⤴⤵ Is Biden a pro-progress Up Winger? Is Trump?

I report, you decide

Quote of the Issue

“Make more cars and semiconductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America. More goods moving faster and cheaper in America. More jobs where you can earn a good living in America. … Economists call it ‘increasing the productive capacity of our economy.’ I call it building a better America.” - Joe Biden, 2022 SOTU

“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. … They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!” - Donald Trump on X (Twitter)

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The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised

“With groundbreaking ideas and sharp analysis, Pethokoukis provides a detailed roadmap to a fantastic future filled with incredible progress and prosperity that is both optimistic and realistic.”

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The Essay

⤴⤵ Is Biden a pro-progress Up Winger? Is Trump?

In my previous essay, “Politics and progress: a mini-manifesto,” I argued for a "conservative futurism" that preserves the liberal principles of the American Revolution and Adam Smith while embracing progress and change. I described an ecology of public policy that sets the right conditions for innovation and growth. That, rather than trying to micromanage the future. 

In that context, then, the traditional left-right political spectrum seems inadequate. We should also think in terms of “up” and “down,” with the "Up Wing" embracing optimism, economic growth, and technological progress to solve societal challenges and improve human flourishing. "Down Wing," on the other hand, urges caution in the face of rapid technological and economic change, focusing on potential downsides and disruptions, and advocating for policies based on the precautionary principle.

As a way of adding detail to the Up Wing versus Down Wing dichotomy and making those perspectives more concrete, I thought I would examine how the two leading presidential candidates fit into this framing.

Here are some key Up Wing things from Biden: 

• Clean energy abundance, particularly nuclear energy, is a vital part of the Up Wing agenda. In an April 19 speech, Biden called nuclear the largest clean energy source, essential for a net carbon-free grid by 2035. He also stressed the need to maintain existing plants, restart closed ones, and invest in small modular reactors. The Inflation Reduction Act expanded support for nuclear, putting it on par with wind and solar in terms of subsidies, and the administration is enthusiastic about fusion technology. ⤴️

• Infrastructure is another key component, as better connections enhance economic productivity by linking cities, universities, companies, and individuals. Biden's infrastructure bill provided federal funding for building and maintaining roads, bridges, tunnels, and digital links, with bipartisan support demonstrating Congress' ability to work across the aisle. ⤴️

• Up Wing America also welcomes immigrants with big dreams. The post-pandemic immigration surge raised labor force participation, helping the US economy grow faster and create more jobs in a non-inflationary way. (The Migration Institute notes that pandemic-driven adaptations accelerated the modernization of the immigration system.) Biden has also stressed the need for more high-skilled immigrants to aid the country's AI efforts. ⤴️

• The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which included $200 billion in scientific R&D and commercialization, aligns with the Up Wing policy agenda of massively increasing government science investment to drive rapid economic growth and solve significant problems. ⤴️

That Up Wing-ish agenda faces challenges in policy execution, permitting problems, and populist impulses.

• When democratic governments are seen as capable of addressing the needs of their populace, there’s stronger support for democratic principles. But when government screws up, folks start doubting democracy. You want to make computer chips here because you're worried about China? Fine. But you better have enough talent here to do it. And don’t glom on unrelated policy goals, such as childcare mandates. Money for science is great, but make sure the cash actually shows up. Boosting the supply side of the economy to fight inflation is good policy, but not passing a stimulus bill in March 2021 would have made the fight easier. Chaos at the US southern border makes it harder to make the case for more immigration. ⤵️

• A recent IMF analysis stated that, should US permitting delays continue, the expected decline in carbon emissions from the IRA would be “smaller by a third.” The IMF analysis notes that the “National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 requires federal permitting for infrastructure projects, including for energy, a process that takes around 4.5 years on average.” The Biden White House has offered NEPA reforms after reversing Trump-era fixes and failing to get permitting reform included in the IRA. Republicans don’t like the addition of climate change provisions, and it’s unclear whether the Biden changes would actually speed up permitting. This is a half-decade-old problem. You only get Up Wing points for big change. ⤵️

• Buy American provisions in recent bills, opposition to the Nippon Steel-US Steel deal, maintaining his predecessor's trade approach, especially with China, and frequent protectionist rhetoric aimed at blue-collar workers suggest a retreat from trade. Trade benefits America and keeps the world connected through commerce. Its trade-offs are more apparent than its benefits in the short term, making it less popular than it should be. Without a president actively pushing it forward, there's a risk of regression. ⤵️

Now let’s turn to former President Trump’s Up Wing things:

• I thought the 2017 Tax and Jobs Act should have been structured so that the tax cuts didn’t worsen budget deficits, which they did, of course. But the recent study “Tax Policy and Investment in a Global Economy” also finds that the tax cuts boosted annual private investment by slightly more than 7 percent, equivalent to an additional $265 billion in 2023. What’s more, it finds that the increased business investment led to a roughly 1 percent rise in the average worker's wages. Both parties need to think hard about tax reform that can raise more revenue in the most growth-friendly way possible. ⤴️

