percent – almost identical to 2020 when Biden won them 87 percent to 12 percent.

The big demographic surprise this year for Democrats was young voters. Voters under 30 made up about 12 percent of the electorate, which is consistent with their turnout in past years.

However, Democrats won voters under 30 by 28 points, up from 26 points in 2020. It’s up even more substantially from 2016 when Clinton won 18-24-year-olds by 21 points and 25-29-year-olds by 14.

The Democrats did especially well with young women, who were probably inspired by opposition to the Supreme Court’s anti-abortion Dobbs decision. Fully 72 percent of women 18-29 voted for Democrats in House races. In a key Pennsylvania Senate race, Democrat John Fetterman won 77 percent of young women.

The strong youth vote for the Democrats reflects in part that younger voters are more diverse than older ones. As of 2019, less than half of children under 15 are white. That’s ominous for the GOP, which relies on running up the numbers with white voters.

Working people are important to any coalition, and the Democrats’ support of working people hasn’t been consistent. Even so, GOP support for working people is nonexistent. They’ve blocked minimum wage bills; unified to support an increase in child poverty. Their one consistent principle is fighting to keep billionaire taxes low.

No wonder people with low incomes vote against them.

No wonder young people consistently vote against them.

Who’s facing disaster?

Pundits warn that Democrats face disaster if they don’t do better for working people, but Republicans have lost three elections in a row. They need to support working-class policies and stop assaulting women, Black people and LGBT people, or face generational loss.

The Republicans have never been the party of the working class. But if they don’t work to appeal to mainstream voters, they may soon be the party of aging wealthy white men. That is not a winning coalition.

READ MORE: 'We would have won': Marjorie Taylor Greene says Capitol rioters should have been fully 'armed'

Despite major tech layoffs and ongoing fears of a recession, unemployment in the US remains low. In the long term, businesses are likely to continue to struggle to fill positions. That creates an opportunity for unions. And there are encouraging signs that workers are seizing the moment.

There’s no doubt that the economy is slowing, with ugly consequences for some workers. Tech companies have been laying off employees at a brutal rate. Amazon plans to lay off about 10,000 workers. Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to lay off 4,000 to 5,000 people in the next few years.

NBC estimates tech layoffs this year could hit more than 137,000.

READ MORE: Know thine enemy: Time to strike

Higher interest rates and a slowing job market contributed to a 3.7 percent unemployment rate in October, higher than the 3.5 percent estimate.

Job gains were lower than in any month since December 2020. Many economists still expect a recession in 2023. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the non-farm economy still gained 261,000 jobs in October, higher than the estimated 205,000, and barely down from 263,000 in November. Overall, the economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter. Relatively low unemployment seems likely to continue in the long term, despite short-term variations.

There are two reasons for that.

READ MORE: 'Another happy jobs day': Economists cheer 'amazing' report as jobs growth beats expectations

An aging workforce and falling immigration.

Shrinking workforce

The median baby boomer turned 65 in 2022, and the pandemic has encouraged retirements. In the third quarter of 2021, 66.9 percent of people between 65 and 74 were retired, up from only 64 percent in the same quarter of 2019.

Economists thought that some of these retirees might return to the workforce, but that hasn’t really happened. Instead, retirements have continued high, contributing to workplace shortages.

Net migration to the US has collapsed simultaneously thanks to Trump era restrictions and the pandemic. Net migration to the US in 2021 was the lowest in decades. Only 247,000 people were added to the US population through immigration, in comparison to 568,000 in 2019 and more than 1 million in 2016.

According to one estimate, the US has a deficit of 1.4 million immigrant workers relative to pre-pandemic trends.

Little wonder, then, that US employers have struggled to fill positions, even as covid restrictions have largely ended. Some industries do have a surplus of workers now, like construction and mining. But others, like hospitality, education and health care, continue to have widespread vacancies.

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2022 (October to June), union election petitions were up 58 percent over the same period in 2021.

Moreover, unions won 641 of those elections—the highest number of union victories since 2005. The win rate of elections has been 76.6 percent, as high as any success rate since 2000.

Union boom

Not coincidentally, the industries where employers need more workers are also industries that have seen an increase in worker organizing.

The single company contributing most to unionization success is Starbucks. The first three Starbucks stores filed union election petitions in August 2021. In the next eight months, almost 250 stores followed suit.

Traditionally, food and drink retailers like Starbucks have had dismally low union participation. In 2021, 1.2 percent of workers in the sector were unionized, according to the US Labor Department.

An NPR analysis found that 10 years ago only 4 percent of union election petitions came from the accommodations and food service industry. In the beginning of 2022, in comparison, the sector was responsible for 27.5 percent of union election petitions.

Starbucks workers have organized heroically in the face of a vicious union-busting campaign by CEO Howard Shultz. Among other tactics, Shultz is accused of illegally boosting benefits and wages, but only for non-union employees.

Their efforts have been aided by the labor crisis in the industry. Many Starbucks locations, like businesses throughout the hospitality industry, have faced major shortages.

Pandemic disruptions to higher education also gave graduate students and adjuncts more leverage in dealing with university employers. In 2020, four universities signed contracts with graduate student unions, doubling the total number of private institutions with union agreements.

These successes helped to boost a long-term trend. Over the last 10 years, faculty union chapters at private schools have increased by 80 percent.

