I was deeply involved in this debate 8 years ago.

I hear a lot of my own past words in this piece (which is cool, I know Oren), but looking at this now, I’ve largely moved on from the issue because this isn’t an economic problem that can be addressed with policy only, but a cultural & meaning problem, and that ship has long ago sailed.

Bringing eco growth to the Back-row will help, but that alone isn’t enough, since the core issue is our dominant form of meaning, the one the Front row believes in — a credentialed careerism that’s also about being emancipated from any communal obligation, including nation — is absolutely and metaphysically destructive to almost everyone, with the exception of a tiny, highly successful few.

The result is a vacuum of meaning and a spiritual emptiness in the US.

To be egg-headed about it. It’s Kierkegaard’s loss of the finite and infinite. Which ends in a lot of despair.

You can’t reverse that, not in my lifetime, and I don’t know how you even begin the process of change because the idea of individual freedom is so core to the worldview of US elites. It’s central to their identity.