• More important than newsy, it seems, but back in 2020, the Trump administration proposed significant changes in NEPA rules, regulatory reforms — since reversed by the Biden administration — that aimed to streamline the approval process for infrastructure projects like highways and energy pipelines by setting time limits on the completion of environmental reviews. Another thing: In January 2017, Trump signed an executive order implementing a regulatory freeze, which temporarily halted new regulations and delayed the implementation of pending rules. We should be thinking harder about how the regulatory state impedes innovation and offers bad trade-offs. ⤴️

• Operation Warp Speed, the pandemic-era public-private partnership initiated by the Trump administration, was remarkably successful in accelerating the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. OWS facilitated unprecedented collaboration between federal agencies and the biopharmaceutical industry, leading to the approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines by December 2020, just seven months after the project's inception. Big techno-solutionist win, here .⤴️

And Trump’s Down Wing things? No need to spend much time here. Both his policy and rhetoric on trade and immigration — economic openness is a key part of Up Wing thinking — get terrible, terrible marks on an Up Wing vs. Down Wing basis. So, too, do his claims about the supposedly rigged 2020 election. ⤵️⤵️⤵️

Oh, and by the way, both Biden and Trump are pretty bad when it comes to putting Washington back on a sustainable long-term fiscal track. That’s not very Up Wing either, as I see it. One of the most important catalysts for me beginning to think in explicitly Up Wing terms was a 2019 study by Yale University economist Ray Fair, which notes an interesting historical coincidence. First, US infrastructure spending as a percent of GDP began a steady decline around 1970, a pattern seen in no other rich country. "The United States appears to be a special case in this regard," Fair writes. And roughly at the same time that America started ignoring its roads and bridges, Washington started running big budget deficits. And it has continued to do so ever since, except for a few years at the end of the 20th century

Fair argues the two occurrences reflect a sustained change in national attitude: "The overall results suggest that the United States became less future oriented beginning around 1970. This change has persisted." 

The reasoning here is obvious: Fixing your roof while the sun is shining and curbing spending before the bill collector calls require some foresight and the ability to place the current you in the shoes of “future you.” So, yeah, bringing debt and deficits under control really is Up Wing.

So who is more Up Wing, Biden or Trump? Certainly there are more relevant issues to examine than what I have covered here, including AI and climate change. But I hope I’ve given you at least a few ways of arriving at that decision for yourself and, more importantly, given you a bit more explanation on my UW-DW thesis.

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Micro Reads

▶ Business/ Economics

The Emerging Geostrategy Industrial Complex Is a Win-Win - Bberg Opinion 

Microsoft Makes a New Push Into Smaller A.I. Systems - NYT

US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform - FT

The AI race is generating a dual reality - FT Opinion

China Approves US Listing for Self-Driving Firm in Easing Sign - Bberg

Natural Capital as a Stock Option - arXiv

▶ Policy

Congress Passed a Bill That Could Ban TikTok. Now Comes the Hard Part. - NYT

Noncompetes Are Dead—and Tech Workers Are Free to Roam - Wired

F.T.C. Issues Ban on Worker Noncompete Clauses - NYT

Three Options for Taxing Wealth - Conversable Economist

Reforming innovation policy to help the EU escape the middle-technology trap - Vox EU

Lethal AI weapons are here: how can we control them? - Nature

▶ AI/Digital

Quantum Computing Meets Genomics: The Dawn of Hyper-Fast DNA Analysis - SciTechDaily

▶ Clean Energy

Do We Have the Technologies Necessary to Reduce Global Emissions - Bridgewater

How US shale keeps sheltering America from the next oil price surge - FT

Should we tweak the atmosphere to counteract global warming? - NS

Beware the pragmatism of the nonchalant ‘hot earthers’ - FT Opinion

Forests trap less carbon than before, EPA says - E&E

▶ Cities

When Was the Last Time We Built a New City? - Asterisk

▶ Robotics

Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment? - MIT Tech Review

Will Amazon's robotic revolution spark a new wave of job losses? - NS

A Brief History of Automatons That Were Actually People - SciAm

You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000 - Ars

▶ Space/Transportation

BYD's roofless, no-windscreen, scissor-door supercar: Headed for production - New Atlas

Video: Beta Alia nails first manned eVTOL transition to cruise flight - New Atlas

World’s most advanced solar sail rockets into space - New Atlas

▶ Substacks/Newsletters

The Environmental Costs of Generative Artificial Intelligence - AI Supremacy

Google, Perplexity and OpenAI seek to mould Changing Consumer Behaviors - AI Supremacy

The Social Feedback Loops That Constrain Climate Science - Breakthrough Institute

What can LLMs never do? - Strange Loop Canon

Tesla FSD, Robotaxi, AI Services and Optimus Teslabot From Q1 Earnings - next BIG future