This month 48,000 academic workers at the University of California declared a strike that has entered its third week as they call for better pay, benefits and job security. The strike includes postdoctoral scholars, teaching assistants and graduate students, and has disrupted classes and laboratories.

A new day for labor

Wages have been stagnant for four decades in the US. Suddenly workers are at a premium, but wage growth continues to lag inflation. It’s no wonder that workers are using their greater power to unionize.

Unionization is a solid strategy for raising stagnant wages. Non-union workers make only 83 percent of unionized weekly earning. But unions ultimately raise wages for all workers.

One report estimated that the decline in unionization from 1979 to 2017 cost the average worker the equivalent of $3,250 a year. Deunionization depresses the wages of middle-wage earners more than those of high-wage earners, and so contributed to the 23-point growth in the wage gap between high and middle earners over the same period.

If the US moves back toward higher union concentration, it will move toward a stronger, more affluent middle class, and less inequality.

The business class and rightwing politicians oppose this. President Biden tried to get a bill through Congress allowing the National Labor Relations Board to fine labor law violators this year. It passed the House, but Republicans and conservative Democrats in the Senate killed it.

But the long-term trend of labor shortages in key industries, and organizing momentum in new sectors, is a promising development.

If we’re lucky, we may be at the beginning of a new era of labor power.

READ MORE: 'Profits over people': Senate rejects paid sick leave for rail workers

The Democrat’s surprising strength in the midterms has been framed mostly as a rebuke of Republicans’ attack on abortion rights and on democracy. The GOP’s flirtation with imperial oligarchic Russian leader Vladimir Putin has, in contrast, received little attention.

That’s not exactly a mistake. Foreign policy rarely drives many votes, and the war between Russia and Ukraine was never a top issue for voters or for candidates on the campaign trail.

And yet the Democratic midterm strength serves as a powerful defeat not just for the GOP, but for Putin. Republican losses in the Senate and narrow gains in the House all but guarantee that the US will continue to lead international support for Ukraine.

READ MORE: Russian propagandists are hoping for 'a political Halloween' if Republicans win the midterms: report

GOP Putinistas

The GOP has been divided on aid for Ukraine. An older, more traditional wing of the party, steeped in Reaganite Cold War antagonism to the Soviet Union, has supported the (much more justified) Ukrainian war against Russia imperial invasion.

But there’s another wing that’s openly pro-Putin.

Putin has long cultivated ties with far-right nationalist groups globally, portraying himself as a defender of manly tradition through shirtless iconography and vicious homophobic policies.

READ MORE: Why support for Ukraine could dwindle in the final months of 2022

He saw a potential ally in wannabe-authoritarian Donald Trump, and tried to aid his campaigns in 2016 and (less successfully) in 2020.

Trump reciprocated by praising Putin consistently over the last six years. Most recently, he called the Russian invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “wonderful.”

Trump’s enthusiasm has affected his partisans.

Between 2015 and 2017, GOP opinions of Putin went up 20 points from 12 percent favorability to 32 percent favorable. A February poll found that Putin’s favorables among Republicans were higher than those of Democratic President Joe Biden.

It’s not just the rank-and-file either. Fox News far-right host Tucker Carlson has ceaselessly pumped out pro-Putin propaganda since the invasion of Ukraine in February. So has Carlson’s frequent guest, erstwhile progressive and current far-right shill Glenn Greenwald.

Many in the GOP conference have followed along. In the House, the chair of the rabid more-MAGA-than-thou Freedom Caucus, Scott Perry, wants to investigate, and potentially spike, US aid to Ukraine.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy signaled support for Perry in an interview in October: “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.”

In May, 57 House Republicans voted against $40 billion in aid to Ukraine. Eleven senators joined them, including Rand Paul and Josh Hawley.

In addition, one of the few midterm contests focused on foreign policy was that of JD Vance, the Ohio Republican Senator-elect, boosted by fash-curious tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who made opposition to Ukraine a centerpiece of his campaign.

Republicans are split

With far-right Putinophilia bubbling up from the MAGA swamp, observers believed Biden might have real trouble continuing support for Ukraine. Reports suggest Russia put off announcing its retreat from Kherson until after the midterms because Putin did not want news of a Ukrainian victory to bolster Democrats.

Republicans who support Ukrainian aid were reportedly nervous that they’d be undercut in a GOP-controlled House. Biden was floating a Ukrainian aid package in the lame-duck session of the Congress, anticipating that further funding might be blocked.

Democrats may still vote on a Ukraine funding bill. But prospects for aid in the new Congress have significantly improved.

First of all, Democrats retained control of the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has strongly supported aid for Ukraine. Even so, his conference is unpredictable, and the Democrats are in a much better position to buttress Biden’s foreign policy priorities than they would have been had they lost the chamber.

Democrats did lose the House — but it was very close. The GOP majority is likely to be somewhere between 220-215 and 222-213.

McCarthy — or whoever the GOP chooses as speaker — is will block many Democratic initiatives on abortion rights, voting rights and much else. Ukrainian aid is different, though. That’s an issue that sharply divides McCarthy’s own caucus. Even if he wanted to, he’s not going to be able to win a vote striking down Ukrainian aid.

And if he were to try, the Democrats could likely get enough GOP support to bring it to the floor without his say-so.

Opposition to aid would likely expose huge fissures in the Republican caucus and lead to an embarrassing defeat for the speaker.

Stepping away, domestically

If the GOP were a normal party, that would be the end of that.

