Americans are still drinking too much

Plus: The left strikes back. [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an Amazon-box fort of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - America is [drinking too much](. - The [left is making a comeback](. - Commodities will [never stop booming](, apparently. - Housing policy should [favor the poor](. The Whole Nation Needs a Dry January In one of the most influential [films]( of the 1970s, pre-med student and future president of the United States John Blutarsky [tells]( a fellow college student suffering through hard times, “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.” It was terrible advice. But faced with soaring inflation, geopolitical tensions and bell-bottom jeans, many Americans embraced it at the time, as if they needed encouragement. The advice only got worse with age, yet many Americans took it again when hard times hit in 2020: Holed up in their Amazon-box forts, they [drank heavily during the pandemic](. And maybe that was understandable, given the circumstances. Unfortunately, Justin Fox writes, the “party” hasn’t really stopped, with drinking still on the rise, to levels not seen since the boozy 1970s and ’80s: The alcohol is arguably higher-shelf today; no longer are people slugging 36 Miller Lites in a field and passing out beneath the eight-track player under the dash. But too much of even a good thing is just too much. Alcohol-related deaths have jumped in the past couple of years, Justin writes, along with the social and economic problems that come with binging too often. [Dry January]( may need to last more than just one month.  The Left Gets a Handhold We have exhaustively detailed all year what a bad one it has been for our most famous right-wing dictators. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, only to end up with his gun barrel bent right back into his face, [Elmer Fudd](-style. Donald Trump keeps losing court cases and [supporters](.  But the popular movement away from the right goes far beyond those headlines. In elections from Latin America to Europe to Asia, [the left has been making a comeback]( all year, writes Pankaj Mishra. The economic woes that fueled the rise of Trump and other hard-right demagogues haven’t improved, exactly, but the left has finally remembered to offer its own solutions to them. The right still has plenty of power, of course. Maybe even the preponderance of it. Most notably, the reactionary US Supreme Court just wrapped up a year of [turning back the clock on civil rights](, Noah Feldman writes, dragging the rest of us on a nostalgia trip to some conservative ideal of a country that never really was. And there’s a lot more of that coming in 2023. Giving rural Americans jobs building electric-car batteries could throw an (electric-car) wrench into our classic left-right narratives. We’ll find out soon enough; Conor Sen writes the open fields and cheap, not-so-highly-educated labor of the Sunbelt make [inviting territory for EV car-parts builders](. The Battery Belt could be a huge economic and political bloc in the years to come. Who knows how it will vote. Telltale Charts Like a climber on Everest, the [commodities boom is only taking a pause]( near the summit. It will keep climbing next year, writes Javier Blas. John Authers breaks down the [2022 trades that were obvious]( to anybody with perfect hindsight. Shorting Tesla, for example: Further Reading [Government housing policy has ignored the poor]( and favored the wealthy for too long. — Bloomberg’s editorial board This was the year [economic orthodoxy had its revenge](. — Tyler Cowen [Deglobalization will dominate M&A]( next year. — Chris Hughes [Sri Lanka will keep suffering]( because we’ve made restructuring sovereign debt too hard. — Andy Mukherjee  [Battersea power station]( (an image stared at by many Miller Lite consumers in the ’70s as they stared at it on the cover of “[Animals](”) still reflects London’s character, for better or worse. — Matthew Brooker ICYMI Hey, at least Italy [didn’t find new Covid variants]( in all those infected travelers from China. The US may send [Bradley fighting vehicles]( to Ukraine. RIP, [Pele](. Kickers Ten [bonkers Pele goals](. The USGS [mapped the sea floor]( off Cape Ann, Massachusetts. How does [sleep training affect babies](? Everything you ever wanted to [know about vending machines](. Notes:  Please send pigs on the wing and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net or @markgongloff@mastodon.world [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( | [Ad Choices]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022