Why I have Been So Quite Lately

It is difficult to write about the politics of the moment when everyone has gone crazy or insists upon talking to morons.

First up Eliana Johnson. Some weeks back she, I assume, took President Obama to task for calling the Holocaust senseless. Her argument, such as it was, consisted of the claim that say what you'd like about the tenets of National Socialism it wasn't senseless. She then posted a follow up that was equally stupid.  Had the President followed her advice and said something like: while we all deplore the murder of millions we need to keep in mind that the Nazis acted out of deeply held belief; their violence wasn't senseless; rather, it was ideologically driven and, from their point of view, necessary. I would have called for his impeachment. Indeed, if you think back to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iran you will recall that any attempt to contextualize Isamist violence was viewed as tantamount to treason, you will understand that Johnson would, in fact, have called for Obama's execution had he done what she suggested he do.

It is no secret that  Matthew Yglesisas is a dolt. Recently he asked, in the context of the increasing inequality in America, "What do people have less of." Paul Krugman responded that we have less time. This misses the larger point that what "we" have less of is consequential political power. That is why wage stagnation matters. It's not that one cannot go deeply into debt to get law degree and no job as Yglesias suggests it is the fact that the plutocrats domination of out political system is evidence that the assault on the working poor, which is nearly all of us, is evidence that we live in a plutocracy.

And David Brooks is teaching a course at Yale about "humility" the exams for which are:

Assignment 1: Mid-Term paper of 2,500 words. Students will be asked to grapple with the indictment of their generation made by Christian Smith, Alasdair Macintyre and Jean Twenge. Due Date:  February 26. Deliver Hard Copy at end of class.  40% of the final grade.

Assignment 2: Final Paper. 2,500 words. Students will be asked to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of one of the character codes covered in the course. Due April 29. Delivery by email.  40% of the final grade.

 Leaving aside the fact that course make no sense, he is asking students to learn how to write David Brooks level stupid essays. The idiots have taken over the asylum and the morons are considered honest interlocutors.

So basically, I find it hard to say anything because the world has become such a hot mess and I give up.

Matt Yglesias Still Dumb

Re the Chicago strike he writes that

[i]f you think that Chicago's teachers deserve the right to form an association to advocate, lobby, and bargain on behalf of the interests of its members (and why shouldn't they?) then you have to think that they deserve the right to advocate for ideas that may not be in the public interest

Without a rough definition of "public interest" the claim that if I support public unions then I must support advocating anti-public interest ideas is devoid of content.

Indeed, given that teachers have a set of concrete demands, both in this case and in general, it would be helpful in Yglesias offered some examples of anti-public interest advocacy or policies. Given that his example drawn from private sector unions is the increased cost associated with increased wages, he seems, although given his dunderheadedness it is hard to know, to mean that increased wages mean increased taxes.

The problem here, of course, is that only neoliberals and libertarians fully support the notion that providing adequate funding for public services is anti-public good.  Paying teachers a decent wage, protecting them from the  arbitrary authority of administrators in thrall to the latest educ-scam, and the like are, actually, policies that promote the public good. Smaller classrooms and more teachers make for better schools. Limiting the power of the administration or rabid maniacs riding various political, religions, or other hobbyhorses to dictate curriculum or tenure and promotion decision is another public good. And so on.

People babble on about rubber rooms and lazy teachers but the fact of the matter is that teaching is a highly competitive profession and thee most teachers care about students and want their schools to continue to improve. Assuming that they and their unions want to advocate for policies that decrease the public good is one way to assure that the best and the brightest of this and any future generation will seek to join a profession, like banking, investing, or punditry, where failure is not an option and even the dimmest  of bulbs is free to fail upwards.

Cat Out of The Bag

We all know that reading and education are bad for you and unnecessary for the least amongst us. And we know that

[w]hile government and laws take care of the security and the well being of men in groups, the sciences, letters, and the arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men down, snuffing out in them the feeling of that original liberty for which they appear to have been born, and make them love their slavery by turning them into what are called civilized people.  Need has raised thrones; the sciences and the arts have strengthened them. You earthly powers, cherish talents and protect those who nurture them (1).  Civilized people, cultivate them.  Happy slaves, to them you owe that refined and delicate taste you take pride in, that softness of character and that urbanity of habits which make dealings among you so sociable and easy, in a word, the appearance of all the virtues without the possession of any.

