Josh your reaction to the protestors yesterday was top notch.
Totally agree. Look at Chicago, the mayor, who has like a 6% approval rating is ready to bankrupt the city to meet the demands of the CTU and its crazy list of demands that won’t help make Chicago Public Schools better at all.
I mostly agree with the piece but question that smaller class sizes don’t help. Specifically with younger children they seem to help. The Tennessee Star study is the most famous one done on class sizes and it showed the smaller class sizes benefit for K-3 students.
I couldn't agree more. It's not just in New York where unions can stand in the way of abundance. In California, construction and carpenters' unions have made housing way more expensive to build. Some good legislation has recently been passed out of the state house unanimously, but in the state senate unions are trying to get requirements for their labor and wages to be paid.
The need to say no to unions was one of my big takeaways from reading Abundance. The link to what I wrote is below if you or anyone else is interested. It doesn't get mentioned, but it's an obvious implication, especially in blue states. Nationally, I think unions can be good on things like permitting reform, but the mantra of whatever unions say goes needs to go.
More cynically, Democrats shouldn't waste their time doing things for unions whose members don't vote for them. They should never do anything for the Teamsters again. Same with the dockworkers' union. Not only do their members not vote for Democrats, but they're little more than Luddites these days.
It's because of their attachment to unions that many Democrats are kind of pro-protectionism and aren't up in arms against Trump's tariffs. They still cling to the idea that we can go back to the 1970s and bring back the union jobs from the days of yore. It's pure fantasy and is completely detached from the reality of what our economy is, i.e., people work in services, not in manufacturing.
I think you left out a "not" in this sentence: "the public is represented on the management side of the table when public workers’ contracts are negotiated." Union representatives are generally on both sides of the table and the public isn't in the room.
I think the most politic way to deal with the unions is to say, "Hey, it's fair to want fair pay, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions, but not wasteful feather-bedding like [fill in the blank with several examples, including yours]."
While the abundance agenda is great, it requires infighting within the Democratic Party in order to prevail as the dominant agenda over other progressive priorities. Governing effectively and demonstrating competence is very low on the list of their priorities. Even Josh Shapiro, one of the few competent Democratic governors, is very pro-union.
Edit: Thanks to you for pointing out the underlying issues that make abundance mostly wishful thinking on part of Democrats trying to move their party forward.
To some extent, the infighting is a feature rather than a bug, especially if it leads to a news narrative where the Democrats overtly rein in the fringe elements that the bulk of the public dislikes.
Shapiro is pro union, but when he had to rebuild I-95, he did it in record time and got every barrier he possibly could out of the way. Imagine if someone Shapiro minded was running California, I dare say they’d figure out how it issue a lot more permits for housing for people who lost their homes in the fires versus like the seven that California has managed to issue right now.
Nobody can fix that high speed rail mess, unfortunately you’re stuck with that disaster!
The big question is why we can't get the "emergency situation" to apply all the time.
When it's a clear disaster that needs immediate action, then there's the Common Knowledge that we all need to do with this now and anyone standing in the way is a monster. This can be used for goor or for ill, like the PATRIOT Act.
Shapiro walked down the road from the bridge collapse to a union crew doing other work and recruited them into the task. It was still union labor.
As Josh B pointed out, it's not really the wages and benefits that unions want that ruin stuff. It's all the rules and associated blocking of projects.
> An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
> The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.
> “Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.”
200 people * 1000 per person per day * 5 days a week = $1 million flushed down the toilet a week.
I think this is how some people thought DOGE would work. You could just eliminate a bunch of feather-bedded nonsense.
Of course the comment drew a lot of ire. You don’t look under the hood of a car to find the driver of the vehicle. That’s not how cars work.
I get it, you spend a good chunk of your year on Fire Island which doesn’t have cars, but you’ve apparently become disconnected from everyday Americans who know that you look in the cabin of the car to find the driver.
To the extent that there’s been criticism of abundance policy and politics it’s hard not to think that those critics don’t actually value or want abundance. Seems like they’d rather keep empowering labor unions even if it means less stuff is built, or less built at a higher price, and less enriched public schools.
Josh - Not to glaze, but very much appreciate takes like this. Systemically approaching these issues and recognizing the strategic and self-interested resistance of intracoaltional parties isn’t well done these days. Often feel adrift in the center-left, but keep on fighting and thanks.
Josh your reaction to the protestors yesterday was top notch.
Totally agree. Look at Chicago, the mayor, who has like a 6% approval rating is ready to bankrupt the city to meet the demands of the CTU and its crazy list of demands that won’t help make Chicago Public Schools better at all.
I mostly agree with the piece but question that smaller class sizes don’t help. Specifically with younger children they seem to help. The Tennessee Star study is the most famous one done on class sizes and it showed the smaller class sizes benefit for K-3 students.
