For those who flirted with parts of the ex-presidents populist message, there is a straightforward line of defense: While Trump obviously failed, real Trumpism was never tried.

The problem was the deeply flawed, unhinged and amoral champion of the populist cause, but not the cause itself, which continues to be relevant. As my AEI colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, political conditions will continue to call for a Trumpist response for some time.

Trumps idiosyncrasies surely go a long way toward accounting for the wholesale failure of his policy agenda, as well as for his disgraceful departure from office. But conservatives have to confront the possibility that populism itself was an important component of the failureand indeed that any populist politics carries the seeds of policy failure.

The proposition will not sit easily with those who, in the wake of the Trump disaster, are seeking to rehabilitate the term. According to the American Compass Oren Cass, for example, theres a way in which populism also means taking seriously the concerns that people have, understanding that they will not all express them in the same terms a Beltway debate might.

But populism has a commonly agreed-upon definition: Namely, it is a type of politics that pits good and pure-hearted ordinary people against a self-serving, out-of-touch elite. As such, populism is inherently divisive as it singles out specific groups as distinct from the people (elites, immigrants, bankers, journalists). It is anti-pluralist as it treats the people as a homogenous entity. Finally, it has a penchant for authoritarianism: If one takes Trumps I am your voice seriously, why should there be any limits to the power of the presidency?

Moreover, through its Manichean nature, populism introduces passions into politicsas opposed to an interplay between interests and abstract principles. And passions are only rarely useful for threading the needle on public policy. In fact, if stirring passions becomes the aim of politics, policy outcomes take a back seat. Neither the border wall, nor the Muslim ban, nor any other of the ex-presidents signature policy ideas were instrumental to achieving any real-world objectives, such as helping those who helped to elect him. Instead, their sole purpose was to keep the audience engaged and emotionally invested in the populist spectacle.

Furthermore, the debate on the future role of populism within the Republican party ought not to be limited to lessons from the Trump era. The bigger picture is not an encouraging one. For every Israel under Benjamin Netanyahus leadership, there is a Hungary under Viktor Orbn, suffering from brain drain and dismantling its democratic institutionsor an India under Narendra Modi, gripped by social unrest and economic dysfunction.

In the GOP alone, recent manifestations go from Pat Buchanan through Sarah Palin and the Tea Party to Trump. Instead of yielding a governing strategy, the partys attempts to embrace populism were akin to efforts to ride a tigerbefore being eaten by it, like Eric Cantor or Lindsey Graham. Perhaps the tiger could be tamed, as the former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May hoped with her efforts to reshape the Tories as a party of responsible nationalismonly to see herself be overrun by ever more extreme fringes.

It should not be too much to ask those who wish to keep populism as a lasting hallmark of conservative and Republican politics to address populisms real-world record, instead of retreating to a purely abstract defense of politics that would supposedly take the concerns of working-class Americans more seriously than the Beltway elites. Yet, much like Soviet elites of the 1970s and the 1980s, who were not keen to defend the track record of real socialism, the high priests of populism today are keen to sell us a promise of an idealized populism to come, instead of accepting accountability for any of the mess that real populism of the past decade helped create.

There are important policy conversations to be had on the political rightand the leftabout subjects such as immigration or industrial policy. But with its appeal to passions and grievance, populism is the worst possible vehicle for policy change.

In Denmark, the left-of-center government of Mette Frederiksen is seeking without much ado to drive the number of asylum claims to zero, following years of restrictive immigration policy by Social Democrats. Any number of conservative, right-wing, or free-market-friendly governmentsnot least the Reagan administration in the United States or Margaret Thatchers government in the U.K.have provided assistance to specific industries or protected them from foreign competition. Whatever one thinks of the merits of such policies, populism and the pursuit of the substantive agenda advocated by those who want the GOP to be a party of the working class are perfectly separable.

If anything, populism makes thoughtful conversations on immigration, industrial policy, or social safety nets essentially impossible. On both sides of the Atlantic, the combination of the divisive us-versus-them rhetoric of populism on the political right with demands to curb immigration has been a surefire way to attract racists. And combining populism with an expansive view of the states role in the economy has been a one-way ticket to irresponsible, short-sighted economic policy mixesas the legacy of economic populism in Latin America demonstrates.

By all means, let us judge each policy idea on its merits and leave no stone unturned. Yet insofar as insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, to seek to perpetuate the GOPs populism in the wake of the Trump disaster would be positively insane.

Dalibor Rohac is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. Follow him on Twitter @DaliborRohac.

Original post:

The Problems With Populism Go Well Beyond Donald Trump - The Dispatch

WASHINGTON Josh Holmes spent much of Wednesday in Washington watching the populist uprising over GameStop in the stock market with fascination and a growing sense of familiarity.

He has seen this movie before.

Holmes, president of the issue management firm Cavalry, is best known as the former chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Holmes has spent his career among the Republican establishment, which has spent the past five years getting steamrolled by the populist force of Trumpism a grassroots movement that stormed the ramparts of the GOP, ousted the establishment and remade the party in its image.

Almost no one in the party saw it coming. When it did, few of the establishment players understood just how vast the force was that suddenly lined up against them.

On Wednesday morning, as GameStop shares continued to surge, Holmes took to Twitter and typed out a simple message: "Wall Street, welcome to our world."

I called him to ask what he meant by that. "This is an event," he explained. "This is a social and economic moment in our society. There are a few times when you can definitely point to a moment and say society has changed, and this is one of them."

There are a few times when you can definitely point to a moment and say society has changed, and this is one of them.

