🐭 The story of Disney's 'Tomorrowland Problem' and America's Long Stagnation

Also: 5 Quick Questions for … policy analyst Will Rinehart on America’s “vetocracy” challenge

In This Issue

The Essay: The story of Disney's 'Tomorrowland Problem' and America's Long Stagnation

5QQ: Five Quick Questions for … policy analyst Will Rinehart on America’s “vetocracy” problem

Micro Reads: the GOP and climate change; public policy and AI; California reconsiders nuclear power, and much more …

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Quote of the Issue

“Movement is life, and it is well to be able to forget the past, and kill the present by continual change.” - Jules Verne

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The Essay

🐭 The story of Disney's 'Tomorrowland Problem' and America's Long Stagnation

I suppose the current political conflict between the state of Florida and The Walt Disney Company says something about 2022 America. And that “something” is well expressed in recent news headlines like these:

• “How Disney found itself in the middle of a culture war” - Vox

• “DeSantis’s Disney Blow Marks New Culture War Phase Ahead of 2024 Election” - Bloomberg

• “DeSantis takes on Disney in a culture war with national implications” - The Washington Post

My baseline view is best summed up by this tweet:

James Pethokoukis @JimPethokoukis

The only culture war I'm interested in is the Up Wing dynamists versus the Down Wing degrowthers and stagnationists. 🆙⤴️↗️ 📈

While there are public policy issues with the Disney-Florida fight that interest me, most of them aren’t germane to this newsletter. That said, I’m really fascinated by the history of Disney the corporation and of Walt Disney himself, one of the great 20th century futurists. When I think about postwar America, I divide it into into two rough “Up Wing” periods of fast economic and productivity growth, amazing innovations, and widespread techno-solutionist culture. While I hope we are currently at the beginning of a third Up Wing period, the most recent was the boomy middle-to-late 1990s (which some might say lasted in the Global Financial Crisis). That was Up Wing 2.0.

And as for Up Wing 1.0? There’s a good case for dating its beginning to 1955. The Korean War was over, and with the Soviet Union’s launch of the 184-pound Sputnik satellite in October, the Space Race had begun — a contest that would finish in July 1969 when Apollo 11 reached the Moon. And if I were going to get super-specific, I might narrow the start of Up Wing 1.0 to July 17, 1955.