Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion
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Published 2021-11-09
But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way?
In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values.
In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly.
Instead of asking, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Democrats need to spend more time pondering, “What’s the matter with California?”
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All Comments (21)
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Hi, I'm Johnny Harris, one of the producers for this Opinion Video. I've always wondered why famously liberal states like California and Washington struggled to advance progressive policies, so I teamed up with NYT Editorial Board member Binya Appelbaum to get some answers. I'd love to know what most surprised you most in this video, or answer any questions you may have about how we made it — leave your comments below.
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As a native Californian, trust me.......this was sugar-coated to death. This is the rated G version.
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"I love poor people, I just don't want them living anywhere near me."
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It was never a "republican vs democrats" - thing. It is always rich and powerful people against poor people.
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I got assigned this video for one of my college classes, but the professor did not discuss the video during class. It seems like the main people who need to hear this aren't going to.
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As a conservative, I would absolutely love a piece from the New York Times that approached the Republican Party in this way. Respectful criticism is refreshing.
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BREAKING NEWS: Today the New York Times committed a random act of journalism.
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California: Let's build affordable housing while we make it insanely expensive and difficult to build anything!
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WA resident, what I've seen here is the state prioritizes other well meaning values, like slowing climate change, but policy implementation of those values disproportionally helps the upper class and hurts the lower class. For example the electric vehicle credits and the carbon tax. The EV credits give the upper class a nice rebate when buying an EV. The lower class can't afford an EV even with the credit, and don't have a place to plug it in if they could afford it. But the carbon tax raises the gas tax across the board for everyone. Lower class tends to drive the older vehicles that get worse gas mileage, and they pay more of the carbon tax as a percent of their income.
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I would never have believed the NYT would run a story like this. Well done.
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This is huge - someone put their foot down and said hey let’s actually do journalism again. I’m thrilled.
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Note: this was 2 years ago!! It's much, much worse now-5/2024 !!
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I am stunned the NYT allowed this to be made! Sadly it will not be widely available on all their platforms. It would be great to send it over to NPR to watch and maybe learn.
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I join the chorus of people extremely surprised that NYT run a story like this. Good on you. Criticise Republicans when they deserve it and criticise Democrats when they deserve it. Applaud Republicans when they deserve it and applaud Democrats when they deserve it. Then people will trust media again.
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Everybody is progressive until they're even mildly inconvenienced
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I want to make some points 1. This is the world we deserve when we prioritize feelings and emotions over logic and reasoning. 2. Both sides, liberal and conservative may have a point. But we will never know what is actually right when we are shunned, name called, bullied, and doxxed for a simple disagreement. We have regressed as a society because we rise to agree to disagree.
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This isn't exclusive to the US. Both sides of the political spectrum have been captured by corporate interests in the UK as well. Nothing will change until we remove the bribery, sorry, campaign donation model of government. Its actually a disgrace!
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Coming from a left wing person, it’s great to see a video that isn’t just mindlessly bashing the right but shows us what we are doing wrong
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As a wise man once said: "Politicians are regarded as people who have learned to talk, but not to act."
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Tax increase, higher living expanse, more tax on tax, unaffordable housing market, homeless problem, drug addicts, inability to construct a rail network effectively, the state government has the highest tax revenue yet couldn't do anything to improve a single thing in the state. Welcome to California.
