13 Comments

Interesting article about your interpretation of the 2024 election results from a Progress perspective. While we are not very influential within either party, I think the Progress movement can have far more success via the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Far too many necessary reforms would attack sacred sows within the Democratic Party and I just do not see them changing. The Republicans are not pro-Progress, but they are not anti-Progress as so many Democrats are.

And I say that as a former Democrat who once ran for state-level office under the party banner. I go into more detail in this article:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-the-left-undermines-progress

You probably do not know me, but I have been a member of the Progress Studies movement for a number of years and have written two books on the subject. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the conference and meet you.

You might be interested in series of posts that I wrote on what I believe Progress studies is and how we can make the biggest possible impact on society.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/what-is-progress-studies

Since I have a strong background in politics, I also have thoughts on how the Progress party can organize.

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Virginia, your post-election feelings perfectly encapsulate my own. I am doing my best to remain hopeful, understanding that neither candidate truly ran on a pro-growth or pro-progress platform.

Nonetheless, many Trump voters and supporter, are.

I have also noticed that the nascent Trump administration is taking shape in a much more professional and accelerated manner than in his first term. Perhaps the key decisions will be ceded to pro-progress individuals, like Elon Musk, with Trump serving more in a figurehead role.

That is my “optimistic” take, at least.

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Let's see if Elon is willing and able to take on the tax cutters, the trade restrictors, the immigration reducers, the low NPV expenditure (farm and etanol subsidies, subsidized climate hazard insurance, IRA incentives to investment in CO2 reduction instead of subsidies to reduction) protectors. :)

Anybody can talk growth.

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I don't see Elon Musk doing nitty-gritty policy work. You actually have to know about things way outside his considerable expertise in tech. If he stays in Trump's good graces (and few do for long), he might be able to curb some of the anti-trade zeal.

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Why does one have to do “nitty-gritty” policy work to identify wasteful spending?

And to the extent that “nitty-gritty” is needed, is it not in fact very likely that Elon would have folks - whether they become government appointees or not - do said nitty-gritty for him, while he is the one communicating and providing the credibility?

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Forgetting all the rest, why would Musk need to “take on the tax cutters”?

My understanding is that he would be the “efficiency” and “eliminating wasteful spending” czar, not the balance-the-budget czar, as you seem to be morphing him into with this portion of your comment.

In fact, to the extent that Musk succeeds, he would be the best friend of “the tax cutters”.

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We will see. I am trying to be optimistic.

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I recommend that you use Ideogram for creating images with text - and always put the text that you want into quotation marks "Progress and Abundance" https://ideogram.ai/t/explore This is the resource I suggest to students and businesses.

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Larry Kudlow was the proponentt of growth and deregulation during Trump's first term. He was.probably the most useful member of his team.

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I credit Kudlow from keeping the tariffs from turning into a bad trade war, although that is debatable.

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He obviously lost Trump 1's

-Tax cut and spend big policies.

-Permitting reform?

-Federal level NIMBY ism

-Immigration reform

-Trade liberalization

What did he actually DO?

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As I stated he was the proponent of growth and deregulation during Trump's term. There was no one else doing that in his admin so I think the statement stands. Your questions are worth talking about but my information on that is a combination of ideas from CATO, Reason, AIER, and Independent Institute. I stated it narrowly because I did not want to get into more details. You are free to pursue that.

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Nov 12·edited Nov 12

This is a very exciting movement and utterly well suited for Virginia. I just wonder how its results will filter their way to the policy/working level due to what I see as an overriding but contradictory anti-human/pro-humans as groups impulse within the Democrat Party, not just with the base, but the elites as well. This was not the case when Bill Clinton was running things and TFAIE was published, but it sure seems to be now. Perhaps the trick will be something like Milton Friedman's observation that what will be necessary is to pursue policy opinions on progress that make it politically necessary for those who disagree to nonetheless go along with them.

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