The Inflation Game

The economic state of America, which technically may be improving according to the latest inflation ...

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The economic state of America, which technically may be improving according to the latest inflation numbers, is still not good. The gang (with deputy managing editor Michael Scott Reneau stepping in for Steve) discuss it and home in on why that’s bad news for Democrats. Plus, Tim Alberta of The Atlantic just wrote a profile of evangelical churches in America and it is so good Sarah, David, Jonah, and Michael had to talk about it and the state of evangelicalism on today’s episode. And finally, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer held a vote on abortion access in America which failed miserably. What the heck was he thinking? Finally, what is the legacy of John Brown?

Show Notes:

–TMD on the latest inflation numbers and baby formula shortage

–Tim Alberta on the evangelical church

–Politico: Senate Democrats’ imaginary majority

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Comments (49)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Brad Armstrong

    Point of context on the John Brown murders. The Pottawatomie massacre occurred during Bleeding Kansas. The raid was a reprisal for 300 pro-slavery settlers sacking of abolitionist Lawrence KS. (Much physical damage, but only one death.) Brown Sr, and his sons set out on a raid and pulled five random (not known to be involved in sacking) men out of pro-slavery settlements and killed them.

    Random reprisals are morally worse than garden variety murder of passion, but I thought it was important to note that Bleeding Kansas was the equivalent of Nothern Ireland experienced in a sparsely settled state.

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  2. DocHeartless

    You guys, I am really struggling with your frequent tendency to imply that the democrat's bill in the senate, Roe, or democrat positions advocate for elective abortion up to the moment of birth. If you are going to make such an inflammatory statement, then you really need to defend that. When I look at the senate bill (understanding that it is all signaling), it seems pretty clearly to state that the goal is to allow elective abortions up to the point of viability and then after only in cases of health of the mother. I genuinely do not understand how you can characterize this as "elective abortion up to the moment of birth" or, even worse, "partial birth abortion up to the moment of birth."

    Can you not agree that this is the very definition of straw man fearmongering that you decry so often? Can you show me cases of women getting elective abortions of 8 month fetuses? Can you show me laws that argue in favor of elective abortions at that point; and, please, don't respond to me that, "well if you read this law in a high pitched voice with certain ruby googles you could possibly construe it to mean x." No, no, show me a law that was crafted and is being implemented as seeking the goal of abortions in the third trimester. Can you show me doctors that would be willing to perform abortions on a fetus as it is being delivered? Do you genuinely believe that democrats, doctors, or women are seeking to get abortions at that point? That is clearly absurd and yet you are pushing it often.

    Many of you make justifiable complaints about hypocrisy in our culture, and I am proud of you for doing so. But how can you spread the implication that I fervently believe you know is a mischaracterization of all but sociopaths? And how can you possibly say in this podcast that you are concerned about the violence that may result in stirring up fanatical pro-choice advocates, when you are painting the left as far more extreme than any reasonable analysis would conclude.

    I am pro-choice and anti-Roe. I am fine with European style laws with serious restrictions after 12 weeks or so. I salute your level-headedness on this issue for the most part, but I think your conservative worldview may be blinding you to a very important point. You are eager to ridicule and condemn the Margaret Atwoods of the left, but you are flirting with a terrible equivalency on the right.

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    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      The bill includes "mental health" as being health of the mother, which is an exception that swallows any limitation. Joe Manchin has also agreed that this is a massive expansion from Roe, which is why he and Collins/Murkowski have been trying to do a pure Roe codification, which as you said would be viability plus a true health/life of the mother exception.

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      1. DocHeartless

        Thank you for your response, Sarah! The fact that you guys actually consider what we write in the comments (and not just ones about owls) is one of the many reasons why I love you all so much.

        Let me be clear: I don’t care too much about the abortion issue itself. I agree with you guys that it could very well be a positive for the long term to return the issue to the states and calm the national temperature. All of the posturing (on both sides) around something so intimate to the people involved is gross.

        What I care about deeply is you guys, and The Dispatch. You all are a bright light in a pretty dark media landscape. Part of it is your intelligence, wisdom, and personalities, but the majority of that luminescence is your ethos. Your insistence on steel man arguments, avoidance of sensationalism, disgust for all fear/rage news porn, and anti-pandering to your paying audience are rare, precious, and difficult to maintain.

