saikat chakrabarti

Metaphors matter. As a metaphor, the "New Deal" has been mobilized both in response to climate change and in support of President Biden's rescue and infrastructure initiatives. It needs examination if it is to go from serving as a mere slogan to defining a coherent program. Compelling invocation of the New Deal turns on:

• Building state capacity for implementing interventions in the market economy;
• Navigating potential conflicts in overlapping missions; and
• Managing inescapable tradeoffs between efficiency versus effectiveness.

For a long generation from Pearl Harbor, the language of war provided the liberating rationale for mobilization of resources by the American state. Liberating, because a legitimate war frees state actors from the constraints of prospective cost-benefit analysis, where the costs are always easier to quantify than the putative benefits. "Whatever it takes" is the message.