Somewhat immodestly, I must say that I was an inspired choice for a political economy conference\u2019s first presenter, having managed to actually major in political economy, which is fairly unusual. Not that a bachelor\u2019s degree in much of anything makes one qualified in much of anything, but because most people have no idea what political economy is, those of us choosing to study it have to think long and hard about how to explain it\u2014preferably in a pithy way suitable for Thanksgiving dinner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Political economy, I always tell people, is political science without all the reading, and economics without all the math. Honestly, that\u2019s what drew me to it\u2014still draws me to it\u2014and only partly because I was lazy. The definition says something important about why political economy is so useful: it has no time for theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Continue Reading the Founder’s Letter…<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This past year has laid bare the reality that motivated American Compass\u2019s founding and animates our work every day: a viable post-Trump conservatism will look very different from the pre-Trump right-of-center, but its contours remain undefined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 2020 election\u2019s aftermath, the phrase \u201cmultiethnic, working-class conservatism\u201d was suddenly on the tip of everyone\u2019s tongue. \u201cCan Republicans Become a Multiracial Working-Class Party?\u201d asked The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. \u201cThe future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working class coalition,\u201d answered Marco Rubio<\/a><\/strong> a few days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At American Compass, executive director Oren Cass wrote, two days after the election<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of conservatives as the vindicator of workers\u2019 interests may sound strange, but only because we have forgotten what conservatism means. The market fundamentalism that we call \u201cconservative,\u201d celebrating growth and markets without concern for their effects on family and community, and trusting that the invisible hand will invariably advance the interests of the nation, is libertarian. Conservatives are moving beyond it. And experience now suggests that, as they do, a broad-based, multi-ethnic coalition of working families could be eager to join them.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But he also observed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translating such concerns into a durable coalition and a governing agenda takes time, and an attention that Trump has not given it. Existing institutions like think tanks and publications must change their own approaches, or else new ones must develop. Political leaders and young staffers alike must decide whether the approach is for them. The actual work of policy development and implementation must occur.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n The nation\u2019s most prominent platforms recognize our role and feature us when focusing attention on the debates roiling the right-of-center. The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong> partnered with us to host two events exploring the future of conservatism: first, a discussion between Oren Cass and George Will<\/strong><\/a>; and then a panel at the Journal<\/em>\u2019s \u201cFuture of Everything\u201d conference<\/strong><\/a>, featuring Oren and J. D. Vance<\/strong>. Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/strong> invited Oren to contribute a feature essay<\/a> on the future of conservatism, which received widespread acclaim. And when the Intercollegiate Studies Institute<\/strong> convened a major conference in Washington, \u201cThe Future of American Political Economy,\u201d it invited Oren to give the opening remarks: \u201cWhich Way, American Political Economy?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have also begun to play a convening role ourselves. For instance, in December we partnered with The American Conservative<\/em><\/strong> to publish the first major symposium<\/a> reflecting on the Trump administration, featuring live events with Senator Marco Rubio<\/strong>, Representative Anthony Gonzalez<\/strong>, New York Times<\/em> columnist Ross Douthat<\/strong>, and the Conservative Partnership Institute\u2019s Rachel Bovard<\/strong>. At the start of 2021, we launched Bearings, a regular meeting cochaired by ten other conservative organizations to host speakers for, and share notes among, the most engaged members of our coalition. We partnered with the Ethics and Public Policy Center<\/strong> to publish the Edgerton Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, a series of essays from working-class Americans on the challenges they face and what they wish that policymakers knew about life far outside the Beltway. Establishment figures with whom we tend to disagree have been eager to join the conversation, too, from a live event in our 30 Minutes<\/em><\/strong> interview series with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy<\/strong><\/a> to a conversation on our Critics Corner podcast with Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n In June, we expanded our board of directors to include former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer<\/strong>, Baron Public Affairs\u2019 Jonathan Baron<\/strong>, and Neil Patel of The Daily Caller<\/em><\/strong>. In July, we hosted our first annual members retreat, with nearly 50 people representing 26 organizations and publications, congressional and law offices, and academic institutions joining us for a weekend in Charlottesville. In September, we visited Texas to begin work with the Texas Public Policy Foundation<\/strong> on education reform in that state. In October, we announced a new grant program<\/a> with American Affairs<\/em><\/strong>, through which we will seed other new organizations and projects working to reorient economic thinking in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, of course, we have continued to produce the original, provocative work that drives these discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In February, we released our Home Building<\/em><\/strong><\/a> collection, a wide-ranging