        To address your points directly, I agree with you that Joe Manchin said it was an expansion. And as much as I love the lord of the coal-soaked hills, I do not believe that he is correct, nor do I think we should take any politician’s opinion as evidence. I think you are right on target when you praise the Collins/Murkowski effort and I would love to see that become a reality. But let me take up your first point of mental health considerations.

        I re-read the Senate bill as carefully as I could. I am no legal scholar, nor a politician, and this warm-dog-dropping bill is truly difficult to get through as the majority of it is mere anti-republican talking points. It’s obvious that it is a signaling bill and was never intended to pass into law. As such, it would be a mischaracterization in and of itself to attribute too much weight to it as evidence of what the left or democrats believe, in the same way that crazy signaling bills criminalizing women that seek abortions are a fair characterization of what the right or republicans widely believe. Nonetheless, I can find no reference to “mental health” in the bill, though there is a single reference to “mental pain” in section 2.a.17.

        (17) Core human rights treaties ratified by the United States protect access to abortion. For example, in 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee, which oversees implementation of the ICCPR, made clear that the right to life, enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR, at a minimum requires governments to provide safe, legal, and effective access to abortion where a person’s life and health is at risk, or when carrying a pregnancy to term would cause substantial pain or suffering. The Committee stated that governments must not impose restrictions on abortion which subject women and girls to ****physical or mental pain or suffering****, discriminate against them, arbitrarily interfere with their privacy, or place them at risk of undertaking unsafe abortions. Furthermore, the Committee stated that governments should remove existing barriers that deny effective access to safe and legal abortion, refrain from introducing new barriers to abortion, and prevent the stigmatization of those seeking abortion.”

        We could have a good-faith disagreement on the intent of the words in this UN declaration. But I think we would agree that UN Human Rights committee statements have no bearing on US law about abortion, and it seems clear from this passage that it is being thrown into the laundry list of Schumer nonsense: “See how enlightened others are about abortion? We should be so wise.” It doesn’t seem to me to have direct bearing on what the law would legally allow or forbid.

        The most relevant section of the bill, what it would allow and forbid, does not mention mental health concerns in any way. The allowances and restrictions, I think in my amateurism, are in Section 4 “Permitted Services.” Much of this section is dedicated to blocking state legislative attempts to limit or restrict abortions with other creative methods (hospital admitting procedures, declaration of sanctioned intents, parental notifications, etc… -- n.b. all of these could facilitate good faith arguments). Section 4.a states that: “A health care provider has a statutory right under this Act to provide abortion services, and may provide abortion services, and that provider’s patient has a corresponding right to receive such services, without any of the following limitations or requirements:” and subsection 4.a.8-11 states:

        (8) A prohibition on abortion at any point or points in time prior to fetal viability, including a prohibition or restriction on a particular abortion procedure.
        (9) A prohibition on abortion after fetal viability when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose ****a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.****
        (10) A limitation on a health care provider’s ability to provide immediate abortion services when that health care provider believes, ****based on the good-faith medical judgment of the provider, that delay would pose a risk to the patient’s health.****
        (11) A requirement that a patient seeking abortion services at any point or points in time prior to fetal viability disclose the patient’s reason or reasons for seeking abortion services, or a limitation on the provision or obtaining of abortion services at any point or points in time prior to fetal viability based on any actual, perceived, or potential reason or reasons of the patient for obtaining abortion services, regardless of whether the limitation is based on a health care provider’s degree of actual or constructive knowledge of such reason or reasons.

        Yes, the “health” section should be more explicit, but I think it is very fair to say that any reasonable person would read this and understand it for what it is, the physical well being of the mother is in danger. I think it is very fair to say that no reasonable person intended the above to mean a pregnant woman can decide at 38 weeks that she is depressed and wants to abort a viable baby. To argue that this is the intent of the bill is to deliberately mischaracterize the opposition.

        *continued in reply - ugh, it's a novella!

