Americans haven’t been this optimistic about the direction of the country since before Joe Biden staged his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
One hell of a way to open an Opinion piece ;)
That polling result is also quite stunning and I wonder a) if it's accurate—polls are fleeting and unreliable—and b) what might account for it. Perhaps there's just less immediate election crap thrown in people's faces, so everything feels a little calmer/back-to-normal?
Closing down agencies that are unproductive or worse will help to demonstrate the sincerity of reformers, building credibility for the more significant reforms to come.
While that's all good (obviously; no sane person objects to that), it too much window-dressing for my taste. I can't remember who to credit for this, but I saw a recent article saying that America's fiscal problem isn't cutting away small, immaterial things; it's cutting the very things that people like—Medicaid, Military, Entitlements. Stupid shit around the margins ain't gonna cut it—literally.
Freeman concludes
What a beautiful test—bureaucracies must not only avoid doing economic harm, but are prohibited from doing anything at all unless they can show a benefit. Americans are going to need to find a lot of benefits that add up to an economy large enough and a government small enough to sustain our great democratic experiment.
So, Stackers; how excited are we about these microscopic improvements to the Treasury finances?
Personally, the best takeaway from all of this is that it annoys exactly the right people (lefties, wokeys, establishment journos, insiders).
I'll take the win.
non-paywalled here: https://archive.md/FTJZh