Josh Holmes

former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell

There are scores of similarities between former President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement and the GameStop surge. There is a sense of fighting back against disrespect of the elites, belief that systemic rules have been written to benefit insiders at the expense of regular people, and new internet technologies that widely distribute power that was once held exclusively by a small group.

There's a healthy dose of skepticism of the media, and a belief in fake news. And both movements are inspired by viral memes funny, angry and engaging images depicting the movement as engaged in a heroic struggle.

Before the bell Thursday, GameStop shares briefly eclipsed a previously unthinkable $500, more than the share prices of Apple, Goldman Sachs and General Motors. After trading opened, the stock jumped more than 6% to about $370 a share. GameStop shares were worth about $40 a week ago.

The Reddit forum WallStreetBets on a smartphone arranged in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021.

Brent Lewin | Bloomberg | Getty Images

But the most important similarity is the bravado of the members of the movement. On a Reddit forum Wednesday, users cheered each other on, urging "Hold the line, boys!" and "buy and hold!"

One user, named "ishabwa," wrote "THE OLD GUARD IS HORRIFIED. BACKS AGAINST THE WALL. PAINTED INTO A CORNER. ITS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU." Another described this moment as the GameStop "revolution" and wrote: "This is our chance to stick it to those who never took us seriously. Either we forge economic history or loose it all, I'm willing to take this risk."

Scouring those same Reddit message boards, entrepreneur William LeGate felt like he had seen this happen before, too.

But he uses a different touchstone: Occupy Wall Street, the left-leaning anti-establishment movement that blossomed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

"This is Occupy Wall Street Part 2, but this time it is on their turf, and there are real financial consequences," he said. LeGate, who received a $100,000 Thiel fellowship to drop out of college and start a company when he was 18 years old in 2013, has been watching the WallStreetBets Reddit discussion for several years.

He said he is seeing increasing frustration and anger, which is exploding in the Covid pandemic era and it is bringing together the traditional political left and right.

"People were willing to take a risk on Trump and now they're willing to take a risk in the markets," he said. "A lot of people just want to see the world burn right now, and they're enjoying watching it happen."

He said he's already seeing people on the WallStreetBets Reddit page looking for new targets and there are two themes. First, they're looking for highly shorted stocks where big hedge funds might have a lot of leverage. And second, they're looking for nostalgia plays to bring back the companies from their youth. That's why Nokia, Blackberry and Blockbuster are all getting attention.

Wall Street investors are going to have to factor in a new set of risks. "The risk assessment that they're going to have to make is this: is this a meme-able stock that a bunch of kids on Reddit could hit and blow up the price?" LeGate said.

But what explains that nostalgic impulse in the midst of a revolution? It is the same emotion that animated the MAGA movement which, after all, stood for make America great, again. It is a desire to return to an earlier time that the members of the movement remember as better than today.

"There's a feeling I sense across society that people want to go back to a simpler time," LeGate said. "No one likes Covid. People don't feel the economy is fair. Everything looks better in hindsight."

And he argues that efforts to regulate trading will feel to Reddit traders more like suppression, and could fuel more anger.

"If someone on Main Street loses half their portfolio in a day, nothing's going to happen. But if a hedge fund does, they literally stop the trading," he said. "I myself question whether this is really about protecting the individual investor or protecting the hedge fund."

Holmes believes the key to understanding the power of this new movement is the gamification of investing melded with an anti-elite fervor. Sticking it to hedge funds and potentially making a lot of money is, simply, fun. And if you believe its also the right thing to do, and thrive on the engagement of a community of like-minded traders, so much the better.

Josh Holmes, chief of staff for presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., attends a rally at the airport in Bowling Green, Ky., November 3, 2014.

Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

"When things really get going is when the fun meets the purpose," Holmes said. "This is the perfect storm of those two."

His warning to Wall Street is: understand this. Be willing to scrutinize yourself. This not going away, and it is probably bigger than you think.

"People need to take the time to understand the social dynamics of this. What are the problems that have created this class of retail investor who seek to completely destroy your industry, and how do you remedy that?" Holmes said.

Holmes said he has spent the past decade watching American politics turned inside out. An earlier generation of politicians spent their time raising money at country club ballrooms from hundreds of donors writing $500 or $1,000 checks.

But now they spend their time on the internet raising money from millions of donors making $5 and $20 contributions. In politics, the retail money turned out to be bigger much bigger -- than the institutional money. And that's driven massive political spending inflation: the big Senate campaigns that once cost $15 million now cost $100 million.

"The pool is unlimited," Holmes said. "And that's the problem. The volume of potential participants is a hell of a lot bigger than people think it is, and it is certainly a lot bigger than the number of people who participated in this."

Other establishment Republican veterans agree.

"Don't underestimate the very real anger and sense of grievance and the very justified sense of grievance among the American people," said Michael Steel, a partner at Hamilton Place Strategies who was a senior advisor to the Jeb Bush presidential campaign in 2016. Understanding that, he said, can help investors understand who the next targets of Reddit rage might be, and how extensive the new movement is.

Kevin Madden, a former advisor to Mitt Romney, said, "anger can oftentimes be a more potent force than ideas. Those who felt they belonged to a political party of ideas found that grassroots anger, which can be very intoxicating, took over the political marketplace. It can also take over a financial marketplace."

Madden recalled the way populism overtook the Republican presidential primary in 2016.

Kevin Madden, then senior advisor and spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, talks with reporters aboard the campaign plane on October 23, 2012 en route to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

"One of the mistakes an establishment can make at the beginning is thinking this is someone else's fight. Marco Rubio says this is a Jeb Bush problem, and Jeb Bush says this is a Rick Perry problem," he said. "They all believed this was someone else's fight, and they all paid a huge price. That force redefined the party in its image for potentially the next decade."