But the conference is neither normal, so there are caveats.

Representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz hate their more moderate Republican colleagues almost as much as they hate Democrats. They might oppose Ukrainian aid precisely because they know it would put their own speaker in an impossible and humiliating position.

So there could be bumps in the road.

The bottom line is that after their weak showing in the midterms, the Trumpy GOP pro-Putin wing doesn’t have the leverage to successfully advance their dream of global totalitarianism.

The defeat of election deniers in races for governor and secretary of state across the country means that the US has taken a step back from authoritarianism — domestically.

READ MORE: Writer schools Kevin McCarthy on why Ukraine aid isn’t a 'blank check'

Although Democrats overperformed in the 2022 midterms, it’s likely that they will still narrowly lose the House of Representatives. At the least, their majority will be much reduced. They may pick up one seat in the Senate still, but even so, they are going to continue to struggle to pass vital measures like the protection of abortion rights and voting rights.

That doesn’t mean that Democrats can’t make needed changes though.

Presidents have a great deal of power. And President Joe Biden has been using that power in some hopeful ways.

READ MORE: Are we supposed to believe Republicans were duped?

For example, his administration appears to be reversing a decades-long status quo and embracing vigorous antitrust enforcement.

This is a vital step in reducing inequity and breaking the hammerlock the wealthy currently have on policy and public life.

With the threat of authoritarianism looming, the reinvigoration of antitrust policy could be one of the few positive signs of democratic renewal.

The biggest recent victory for the administration’s tougher trust-busting approach was in the book industry. The Biden Justice Department brought a lawsuit to block the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.

READ MORE: Trust buster explains why 'monopoly power is the biggest threat' to small businesses and competition

The US District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan agreed with the Justice Department that the merger would “lessen competition” for “top-selling books.”

Joseph Kanter of the Justice Department said the decision was the correct one, because the deal “would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy.”

The Justice Department argued that Penguin Random House Simon & Schuster would be so large that it would be able to push down advances for books from top authors like Stephen King (who testified against the merger.)

The Justice Department also said that the merger would significantly reduce the number of book releases, limiting what was available to readers and shrinking the breadth of public discourse.

Those sound like good reasons to prevent a deal. However, those arguments for antitrust action have been denigrated and even verboten for decades.

As Stacy Mitchell, co-director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, explains on Twitter, “For 40 years, antitrust has largely operated within the narrow confines of the consumer welfare standard — ie, the only harm that matters is to consumer prices.”

What this meant was that the Justice Department would only prevent mergers if the merger was deemed likely to raise consumer prices. Under that rubric, lower advances for authors wouldn’t matter, since authors are providers, not consumers. Neither would a reduced diversity of books.

As Mitchell suggests, it wasn’t always this way.

In the book How to Think Like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman explains that antitrust used to have a broad remit.

In the early 20th century, antitrust was seen as an important means of regulating the economy and society as a whole.

Antitrust lawyers and government regulators saw antitrust legislation as an important means of protecting small businesses, which were seen as essential to the health of civic life. Limiting mergers prevented individuals from accumulating vast wealth and power, which could damage the health of democracy.

These goals led to aggressive enforcement of antitrust legislation in the early 20th century, Berman says. The 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act prevented companies from buying one another’s stock if the effect would “substantially limit competition.”

This provision was largely enforced by lawyers using a prosecutorial frame. When they felt the law was being violated, and that they could win in court, they would sue.

Over time, however, the framework for government action in general, and for antitrust in particular, began to shift.

Republicans had long been very skeptical of antitrust enforcement. As they gained power in the 1980s, Democrats went on defense and began to turn to what Berman calls an “economic style” of thinking.

The economic style emphasized efficiency first and foremost, dismissing other goals. Through this frame, the point of antitrust was simply to make markets as efficient as possible.

That meant that antitrust regulators focused only on whether a merger would raise consumer prices.

Even in cases where officials thought they could win, they started to do assessments of whether the merger would raise prices or not. If it would, they would move forward. If it wouldn’t, they wouldn’t even try to stop the merger, even if it might reduce competition in other respects.

The results of the lax enforcement regime have been stark.

Concentration of businesses has increased markedly since the 1970s. Competition has fallen. In the 1990s, a profitable business had a 50 percent chance of being profitable in 10 years; today it has an 80 percent chance. That’s an indication that entrenched businesses are using market power to squelch rivals.

The failure of antitrust policy is linked to rising inequality. The gap between the rich and everyone else started to widen substantially in the 1980s.

Between 1975 and 2014, households in the bottom 60 percent of income saw income rise 9 percent. Income grew 22 percent for those in the 80th percentile. It grew a stunning 36 percent for those at the 95th percentile.

One calculation suggests that between 1975 and 2020, the economy transferred a staggering $50 trillion from working Americans to the wealthy.

Early trustbusters worried this kind of concentration of wealth and power could damage democracy. And, given our current predicament, they appear to have been right. Billionaires gave a staggering, record-breaking $881 million to candidates in the midterms.

Almost all of that money went to Republicans who are seen as pro-business, and who are also increasingly embracing authoritarian attacks on democratic norms and institutions like the J6 coup attempt.

The Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster might not have raised prices for consumers. But it would have reduced payments for authors — increasing inequality by allowing (very, very rich) corporations to keep more money from (some rich, some not so rich) authors.

And it would have reduced the number of books published. That would have cut access to ideas in the public sphere.