series of essays and policy proposals that provided the foundation and framework for a new generation of conservative family policy. We surveyed parenting-age Americans<\/a> to learn more about the challenges that they face and the support that they need to build thriving families. Our Family Income Supplemental Credit<\/a> (Fisc) proposal provided a breakthrough solution for reaching low-income families with generous support while maintaining a strong connection to work. Senator Mitt Romney<\/strong> joined us<\/a> for a 30 Minutes<\/em><\/strong> event to discuss his own family benefit proposal and the future of conservative policymaking. The collection was widely cited, including in the New York Times<\/em><\/strong>, Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong>, New York<\/em> <\/strong>magazine, Bloomberg<\/em><\/strong>, The American Conservative<\/strong><\/em>, and The Week<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n As we had anticipated, the debate on family benefits continued gaining steam during the year, and in August we commissioned a follow-up survey<\/a> to understand American attitudes on various proposals. Our findings informed the debate over the expanded Child Tax Credit, making appearances in the Washington Post<\/em><\/strong> and several New York Times<\/em><\/strong> columns on the need for careful compromise among policymakers\u2014and the importance of tying benefits to work. We provided briefings on our research and proposals to the White House and a number of congressional offices focused on these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In May, we placed the technology sector in our sights, looking beyond the battles over \u201cBig Tech\u201d to the deeper questions raised by the reshaping of our economy by social media\u2019s attention economy, the labor market\u2019s shift toward gig work, and the threat to privacy posed by all-knowing algorithms. Our Lost in the Super Market<\/em><\/strong><\/a> collection brought together a wide range of scholars to debate these novel issues and helped to start the broader conversation that policymakers need to hear. Our team has since written on the issue for the Financial Times<\/em><\/strong> and The Daily Caller<\/em><\/strong>; spoken at Baylor University<\/strong>, the Claremont Institute<\/strong>\u2019s Digital Statecraft Summit, and the Lincoln Network<\/strong>\u2019s Realignment Conference; and worked with numerous Hill offices and state-level officials who have sought our input as they consider policies to mitigate technology\u2019s harmful effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While expanding our reach into new areas, we also dug deeper into those where we did groundbreaking work last year. In March, we returned to the themes of our initial Coin-Flip Capitalism<\/em><\/strong><\/a> collection and the question of what value the financial sector is producing for the broader economy. Using firm-level financial data dating back to 1970, Oren Cass showed that business investment has declined precipitously in recent decades, threatening the productivity growth and global competitiveness of American industry. These findings were highlighted by the Washington Post<\/em><\/strong>, Bloomberg<\/em><\/strong>, Fox News<\/strong>, the Financial Times<\/em><\/strong>, Senate testimony, and a member of the White House\u2019s Council of Economic Advisers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n Building on the Seat at the Table <\/em><\/strong>collection, we returned in September to the need for a revitalized American labor movement. In A Better Bargain<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, we surveyed workers across the country about their attitudes toward their jobs and organized labor; their appetite for greater support, voice, and power in the workplace; and their reactions to political messages and policy reforms. We then proposed three Better Bargains to rebuild worker voice and representation, worker power in the labor market, and worker solidarity and mutual support. We brought this conversation to a large gathering of conservative leaders at the National Conservatism<\/strong> conference<\/a>, where we convened a panel discussion with Sean McGarvey, president of North America\u2019s Building Trades Unions<\/strong>, and Cardus\u2019s Brian Dijkema<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A major conservative conference featuring a panel on the importance of worker power, with a union leader as an invited speaker, is just one example of how dramatically the national policy conversation has transformed in the 18 months since our launch. Initially, we were \u201cdissidents\u201d (The Economist<\/em>), \u201ca dagger thrust into the heart of the traditional center-right consensus\u201d (Senator Pat Toomey), and even the subject of an attack ad released by the Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial page warning that we \u201csound an awful lot like Bernie Sanders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only are we now welcomed as vital participants in the debate over the right-of-center\u2019s future; we are winning those debates and charting the conservative course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[A] stark ideological divide on economic issues is also emerging over how to chart a post-Trump future for the GOP. … The emergence of the new economic counterculture is loosely connected to the two-year-old think tank, American Compass.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2014POLITICO Magazine<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201c[T]he conservative media have heaped acclaim on Cass\u2019 efforts and held him out as the future of the movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2014Reason<\/em> Magazine<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe most closely attended- to conservative voice on this issue is Oren Cass, a former Mitt Romney adviser who heads American Compass. … Nearly all the Republicans loosely aligning themselves with working-class interests listen to Cass.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2014Christopher Caldwell in The New Republic<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cAmerican Compass represents the most intellectually honest tendency within the anti-Establishment right. … It\u2019s arguing with exquisite politeness that upholding conservative values requires giving labor more power over capital.