Together these Republican strategists see Melvin Capital's decision to close out its GameStop position and take an enormous loss this week as something akin to the victory of populist Republicans in driving the establishment Republican House leader Eric Cantor from office in Virginia in 2014. It was an early demonstration of power. And it was a precursor to the much more dramatic events to come in 2016 and in 2021.

LeGate, the WallStreetBets watcher, agrees.

"It's a really powerful message," he said. "I think this is the first wave of what's going to happen."

But LeGate said he didn't buy any GameStop stock himself, for fear of an SEC investigation into his viral tweets about the movement.

Instead, he said, he is 100% invested in cryptocurrencies.

Read more:

Republicans in Washington warn Wall Street: The GameStop populists are more powerful than you think - CNBC

The GameStop short squeeze has become a quintessentially American story. But the David vs. Goliath narrative of the multi-billion dollar saga overshadows what it's shown about the role class plays in American politics.

As bizarre as the whole thing has been Reddit users pitted against wealthy hedge fund investors, online memes jolting the market, financial pundits losing their minds Democrats and Republicans have approached it in a largely predictable manner, at least from a messaging standpoint. For all of its very online and very 2021 quirks, the response to GameStop-gate from Democrats and Republicans is indicative of their longer standing battle for credibility among middle class voters.

The bipartisan call for Wall Street accountability is about curating the appearance of being the party of working Americans and avoiding any perception of coziness with wealthy investors.

Once the trading app Robinhood halted its users from buying the surging GameStop stock amid reported credit issues, a bipartisan chorus of federal lawmakers called for hearings and a reckoning for the finance industry.

This rare flourish of bipartisanship was cemented in a widely shared agreement between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

(Ocasio-Cortez AOC quickly rejected Cruz's overture, telling him "You almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago" in a tweet referencing the Capitol Siege.)

The opportunity politicians on both sides of the aisle saw in the GameStop-Robinhood fiasco demonstrated how the Democrats and GOP operate in an era of growing economic inequality.

Both parties try to present themselves as allies of the working class. Both decry the greed of Wall Street and emphasize they're on the side of the proverbial Main Street, yet they cannot agree on basic components of the next stimulus package.

Republicans vehemently oppose the notion of wealth distribution, while Democrats are in favor of increased taxes on the rich and frequently campaign against GOP candidates as out of touch wealthy elites, as they did during their sweep of the Georgia Senate runoffs.

How we define "working class," "middle class," and other commonly used terms varies widely, especially when compared to the economic data.

Pew Research has an ongoing social and demographic trends study on middle class Americans, and their January 2020 report chronicled how this coveted voting block has lost its overall share of earnings in the American economy over the decades and that was before the pandemic began accelerating economic inequality in the US, particularly by gender.

Around 70% of Americans identify as middle class, but only 52% lived in a middle income household in 2018 based on tax data analyzed by Pew.

Pew Research

Despite the shrinking influence of the middle class economically, they are still the primary broad messaging target for both parties.

As Democrats and Republicans duel over which party is the true champion of the middle class, notable shifts have happened over the past few election cycles with income and party affiliation.

A Pew study found that in many states, those earning $100,000 or more vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. In states like Massachusetts and Maryland, that number is as high as 60%. But states like Indiana and Tennessee have the reverse dynamic, with more than 60% of their six figure earners identifying as Republicans.

Surveys on perceptions of the parties show Americans still view Republicans as wealthier than Democrats.

A landmark 2016 study by Douglas Ahler and Gaurav Sood found respondents believed 38% of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year, when in reality that income bracket only accounts for 2.2% of registered Republicans.

In the 2020 election, counties that voted for Democrats accounted for 70% of GDP. While that does not mean that only wealthier Americans voted for Democrats, it does show that President Joe Biden significantly outperformed Donald Trump in affluent parts of the country. It also marks a continued shift from 2016, where Hillary Clinton's counties made up 64% of GDP.

Well before the votes were in for the 2020 election, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began work shopping new messaging on the "Republican Party becoming the party of wage earners."

The GameStop fiasco shows that amid mounting income inequality, being seen as on the side of Wall Street is politically toxic for both parties, and they will do almost anything to avoid such a perception.

Passing a stimulus package with broad bipartisan support, however, remains beyond the pale, despite whatever glimmer of hope the anti-Robinhood bonhomie may provide otherwise.

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Why both parties pushed their populist messaging around GameStop and Robinhood - Business Insider - Business Insider

Just as the disastrous digestion process of the Brexit referendum has become the best vaccine against anti-EU populism, so could the assault on the US Capitol become the mirror in which populists in Europe and other parts of the world see their reflections from now on, each time they try to impose their discourse of delegitimising institutions.

Such an American impact would be nothing new. With all its problems and limitations, US democracy has always stood as a beacon for all people around the world who wished to live in freedom and equality under the rule of law. When the French people gave the American people the Statue of Liberty in 1886, marking the first centenary of US independence, it was not just a gesture of recognition, but also a conscious transferral of the flame of freedom for preservation in a safe place while the old continent waited for better times.

As its designer, sculptor Frdric Auguste Bartholdi, said to the promoter of the initiative, French jurist and politician douard Laboulaye, I will endeavour to glorify the Republic over there, until the day we rediscover it among ourselves. But, far from being glorified, the Republic came close to being lost.

Democracy is contagious, as is populism. Until now, the US populist contagion reaching Europe has run along two lines: an indirect one, based on imitation; and a direct one, stemming from cooperation, with support from the US, especially via the activism of Steve Bannon and the financing of Brexit and European far-right parties (see, for example, the establishment of US far-right movement QAnon in Germany, and the Trumpism of Spains Vox on George Soros).

