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.

Oh, For Dumbest

Long-time commentator John Rove alerts us to Matthew Yglesias condemnation of laws limiting shops operating hours in France.This situation is wrong, Yglesias intones with all the seriousness of a neoliberal intent on destroying human happiness, because

[t]he problem with leisure. . . is that you can’t tax it to pay off accumulated debt or to finance pensions for your senior citizens. The good news is that the much lower hours worked in places like France shows that a determined set of policymakers could push official GDP a lot a higher without the TFP fairy showing up.

First lets hope the poor adle-pated dope doesn't find out that Germany closes most of its shops at 12 on Saturday and doesn't reopen them till Monday. 2nd, really? The economy is a mess because of unregulated financial shenanigans and  neoliberal policies more generally. Yglesias' response? Work harder peons.Third "determined set of policy makers" is short hand for technocratic defeat of democracy. He knows that democracy, as Salvador Allende pointed out in his speech to the UN,means that democratic polities lead to social democratic societies and the only way the 1%ers can win is by recourse to anti-democratic means to oligarchic ends. What horrid little man.

It's a Puzzle

 A few days ago, John Quiggin argued for increasing taxes on the rich.  Matthew Yglesias responded by insisting that

a lot of the political dialogue I see online seems to consist of a slightly strange form of class resentment in which intellectuals, nonprofit workers, or public servants express bitterness about the high incomes of businesspeople whose lives they don’t actually envy.

Today, among other things, Henry Farrell points out that this is nonsense. Yglesias, or someone claiming to be him, shows up in the comments and argues:

Apologies if you feel I impugned the motives of anyone in regard to inequality. Let me simply restate my hypothesis that few tenured professors at reputable Anglophone universities actually envy the lives of CEOs earning above the “top one percent” threshold. Perhaps that hypothesis is false. But if my hypothesis is true, I think it complicates the issue of inequality somewhat beyond the terms in which Quiggin presented it.

In the space of a few short sentences he changes an observation, class resentment drives a lot of online political etc, to a theory which, if true, complicates discussions  of inequality.  Leaving aside that there needs to be some kind of an argument about how non-envy driven resentment based tax policies complicates inequality, how is possible that an initial factual claim is really a theory?

Baffling. What is clear, however, is that it is becoming harder and harder for the spokesmodels for "left neoliberalism" to keep their stories straight.

Update:
From the comments over to CT from Yglesias, or someone pretending to be him:

I also think that in a relatively affluent society it makes sense to take a somewhat broader view of quality of life—and thus of inequality in quality of life—than would be suggested by a narrow focus on cash income. This is why the fact that many people who earn substantially less than CEOs do not in fact envy the lives of CEOs is relevant.

This is just word salad.  The issue under consideration is quality of life, i.e., the poor today are better off, in the sense of having cell phones and ac, than the rich of the 1920s. This kind of an argument, which has been around, if not for ever, at least since William Graham Sumner, ignores the fact, and fact it is, that inequalities in wealth translates into political inequality.  This fact, in turn, means that the benefits the next generation of have-nots and almost-haves will be worse of than this generations. Furthermore, whatever is meant by "quality of life" it's something, in any kind of a capitalist society, requires  "cash income." So fine, provide everyone with a salary and subsidized house equal to that of his imaginary non-envious, CEO-resenting and consequently tax-increasing demanding professors without taking some of the "cash income" from the unenvied CEOs.

What, exactly, does he mean by "envy the lives"? Is he referring to the light work load? the long vacations? the endless homes? or the mind-numbing boredom of being able to whatever you'd like at any given day or week? Does he mean that some people live lives they find perfectly satisfying? Of course they do. What this has to do with increasing the taxes on the wealthy as a means of paying for civilization and, whatismore, doing something to decrease the political power that comes with excessive wealth escapes me entirely.

Ah, No.

Matthew Yglesias doesn't like regulation. I agree with at least part of his point, it's silly to lock convicted felons out of jobs. There, for example, no reason why a murderer can't be perfectly good barber or lawyer. On the other hand, there is no reason why a convicted Ponzi Scheme operator ought be allowed to manage a hedge fund. The key to intelligent regulation is understanding if the danger outweighs the damage done to the pool of felons or other miscreants seeking employment in this or that field. Keeping people convicted of sexualized violence against children away from children, for example,  strikes me as a perfectly reasonable regulation. It isn't, obviously, going to end sexualized violence against children and, given the Neoliberal commitment to undermining the state's ability to protect its citizens from predators, it wont be perfect. Still, it's difficult to see how this kind of regulation is an example of a slippery slope. Indeed, I would worry more about the various housing rules that make all but impossible for some convicted of sexualized violence against children to find a place to live.

Relatedly, he observes that younger Americans and some other subgroups of Americans aren't graduating college in the same percentages of older Americans. He concludes:

No huge policy insight from me for now, but it’s a reminder that more high-skill immigration would be in our interest.