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2014New York<\/em> Magazine<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The 2016 election made clear what astute analysts had already been predicting for some time: American politics would undergo a realignment. The so-called fusionism that characterized the right-of-center and provided the Republican Party\u2019s coalition\u2014economic libertarians, social conservatives, and Cold War hawks\u2014had passed its expiration date. The coalition members no longer agreed on how to address contemporary challenges, and their stale agenda was unresponsive to the concerns of middle- and working-class Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Donald Trump marked an obvious break with the past but provided little foundation for the future. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, we partnered with The American Conservative<\/em> to reflect on the previous four years in the first comprehensive review of the Trump presidency<\/a>. In essays covering personnel, politics, and policy, contributors Rachel Bovard (Conservative Partnership Institute), Julius Krein (American Affairs<\/em>), Daniel McCarthy (Modern Age<\/em>), and our own Oren Cass and Wells King considered what lessons conservatives should learn. To discuss these issues in more depth, we hosted two live events: \u201cWhat Happened<\/a>,\u201d with New York Times <\/em>columnist Ross Douthat; and \u201cWhat Next<\/a>,\u201d with Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Anthony Gonzalez.<\/p>\n\n\n Recognizing our role as the flagship for efforts to forge a post-Trump conservatism, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> also partnered with us for a series of live events: one in which Oren Cass and longtime political commentator George Will shared<\/a> their starkly different understandings of and aspirations for conservatism; and another at the Journal<\/em>\u2019s popular \u201cFuture of Everything\u201d conference, where executive Washington editor Gerald Seib interviewed<\/a> Oren Cass and Hillbilly Elegy<\/em> author J. D. Vance. Later in the spring, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy joined us for a discussion<\/a> of how the GOP is shifting to embrace a truly working-class coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n That shift seems to be having a real effect: when Senator Rubio spoke to the Republican Study Committee about the need to challenge \u201cthe orthodoxy that the market\u2019s always right,\u201d the Washington Examiner <\/em>reported<\/a> that it was \u201cone of the clearest signs yet of the Republican Party shifting ideologically away from free-market evangelism. \u2026 So many members \u2026 attended the event that they ran out of food.\u201d In a striking October column<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, former editor-in-chief Gerard Baker dismissed Reaganism because \u201cthe complex challenges the country faces today won\u2019t be fixed by big tax cuts and deregulation\u201d and called instead for the GOP to follow the trail that American Compass has been blazing, one that \u201caddresses the dystopia in modern American life, elevates the family and traditional values, resists the advance of cultural nihilism, and rejects the pure neoliberal market economics that has in some way exacerbated the crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even those who disagree with us most strongly have acknowledged our leading role and the success that we are having. As Stephanie Slade noted in Reason<\/em> magazine<\/a>, \u201cthe conservative media have heaped acclaim on Cass\u2019 efforts and held him out as the future of the movement.\u201d On the left, Eric Levitz wrote in New York<\/em> magazine<\/a> that \u201cAmerican Compass represents the most intellectually honest tendency within the anti-Establishment right. \u2026 [T]he think tank takes the GOP Establishment to task for its actual, material betrayals of the party faithful. It packages this dissent in policy papers, not Twitter tantrums. \u2026 It\u2019s arguing with exquisite politeness that upholding conservative values requires giving labor more power over capital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A realigned conservatism must be built on a coherent and compelling intellectual framework, not mere political opportunism. Thus, our mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation\u2019s liberty and prosperity. This year, as the right-of-center contemplates its path forward, American Compass has emerged as the leader in scrutinizing the outdated orthodoxy and developing genuinely conservative economic thinking. In The New Republic<\/em>, the Claremont Institute\u2019s Christopher Caldwell described<\/a> Oren Cass as \u201cthe most closely attended-to conservative voice,\u201d writing that \u201c[n]early all the Republicans loosely aligning themselves with working-class interests listen to Cass, and it\u2019s partly because he has a theory about the economic history of this century and how it led to our present predicament.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reassessing that economic history is the thrust of the essay that Oren wrote to lead off Modern Age<\/em>\u2019s symposium on the humane economy, in which he asks<\/a>, \u201cAre you better off than you were 40 years ago?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Questions like these have inspired a profound reconsideration of many economic ideas long accepted as gospel on the right. In the Claremont Review of B<\/em>ooks<\/em>, Oren explored<\/a> the \u201cself-defeating libertarianism\u201d of so-called public choice theory. Then Foreign Affairs<\/em> invited him to contribute a feature essay<\/a> describing the current political moment and the contours of a conservatism that moves beyond free-market fundamentalism. Bloomberg Businessweek<\/em> featured the essay\u2019s arguments<\/a>, highlighting that in mid-February, it \u201cwas the most-read article on the magazine\u2019s website.