These two types of influence have come together in the use of social media and alternative media, with the result that the followers of populist movements reinforce their sense of grievance with the system and immunise themselves against the facts.

The Washington riots will have a significant impact on the worst of the populists in our midst.

But, now we have seen a mob assaulting the US Congress, this could change. From now on, each time someone attempts to set themselves up as the sole spokesperson of the people, urges protesters to occupy institutions, undermines the role of the courts as supreme arbiters of the law, or conceals their defeats behind baseless claims of electoral fraud, everyone will know how the story ends: your country out of the European Union, a clown in disguise at the parliamentary platform, violence in the streets, institutions in disrepute, and an illiberal democracy with reduced rights.

From now on, citizens will understand much more clearly why it is said that democracies die bit by bit, until they suddenly succumb and it is too late; understand that they must take a stand against each small violation of institutional independence, demagogical outburst by their leaders, incendiary and hate-filled speeches by political representatives, imposter journalists, fake media outlets, and disinformation campaigns that nurture and encourage populists.

Undoubtedly, these effects will be felt on both sides of the political spectrum. Even though the Trump phenomenon can be likened to the nationalist populism of the far right, left-wing populisms are also populisms. And, in all likelihood, the population will sharpen its eyes and recognise that, though the issues are different (religion, immigration, or the economy), the methods for gaining power are the same.

Beyond empowering European democrats and weakening forces that aspire to take power by assault, the Washington riots, added to Trumps exit, will have a significant impact on the worst of the populists in our midst those who have already reached power in Poland and Hungary, bolstered by Trumps United States both as an example and in policy terms.

For other EU member states and their institutions, the events in Washington are an important reminder that, from the dawn of time, the heavens have been breached first by assaulting public institutions and undermining the rule of law. After all, the Statue of Liberty holds a torch in her right hand, and a tablet of laws in her left. There is no liberty outside the law, only within be it in Washington, Paris, or Warsaw.

The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications only represent the views of its individual authors.

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The other contagion: Why the US Capitol attack is a warning to populists - European Council on Foreign Relations

Europe's populists have seen their polling numbers dip since the coronavirus emerged on the continent, but as the economic impact of lockdowns and restrictions starts to be felt in earnest, widening income disparity, they could see a revival, some analysts forecast.

Others argue that won't happen, if incumbent governments and establishment parties can restore public faith in their competence, cushion lower-income and rural populations from economic misery, and get their countries back on track working again soon.

The populist challenge is dimming, they say, pointing to former U.S. President Donald Trump's November election loss on the other side of the Atlantic. "One reason is their trademark scorn for expertise, which enthuses a minority of voters but unsettles many more who are worried about their health and livelihoods," according to Tony Barber, Europe editor of the Financial Times.

While acknowledging that the populists have not had a "good" pandemic, Matthew Goodwin, a political scientist and visiting fellow at Britain's Chatham House research group, believes political turbulence generally lies downstream of crises and the Great Lockdown will have seismic effects that are hard to foresee.

"Emerging evidence shows it looks fairly certain the Great Lockdown will actually exacerbate divides in our society that began to sharpen a few decades ago, and were then worsened by the Great Recession," he said.

The European Union isn't helping to head off a possible revival in political populism on the continent, which recruits partly on the basis of euro-skepticism. Logistical missteps and hidebound bureaucracy have marred the EU's vaccine rollout, prompting rising public frustration with the pace of inoculations and adding to anxiety about a grim northern hemisphere winter ahead. Some commentators see this as a gift for populists with the low-paid, the unskilled and those in insecure jobs hit the hardest by prolonged lockdowns.

The EU's struggle to secure enough early doses to make headway in the inoculation of the bloc's 446 million people has put the bloc front and center of widespread anger. Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was framing prematurely the bloc's vaccine procurement strategy as a "European success story."

The 62-year-old German, French President Emmanuel Macron's pick for the top job at the EC, had maintained that Brussels should take the lead in negotiating and procuring vaccine supplies for all 27 member states. She had the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called a halt to negotiations already under way between vaccine developer AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish firm, and Germany's health minister, along with his counterparts in France, Italy and the Netherlands.

Von der Leyen, supported by Merkel, argued a collective approach would work better as it would avoid vaccine nationalism and competition among member states. Negotiating as a bloc would provide more leverage to haggle over pricing with the pharmaceutical giants.

But an overriding motivation was to show how well the EU could do. That would overshadow the bloc's lack of solidarity at the start of the pandemic, when calls for help from Italy, the first country to suffer the full force of the virus, were rebuffed, and member states competed for supplies of personal protective equipment and shut borders without consulting each other.

Some of the problems in the rollout have been country-specific but there are mounting doubts about the EU's collective approach to procurement and distribution. Go-it-alone Britain has vaccinated more than 13% of its adults so far while the EU average is barely nudging 2%, with the gap growing.

British regulatory authorities were quicker to approve vaccines and signed contracts with manufacturers three months before the EU. As a result, Britain has not been impacted as much as the EU by production delays and difficulties. On January 22, the EU reacted with fury when AstraZeneca disclosed it would have to reduce by around two-thirds doses expected over the next two months because of production difficulties.

"There are no signs that the vaccination rate in the EU is accelerating, unlike in the U.K. and U.S., where daily vaccination rates have increased substantially in the past few weeks," according to Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research group. "Part of the explanation is that the EU ordered too few vaccines too late. It was slow to order the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, even when it became the front-runner and its efficacy had been documented."