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        1. DocHeartless

          *continued

          The Wall Street Journal’s opinion board does exactly this, I think, when they argue “After fetal viability, the WHPA would assure a right to an abortion whenever the physician’s “good-faith medical judgment” is that “the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.” What counts as “health”? This is sometimes defined to include mental, emotional or familial factors, a loophole that permits elective abortions, more or less, through all nine months of pregnancy.” “Sometimes defined”, they say, except in the actual case they are discussing when it is explicitly NOT defined in that way. “A loophole that permits elective abortions,” they say, which implies a smarmy intent on the part of democrats to sneak in something they want but do not wish to state out loud. Where is WSJ's evidence for this subtle but incredibly inflammatory claim? They are implying that Senate democrats are conniving to include a way that women can abort babies as they are being born. If that is not the very definition of a straw man argument meant to inflame those that already agree with them, I don’t know what is.

          Jonah said that Roe allows for elective abortions in the third trimester. Again, I am no legal scholar, but a cursory reading of Roe makes it pretty clear that abortions in the third trimester are permitted when the situation is a balancing act between the life of the fetus and the life of the mother. Casey seems to make this very clear as well. I have no doubt that if you were to ask judges, politicians, doctors, nurses, every day shmoes, you name it, they would all widely agree that the basic framework of these bills was to allow abortions up to viability and forbide them after except for the physical health of the mother. Yes, Schumer is being an idiot here, put on this earth to make Mitch McConnell look like a genius! Yes, he is enraging me by pandering uncritically to the base. But to imply that he and democrats are supporting, through this bill, elective abortions up to the moment of birth is a bad faith rhetorical hit. It is based on creative Eastman-like legalese, deliberate mis-readings of the text, or justified by radical statements put out by shout your abortion nutjobs. As such, this is taking up the straw man.

          David said that Schumer’s intent is, “of course we [democrats] are going to go **beyond Roe and Casey**.” Again, the bill here does not seem to support that view in a fair reading of it (again, hate the bill, awful, and never meant to be passed). Later he says “10 percent” of the nation, or perhaps 1/4th of of the democratic party according to his math, “feel passionately that abortion should be legal right up to the moment of birth.” Excuse me? Show me the polling that supports this. Yes, I know that a depressingly large minority say that abortion should be legal “in all circumstances.” But let’s be honest here and ask which is more likely: they are spouting out tribal doctrine without thinking it through, or they know what they are saying and want the right for a woman to abort a 9 month old baby. Should we assume that those Americans are really supporting aborting a baby while it is being delivered? That is ridiculous. Ask this polling question: “Do you believe a woman should have the right to choose to abort a nearly full-term baby at 8 months when it is easily able to live outside the womb and there is no physical danger to the baby or the mother?” What do we think would be the percentage of Americans that would say yes to that question? Are there any? Show me a poll that makes that question that clear and gets more than 1% of adults saying yes and I will eat my computer chips. I have to assume that David understands this. So I have to assume that he is getting emotional here and is verbally leaning out over his skis. As such, he is unintentionally contributing to the inflammation around this issue (and I fully understand that these statements are all made in the heat of a verbal exchange in a podcast and so they are in a different category than a written and well-thought out proclamation).

          Now, could this senate bill be better defined? Of course. Would it be improved it were more conservative, explicitly laying out that elective abortions are allowed before 12 weeks and not after, except in these specific circumstances and no others? Yepper. Is the Collins/Murkowski effort practically guaranteed to hew closer to the pulse of the nation and what a majority would find acceptable? I have no doubt. But none of that changes the fact that this rhetoric you guys are occasionally falling into is mischaracterizing the position of the left and the democrats. As such, it is contributing to the irrational fears of the right in the same way that liberal commentators (which are far more numerous, to be sure) are doing when they argue that republicans want to turn women into the Handmaid’s Tale or take away people’s birth control.

          Please understand this criticism for what it is. I am certainly not implying any unethical or pernicious intent on any of you wonderful folks working at this amazing institution. But we all understand the ways that confirmation bias and group think can represent a danger, especially because it sneaks in to our thinking undetected. The more important and emotional is the issue in question, the easier those logical flaws can manifest without being noticed. I am sure you have thought about this dynamic thousands of times at the Dispatch, but if you don't have an Israeli tenth-man around you on abortion rights, please take this screed as an attempt to fill that role.

