The reviews are rolling in for American Compass founder Oren Cass’s 3,300-word article in this weekend’s New York Times, and it turns out that playing the hits of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign platform (massive re-regulation, more taxes) doesn’t resonate across the center-right policy space. A sampling from this week:
No, American Finance Is Not A Grift
It is the long-form essay from the post-liberal right’s economic darling, Oren Cass. He hates what our economy has become and sees those who work in finance in the US in the 2020s as essentially hucksters and thieves. I hated almost all of this essay. … Biggest of all is this clamor for a golden past that was not golden and cannot in any event be recovered. … But we should reject the idea that finance has no value, that it was better in the Time Before when bankers were noble and their customers were all prosperous and equality was the dominant ethos of American life. That is a past that never was. We cannot turn the clock backward. All we can do is wreck the great institutions that American prosperity built because some people think private equity is gross. Hard pass on this political moment. I hope it loses badly among Democrats and Republicans alike.
The article that Oren Cass wrote in The New York Times this weekend is case in point of people basically codifying an argument that would undermine the very preconditions for a prosperous society and one in which freedom can reign and people can pursue human flourishing. He does so the way that so many on the left have done for decades. … This was such a case study in inaccurate wild assertions… This is utter juvenile insanity to suggest that these institutions are not engaged in the productive allocation of capital… Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative, and less competitive. I’m sorry. Would you like to inform Europe of that?…He is giving immunity to the people who caused the problem because in Oren’s worldview, the people who caused the problem need to be the solution to the problem. It is as counterproductive as anything I’ve ever seen.
Michael Munger, Professor of Political Science and Economics, Duke University:
What leaves me incredulous is Cass’s economically tone-deaf “solution”: more regulation, lots of it. … Even ignoring the fact that the derangement was caused by regulation in the first place … Congress and the agencies were thickly lobbied throughout the Dodd-Frank legislative and rulemaking process, with predictable advantages for incumbent firms that can afford influence and compliance at scale. … More regulation would mean more, not less, insulation for executives of the existing firms. Cass’s “more regulation” program is just an all-you-can-eat buffet for Wall Street and K Street.
Ira Stoll, Washington Free Beacon:
‘The Finance Industry Is a Grift,’ Oren Cass Claims in the New York Times. Look Who’s Talking.
Too bad, because it is riddled with falsehoods, tendentious reasoning, and sloppy thinking. One misleading claim is Cass’s complaint that the financial sector ‘attracts the highest share of top talent from top schools, in part by offering the highest compensation.’ … That’s cherry-picking. … His policy solutions are likely to create their own problems. He writes, ‘We should establish regulations to curtail the riskiest and most convoluted financial activities.’ Yet excessive regulation of the banks is what pushed activity in the first place to the ‘unregulated lenders’ Cass complains about. … Cass’s proposal for social shunning of people who take jobs in the financial sector is gross.
Broken Compass Vol. 3: Oren Cass Wants a Tax Increase
In the online exchange, Cass agrees that cuts to federal spending are necessary, but quickly added: “Yes, and more revenue, too!” This is far from an isolated statement. … He has argued that “some amount of new revenue, which means a tax increase in some way is going to have to be part of any way out of this.” … His revenue-focused approach prioritizes balancing budgets by taking more money out of Americans’ pockets – rather than unleashing growth through lower tax burdens. Cass’s focus on “more revenue” amid fiscal challenges reveals his preference for solutions that expand government, rather than market-driven prosperity.