A shift in antitrust enforcement philosophy won’t reverse wealth inequality or save democracy all at once or all on its own. But after four decades of increased business concentration and growing oligarchy, it’s well past time to start busting trusts again.

Hopefully the Biden Administration’s new focus indicates a long-term shift by Democratic leadership away from a model based solely on efficiency, and back to a recognition that antitrust can be a tool to restrain the wealthy and powerful for the public good.

READ MORE: The next Republican to occupy the White House will probably also try to end our democracy -- unless Congress acts

“Antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” No one is exactly sure who first said this, but it’s treated today as a truism. Antisemitism, in this formulation, is the result of displaced economic anxiety.

Working people should direct their ire at the capitalist class, the thinking goes, but the capitalist class befuddles and misdirects them, so that they think their oppressors are Jewish people instead.

The problem with this understanding of antisemitism is that it’s not true. Jewish people are sometimes hated for having money. But they’ve also been hated for threatening those with money.

READ MORE: Doug Mastriano’s Facebook account is an 'active administrator' for a 'xenophobic, antisemitic' group: report

At a time when antisemitism is becoming accepted in the mainstream right, it’s important to be clear that antisemitism isn’t caused by poverty or a rational concern about living standards in any way. Antisemitism is irrational; it’s hatred. It can be twisted to various political programs, but at bottom it has its own logic — or illogic.

Again, antisemitism does sometimes take the form of a kind of garbled critique of capitalist hierarchy. One of the most popular stereotypes of Jewish people is that they are greedy and hoard wealth and power in order to manipulate and exploit others.

Rapper Kanye West channeled this strand in recent social media posts where he declared “the Jewish community, especially in the music industry … they’ll take us and milk us till we die.”

There is a brutal history of exploitation of Black artists in the music industry. But that exploitation has been perpetrated by (mostly) white capitalists, and by a white supremacist legal system that wouldn’t enforce Black legal rights. Jews, as Jews, or as a group, weren’t the culprits. Kanye is engaging in the socialism of fools.

READ MORE: 'Craven silence': Author says Ron DeSantis is 'sending clear messages' he 'will tolerate hate speech'

This isn’t the only form, though. Historically, the most devastating antisemitic conspiracy theories have cast Jews not as capitalists, but as anti-capitalists. The Nazi’s associated Jews with Marxists.

In fact, Adolf Hitler basically believed Jews and Marxists were the same. He thought all Marxists were Jews and all Jews were Marxists.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler referred to “the Jewish doctrine of Marxism” that “rejects the aristocratic principles of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers.”

Hitler thought that Jewish people had formulated Marxism in order to undermine the natural order of Aryan white supremacy. Nazi antisemitism was what you might call an anticommunism of fools.

The fools in this case were the leaders of German industry. Hitler promised to eliminate trade unions and shoot leftists in the street — a program that the wealthy were eager to pay for.

The antisemitic conflation of Jews and leftists isn’t a historical relic. It’s very much alive and well. It’s most virulent and popular manifestation today is in the demonization of George Soros.

Soros is a Holocaust survivor, a billionaire businessman and a Democratic donor. He’s become an all-purpose far-right scapegoat, who’s reliably accused of funding and masterminding everything that the right thinks is wrong with the country and the world.

For example, Soros was falsely accused of funding a migrant caravan from Central America in 2018. The right also made up lies and conspiracy theories claiming Soros funded or masterminded the 2020 George Floyd protests against racist police brutality.

Part of the appeal of attacking Soros is that he’s very wealthy, which dovetails with antisemitic stereotypes. But Soros isn’t accused of capitalist exploitation. Conspiracy theories targeting him aren’t about him mistreating workers or controlling particular industries.

Instead, Soros is hated for, supposedly, being a shadowy mastermind using his fortune to spread leftist ideas that undermine America and the white race. Soros is not portrayed as a wealthy businessperson crushing working people. He’s portrayed as an insidious leveler who is threatening white power and (white) national unity.

That’s an update of Hitler’s antisemitism.

As with Hitler, it’s very dangerous.

The man who attacked Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, killing 11, was an avid consumer of Soros conspiracy theories. He thought Soros was trying to dilute and weaken white America via unrestricted immigration. The shooter chose Tree of Life as a target because the synagogue participated in a Shabbat service for refugees hosted by HIAS, a Jewish organization that resettles refugees.

“Jews are waging a propaganda war against Western civilization and it is so effective that we are headed towards certain extinction within the next 200 years and we’re not even aware of it,” the shooter said.

The shooter wasn’t angry about his falling living standards; his antisemitism wasn’t a kind of substitute for socialist analysis and commitments. Rather, he hated Jewish people because he saw them as spreading left ideas about racial equality and diversity.

The various strands of antisemitism aren’t incompatible. Kanye sees Jews as manipulating the music industry to exploit Black people. The Tree of Life shooter sees Jews as manipulating immigration to bring down Western civilization.

The details are different, but as antisemites, they can agree that Jewish people are shadowy manipulators with great power who are not to be trusted.

Still, the exact strand of antisemitism that’s currently ascendant can determine which Jewish people are most vulnerable and how antisemitism is used politically.

Antisemitism isn’t necessarily, or primarily, a way to redirect economic concerns or economic anxiety. It can instead be a way to solidify racism, to target protestors, or simply to justify and rationalize violence against political enemies, especially on the left.