Matthew Yglesias has the solution for the next generation of cooks and gardeners:

[t]his is where I think education does get back into the picture. Most of these are jobs that require some skills. Personal services generally exist on a spectrum between “things a person might hire someone else to do because it’s a pain in the ass” and “things a person might hire someone else to do because it’s difficult to do it well.” You hire a maid because you don’t want to clean the toilet. You go to Komi because you can’t cook as well as Johnny Monis. There’s more money and prestige to be had as you move up the maid-Monis spectrum and there’s a need for some kind of mechanism to help people move up it. That sounds like “education” to me, though not necessarily the kind of education we’re handing out.

If we would just stop teaching people to read and write they could accept that they need to train themselves to take ever better care of the rich and the hive would be without grumbling.

Improvement Doesn't Just Happen

Matthew Yglesias busy being wrong about educational reform, which ought include, he thinks, less unions writes:

Say it’s true that we don’t know how to make schools better

A chart and an explanation of the chart:

.

 The circled numbers show how American students compared to the average of the entire dozen countries. In 1964, we were 0.35 standard deviations below the mean. In the most recent tests, we were only 0.06 and 0.18 standard deviations below the mean. In other words, our performance had improved.

We know that Yglesias' preferred modes of reform don't work; so from where came this gradual improvement in "measurable" educational outcomes? From professional educators being left alone to do what they know seventy-bazillion times better than Ygelsias, who hasn't a clue about what he's talking about.

It's just bizarre how people who know nothing insist that if we react to a non-crisis in a field that engages in constant conversation about how to do what it does better conclude that the solution to the non-problem involves implementation of economically based solutions, likeforcing them to be like the Olive Garden.

Empiricism: Reality Bites Edition

 Not content with being profoundly silly and wrong about education and history, Matthew Yglesiashas decided to be silly and wrong about industrial policies and economic opportunity. He insists that making things is making things and restaurants can replace factories as engines of economic opportunity. Empirical reality suggests that he has yet again embarrassed himself.

As I mentioned a Koch Brothers owned paper mill recently laid off 158 workers and replaced them with machines. In that post, I used the figure of 30k per worker: I was wrong to guess. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean salary for all workers in the productive side of the paper mill industry is 43,670. The mean for food prepares and related jobs in full service restaurants is 21,150 and the mean for managers is 53,750. So it's true, I guess, that if all 158 displaced workers find work as full service restaurant managers, which is impossible, they will be better off. If, on the other hand, they end up in the elsewhere in the full service restaurant industry making things, they will be much worse off. The reason, in other words, people want to increase the number of factory jobs want to increase the number of factory jobs is that they pay better, for which fact we can all thank, or -- if you're a Neoliberal and hate people-- blame, unions.

Of course, we could also all go to work at Olive Gardens and live here, it's only 200 bucks and it's size would allow for high-density Hoovervilles.

Snake Oil Effect

Over the weekend I finished reading Richard Overy's The Twilight Years, a very well-done discussion of intellectual movements in interwar Britain. One of his points is that the response to the perceived crises during this period relied on  all manner of ill-informed and inapt use of science in the hopes of finding solutions.  Eugenics relied on misunderstood notions of race and biology, for example.[1] Overy sheds a great deal of light on this tendency in a variety of contexts rand the books is well worth reading.

In this vein, Matthew Yglesias, whose grasp of economics is open to debate, argues of people interested in educational reform in response its "crisis" that he

know[s] a lot of people, especially people working in or around academia, find this kind of talk unpleasant. But people thinking about education really do need to confront the Baumol problem.

The Baumol Effect or Disease, as it is actually called, for those not interesting in clicking, is that educators', artists', and others' salaries rise without any connection to increased productivity. Leaving aside, except for this comment, the fact that there is no connection between increased productivity and increased salaries as evidenced by the stagnant wages among more "productive" workers, there is no reason on earth to think of education as an issue whose reform is best served by the application of economists' paradigms.

Indeed, given that the rise of thinking about social and political arrangements like an MBA or an economist hasn't been especially helpful, see, for example, the current state of America's economy, which -- after thirty years or so of Neoliberalism -- is a mess. There is every reason to accept that thinking about social and political arrangements in this manner is counter productive, if your goal is a more equatable and substantively democratic society.

