By shifting the burden of repaying up to $20,000 from each person who incurred student loan debt to taxpayers, Team Biden has exacerbated the political polarization of the United States.
Usually, when people talk about polarization, they mean partisan polarization. But that is a lazy and shallow assessment. The real divide between people — the divide that is both obvious and dangerously rarely mentioned — is the gulf between those for whom society and its institutions are working well and those for whom society and its institutions or they do not work at all. or are actively working against.
The last few weeks in the United States have seen a few really strong examples. Let’s start with the student loan disaster. Team Biden has been engaged in a non-stop effort to make the working class pay for the education of the wealthy since the president took the oath of office. It is a completely indefensible policy for a number of reasons — the injustice of penalizing frugality, thrift and hard work; the creation of moral hazard related to debt relief; feeding the ever-voracious academy; ignoring the universities’ considerable assets and other endowments.
But the most salient reason to oppose it is that it is regressive. It transfers cash from the relatively less wealthy to the relatively richer.
How about budget reconciliation? That legislation, formally called the Inflation Reduction Act, is loaded with tax credits for companies, buyers of electric vehicles, buyers of heat pumps, water heaters, solar panels, etc. .
While there was $60 billion for environmental justice (the details of its distribution seem murky), almost all of the $380 billion of that legislation spent over the next 10 years will end up in the pockets of the executive companies, the shareholders and those too. -off enough to buy electric vehicles (average price now more than $66,000), advanced heat pumps, solar panels. That’s not accidental. Environmental activists are disproportionately wealthier and better educated than most.
How about CHIPS, the legislation in which Congress gave $75 billion to semiconductor manufacturers who, together, made nearly $250 billion in profits in the last five years? Senator Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, in announcing his strong reservations about the legislation, pointed out that whenever he has proposed policies to help poor people such as free community college, expanded Medicare and paid family leave, told him we couldn’t afford it.
However, when chip makers threatened to send even more of their manufacturing facilities offshore, we somehow got $300 billion for them and their allies in universities and government.
This is a bipartisan problem. Seventeen Senate Republicans – unable to let go of their reflexive attitudes towards business – voted for the CHIPS Act. Others, in the past, voted for many of the tax credits incorporated in the reconciliation legislation. Progressives in the House also voted for the grants to corporations and the wealthy included in the CHIPS legislation and reconciliation. The Democrats – despite their rhetoric and the stories they tell themselves about being for the little guy – were the originators of many of these regressive ideas. Their coalition now consists entirely of those for whom the system works – college-educated laptoppers and recipients of federal and state largesse.
The biggest divide in American political life is not between Republicans and Democrats. It is between those who now see that the system is actively hostile to them and those who see that too, but don’t care because it works for them.
That is the polarization we need to address, and soon.
• Michael McKenna, columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated” podcast. He was most recently deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
What does it mean when a country is polarized?
Political polarization (polarization written in British English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. To see also : Politics should not take precedence over priorities. Most discussions of polarization in political science consider polarization in the context of political parties and democratic systems of government.
What does polarized mean in society? Social polarization is the segregation within a society that arises when factors such as income inequality, variations in real estate and economic displacement result in the differentiation of social groups from high income to low income.
When did US politics become so polarized?
However, since the early 2010s, the Democratic Party has moved significantly to the left on social, cultural and religious issues. Since the 1970s, the United States has grown more polarized, with rapid increases in polarization during the 2000s and beyond.
What’s polarized mean?
polarize verb [T] (DIVIDE) that causes something, especially something that contains people or different opinions, to divide into two completely opposite groups: The issue polarized the nation. See the article : When politics returns to Kiev. Two developments polarized the debate.
What is another word for polarization?
| separation | divided |
|---|---|
| division | divergence |
| schism | polarity |
| opposition | a contradiction |
| contrary | difference |
What is another term for polarization? Synonyms & Near Synonyms for polarization. See the article : Sadr protests: Iraqi politics needs a complete overhaul. atomization, dichotomization.
What is an example of polarization?
A simple example of transversely polarized waves is vibrations traveling along a taut string (see image); for example, in a musical instrument such as a guitar chord. Depending on how the string is reduced, the vibrations can be in a vertical direction, a horizontal direction, or at any angle perpendicular to the string.
What is polarization in simple words?
Definition of polarization 1: the action of polarization or a state of being or becoming polarized: such as. a(1): the action or process that affects radiation and especially light so that the wave vibrations take a definite form. (2): the radiation state affected by this process.
What are the consequences of the continued growth of party polarization quizlet?
What are the consequences of the continued growth of party polarization? Fewer moderates are elected to public office. Gridlock has increased in the legislatures. Voter turnout is down.
What is the result of the partisan polarization quiz? As a result of partisan polarization, compromise between politicians becomes more difficult. the New Deal and civil rights policies.
What are the positives and negatives of partisan polarization quizlet?
What are the positives and negatives of partisan polarization? A positive is that voters have choices, but a negative is that moderates are not voting or participating.
What are the effects of party polarization quizlet?
Political polarization will hurt the ability of the United States to continue a persistent and long-term presence in the field of foreign policy. A more or less consistent set of beliefs about what policies the government should pursue. A person with a disproportionate share of political power.
How is polarization used in real life?
Polarization is used in sunglasses to reduce glare. Polaroid filters are used in the plastic industries to perform stress analysis tests. Three-dimensional films are produced and displayed with the help of polarization. Polarization is used to differentiate between transverse and longitudinal waves.
What is an example of polarization? Common examples of surfaces that reflect polarized light are undisturbed water, glass, plastic sheets, and highways. In these cases, light waves that have electric field vectors parallel to the surface are reflected to a greater degree than those with different orientations.
What is Polarisation and where is it applied?
Polarization (also polarization) is a property that applies to transverse waves that specifies the geometric orientation of the oscillations. In a transverse wave, the direction of oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of wave motion.
How is polarization used in medicine?
Polarized light has the ability to increase the specificity of the investigation of biomedical samples and is finding greater utilization in the fields of medical diagnostics, sensing, and measurement.