          If the leaked draft becomes the final decision, as I hope it does, the country is going to need you. We will need your moderation and your logic. We will need you to provide that island of calm, rational, and fair analysis. There are a bazillion other places we can go to for inflamed rhetoric and straw man arguments. I beg of you. Please sleep on it, re-listen to this podcast, and see if there is no validity to the point I’m trying to make here.

          **By the way, we awoke recently to find a white fluffy so-ugly-it-is-adorable owlet walking around in our strawberry patch. I desperately hope that she didn't fall out or get pushed out by a larger sibling. I hope that mom or dad could lift her back up to the house somehow, or that she could make her way back up. Heartbreaking!

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          1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
            Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

            I'm going to look into your points above...but as to the owlet, if its still there the next morning/day, it shouldn't be. So you could get a nice little cardboard box, line it with newspaper and call 311 for someone to come pick it up. No need for water. And it probably won't eat anything--but you could throw in very small chopped raw chicken (breast or thigh or whatever) if you have any lying around. OR you can send me a picture and we can talk through how old the little guy is and go from there.

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  3. Craig Taylor

    Love the podcast, but one thing is starting to drive me a bit crazy. I understand The Dispatch folks want to be seen as reasonable, willing to acknowledge when "their side" does bad things and when the "other side" does good things. Generally, there is goodness to this.

    But I need everyone to stop with the constant caveat about things "not being Biden's fault." Inflation is a prime example. It feels like the hosts trip over themselves to point out that inflation is 'not Biden's fault'. They talk about Biden as unlucky and not the cause of inflation, and how voters will blame him even if he doesn't deserve that blame.

    I get it. Biden didn't cause the pandemic. Runaway spending in Washington has been going on for many years. Not all of that can be laid at Biden's feet, and there's blame to go around. But Biden is the President, and I don't just mean that in a "the buck stops here" type of way. Biden is actively pushing an inflationary agenda in the midst of inflation! COVID relief, infrastructure bill, and if Biden had his way, a MASSIVE 'Build Back Better' spending bill. He wants to forgive student loans. He has kept Trump-era tariffs and other restrictive trade policies in place. All of these things are inflationary! Stop repeating it's "not Biden's fault" when he continues, even now, to push an inflationary agenda! Biden is not a victim here! If you're a voter concerned about inflation (which accounts for most of us), you can - as David likes to say - hold two thoughts in your head at once. (1) Current inflation is multicausal with blame to go around. (2) Biden's agenda is inflationary, and if he were able to pass it, it's likely inflation would be considerably worse than it already is.

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  4. Mike Farley

    Years ago, The Dispatch podcast was the first time I can remember anyone citing the statistics of how few people are on Twitter let alone tweet. Yet you guys frequently reference the latest "Twitter war" or use the words "...on Twitter..." while discussing a particular topic and this episode was no different.

    I understand that all of your media colleagues are on there and that there is some utility in the real-time nature of it. However, after listening to this podcast for years now, I am starting to wonder if Twitter is skewing your views.

    Maybe simply start by a) pruning the people you follow to those who provide you value (e.g. fellow journalists sharing breaking news) b) not reading the comments. It seems like those two steps would greatly reduce the influence that the platform has over your views of the world.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Price controls? What an idiot? I would have figured Biden - having lived through the 70s - wouldn’t go there, even if he has zero understanding of economics. But this is moronic. We wanted competency. We get unserious suggestions like this. We wanted a return to normalcy. We got a return to the 1970s.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Michael Berkowitz

    It seems to me that when Elizabeth Warren talks about the minority blocking the majority she's not talking about the filibuster - she's talking about the Senate. The Senate, which allows unpopulous red states the same voice as populous blue states.