It is also the case that as applied to higher education the assumption here is that educators' salaries drive costs. It is now no secret that, particularly in the humanities, administrators rely increasingly on adjunct faculty to lower costs, the number of students per teacher continues to rise, faculty are increasingly pressured to use "distance" learning to increased their "productivity," resources dedicated to faculty research is in decline, even as faculty members are expected to engage in more service and administrative tasks without any decrease in their other responsibilities.

It's not, in other words, that people find this kind of argument "unpleasant" but rather they find it to one side of the problem and one more example of people who know nothing about education guiding its reform in ways that are counter productive.

When you get right down to it, rather like Scott Walker, Yglesias, and his ilk are blaming the workers for most of the problems people like Walker, Yglesias, and his ilk caused and offering more of the same snake oil as the necessary cure.

[1] For a really useful discussion of Nazi racial science and eugenics more generally see Eric Ehrenreich's The Nazi Ancestral Proof. In the interest of full disclosure, I know Ehrenreich and spent a great deal of time with him in Berlin while he was researching and am mentioned in the acknowledgments.

Honesty Not the Best Policy

Matthew Yglesias argues, if you want to call it that

Indeed, I would say it’s the very fact that a lot of people can lose jobs do to perfectly fair international competition that actually makes the case for financial assistance. If the problem was malfeasance of some kind, the right solution would be to halt the malfeasance. The main issue is that in a technologically and socially dynamic world, fair competition leads to people suffering economic hits through no fault of their own. This is one of several reasons why it’s important to have public services and a social safety net. Even people who do everything right—acquire skills, work hard, etc.—can be subject to large and unpredictable negative shocks to their value as a worker.

By fair competition he means what now?  Artificially low wages through denial of labor organization, lax or no environmental regulation? This is Walker's preferred method of job creation.  He can, he thinks, lure business here from elsewhere by destroying unions, lowering taxes, ignoring environmental concerns, and, generally, returning Wisconsin to the 19th century.

Somebody made the point once that the more horrific your desired end the more likely you will use obfuscatory language to mask the horror. In plain language, Yglesias means that if you let profit maximization rule the roost people get screwed out of jobs because somewhere someone is willing to participate in a race to the bottom.  However we can't, he suggests, do anything about the underlying problem because

Halting all the possible sources of these shocks would be disastrous to economic growth.

What does this mean? If we create a system that distributes the benefits more equitably the economy will cease "growing," where growing is a placeholder for fewer people getting ever more money while more people work for company script. That's growth we can believe in.

But refusing to acknowledge the reality and pervasiveness of this kind of misfortunate treats people unfairly and pushes political activity in the direction of rent-seeking.

I ask what does this mean?

Honesty Not Always the Best Policy

The other day, I argued that honesty was not the best policy for neo-Liberals like Matthew Yglesias because reality disproves their ideological commitment to freer markets, fewer unions, and it gets in the way of their war on humanity. For decades, the doodlebug contingent have provided cover for a managerial class determined to destroy unions, the economy, and the environment in search of a short term financial gain for an ever decreasing percentage of the world's population by insisting that if we all just deregulate harder the magical fairy dust of unfetter market capitalism will shower us all golden unicorns.  This hasn't happened and, not only does it continue not happening everyday, it isn't happening with increased violence against the vast majority of the world's population

Recently, Yglesias made the mistake of making the point that workers jobs are only safe to the extent that workers are willing to work for less than robots. It would be nice if recognizing this Yglesias decided to weigh in on the advantages of increasing the number and kind of people making decisions on automation to include those whose livelihoods, as opposed to profit margins, were directly involved. Instead,  he argues

I’m not sure exactly why that is, but I guess there’s a perception that this kind of “caring” work is less manly than working in a factory. But the various forms of nurse (or advanced nurse) and physician assistant type jobs out there are precisely the type of middle class work for which there’s certain to be growing demand in aging, increasingly wealthy societies. Someday probably someone will come up with a way to build robot nurses, but that seems a ways off at this point.

What's wrong with his picture? Leaving aside the his refusal to think through the effects on wages of increased competition for jobs, or the already strained educational/vocational systems leading to these kinds of jobs, he ignores his eager and endless support for an economic system that pits workers against robots in the search for their daily bread, there are already robot medical assistants and more every day. Indeed, in a move guaranteed to warm the cockles of Glenn Reynolds heart, there are now sex robots for brothel owners looking to cut their labor costs. Keep in mind as well that folks like Rhee and Yglesias see semi-robotic teachers in our future.