You can’t address antisemitism by improving economic conditions. The rich can be plenty antisemitic, as Donald Trump demonstrates.

Rather, antisemitism is often used by the right to delegitimize unions or movements designed to help those with less wealth and power. It addresses the grievances, not of fools, but of white supremacists.

READ MORE: Kanye West had Adolf Hitler 'obsession' and praised his genocidal achievements and power

In the last weeks before the 2022 midterms, Democrats have been struggling. A major Times poll indicated that 44 percent of voters said that economic concerns were most important for them in the election, up from 36 percent in July.

That’s important because voters who put economics first favored Republicans by more than two to one.

Polls like this make it sound like the American people are angry about continuing high inflation and have deprioritized issues like abortion rights and voting rights. As a result, they have turned to Republicans.

READ MORE: Anxious Americans are putting prices over principles

That may be part of what is happening. But it also seems likely that voters are turning to Republicans, and that they have therefore started referencing Republican talking points about the economy.

This seems counterintuitive; economic health has a direct material effect on people. You’d expect that to drive vote choice.

But a good deal of research suggests that the opposite is the case. People aren’t pushed into partisan camps by the economy. Rather, people interpret the economy through a partisan lens.

In 2016, for example, the Republican Consumer Confidence Index, based on a weighted value for a series of key questions, was around 77. The Consumer Confidence Index for Democrats was around 105.

READ MORE: Republicans would rather tank the global economy than stop corporations from destroying the planet

Immediately after the election when Republican candidate Donald Trump was victorious, though, those numbers flipped. Republican CCI jumped to 120; Democratic CCI plummeted below 80.

There was a similar dynamic after the 2020 election. Democrats shortly before the election had a CCI of around 76. The Republican CCI was close to 100. After the election of Democrat Joe Biden, Democratic CCI skyrocketed to close to 105, while Republican CCI cratered to under 70.

Similarly, before the 2016 election, less than 25 percent of Republicans said the economy was getting better; more than 75 percent said it was getting worse.

As soon as the election happened, though, those numbers changed dramatically. Suddenly almost 50 percent of Republicans thought the economy was getting better, while a slightly smaller number than that said it was getting worse.

Obviously, the economy didn’t change that much in the week after the election. What changed were partisan signals. When Trump was in control, Republicans told pollsters the economy was better, while Democrats told pollsters the economy was worse.

The fact that partisanship drives economic polling, rather than the economy driving partisanship, is well known now. And it’s even more salient as partisanship has increased and strengthened over the last years. It should be taken into account in media reporting and narratives.

But it rarely is. For example, in 2016, the media was obsessed with the idea that Trump voters were being driven by economic anxiety.

But numerous retrospective studies showed that there was little correlation between economic distress and support for Trump.

Trump voters chose Trump for partisan reasons—because he was a Republican, because he embodied their enthusiasm for white, male, Christian identity politics.

But Republican talking points focused on economic anxiety. So voters signaled their partisanship to pollsters by saying the economy was doing poorly.

Despite the evidence that media narratives were wrong or confused in 2016, you can see the same thing happening again in 2022. The media looks at polls saying that voters are concerned about inflation and the economy, and says that poor economic performance is bad for Democrats.

Inflation does materially affect people, and disruptions from Covid and the war in Ukraine are real. There is plenty of reason to be concerned about the economy at a time of global uncertainty and conflict.

But those concerns don’t necessarily translate into voting choices.

For instance, in the New York Times article on their own poll, the reporter interviews Robin Ackerman, a 37-year-old mortgage loan officer who said she was a Democrat.

Ackerman supports abortion rights. But she said, “I’m shifting more towards Republican because I feel like they’re more geared towards business.”

The vague gesture towards “business” doesn’t really sound like someone who is worried about the economy and is going to vote Republican. It sounds like someone who has decided to vote for the GOP, and is therefore referencing partisan GOP pro-business talking points to justify or rationalize that choice.

So, if the economy isn’t necessarily driving voter choice, what is?

The probable answer is simply that the incumbent party has a large structural disadvantage in midterm elections. According to FiveThirtyEight, the president’s party has performed about 7.4 points worse in the midterm elections than in the previous presidential election.

Based on those numbers you’d expect Democrats to lose the House (which they won by 3 in 2020). They might be able to hold the Senate this year because of the very poor quality of Republican candidates.

Why do voters turn on the incumbent president? Political scientists are unsure, but the best explanation is probably “balancing.”

Voters, perhaps pushed by a press obsessed with both sides messaging, tend to worry that a president has gone too far to the left or the right. They vote for the out party to get what they see as more moderate outcomes.

The Dobbs decision, one of the most sweeping right-wing policy victories of the last twenty years at least, has somewhat undermined the narrative that the country is moving too far left. So has the continued prominence of Donald Trump in the news, a constant reminder of what the Republicans would do if in power.

These factors have helped keep Democrats more competitive in midterm polls than would be expected. Republicans are still only about .5 points ahead on the generic congressional ballot according to 538’s poll aggregator, rather than the 4-point lead you’d expect based on previous midterms.

Still, the swing towards the out party as the midterm approaches is powerful. The Democrats are fighting against long-term structural factors which have shaped elections for decades.

Those factors are pushing voters towards Republicans—and when voters move towards Republicans, they tend to say they’re concerned about the economy, because that’s what Republican partisan leaders are emphasizing.

But it’s not the economy driving the partisanship. It’s partisanship driving economic concerns.

