Beth Ann Bell

The American system is designed to maximize GDP and sacrifice things the left wants like free healthcare and public transportation, and also things the right wants like traditional gender roles and immigration rates inflexibly fixed at the low, 1950s level. This produces perennial dissatisfaction from the masses, and so there’s always a political market for political entrepreneurs pretending to sell these things which the American system can’t actually deliver. Nobody ever runs and says “to get you your free healthcare / public transportation / traditional gender roles / permanently low immigration, we’ll have to stop GDP maximizing.” Or alternately: “to deliver any of those things, we’ll need to do a risky, developmentalist moonshot to keep GDP afloat, like fusion power.” They don’t say that either. Even politicians fluent in revolutionary rhetoric (Bernie etc) won’t say that. They all proceed as if the American system can stay in place but “also” there can fully paid universal 6 month parental leave, or “also” there can be religiously motivated anti-AI limitations. Anyway, that’s why everyone feels betrayed every 2-4 years. What’s more, memories are poor: people always think “their” current wave is the one to break the cycle, the wave to end all waves. Instead, they’ll get into “power,” in their minor, symbolic, and circular way, do their stint of managerial paper-pushing on behalf of the American system, and not deliver anything they had promised which was in defiance of the American system.