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl%3A1902.1%2F10766&utm_source=chatgpt.com
You can find all sorts of interventions that work at the size of a controlled study that don't scale in the real world: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Class-Size-Reduction%2C-Teacher-Quality%2C-and-Academic-Jepsen-Rivkin/c9ab95bce3e7fe5399b3796f21738d6153c1c96f
I couldn't agree more. It's not just in New York where unions can stand in the way of abundance. In California, construction and carpenters' unions have made housing way more expensive to build. Some good legislation has recently been passed out of the state house unanimously, but in the state senate unions are trying to get requirements for their labor and wages to be paid.
The need to say no to unions was one of my big takeaways from reading Abundance. The link to what I wrote is below if you or anyone else is interested. It doesn't get mentioned, but it's an obvious implication, especially in blue states. Nationally, I think unions can be good on things like permitting reform, but the mantra of whatever unions say goes needs to go.
More cynically, Democrats shouldn't waste their time doing things for unions whose members don't vote for them. They should never do anything for the Teamsters again. Same with the dockworkers' union. Not only do their members not vote for Democrats, but they're little more than Luddites these days.
It's because of their attachment to unions that many Democrats are kind of pro-protectionism and aren't up in arms against Trump's tariffs. They still cling to the idea that we can go back to the 1970s and bring back the union jobs from the days of yore. It's pure fantasy and is completely detached from the reality of what our economy is, i.e., people work in services, not in manufacturing.
https://coldpoliticaltakes.substack.com/p/abundance-by-ezra-klein-and-derek
I think you left out a "not" in this sentence: "the public is represented on the management side of the table when public workers’ contracts are negotiated." Union representatives are generally on both sides of the table and the public isn't in the room.
I think the most politic way to deal with the unions is to say, "Hey, it's fair to want fair pay, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions, but not wasteful feather-bedding like [fill in the blank with several examples, including yours]."
While the abundance agenda is great, it requires infighting within the Democratic Party in order to prevail as the dominant agenda over other progressive priorities. Governing effectively and demonstrating competence is very low on the list of their priorities. Even Josh Shapiro, one of the few competent Democratic governors, is very pro-union.
Edit: Thanks to you for pointing out the underlying issues that make abundance mostly wishful thinking on part of Democrats trying to move their party forward.
To some extent, the infighting is a feature rather than a bug, especially if it leads to a news narrative where the Democrats overtly rein in the fringe elements that the bulk of the public dislikes.
I’ll believe it when I see it happen. They still haven’t cancelled the HSR project in CA.
Shapiro is pro union, but when he had to rebuild I-95, he did it in record time and got every barrier he possibly could out of the way. Imagine if someone Shapiro minded was running California, I dare say they’d figure out how it issue a lot more permits for housing for people who lost their homes in the fires versus like the seven that California has managed to issue right now.
Nobody can fix that high speed rail mess, unfortunately you’re stuck with that disaster!
The big question is why we can't get the "emergency situation" to apply all the time.
When it's a clear disaster that needs immediate action, then there's the Common Knowledge that we all need to do with this now and anyone standing in the way is a monster. This can be used for goor or for ill, like the PATRIOT Act.
Shapiro walked down the road from the bridge collapse to a union crew doing other work and recruited them into the task. It was still union labor.
As Josh B pointed out, it's not really the wages and benefits that unions want that ruin stuff. It's all the rules and associated blocking of projects.
I'm still hopeful about Shapiro.
They should just kill the HSR project in CA and save us from further embarrassment.
The Chicago Teachers Union comes to mind here—any aspiring new (and competent) mayor of Chicago is going to have to stand up to them.
Josh, did you mean to link this 2017 NYT article?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html
The first three paragraphs there:
> An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
> The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.
> “Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.”
200 people * 1000 per person per day * 5 days a week = $1 million flushed down the toilet a week.
I think this is how some people thought DOGE would work. You could just eliminate a bunch of feather-bedded nonsense.
Of course the comment drew a lot of ire. You don’t look under the hood of a car to find the driver of the vehicle. That’s not how cars work.
I get it, you spend a good chunk of your year on Fire Island which doesn’t have cars, but you’ve apparently become disconnected from everyday Americans who know that you look in the cabin of the car to find the driver.
To the extent that there’s been criticism of abundance policy and politics it’s hard not to think that those critics don’t actually value or want abundance. Seems like they’d rather keep empowering labor unions even if it means less stuff is built, or less built at a higher price, and less enriched public schools.
Josh - Not to glaze, but very much appreciate takes like this. Systemically approaching these issues and recognizing the strategic and self-interested resistance of intracoaltional parties isn’t well done these days. Often feel adrift in the center-left, but keep on fighting and thanks.
Josh looks very sexy and yet, utterly bored with the antics of the Gaza protestors. Great combo!
Josh are you happy that the voters of NYC will likely continue the trend of electing a "huge weirdo"?