Which means that the problem isn’t really that Democrats are out of touch on the economy, or aren’t appealing to working-class voters. The problem is that many voters continue to behave as they have in the past, despite the GOP’s escalating extremism and escalating attack on democracy.

This dynamic is very dangerous for our democracy, and it’s difficult to know how to address it. But if we are ever going to do so, it’s important to understand that economic anxiety is not what’s driving the backlash.

READ MORE: Bernie Sanders says Democrats should hammer the 'corporate agenda of the Republicans'

Workers are often blamed for inflation. When they irresponsibly demand higher wages, inflation goes up. To fix the problem, workers are disciplined with higher interest rates and higher unemployment.

“You don’t become a low inflation country with high wage inflation and wage inflation is looking pretty high in the United States,” former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said at a recent conference. He said a recession to bring down inflation was almost inevitable.

The demand for a recession to crush worker wages assumes, first, that wages are driving inflation. It assumes, further, that inflation is the most dangerous threat, always, and that suffering by workers and lower-income people is righteous or at least a tragic necessity.

READ MORE: 'Boom': How Republicans could trigger a 'global financial catastrophe' if they retake Congress

Both assumptions are questionable. Wage growth is not the main driver of inflation. A recession can easily be worse in terms of human suffering than continued inflation. If we want to lower inflation, we should do so in ways that do not immiserate workers and that make the lives of most people better rather than worse.

Inflation harms middle- and low-income people. Affluent people’s resources are often tied up in fixed-rate mortgages and retirement savings, which are less vulnerable to short-term price hikes.

Low-income people in contrast spend most of their paycheck on immediate needs, like gas, food and shelter, all of which have spiked in price in the last few years. As a result, domestically and globally, high inflation is harming the poorest and increasing inequality.

So controlling inflation is important. But boosting interest rates to slow growth and increase unemployment is worse than the problem.

READ MORE: 'Gen-X and Boomer women' are prime targets of the GOP war on Social Security and Medicare: activists

The 1981-1982 recession, engineered by then-Fed chair Paul Volker, is often celebrated for controlling inflation. For those who lived through it, however, it was a brutal experience. Unemployment rose to 11 percent, the worst figure in the post-World War II era.

Manufacturing industries suffered especially. The construction industry hit 22 percent unemployment. The car industry went to 24 percent. To some extent, they never recovered. Much US productive capacity was abandoned as money flowed into financial industries.

Unions were also weakened in the long term. The recession created a crisis in Latin America, where nations like Mexico had taken out loans in dollars and subsequently were unable to repay. A recession can lead not just to widespread pain as unemployment rises, but to domestic shocks and international instability.

Recessions and inflation harm the most vulnerable. This can feel like an impasse. But currently, the trade-off between high prices and suppressing wages and employment is a false choice. That’s because wage growth isn’t the main driver of inflation.

Analysts at the Center for American Progress point that there is no correlation between wage growth and inflation based on industry. Natural gas, for example, has seen the greatest price acceleration from 2018-2019 to 2021-2022, but wages have fallen slightly.

Workers did experience real wage growth early in the pandemic. But since mid-2021, wages have fallen behind inflation. This means wages are actually dampening inflation pressure, not supercharging it.

If wage pressure isn’t causing inflation, what is?

There are two big drivers. One is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia is a major supplier of oil and gas, and sanctions and production disruptions have caused fuel prices globally to spike.

Ukraine-Russia is an important region in food supply. It supplies 30 percent of global wheat exports and 65 percent of sunflower exports. Sunflower oil shortages pushed margarine prices up 32 percent between September 2021 and last month. Butter rose 27 percent in the same period compared to a 13 percent increase in food overall.

Addressing these inflationary factors is difficult, but the Biden administration has already taken steps to do so.

The omnibus Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier this year creates powerful incentives for moving to green energy, which can address energy costs in the mid- and long-term. The Biden administration is also working to end the war in Ukraine, and to forestall other Russian wars of aggression, by providing aid to Ukraine.

Republicans have framed help to Ukraine as wasteful and useless. But if we want to get gas and food prices under control and stabilize the world economy, the best way is to defeat Putin quickly in such a way that he is deterred from launching further wars of conquest.

Another major driver of inflation is the ongoing covid pandemic. Covid globally affects supply chains. China’s strict lockdown policies have created numerous international bottlenecks.

In addition, the covid creates worker shortages that drive prices up. One study suggested workers disabled by long covid could account for 15 percent of unfilled jobs. There remains a massive shortage of healthcare workers thanks to covid infections and burnout.

Politicians and the public claim to want an aggressive response to inflation. But the pandemic drives inflation. The US has surrendered to the disease, even though it racks up about 300-400 deaths a day.

The world economy is struggling with a global pandemic and a major regional war. There’s no easy or quick way to fix that.

The US should continue to help Ukraine, and it should do more to fight the covid pandemic. But inflicting more pain on workers and the most vulnerable by inducing a recession isn’t the answer.

READ MORE: Republicans want to use the debt limit to wreck the economy. Will Democrats stop them?

In what has become an almost annual ritual, the Republican Party is once again threatening not to raise the debt ceiling. If they follow through, they would destroy the US economy, immiserating millions of their own voters.

The fact that they don’t care shows the extent to which the GOP has abandoned small-d democratic incentives in favor of the reckless politics of authoritarianism and extremism.

The debt ceiling is a legislative limit on the amount of money the federal government can borrow to meet its payment obligations.