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  7. Michael.Mcchesney

    The John Brown discussion reminded me of something I heard Rush Limbaugh say 30 years ago in response to a listener that talked about how those killing abortion doctors were morally justified in doing so. The justification argument is not hard to understand as a person is justified in using force, even deadly force, to prevent the murder of a third person. If you believe abortion is murder than killing the doctor to prevent them from performing abortion could seem justified. Now I remember I hadn't been listening to Rush for very long and I wasn't sure how much of his schtick was his own political beliefs and how much of it was an act to boost ratings. But Rush gave such a well reasoned earnest answer about why using violence was a mistake and counterproductive to the pro life movement that I realised that Rush really believed in what he was saying. I hadn't listened to Rush in 20 years at the time of his passing. My understanding is he became a Trump supporter after Trump was elected and resisted calls for peace on January 6th. That hardly sounds like the person I listened to in the 90's. Perhaps he went from being a leader of the conservative movement to becoming a follower of the populist one. I think that was probably for ratings and it saddens me. For the record, I am opposed to the murder of doctors, even those that perform abortions I am slightly more conflicted about John Brown. If Brown had been conducting raids to liberate slaves and killed those trying to prevent the liberation, I might think he was justified. But he was not justified in dragging people out of their homes and killing them. I am pretty sure that made him a terrorist.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Saied

    On inflation, let's talk some basics. Let's first start with Milton Friedman from the late 70s. You can listen to it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_nGEj8wIP0. The conversation back then was no different what is going around these days. Ben Bernanke in his 2012 collage lecture series made the very same points. You can listen his second lecture covering this topic here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw0qrC4FB_I. The same mistakes are made again this time.

    So, what did happen? Looking up real GDP numbers from the Federal Reserve of the St. Louis we can see that from 2010 to 2019 the US real GDP grew at a cumulative average growth rate of 2.02% (the keyword is real). During the same period the quantity of M1 times the velocity of money - the number of times money changes hands in a year - (both of these numbers also from the St. Louis Fed) stayed very close to the size of the real GDP. In the early part of the pandemic, the velocity fo money dropped from about 5.3 to about 1.3. During the same period the size of M1 grew from about $4 trillion to $16 trillion, but the product of the two did not change much. Trouble started in 2021 because the velocity of money stayed constant around 1.18 while M1 grew from around $17 trillion to about $21 trillion or a 14% increase. M1 times velocity (assuming the velocity has not gone up) supports a $24 trillion dollar economy (in real inflation adjusted terms). That is a 7.5% inflation. It is also reasonable to argue that the velocity of money has increased. It is related to how much money people in total want to hold and who wants to hold a lot of something that loses its value by the month. There are many ways for the inflation to get entrenched, increasing the velocity of money while the supply stays high is one of them. It also makes the job of the Fed harder, they need to run fast just to stay still.
    This was also not an increase in the supply of money that worked its way though the banking system as it usually does. It was "helicopter money" (a Milton Friedman term) handed out, so it was fast acting money. The guilty parties that got us into this mess are Mr. Powell, Mr. Biden, and the Speaker of the House and the Majority leader of the Senate. Not Putin, not greedy corporations, not spend thrift consumers, not dock workers refusing to work nights... just the people who are in the news regularly trying to blame it on someone else.

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  9. DJ

    End the filibuster. Force Senators to take votes that actually mean something rather than making show votes that require an impossible threshold to pass. It would lead to more compromise, not less.

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    1. Roger Ellis

      Say that in January 2023.

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      1. DJ

        I don't care who controls the Senate. I never have. I've thought it should be killed since the Bush era.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Will Roberts

    Jonah "isn't amazing that politicians minimize bad economic facts and deny the obvious"

    Thanks master of the obvious.

    I really don't think the politicians are the problem. I think the people who elect them are. Because they give them the incentives to act this way.

    Jonah says he would vote for someone who gives it to you straight. Perhaps but I think most people vote for hope and change and making America great again. Most people hate government while also expecting government to solve their problems without raising taxes and in a short amount of time.

    As a minister I often want to solve my people's problems. But the solutions I know work through research and experience offend people and will get me fired. They much rather believe in the power of positive thinking than the power of effective solutions that may make you feel bad in the short term but are better in the long term.

    Yeah we were right about inflation? Well up till the pandemic and the supply chain crisis the economy was seeming to prove conservative economists wrong. It seems we would have Continued that trend if not for the pandemic. What allowed us to buck the trend? We should find that out and solve supply chain issues that would be better for all of us.