I find it hard to believe that even a dim bulb cannot be swayed by the light he casts on the errors, misery, and commitment to emiseration inherent to his preferred economic system.

P.S. He wants union organizers to be more like the NRA, seriously.  I mention this because I cannot go back there today.

The Word You're Looking for is Regulation

Because, all evidence to the contrary, I am optimistic that just around the corner there's a rainbow in the sky, so let's etc, some more from Matt Yglesias this time on AOL selling a service no one needs as reported by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker

I think this sort of issue deserves more attention in part because as the economic pie grows bigger and bigger, the number of hours in the day doesn’t grow. So in many cases the opportunity cost of taking the time to really check things out is rising. That means more and more often it’ll be the case for consumers to be rationally ignorant about what exactly they’re doing, and it’ll more and more make sense for firms to exploit that.

Regulations?  Like those protecting consumers from fraudulent locksmiths?  Or no?  Too progressive? it's like he doesn't pay attention to what neo-Liberalism is.

Empiricism

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Dental hygienists held about 174,100 jobs in 2008. Because multiple job holding is common in this field, the number of jobs exceeds the number of hygienists.

And the

[e]mployment of dental hygienists is expected to grow 36 percent through 2018, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. This projected growth ranks dental hygienists among the fastest growing occupations, in response to increasing demand for dental care and more use of hygienists.

And the prospects look good because

[o]lder dentists, who have been less likely to employ dental hygienists, are leaving the occupation and will be replaced by recent graduates, who are more likely to employ one or more hygienists. In addition, as dentists' workloads increase, they are expected to hire more hygienists to perform preventive dental care, such as cleaning, so that they may devote their own time to more complex procedures.

And the

[m]edian annual wages of dental hygienists were $66,570 in May 2008. The middle 50 percent earned between $55,220 and $78,990. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $44,180, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $91,470.

If only there were more competition the oppressed d.h.s' wages would rise and the "consumers'," which is to say patients but if we think about the world without the filter of economized language the neo-Liberal project of dehumanizing society collapses, costs would lower because, to repeat myself, more equals more which means lower because, shut up that's why.

The Problem With Anti-Empiricism

Matt Yglesias argues that

if dental hygenists were allowed to work on their own, not only would this be good for hygenists (a lower-wage and female-dominated profession, and thus a progressive thing to do) it would almost certainly make it cheaper and/or more convenient to get your teeth cleaned.

A few facts, Alaskan d.h.s make 96k per year, those Washington state make 90k, d.h.s in Michigan, with the "highest concentration" of d.h.s in the land, make 59k. Nice wages, I would say.


We have an imaginary problem, low paid women enslaved by the evil dental monopoly, to which he offers the neo-Liberal solution of deregulation and increased competition because increased competition  will

Mak[e access to dental services] as cheap and convenient as possible for people to avoid [dental diseases, which] does a lot to raise living standards. Obviously in part that can be read as a good reason to pay for poor people’s dental bills. But at the end of the day, making these services affordable really does require us to find ways to make delivery cheaper.

According to the neo-Liberal tooth fairy you increase competition and decrease cost because this increases wages or shorter: more equals less which than equals more. This kind of argument makes clear why Yglesias hates empiricism; his ideology only works if you get to make stuff up.

Oh, and yes it does read as good reason to pay for poor peoples' dental bills not, however, via neo-Liberal tooth fairyism but rather by expanding health care through increasing wages by strengthening unions or mandating living wages, the nationalization of health care or other related progressive response to the needs of humanity in the social situation.

Pragmaticism

Matt Yglesias:

For my part, I’m continually baffled by the degree to which thought-leaders and politicians on the center-left think it’s credible and/or political useful to present our agenda as wholly un-ideological and “pragmatic,” somehow emerging magically through empirical study.

In the current The New Yorker Atul Gawande  reports (subscription needed) on a successful attempt to moderate health care cost that arose from and rests on a theory derived from careful study of the actual per patient costs, which is to say hard work interpreting the facts in the light of how the world actually works led to improved health care at a lower cost..  He is cautiously optimistic about the new method and is clear that the it magically arose from empirical study. The solution, by the way, is to find the most expensive patients and give them more health care because, it turns out, the most expensive patients often take really crappy care of themselves and inundating them with trusted health care providers, social workers, and compassionate nags leads to measurable improvement in their health, well being and a decline in the costs of taking care of them.