\u201d In First Things<\/em>, Wells King provided a conservative assessment<\/a> of \u201cdegrowth\u201d economics, discussing the need to consider the moral and ecological requirements of a well-functioning political economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our work has also emphasized the issue of economic inequality, long avoided on the right but unavoidable in any serious conversation of America\u2019s economic woes. In \u201cWe\u2019re Just Speculating Here\u2026<\/a>,\u201d Oren Cass showed how investment congealing on Wall Street rather than flowing into the real economy has inflated asset values, driving massive wealth gains for the already rich while yielding little gain for the typical household. For our Atlas<\/em> series, we produced a comprehensive overview<\/a> of research on the issue, prompting discussion everywhere from The Dispatch<\/em> to America<\/em> magazine. In The Daily Caller<\/em>, research director Wells King explained<\/a> why conservatives should focus on this issue and prioritize \u201cbuilding an economy that provides real economic opportunity for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Our approach to economics is \u201cgaining power,\u201d noted Politico <\/em>in its magazine feature \u201cA Big Policy Fight Is Brewing on the Right. And It\u2019s Not All About Trump.<\/a>\u201d We are catalyzing a \u201cnew economic counterculture,\u201d reported Washington Free Beacon <\/em>editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson, that is giving rise to \u201ccommon good capitalists.\u201d In a conversation<\/a> with Oren Cass for Politico<\/em>\u2019s Playbook Deep Dive Podcast, Johnson noted: \u201cThe challenge is, and what American Compass and Oren Cass \u2026 are doing is taking those broad principles and saying, \u2018What does it mean as a policy?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every day, the American Compass team works to strengthen the persuasive power of our arguments and bring them to more people on more platforms. This year, we published more than 25 op-eds and essays in a wide variety of outlets, including the New York Times<\/em>, the Financial Times<\/em>, Foreign Affairs<\/em>, and Politico<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We made more than 50 public presentations, from speeches at national conferences to classroom lectures at leading universities. And we held more than 60 meetings with policymakers and staff in the White House and on Capitol Hill, across both political parties and both houses of Congress, on issues from education and family benefits to industrial policy and labor reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Described as \u201cdissidents\u201d when we launched, American Compass has quickly established itself as the flagship for innovative policy thinking on the right-of-center and become an integral member of the broader conservative coalition. This year, we introduced Bearings, a regular meeting of leaders from Capitol Hill, nonprofit organizations, academia, and media. The group now boasts nearly a dozen cochairs: American Affairs<\/em>, The American Conservative<\/em>, American Principles Project, American Greatness, Claremont Institute, Conservative Partnership Institute, Edmund Burke Foundation, Ethics and Public Policy Center, First Things<\/em>, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Public Discourse<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n We have sought out partners for some of our major projects this year. We copublished the first retrospective<\/a> on the Trump presidency with The American Conservative<\/em> and cohosted two live events looking back at the administration\u2019s successes and failures and ahead to what might come next for conservatism. We published the Edgerton Essays<\/em><\/a>, our collection of perspectives from working-class Americans, in partnership with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. When we commissioned a survey on Americans\u2019 family policy preferences, we shared the resulting data with the Institute for Family Studies so that it could conduct additional analysis in a report on the family policy attitudes of working-class Americans. Looking ahead, we are excited to partner with American Affairs<\/em> on a new grant program to support innovative work in conservative economics.<\/p>\n\n\n Many organizations have likewise turned to us as an ideal collaborator on their own initiatives. The Wall Street Journal<\/em> worked with us to cohost two events on the future of conservatism, including one at its popular \u201cFuture of Everything\u201d conference. The Texas Public Policy Foundation invited our team down to its state for meetings to kick off an initiative on innovative reforms for education and workforce development. The National Conservatism conference invited us to plan a session that would challenge conventional economic thinking, which we did with our panel on worker power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we have been delighted by the degree to which universities have engaged with our work and sought to bring this fresh thinking into the conversation on college campuses. Oren Cass has taught classes at Notre Dame Business School (on corporate governance), Baylor University (on technology regulation), and Cornell University (on inequality). He also delivered lectures at Georgetown University, University of Virginia, Harvard University, Claremont McKenna, Duke University, New York University, and Yale University, and was honored to give the annual Brooks Family Lecture at Dartmouth College. Wells King spoke at UCLA and the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conservatives have long sounded the alarm about the collapse of the American family, but they have also been short on responses. The issue of family policy rose to the forefront of political debates this year when the Biden administration\u2019s American Recovery Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit for one year and made it unconditional, eliminating any requirement that a member of the family be working.<\/p>\n\n\n Just as the debate shifted into high gear in February, with Senator Mitt Romney offering a competing proposal of his own, we released our most ambitious collection to date, Home Building<\/em><\/a>, which featured a groundbreaking public opinion survey, nine essays from prominent scholars, a series of seven family-friendly policy ideas, and our own comprehensive proposal for a 2021 Year in Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Rescuing Conservatism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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