    I would imagine a church full of conspiracy theorists would be pretty unmanageable since that way of thinking tends to flow into other areas of live. So I suspect this growth will self correct and these churches will implode. Not over politics but over something trivial

    That being said I think it is helpful to deflate conspiracy theories to recognize where they have a good point.

    Like what is up with vaccine courts? Giving an industry immunity from lawsuits for a product they say is safe is a contradictory message. And that is coming from a triple vaxed Christian pastor.

    And the statement that Jeffery Epstein didn't kill himself and that bill Clinton was spotted on his private sex island by one of the staff doesn't strike me as insane. Frankly that trump could have had involvement with him doesn't strike me as insane. Covering up organized sex rings in pizza parlors would be hard to do. But covering up a sex ring on a private island had been proven not to be that hard. Who else was involved seems to be a question that could be answered but powerful people don't want to answer.

    So the conspiracy theorists have points it is just th size of conspiracies they are talking about are highly unlikely. The government can't be both all powerful and incompetent at the same time yet many conspiracy theorist hold both views without thinking about it.

    If you give a little you can get a little from the other side. If you show that to you are willing to change your mind that opens others to changing theirs. If you up just say people are irrational and crazy you may get a lot of likes on the french press but yo you won't persuade the people you want to. Looking for the little truth in bad arguments can go a long way to helping people lay those arguments down.

    John brown is crying from the grave and has been heard at the dispatch!

    "He was right but not morally praise worthy because he murdered 5 people with the a sword while they slept"

    Says the same people who say the founding fathers were justified going to war over taxes and other slights when they killed and wounded at least 20000 British regulars. Yet the fourth of July is a great holiday but John brown's birthday isn't?

    But the founding fathers were fighting tryanny !

    The slaves in their chains are crying out ,"cry me a river build a bridge and get over it".

    I truly believe th founding fathers built something better than the British monarchy. But they shed far more blood for far less than John brown did.

    I love my country but as a Christian and as student of history I often wonder if it this country was worth the blood we shed to get it.

    History shows if we hadn't gone to war we would have probably gained or freedom as Canada did and the other colonies did. And slavery would have been abolished without blood shed as it was in the rest of the British empire.

    It would have been better for the world if the British empire the Roman empire or any other would have evolved into a federal Republic for the world as we have for our continent. But empires also tend to be run by assholes. Maybe one day that will change. The world would be better for it.

    Hidden brain did a good episode called how to change the world where they compared the success of violent revolutions versus nonviolent ones.

    They found that violent ones succeed about a quarter of the time while nonviolent ones succeed about half of the time. Nonviolent revolution is about having the discipline not to strike back and to provoke the other side into overreacting and thus loosing public support. From this perspective it is a good thing the capital police were unprepared for January 6th. Because it turned out most people were unarmed. If they had been cracked down upon and many died Donald Trump probably would be president. It is a sick logic that to be heard you have to be perfect and let the other side beat the shit out of you. But it seems that sheeding your own blood works better than shedding the blood of others.

    Violence is never appropriate. Americans don't believe that. As Donald trump once said that is what the second amendment is for. And he is right. Even in the oath to the constitution we promise to defend against domestic to enemies. I just got think having that in the realm of possibility in the American mind is a really bad idea. The underdog usually looses the movies are wrong. That is why we should work things out at the table and shed our own blood. But we don't really believe that as Americans.

    When you see your opponent as Hitler anything is permissible. Well the slavers in matter of fact were not much better than Hitler. John brown just should have counted the cost and realized it is a bad idea. That is a better moral argument for a people who truly believe killing and wounding 24000 people is justified because you don't like the taxes you are paying or you don't like troops staying in your home against your will. Again the slaves cry out try being raped and your children taken from you. Cry me a river build a bridge instead of a canon and work it out you american cry babies

    Hitler was posed as an existential threat. But once america got in the war he was the clear underdog as was Japan and Italy. We won because we had more guns and troops not because or cause was just though it was.

    Christ said count the cost before you enter the battle. That is a great spiritual and political principle. One that this country should heed before we spill other people's blood


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