The Bruegel director has also faulted the EU for not thinking ahead and crafting a strategy to increase vaccine production by mobilizing other manufacturers to help to do so. He cautioned it is "impossible to say how things would have gone if there had not been joint EU action."

Nonetheless, the EU's logistical missteps are drawing fire.

Markus Soeder, the premier of the German state of Bavaria, and a contender to succeed Merkel when she quits in September, said the "operational responsibility" for the "more than unsatisfactory" situation rests with Brussels. "The decision was made in what I think is a typical, normal, bureaucratic EU procedure," he added.

Von der Leyen was the subject of a scathing article Sunday by Germany's leading magazine Der Spiegel, which said the vaccine rollout "might ultimately turn out to be the greatest disaster of her political career."

With lockdown frustration building the Netherlands experienced three days of riots last week after the government introduced a nighttime curfew and with anger building over the snail-like pace of inoculation, populists see a political opening. Some had aligned themselves with anti-vaccine skeptics but are moving away from that position and focusing now on the issue of EU competence.

France's Marine Le Pen, the euro-skeptic far-right leader, has seen her popularity surge. A poll last week showed her trailing Macron by just 52% to 48%. Macron faces a tough reelection bid next year.

Read the rest here:

Europe's Populists Ready to Seize on COVID Vaccination Bungle - Voice of America

Many are touting Union Budget, 2021 as a seminal one that will hold the key to several of the problems that Indias economy currently faces. But, a more discerning perspective of the nations present economic state suggests that the government is more likely to adopt a balanced approach that marries fiscal discipline with some measures to boost consumption. In fact, one shouldnt be too surprised if the government tilts in favour of fiscal discipline given that this has been an equally difficult year for the government too.

The aam admi expects tax sops on the personal income tax front to increase liquidity. To this end, while there may not be further changes to tax slabs, measures such as increasing threshold of deductions under section 80C, investment in national pension schemes under section 80CCD, and health insurance premium under section 80D could encourage savings and wider insurance protection. With the increasing treatment costs, raising the deduction for preventive health check-ups, tests and treatment from a meagre INR 5000 should also be considered. Additional relief in the form of special deductions for COVID related health expenses would be a welcome step too. Employers and employees expect tax-exempt perquisites to cover additional expenses related to work from home, vaccination of employees and their family, etc.

Further, the reduction of TDS rates by 25% was a good move to increase liquidity in the hands of individuals and small businesses and should be continued for at least another fiscal year.

The Industry, especially MSMEs have borne major brunt of economic slowdown due to nationwide lockdowns with many small businesses finding it difficult to survive. In this regard, allowing losses to be set-off for an additional period beyond 8 years could help in reviving businesses. Indian start-up space has been the harbinger of innovation and has boosted employment, raising the INR 100 crore threshold for claiming tax benefits and easing up on the much debated angel tax provisions could help raise funds from resident investors and boost growth.

While the earlier budgets have seen an overall reduction is sectoral reforms, this Budget could see a comeback of weighted deductions, especially in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, which has become increasingly important for R&D and capacity building to fight against the current pandemic and prepare for handling future outbreaks. Tax deductions for capital expenditure incurred towards developing infrastructure and supply chain for storage, dissemination, and application of vaccines and other essential medical products will be welcome. The current deduction for capital expenditure incurred towards building and operating a hospital with at least 100 beds should be allowed to smaller facilities as well, to help build medical infrastructure.

To address the growing rate of unemployment due to loss of jobs during the economic slowdown, the Government could consider increasing the current deductions for hiring new employees under section 80JJA from 30% to 50% along with raising the threshold of total emoluments of such additional employees. Further, special deductions for expenditure incurred towards training and hiring skilled healthcare professionals would be a welcome step.

Amit Singhania, Partner and Suyash Sinha, Senior Associate, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.

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Budget expectations: Will fiscal discipline trump populist demands? - Mint

Four weeks after the storming of the US Capitol, by now you will have heard of the latest act of American insurrection: The attempts to storm Wall Street by an intrepid horde of faceless individual traders, sallying forth from the bowels of the internet to wreak havoc across the plains of the US financial landscape.

The denizens of the Reddit forum WallStreetBets have caused quite the ruckus in pumping the price of US electronic retailer, GameStop, to dizzying heights, pushing established, billion dollar hedge funds to the brink in an orgy of meme stocks and loss porn. Other stocks, previously considered toxic, have followed GameStop: Nokia, Blackberry, and even the bankrupt movie rental company Blockbuster have seen remarkable rallies off the back of the snowball effect the Reddit legions have had in a wild few days of trading.

For a more comprehensive picture of what mad events had occurred up to yesterday, Robin Pagnamentas piece for this paper sets things out very clearly. But what comes next has the potential to define the future of finance and the internet, too.

Every economic commentator warned that a backlash was coming, and reprisals were indeed swift. Thinly veiled threats were issued that social media was being monitored; trading was restricted on stocks including GameStop and cinema group AMC, Wells Fargo said it would stop recommending the stocks affected, and the CEO of Nasdaq said that trading could be halted altogether to allow big investors to recalibrate.

That Wall Street might try to rein in the marauding barbarians was one thing, but late last night, the WallStreetBets server itself was kicked off communications platform Discord, ostensibly on grounds of violating its hate speech policy and nothing at all to do with what was happening in the markets. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was also asked about the forum and its impact, and confirmed that the Biden administrations treasury secretary, Janet Yellin, was monitoring events.

As night follows day with Americas elites, then came the claims that these upstarts must be part of the alt-right. There are, in fact, some similarities between the alt-right and the new wave of online traders but they arent rooted in white supremacy or racism.

