Very amusing, if you enjoy this sort of thing. Brooks in a recent attack on “populism,” which he has intriguingly defined as taking umbrage at $16 billion in bonuses at Goldman Sachs (your tax dollars at work).
Political populists never get that second point. They can’t seem to grasp that a politics based on punishing the elites won’t produce a better-educated work force, more investment, more innovation or any of the other things required for progress and growth.
Taibbi takes him out:
What’s so ironic about this is that Brooks, in arguing against class warfare, and trying to present himself as someone who is above making class distinctions, is making an argument based entirely on the notion that there is an lower class and an upper class and that the one should go easy on the other because the best hope for collective prosperity is the rich creating wealth for all. This is the same Randian bullshit that we’ve been hearing from people like Brooks for ages and its entire premise is really revolting and insulting – this idea that the way society works is that the productive ” rich” feed the needy “poor,” and that any attempt by the latter to punish the former for “excesses” might inspire Atlas to Shrug his way out of town and leave the helpless poor on their own to starve.That’s basically Brooks’s entire argument here. Yes, the rich and powerful do rig the game in their own favor, and yes, they are guilty of “excesses” – but fucking deal with it, if you want to eat.
Now that is the kind of discussion that might make the PBS NewsHour worth watching, rather than Lunesta’s stiffest competitor.
Discuss
8 Comments . Leave a comment below.A bit off your main topic, but on your last comment -- I'd argue that the NewsHour is probably the only TV news program still worth watching. It sticks to, you know, actual news.
I still maintain that one of the worst developments in American politics over the last couple decades was the development of the 24-hour "news" networks.
As to the arrogance of the Superclass it is well documented that their ultimate green agenda is global eugenics all the way down to 500 million. I am supposed to "deal with it"? If I want to, like not eat, live even?
It seems to me that the word "populist" has always been a dirty word, as if being populist is the same as being anti-capitalist.
Populists don't want hand-outs or a free ride. They are happy with and want a free market, but they just want it to work for everyone, not just the chosen few. They want to be able to work hard to realize their modest prosperity, without being pillaged and manipulated by the big powerful ones.
Sadly, this argument — while perhaps viable in the past — is internally inconsistent today. Here's why.
It starts with an implicit premise ("work hard to realize their modest prosperity") that is no longer valid. In today's economy, the always-tenuous relationship between labor (as in hours-spent-doing-something) and financial return is literally dissolved.
Our great capitalist investment engine has spent fifty years breaking that chain and ensuring that it stays broken. It has done so by inventing, manufacturing, and tightly controlling technology (automation, computing, computer-aided design, electronic communication, electronic funds transfer, etc.) that has accomplished at least a one and possibly a two or three order of magnitude increase in worker productivity (goods produced per hour of labor).
It isn't just automation, though. An enormous part of today's value creation process is individual innovation, aided by decades of growth in programming systems hardware and software. Consider a micro-example — stock trading algorithms (the code that drives "programmed trades"). If my code can make an individual broker even 1-2% better, on average, than his or her competitors, that code is enormously valuable. Its value is utterly disconnected from the number of hours it takes me to invent or write the code. Once it's out there, and that broker now has a competitive advantage (using my code), suppose (based on my knowledge of how I did it) I find a way to double that advantage. What is the value, to my customer, of version 2? In particular, if my customer objects to the significant price increase I suggest, what happens when I honestly and in a free and unregulated market offer my customer's competitor a product that destroys the competitive advantage of my customer?
Again, the value — to my customers, my prospects, and me — of my knowledge has zero relationship to the labor I invest in creating my product.
When we combine these two capabilities, we have an economy where the key questions are more on the order of who controls the intellectual property, who decides what the capabilities of the production systems will and will not be, and so on. Hard work, in its commonly-understood populist sense, has nothing to do with it.
Here are several immediate consequences (there are many more):
The bottom line? We have spent decades intentionally creating and deploying the means by which the already-wealthy can suck the wealth from an entire economy and concentrate it in the hands of a tiny handful of extraordinarily powerful men (and perhaps a few women; these circles are not known for the embrace of gender equality, especially when it comes to wealth).
We have given the very wealthy the means to concentrate the wealth of society, and they have used those means. During the Bush years, the US economy obscured this reality behind the smoke-and-mirrors of a credit-based Ponzi scheme, a scheme that makes Mr. Madoff's exercise pale in comparison. Like every Ponzi scheme, the wheels finally came off this one in the fall of 2008. We now face the very bleak (and dangerous) prospect of understanding what we do now.
If there is to be a reality-based "neo-populism", I think it needs to be built upon a rock foundation. We have turned the wealth-depends-on-work paradigm into quicksand.
I agree with your points, but all is not lost. Yes, absolutely, the motivation in corporate America has gone from making an honest product and running the business in the interest of the common good of the county and it's people to ...what's in it for me and how can I suck every dollar out of every aspect of my business, crushing the consumer and the employee in the process.
So one of ways that we can help turn this greed-capitalist environment around is to stop forever praising and idolizing the run-away greed motivitated capitalist mentality, and bring back more of the common good populist message, without it being called socialism. It isn't socialism.
And, by God, our President helped us a little along the way with his speech last night.
Thanks President Obama. And thanks Matt Taibbi for being a voice for the middle and working class. Thanks Bob, for writing a post about it.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.
As the last bastion of real objective reporting that is not influenced by ratings or corporate considerations, the NewsHour is the most informative and substantial newscast on American television. Sure it isn't glitzy, sexy, or sensational but that is exactly what sets it apart from its peers. It is objective, impartial, and at a commercial free hour instead of the 15-20 minutes you get with the networks, can actually bother to provide stories of substance and depth. Sorry if that bores you, but I would rather be informed that entertained by my news. Frankly the only reason Shields/Brooks is one of the weaker elements is because its one of the few dumb ideas they kept on from corporate news (Crossfire style banter instead of serious discussion), although they are a lot more respectful. Jim Leher doesn't even vote, that is how committed he is to impartiality.
Wonderful wonderful Diary and comments from Brookline Tom and Liveandletlive. I feel wiser, (or at least I will sound wisert when I plagerize some of the language here.
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