If we take his "our" to mean Americans, it is unclear why importing already educated people would benefit "us," at least some of whom are those of "us" who didn't graduate. The benefit to "us" comes from figuring out why these groups aren't graduate at the same rate as older Americans and then ameliorating those conditions.Yglesias seems not to understand that suggesting a change in policy is, in fact, a policy "insight."  Furthermore, there is right now a fierce competition for jobs among all categories of workers. The focus needs to be on the creation of decent paying jobs even if it violates on or another of the limitless Neoliberal nonsense based on economized language.

Crises Management

When I think about a crisis, I think of a discrete moment during which the normal means of dealing with one or another of life's problems fails and the problem metastasizes and fundamentally alters the problems scale threatening lives, homes, and etc. During a crisis those actually dedicating to solving it pursue multiple paths, attacking immediate and underlying causes, and jettison those methods that fail. The same, it seems to me, is true of forest fires, floods, and the Berlin Air Lift. There is an underlying intractable problem that grows into a life threatening something or another, previous measures fail and therefore something new and dramatic must be done.

So, for example, contagious disease is a recurring problem for humanity in a social state, the flu pandemic of 1918-1920 was a crisis. The state operating through a variety of humanitarian and other organizations, sought to deal effectively with the dead, provide palliative care for the ill, inhibit its spread, and find a cure. San Francisco order everyone to wear a mask as means of stopping the dread disease's spread. When they figured out that the gauze masks were of little use, the stop enforcing the rule.

Lots of ideologically driven nimrods are insisting that the American educational system is in crisis. How can this be? Educating children, young adults, and adults, has always been a difficult task. But no one is going to die, lots of homes are being built, books written, and so on. The evidence is that the choice and accountablility don't work and, in fact, that whole dealio is a scam. Rather than abandoning choice and accountablity the people are pursuing it with greater vigor or moving the goalposts and generally denying that improvement has anything to do with it.

This isn't a crisis, it's an opportunity for people who hate people trying to rob us of yet another social good in favor of market fundamentalism, which is just another way of saying let's let the rich rule.

It's The End of The World As We Know it and He Feels Fine

The people responsible for hiring and firing people have been firing them at a decent clip and not hiring them at a slightly faster pace. The people responsible for getting or giving wages and dividing wealth have, for some time now, decided that fewer people with preposterously large incomes and ridiculous levels of wealth is better than seeing to it the vast majority of Americans have decent wages and any wealth.

Matthew Yglesias thinks that this if "fine."

And then asks, what he sees as,

[t]he real question is: Why are policymakers satisfied with FINE?

Two points: The economy isn't fine; after 30 odd years of Yglesias' Neoliberalism it's broken. Policy makers are doing the wrong thing because right now Neoliberalism reigns supreme.

If he actually wanted to fix the problem, he attack Neoliberalism and admit that it broke the world in the first place.

Oh For Dumb

So Matthew Yglesias understands that all the promises of charter schools are a nonsense. But he can't bring himself to reverse his position on choice and the perfection of the market. He, consequently, moves the goal posts from charter schools and choice creating better outcomes to charter schools and choice increasing human happiness because of illusions.

On the other hand, when confronted with something that all profession educators understand as a necessary first step to improving outcomes: class size. He denigrates it.

It's almost like he doesn't care about ends so longs as his means are put into place.

If The Facts Are Against You Ignore Them

America is right now a richer society than it was at some point in the past. For quite a while now lowering labor costs through machines/robots/computers and other "productivity enhancers," which is another way of saying doing more with fewer people or more jobs in low wage areas with little or no "burdensome" regulations, led to stagnate wages and under- and un-employed people because an economy so structured doesn't create jobs with the added benefit of increasing income/wealth inequality. If you don't believe me, look out the window. Still, Matthew Yglesias argues

[t]hat’s not to say the robo-waiters of the future doom us to endless mass unemployment and immiseration. If labor costs related to waiting tables falls, over the long run that’ll mean more and better restaurants with more jobs for people with specialized skills. More sommeliers and more chefs, in other words. Consumers will also buy more things in other sectors of the economy, so there’ll be more jobs for nurses and yoga instructors. On average, replacing labor power with technology makes us better off. But the specific people who are made better-off will be the people with the complementary skills.

 Just because the world is the way the world is because of a mindless commitment to Neoliberalism, he is suggesting, doesn't mean that continued mindless commitment to Neoliberalism won't fix the problem Neoliberalism has created.

What is equally appalling is his argument that if only workers wouldn't ask for more money then none of this would ever have happened. Yes, we should all just accept whatever the market demands instead of trying to end economic inequality by putting people over profits.

Manly Men: Governance Edition

If you're the sort of person who thinks being all manly man and riding roughshod over your opponents when in the majority and conversely using every trick in the book to forestall when in the minority are signs of being a serious politician, you might consider Scott Walker's recent career. He ran roughshod over opponents, insulted voters, workers, and citizens because of the roughshod riding and procedural trickery. And, finally, he discovers that actions have consequences as a broad-based coalition forms to remove members of his cabal from office.

It would seem that as a practical matter playing winner-take-all politics in a stable democracy means that you if you win and you are wrong, and manly men are nearly always wrong regardless of their alleged "ideological" commitments, you lose.