What we are witnessing are movements of people deeply dissatisfied with the country, the direction it is headed in, and their role within it, who see no reason why it cant and shouldnt be upended. They share a yearning for a different direction. In many ways a more equitable one than the Biden administration is pushing for where Americas elites are made to bend and cede more control to the demos. The elites angry reaction to them is, in their mind, justification. It isnt confined to whatever passes for the right, now, either its what drives the likes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, too.

This, specifically, is a new front money is, after all, the lifeblood of America after four years of slugging in the political arena. Here, we see issues of financial control and censorship collide with the emergence of new platforms and indeed, new systems.

The erasure of scores of social media accounts in the wake of Donald Trumps Twitter ban showed that online spaces would not be left alone and with the point-blank destruction of the Parler platform, that the reach of elites is longer than many had imagined. Now, having witnessed the initial sally, we see the backlash happening in market spaces, too.

All it will lead to is people switching where they engage with others and how. Parlers destruction proved that things arent as simple as just making your own platform, but that it was possible to start off down the hazardous road. The migration of people away from WhatsApp to Telegram is another example that the internet evolves as fast as people want it to, and in whatever direction enough of them lean in.

But the GameStop incident, having shown the little people that it is possible to take on financial institutions at their own game and win, has also shown that the system, from governments to Wall Street, is every bit as ruthless and vindictive as they believed. As the world lurches from the fallout of the coronavirus-induced financial crisis, jobs dry up and values are inflated or evaporate overnight, it seems natural that this generation of online traders will look to other outlets to forge and preserve their economic futures.

That, surely, means decentralised finance will be the big winner in all this, as people look to engage in a financial world they feel they have more control over (the very nature of how the Redditors took hold of GameStop et al suggests it is a community already very familiar with this brave new world). Sure, it can be fun, and invigorating, to mete out some punishment to Wall Street suits. But if they keep rejigging the rules of the game to shut you out, it surely makes more sense to set up something your foes will find it harder to get their hands on.

Donald Trump may be gone, but what he unleashed emboldening people occupying alternative sections of reality, long there but never seen, to cross over from one to the other caused more than enough friction in politics, allowing paths to veer wildly off course from the directions they were meant to. A similar effect is now being felt in other spheres too. It is the beginning of the Trump Century: not a drained swamp, but new ones founded elsewhere, instead.

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Reddit fever may open a new populist front that the elites can't stop - Telegraph.co.uk

On Aug. 6, 2019, 55 per cent of those polled by Morning Consult disapproved of Trudeau and only 39 per cent approved. The gap began to close after the Liberals narrow re-election victory in October 2019, but Trudeaus net approval still remained in negative territory.

The pattern shifted dramatically in March 2020, as the first wave of COVID-19 hit. On March 23, the two lines finally crossed and Trudeau has had positive net approval ratings ever since. Among other Western leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel saw a similar jump in her approval ratings around the same time as Trudeaus.

While COVID-19 has been, and continues to be, a curse for humanity, the truth is that it has salvaged the careers of numerous politicians who appeared to be in deep trouble less than a year ago. Merkel was seen as a lame duck and Trudeau was reeling from scandals that came to light during his first term, to say nothing of the Blackface controversy that tarnished his woke image.

Fast forward to today, and Merkel is being described as one of Germanys greatest post-war leaders, while the Liberals, according to the latest CBC poll tracker, have a 49 per cent chance of winning a majority if the election were held today.

Despite its various missteps including its failure to put meaningful restrictions on international travel, the time its taking to roll-out rapid testing and its cock-up of the vaccine roll-out the Trudeau government has managed to buy a lot of voters with its massive public spending.

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Rupa Subramanya: Trudeau is a left-wing populist who may have bought himself the next election - National Post

Populism is a global socio-political phenomenon and its emotional and debilitating nature of liberal democracy is one of its hallmarks. Personalist leaders around the world have attempted to weaken counter-majority institutions in order to exercise unhindered political power. Will the 21st century be marked by the steady rise of populist governments or will they have some kind of limit?

Pierre Rosanvallons recent publication, The Century of Populism (Ediciones Manantial, 2020), helps us understand the different characteristics of populist leaders left and right in the 21st century around the world.

This, through the approach of an anatomy of populist political culture with the identification of five elements that constitute it: the conception of the people, the theory of democracy, the modality of representation, the politics and the philosophy of economy and a regime of passions and emotions.

In the case of the United States, the political behavior and discursive recurrence of Donald Trump embodied some of these elements and, although he is no longer in office, left an imprint in the history of the country that will be difficult to understand. to erase.

The emotionality embodied in Trumps political speeches, structured in the us versus them logic, and the ongoing torpedoing of democratic institutions, has been a constant that peaked on January 6.

According to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the objective of the presidents supporters was to end our democracy, after sending a political message to his supporters with a withering phrase that says a lot about his philosophy of life : fight like hell.

It is a discursive strategy that had fake news, conspiracy theories and the deep state as fertile ground, a supposed network of public officials who act secretly, like the de facto power that is out of sight of the public. audience, controlling them manipulating things.

A perfect cocktail to maintain a regime of passions and emotions, the main connotation of populist political culture in which, as Rosanvallon says, objects are magnified in the midst of darkness. In the shade, everything seems hostile and gigantic.

This problem has only worsened in a world where disinformation, revelations and scandals arise every moment, while suspicions against the powerful are constantly renewed and confidence in institutions crumbles.

Another notable element of the populist universe is the polarization and destruction of the political center, a place where it is possible to deliberate, reach consensus and play by the rules of the game. In Bolivia, Evo Morales ran for the fourth consecutive time for the presidency in 2019, when he lost a constitutional referendum with which he was trying to renew his candidacy.