READ MORE: What Social Security should actually be paying to survive in this economy

The limit was established in 1917, and was routinely raised until the mid-1950s, when conservative lawmakers threatened to refuse President Dwight Eisenhower’s request for an increase.

Since then, struggles over the debt ceiling have escalated. In 1979, lawmakers tried, unsuccessfully, to add a balanced-budget amendment to the debt-ceiling increase.

It wasn’t until the 1990s though, when a radical rightwing Congress actually shut down the government rather than raise the debt limit, requiring the Treasury secretary to shuffle funds to prevent a default.

Republicans closed down the government again in 2011 and then again in 2013, when they demanded that any debt ceiling increase include the repeal of major portions of the Affordable Care Act.

READ MORE: GOP planning 'catastrophic default' if Democrats refuse to cut Social Security and Medicare

These negotiations can look to casual observers like the usual partisan give-and-take negotiations around any legislation.

But they aren’t.

Republicans who refuse to raise the debt ceiling are blackmailing Democrats. And the blackmail is only credible to the extent that Republicans and Democrats alike know that Republicans are happy to ruin the lives of voters and destroy the country.

If Congress refused to raise the debt ceiling, the US would be unable to fulfill its obligations. That means it couldn’t pay Social Security checks. It couldn’t pay US troops. It couldn’t pay federal employees. Veteran pensions would stop. There wouldn’t be money for federal disaster relief.

But that would just be the beginning.

A US default – or even serious concerns about US default – could lead to a sell-off of US treasury bonds. That would raise interest rates in a potentially catastrophic manner.

In 2011, during the worst debt-ceiling stand-off, Moody Analytics predicted the unemployment rate would spike to 9 percent, with a loss of 6 million jobs. At that time, Standard & Poor’s did actually downgrade the US credit rating for the first time ever, leading to a market plunge.

Moody’s also predicted that in a default, stocks would drop by a third, erasing $15 trillion in household wealth. There could be a market crash as bad as or worse than the 2008 recession.

Refusing to raise the debt ceiling would create a massive financial collapse while simultaneously preventing the US from providing aid to those most in need.

The cost in human suffering would be nightmarish and long-lasting, permanently weakening global faith in the US economy. The consequences have been clear and much-discussed for decades.

That’s why Senate Republican leadership compromised with Democrats in December to avoid a debt-ceiling shut-down.

But if Republicans win the House in November (as seems likely), radical members of the caucus with McCarthy’s ear are already threatening to refuse to raise the debt limit.

Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, who has a good chance of being the head of the House Budget Committee, told Axios that he wanted to refuse to raise the debt limit until Biden agreed to “reverse” his “radical” policies.

“If we were trying to bring down inflation ... trying to secure our border, surely [Biden] wouldn't default,” Smith said, testing out the usual garbled GOP talking points.

Republicans don’t like to vote to raise the debt ceiling because the party is supposed to be committed to small government.

But they see it as an opportunity for blackmail, because they’re increasingly disconnected from democracy and its incentives.

In theory, political parties try to avoid devastating economic collapse because immiserating voters leads to those voters tossing you out of office.

But Republicans are increasingly insulated from such democratic checks. Political partisanship is growing, and combined with the rightwing media bubble, that means more voters will vote Republican no matter what.

And because they are the party of rural white voters, Republicans have a huge advantage in the Senate, the Electoral College and even in the House.

Republicans can adopt very unpopular policies and still win elections. They no longer have to worry about democratic incentives, and so those democratic incentives seem increasingly irrelevant and frustrating to the party.

One sign of that is the widespread Republican support for Trump’s coup. The debt ceiling is another. Rather than attain their goals through winning elections and then doing the hard work of legislating, the GOP prefers to win through violence and threats.

If the GOP can’t win through democracy, they’ll end democracy — either through a violent coup or by wrecking the economy out of spite.

There are a couple of things Democrats could do to end the constant debt-limit showdowns. First, they could simply vote to eliminate the debt ceiling all together while they still control Congress.

This would be the best option.

The debt ceiling was always a bad idea. It doesn’t actually limit spending; it just limits paying for what’s already been spent. It’s essentially a law that says Congress can’t pay its past-due bills.

Democrats don’t want to be seen as unilaterally authorizing more government spending, though. And to raise the debt ceiling, they’d have to either include it in a reconciliation bill, which is complicated, or overrule the filibuster, which conservative Democrats won’t do.

Alternately, Joe Biden could effectively eliminate the debt ceiling unilaterally by using his statutory authority to order the minting of a $1 trillion commemorative coin. He could then use the coin to purchase Treasury debt, bringing outstanding debt well below the debt ceiling. (Eric Levitz explains this process in full at New York.)

The trillion-dollar coin gambit would be an unusual exercise of executive power, though, and op-ed writers would squawk. So Biden doesn’t want to do that either.

The situation is familiar. Republicans are willing to wreck democratic institutions and inflict terrible suffering on the American people. The Democrats would rather they didn’t, but also don’t want to have to take even moderately controversial steps to stop them.

So far, Democrats and slightly more responsible Republican leaders (pushed by business interests) have managed to avoid the worst. The GOP is growing ever more rabid though, and there’s no guarantee that we can avoid a debt-ceiling crisis forever.

An unforced default would be a ridiculous way for US democracy to end. But an absurd apocalypse can still be very dangerous.