My point is this, for someone who is more or less ignorant of the facts of the matter retreat to ideologically driven argument makes sense as an ideology allows the construction of an easy argument or solution to complicated problems. Ideology, the last refuge of the intellectually lazy.

The Point

Some guy I've never heard of explains in detail why Yglesias et alia are a menace to society, without resort to that sort of heated rhetoric. Inter alia Matt Yglesias replies to the critique:

But one point that I agree with here, is that while I’ll cop to being a “neoliberal” I don’t acknowledge that I have critics to the “left” of me.

He then lists a long list of things that critics to the left of him cannot critique, I guess. Most of the things listed are outcome based, redistribute wealth, improve k-12 education outcomes, etc, without providing his preferred methods.  Others, break the "illegitimate" and anti-competitive licensing regimes, are policy specific.

All are open to left or socialist critiques. The fact that he fails to acknowledge this fact, if I can be factitious for a moment, is all you need know about Yglesias.  Consider that his preferred method of reforming k-12 is to attack unions and insist on market-based solutions even though he has no clue how education operates.  How, one wonders, does he plan on redistributing wealth?  Tax transfer payments?  Wouldn't a more left-leaning solution be the equalization of rates of pay through increased union participation in the nation's economic life?

It would be one thing to say I reject criticism from the left because . . . (One assumes the because would be because he is a Reaganite neo-Liberal convinced of the unique genius of the unfettered market or, put another way, he is totally ignorant of the actual history of markets and modern capitalism.) He might, in fact would, do well to consider the critiques of those to his left on his basic ideological assumptions, and he would do well to engage in the facts and arguments he would find there as a way of shoring up neo-Liberalism's weak empirical underpinnings.

Real Realism or Empiricism versus Glibness

Matt Yglesias, taking time out from being wrong about education, regulation, and frozen food, decides to be wrong about city planning and asserts that

[t]he number one factor in making a city a congenial place for cycling is . . . having lots of other people ride bikes.

And concludes that

[t]his is why I’ve tended to shift more in the direction of big picture stuff. If you have dense development and don’t have parking minimums, some people will start to bike around. And having those people bike around is the best pro-bicycle measure on earth.

He is, of course, wrong.

Take an actual city that has a lot of cyclists like Amsterdam.  It reputation for being cycling friendly is not an accident and is of recent vintage. Here (pdf) is a very brief overview of the history of cycling in Amsterdam.  The story is that despite pressure groups its high density as late as the 1970s Amsterdam was very much a city of cars.  Then, however,

[i]n 1978, a new City Council took office. It opted to conserve the cultural and historic value of
the city centre and to encourage the use of the bicycle and public transport. Soon measures to
encourage the use of the bicycle were taken. These included the construction of a 'Main
Bicycle Network', the improvement and expansion of facilities for cyclists, and the removal of
physical obstacles within the cycling infrastructure.

And

[i]n the 1980s, a working party was set up to oversee the realisation of the cycle infrastructure.
In addition to city officials, the group included representatives of the Cyclists' Federation. An
additional annual budget was made available to help resolve problems. In the 1990s, the City
Authority continued to put extra amenities for cyclists into place, including some outside the
Main Bicycle Network itself, such as storage facilities at railway and metro stations.

With a complicated plan going forward, it is clear that the development of a cycling friendly city waits upon regulation and related whatnottery designed to make a city more cycling friendly.

It would be nice if before sounding off on something the pundits of today had some consideration for the facts of the matter.

UPDATE:
If you're wondering, I knew about Amsterdam's cycling history because over the years I have read quite a bit on cycling and urban development. 

Enough, Already

A few days ago Matthew Yglesias, in a burst of integrity, admitted that he knew nothing about pedagogy. 
Today, however, when commenting on Detroit's disastrous school cutbacks, he confidently asserts that

[t]he city really should be operating fewer school buildings, and though large class sizes aren’t ideal it’s more important for kids to have access to effective teachers than for kids to have low student:teacher ratios.

So, it seems, that despite not knowing anything about how to teach, he knows enough to know that fewer teachers overwhelmed by larger and ever larger classroom size will be effective because dealing with a large number of often unruly students isn't exhausting; not a bit of it, its exhilarating.

Once you admit that you know nothing about something it's time to shut the door on commenting on the thing about which you know nothing.  In this case the farcical nature of his contribution serves to buttress his admission of ignorance.