This weakened the democratic institutionality of the state, generated civic unrest, social polarization and civic rebellion which led to the resignation of the former president. According to Carlos de la Torre, although Latin American populisms from Pern to Chvez included the poor and the destitute, their practices in power were authoritarian.

In fact, the Constitutional Court acted as a puppet of the executive power administered by Evo for the benefit of its postulation, but to the detriment of the popular vote and the legal and legitimate result of a constitutional referendum which was unfavorable to it. From the point of view of political democracy and contrary to populist political culture, the Constitutional Court implies restrictions on independent authorities and a reduction of its area of intervention.

The consequences of this political event were the progressive weakening of the counter-majority institutions. According to famous political scientist Adam Przeworski, the function of constitutional courts is to protect rights against the whims of temporary majorities. But in Bolivia, the opposite happened: the Constitutional Court gave in to the whim of a temporary majorities leader who lost under the rules of democracy.

In perspective, it is an event that has undermined the political democracy of the country. But, more than that, it has made citizens distrust of public institutions and turned the constant violation of norms of social and political coexistence into habitual and almost natural behavior.

Without a doubt, Pierre Rosanvallon allows us to gain a broader and deeper understanding of populism as a political phenomenon. With its conceptual tools, it is possible to distinguish and interpret certain political events carried out by political leaders who break the rules of the game by identifying an enemy to attack and destroy, seeing themselves as the unique embodiment of collective interests.

However, the advancement of populist political culture seems to have no limits in the 21st century, the followers of messianic rulers continue to grow and lie in different spaces of the ideological spectrum. His political arguments are polarizing and based on fake news. Worse yet, they dilute the sanity of the political center, where democratic institutions must serve as regulators of passions and emotions.

* Translation by Maria Isabel Santos Lima

http://www.latinoamerica21.com, a pluralist media engaged in the dissemination of critical and true information about Latin America.

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The Century of Populism 01/30/2021 World KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper - KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper

In a recent interview with the UKs Channel 4 News, for example, Museveni claimed that Wine was being encouraged by Western homosexuals. The interviewer, Lindsey Hilsum, pushed back, asking what have the homosexuals got to do with it? and Museveni struggled to give a coherent answer, live on television.

Some local media has also withstood Musevenis attempts to make the political conversation about homosexuality. When Wines supporters, urban youth, took to the streets in protest and eventually riots after his arrest by state security, Museveni claimed the mayhem was an insurrection sponsored by homosexuals. Police said they arrested Wine for gathering a campaign crowd of more than 200 supporters, contrary to coronavirus restrictions.

The Kuchu Times responded by foregrounding voices that criticised Musevenis populist tactics and evasion of accountability, writing: These [homophobic] sentiments are usually heightened during campaign season and like clockwork, this same tired card is now being played to distract the citizenry.

Other shifts in the political landscape also made Musevenis homophobia less potent this election season. While he has been the default candidate for Christian moralists in the past, this time the Catholic Church threw its weight behind Wine and the evangelical church fielded three presidential candidates of their own.

Museveni has never had much traction with young, urban, middle-class Ugandans who watch international news shows like Amanpours. They love to hate him. For weeks now, #WeAreRemovingADictator, has been trending online.

His election campaign created a fake social media network to counter such online rejection. But his team was caught in the act, first by investigative journalists, and then by Facebook for coordinated inauthentic behavior. The social media giant closed numerous associated accounts, including those owned by Musevenis own press secretary.

This election season has been Musevenis hardest and in this context, Amanpour giving him a platform for his homophobia gave him a ray of light, and a rare opportunity for him to connect with voters on terms that he enjoys.

Some people who may otherwise see him as a dictator have actually rallied around him because of this interview. They see an African leader dismissing one of the Wests most famous journalists, in a way that allows them to feel self-righteous. They seem to have heard: Take that, world! We are independent people too!

Journalism has the potential to advance and add nuance to public debate about sexual rights and politics without inflaming outrage and without doing PR for populists.

I think Amanpour got it wrong on this occasion but she is an exception. Journalists around the world can learn from how the majority of their colleagues have covered the Ugandan leaders homophobia. These lessons include: talk about the people on the ground, not the political debates. Also, hot seat interviews are probably not the best way to hold politicians accountable. Do investigative journalism on these issues instead.

On 16 January 2020, two days after the controversial and disputed election, Museveni was declared the winner with 58% of the vote. It is the lowest majority he has ever got at the polls. On this occasion, every vote for him helped him stay in power.

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The media must not give African leaders platforms to spout homophobia it only helps their populism - Open Democracy

Alternative LendingDigital BankingSavings and Investment

Stock market mania isnt new or innovative but, nonetheless, the future of investing for both retail and institutional money is set for rapid change as more and more participants come online.

Weekly Leading Article

Its a strange situation that unites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jnr. to a common cause.

Just one month in, irony looks set to be the best performing asset class in 2021, surpassing puppies' 500 per cent bull-run in 2020 when demand for pedigree pooches skyrocketed under lockdown.

Last week Robinhood, not exactly true to its folkloric namesake, shut off market access to retail investors in favour, according to six million Reddit users, of Wall Street's evil hedge funds.

What transpired? Was it collusion? What does it mean for the future of investing in the stock market? Was it all just a tad overblown?

No doubt, much of the activities on Wall Street last week, that saw an army of Reddit users push the price of a battered analogue business heavily shorted by professionals sky-high, were due to a combination of lockdown boredom, speculative greed and vitriolic desire to stick it to The Man. But, something more profound was at work too.