Democrats need to abandon their timidity and fix this permanently while they still can.

READ MORE: US oligarchs don't care what the majority of Americans thinks about taxing the rich -- here's why

This week, British Prime Minister Liz Truss surrendered, abandoning her signature conservative economic proposal in the face of imminent economic collapse and public rebellion.

The reversal is mostly being reported as a massive failure for Truss and the Tory party. And it is that. But it’s also a rebuke to conservative economic orthodoxy. It’s an indication of where the US could end up if Republicans gain control of the government.

As one of her first acts as prime minister, Truss wanted to eliminate the top income tax tier of 45 percent on individuals who earn more than £150,000 (around $172,000) a year.

READ MORE: The queen is dead. The legacy of her colonies is not

The tax cut was part of a huge package of spending, including eliminating caps on banker’s bonuses, and reversing a planned corporate tax increase. The total was in the tens of billions of pounds. The top rate tax cut alone would cost £45 billion (nearly $52 billion) over five years. Truss and Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng planned to pay for the shortfall through borrowing.

Truss insisted the package would strengthen the UK economy. But financial markets didn’t agree. There was panic selling and the pound cratered to $1.03, its lowest exchange rate in history.

Unsurprisingly, the crisis has made the government extremely unpopular. After she announced the tax cuts, Truss’ approval fell from a poor -9 to a catastrophic -37. Only 18 percent in the UK approved while 55 percent disapproved, according to one poll.

The opposition Labour Party has been ahead by 33 points in polls. Some analysts predicted the Tories could be reduced to only four seats in the 650-member Parliament if the election were held today.

READ MORE: Great Britain's new prime minister blasted for 'destructive' decision ending fracking moratorium

The pound rebounded somewhat after Truss scrapped the tax cut. But Britain faces numerous other economic challenges.

Like many European countries, the UK has experienced rising inflation because of pandemic supply chain issues. It has also struggled with energy shocks from the Ukraine war.

However, Britain is worse off than many of its neighbors because of its reliance on natural gas. Its homes rank lowest in energy efficiency in Western Europe. Consumer price inflation for households in the UK is expected to be 80 percent in 2022. In the Eurozone, it is only expected to be about 40 percent.

The UK has a larger gap between rich and poor than its peers. As a result, the poorest 10 percent of households in Britain will spend a whopping 17.8 percent of their 2022 budgets on energy costs.

The UK’s decision to leave the EU through Brexit, which was fully accomplished at the end of 2020, has further weakened its economy.

A report released in June of this year found that Brexit had reduced the openness of the British economy, threatening to shrink growth over time. Since 2019, the UK has seen trade fall by eight points as a percentage of GDP. (France has seen only a two-point decline.)

By 2030, British workers will be £500 (around $574) worse off with Brexit than they would have been without it, the report found. Sectors like electrical equipment manufacturing, which rely on supplies from the continent, will be worst hit.

In sum, the Tories have pushed for xenophobic policies to restrict immigration through Brexit. They’ve fought against green energy. And they’ve embraced tax cuts for the rich.

The result has been a series of long-term, mid-term, and short-term economic disasters that have resulted in long-term stagnation. The UK is the only G7 country whose economy shrank over the covid, and its economy is currently teetering on the verge of a recession.

The failed Tory agenda is based on policies also embraced — often even more rabidly — in American rightwing political circles.

Donald Trump enacted draconian restrictions on immigration. He helped exacerbate inflation and labor shocks during the pandemic.

Republicans have fought adamantly against any move toward green energy — most recently by voting en masse against the climate bill that the Democrats passed through reconciliation earlier this year.

And Republicans love tax cuts for the wealthy. They were at the core of Trump’s agenda. His $1.5 trillion tax reduction was a huge giveaway to billionaires. The 600 richest families in the US ended up paying a lower tax rate than the poorest families in the country.

The US is more economically prosperous than Britain. There are many reasons for that. But one big one is that the GOP has not been in power in the US as long as the Tories have controlled the UK.

The Tories took office in the UK in 2010 and they have retained control of the country for the past 12 years. In contrast, Republicans have only held the presidency in the US for four of the last 12 years.

In addition, the US system is more fractured than that in the UK. In Britain, Parliament selects the prime minister. In the US, different parties can hold the Congress and the presidency. Republicans had unified control of the Congress and presidency from 2017 to 2019.

Nonetheless, it’s worth remembering that the last two Republican presidencies ended in economic and political disaster.

George W. Bush’s term concluded with the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the Great Recession. Trump’s tenure finished with the massive failures of covid policy and a resulting recession.

Polls in the US show that voters tend to view Republicans as more trustworthy on economic issues. But the GOP has done little to earn that trust. And Liz Truss’ damaging first month in office suggests what would actually happen if conservatives had their way in the US.

Xenophobic trade and closed borders shrink the economy. Opposition to green energy makes it more vulnerable to energy shocks. Trickle-down economics — giving more money to the rich in the hope that they’ll pass the benefits on to everyone else — doesn’t work. Even financial markets know it’s a dangerous boondoggle.

Rightwing economic policies have a record of egregious failure, stunted growth and compounded misery. Twelve years of Tory dominance has left Britain a smaller, colder and poorer place.

Republicans, though, are undeterred. They long to enact the Tory plan here. If they do, we can expect a similarly bleak result.

READ MORE: 'Enough is enough': Protests erupt in the United Kingdom amid soaring prices and tax cuts for the rich