Imaginary Realism

Matt Yglesias on his realism

Suppose I say, “DC’s barber licensing rules are bad.” You ask, what do you mean by that? Well, they reduce competition in the barbering field, leading to higher prices and worse service for customers. They reduce tax revenues and employment opportunities. They’re, you know, bad.(emphasis in original)

How many barber's are there in DC and its environs? Lots.  How much do you have to pay to get your hair cut?  As little or as much as you'd like.  How is service?  From excellent to lousy. In other words, not one of his justifications is true in the specific case of barbering but rather are only true in the abstract case of opposition to regulations, which can be applied to puppy mills just as easily.

As a example of a realistic critique of over-regulation, it's wrong to deny felons the right to be barbers, lawyers, and etc unless the crime is related to the occupation and, in all cases, felons ought to have the right to apply their exclusion.

Covering Himself With Glory

How many times has the current administration called the ACA Obamacare without scare quotes?  None, that's how many. 

For example

Q    How many of the Democrats -- of the 219 Democrats who voted for “Obamacare” have invited the President to campaign for them in their districts this fall?
MR. GIBBS:  I don't have a political schedule in front of me, Lester.
Q    Since not one of the Republicans in the House voted for “Obamacare,” and 32 Democrats voted against --
MR. GIBBS:  Do you mean -- I'm sorry, I'm confused.  Do you mean by that the law that the President signed yesterday?
Q    “Obamacare,” yes.
MR. GIBBS:  Okay, I just was -- I didn't know if that was the Internet vernacular or the name of the bill, Lester.  I was a little confused.

How silly is Matt Yglesias?  Very.

Incidentally, I’m glad to see that the “Affordable Care Act” lingo that I started trying to popularize months ago as an alternative to “ObamaCare” has been taken up by the administration.

Why I Despair of Glibertarian Gibberish

Matt Yglesias is not, I argue, a serious human being.  His is, rather, an ideological Jack-in-the- box who spouts the usual Glibertarian nonsense at the drop of a regulation. Today he celebrates the beginning  of the end of the regulatory regime painstakingly put in place between 1906 and 1976 with a post lauding Alfred Kahn for deregulating airlines.  This deregulation, he argues, did, in fact, lead to air transportation being "sucky" but only because that's what people wanted.  He offers no evidence for people wanting sucky air transportation but, one assumes, his certainty arises from some Glibbertarian bedrock, like the wisdom of markets.

Airlines have the third lowest customer satisfaction rating on the University of Michigan's survey and, according to the same source, passenger volume was down 6% in 2009.  On average 66% of customers are satisfied with airlines. It's difficult to spin those numbers into evidence of giving people what they want.

But, he might reply -- as he does in the post, that the cost is lower and besides all that luxury of yesteryore was an inefficient use of scarce resources, no really. Costs, it's true, declined but since 2001 have risen kind of dramatically, to say nothing of the nearly 5 billion in 2001 tax payers gave the airlines for free.  From June 2003 until October 2010, the most recent data available, just over 20 percent of all flights arrived late.  Airline passengers don't like paying for baggage and miss the "inefficient" luxuries of the past. There is also problems with maintenance and such like.

So, has deregulation been a success? No.  Is there any evidence that consumers are getting what they want? No.  Is this one more example of Yglesias talking out of his hat because he is a neo-Liberal?  Yes.

Why on earth does Think Progress pay someone to make zombie Reaganite, Thatcherite, neo-Liberal and Glibbertarian arguments?

Andrew Sullivan

John Cole, over to Balloon Juice, is complaining about Andrew Sullivan's stupidity, which is fine.  It ought not go unnoticed, however, that Sullivan created Yglesias and both are equally sillily illogical and ideological bedfellows. Indeed, every time one complains about Sullivan, McArdle, or some other Glibertarian, it ought to be mandatory to include Yglesias.

In a Nutshell

A real professional and trained economist makes a substantive point about the concrete economic situation and Matt Yglesias, with his B.A. in philosophy and long history of being ill informed, "proves" that the actual economist is wrong. How?, you ask.  Thusly, he responds:

Imagine a recession that begins at a time when nominal interest rates are 9 percent.

That's right he creates an imaginary crisis that, if properly misunderstood and badly analyzed, proves that a professional no nothing is right.  To which I would respond, imagine a world in which knowing something was a prerequisite for making claims of knowledge.  In such a world, we would be be free of Douthat, Brooks, Freidman and his related units, almost all of the WaPo editorial page, and, perhaps most importantly, Palin.


edited for clarity.