The power of the crowd, helped by lower barriers to entry to invest in the stock market and the giddying power of social media brought about a huge rise in the price of GameStop as well as a number of other stonks (stocks). It also pushed some formerly powerful hedge funds to hurry out of short positions in these companies and away with a bloody nose. It would be short-sighted to expect this to be the end of the story.

Robinhood, the biggest, most deep-pocketed and most well-known name in the digital wealth sub-sector of fintech, acted for unknown reasons when irritating its users, half of whom had piled into GameStop, but no doubt it did so because it had to.

The contagion was not just felt in the US. Freetrade in the UK, which provides a similar level of market access for UK-based investors had to put in a weekend of hard graft to work to off-set issues it had with providing US market access to its customers owing to its FX partner bank.

If there is a long term trend of greater and greater dominance of the retail investor in markets underway this is both a good thing in terms of fulfilling fintechs promise to democratise financial services but also carries the risk of uncharted populism that might well end in Trumpian catastrophe, not least for those investors bidding up the share price of a failing company that will ultimately crash.

Principally this is the kind of un-checked animal spirits that encourages people to bet using money they cant afford to lose. Decades of regulation have been driven by a belief in theneed to protect the retail market and encourage sensible practices. But in the age of the Reddit forum, much of it clearly needs updating.

More retail investors could spell long-lasting positive change, however. Shareholders also hold sway over companies values, future direction and executive compensation via voting rights. Traditionally, fund managers have voted on behalf of their retail and institutional clients at company AGMs but if the last week has shown us anything, its thatsocial medias populist power can quickly galvanise behind a cause. This could lead to meaningful positive change in areas such as climate change and persecution of minoritiesbut as the politics of the past five years or so have shown, populismcan also lead to chaos.

The AltFi Leader is a new weekly view for 2021 from our editorial team. Wed love to hear your ideas, thoughts, feedback and constructive criticism.editorial@altfi.com

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The AltFi view on Gamestonk: Populism is coming to fintech - AltFi

The past decade has been defined by a populist movement all over the world. From the Arab Spring to Brexit to mass protests on both sides of the American political aisle, millions of everyday citizens around the world have watched the rich getting richer while they get poorer, and decided theyve had enough.

Set aside the specific reactions that populists have had for a moment, and consider whats driven all that anger: skyrocketing income equality, and as weve seen this week, rigged markets.

Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis?Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.

If youre just catching up, read Invezz author Charlie Hancoxs excellent breakdown of the Robinhood fiasco that saw the trading platform stop accepting buy orders on graveyard-to-penthouse stocks such as AMC (AMC) and GameStop (GME). The short version of the story is that waves of retail investors started making a killing by trading beaten-down stocks on Robinhood that were being shorted in droves by hedge funds. So Robinhood responded Thursday by restricting trading on AMC, GameStop, and other heavily traded former laggards to closing positions only. The result was that hedge funds caught a huge break, while retail investors got demolished as these graveyard stocks tanked.

Its possible that the massive spike in Robinhood trading activity risked causing some huge catastrophe that we dont know about. But if you want to know whats triggered global outrage and a populist movement, consider whats happened to the world economy during the COVID-19 crisis, and also what happened in the years leading up to it.

Forget average salaries. If you want to measure peoples ability to live and provide for their families, real wages is a better metric. Real wages refer to wages adjusted for inflation, i.e. the goods and services that can be bought with the money that you make. It turns out that real wages have stagnated in many of the largest economies of the world for more than 40 years.

That already bleak picture only begins to tell the full story. If you break down average real wages in the past 40-plus years, when gains have occurred theyve overwhelmingly and disproportionately flowed to the highest tier of earners. As Pew Research explained in a 2018 report:

Meanwhile, wage gains have gone largely to the highest earners. Since 2000, usual weekly wages have risen 3% (in real terms) among workers in the lowest tenth of the earnings distribution and 4.3% among the lowest quarter. But among people in the top tenth of the distribution, real wages have risen a cumulative 15.7%, to $2,112 a week nearly five times the usual weekly earnings of the bottom tenth ($426).

Macro studies like these also miss some of the finer points and bigger challenges facing folks who are just trying to get by. For instance, the average price of a home in the U.S. more than doubled from 2000 to 2020, blocking millions of families from attaining housing stability while making one of the most effective methods of wealth accumulation available only to those who can afford the rising price of admission.

The wealth gap becomes far more shocking when you consider whats happened in the past year alone. Of the many forms of harm that the pandemic has caused, one of the most devastating has been massive spikes in global hunger. The rising death tools that we see on the news everyday dont take into account the hundreds of millions of people around the world facing mounting food insecurity, and the fast-growing number of deaths caused by hunger related to COVID-19.

So how are the worlds billionaires doing while all this is going on? The super-rich have collected added trillions to their collective wealth since global lockdowns started popping up less than a year ago. Its not hard to draw line from Point A to Point B too: While mom-and-pop businesses around the world have gone under during the pandemic, megacompanies like Amazon have seen massive growth in revenue and market share.

Stagnant wages. Declining rights for labourers. Mass job losses. Millions dying from a deadly virus and the poverty and hunger that have come with it. All coupled with skyrocketing housing prices, billionaires becoming multi-billionaires, bailouts for corporations while individuals go broke, and a political class that so far has done almost nothing to solve any of these problems, other than voicing their supposed outrage on Twitter.

Given all of those toxic factors smashed together, you can see why people would look at Robinhoods breakdown and conclude that the game of life is rigged. You can also see why the populist movement is raging, and why people around the world are beginning to revolt.

WallStreetBets, we salute you.

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Robinhood fiasco shows that populist movement was right all along Robinhood fiasco and the populist movement - Invezz