...about the latest conservative "reform" craze. C'mon guys, I had to read all those manifestos, the least you can do is look at the column.
UPDATE. Comments are busy, considering this was a longish, wonkish column. Well, that's the sort of bright boys and girls this lantern attracts! Regarding the Yglesias-Ayn Rand anti-licensing alliance, Derelict says, "Personally, I'm looking forward to eliminating the onerous licensing requirements for airline pilots. I've spent many hours on Microsoft Flight Sim, so handling that New York-Frankfort Airbus A-380 flight should be a no-brainer." "Sure, there will be a few crashes in the transition period," adds montag2, "but consumers will quickly get the hang of which flights have competent pilots and push the industry in the right directions." Freedom!
Several commenters are creeped out by the reformers' weird family-values theories -- e.g., that if you make it hard for paupers to afford non-family alternatives like day-care, they'll rely on relatives to watch the kids and thus become more tight-knit. "They want to return to the days when entire families did piecework in their homes," marvels Shakezulu. "That way the family can be together while it works." It's the reasoning behind their policies on entitlements, too.
"Reformicons": Those must be the robots who even the Decepticons kicked out for being mendacious toolbags.
ReplyDeleteSo the reform manifesto calls for slashing the minimum wage, funneling money to charter schools, cutting early childhood programs and aid to poor families and deregulating everything. Oh, and a bunch of policies meant to convince people to get married.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, was there supposed to be something new here? I've been squinting at the screen and all I'm finding is a headache. This manifesto is the political equivalent of a Magic Eye book.
roy, i also have a conservative reform manifesto; i've attached it and you can read in its entirety below.
ReplyDeleteLower barriers that now keep workers from potential jobs. One example is to roll back oppressive licensing requirements.
ReplyDeleteFreed from such tyrannical paperwork, the poor will finally be able to grow rich by cutting each other's hair and taking in each other's laundry.
When one of their bogus political movements is exposed as just another helping of the same old conservative bullshit, they "reform" under a new name.
ReplyDeleteI like the way that they've collectively said "To hell with the "kinder more gentle" crap, bring on the feudalism!" it's prejudice confirming for me.
ReplyDeleteProposing minimum wage cuts to fix the recession's long-term unemployment is such a humongous crock. Let's pretend we're helping the shrinking middle class by pissing directly into the mouths of the poor instead of just on their shoes!
ReplyDeleteBy an astonishing coincidence, the first question in this funny and not real interview concerns reforms and lying starts at about 1.00.
ReplyDeleteRubin:
ReplyDelete[The usual suspects] rolled out a unifying theme and agenda for the right
This year's model. Bigger tail-fins.
..
ReplyDeleteI'm always just pleased that Rubin gets words down in an order that one might say, admittedly optimistically, has a chance of being a sentence. Bully for you Jen!
ReplyDeleteMy comment at Jenghazi's blog earlier:
ReplyDeleteand refocusing the right on helping the lower- and middle class
Haha! Good thing I wasn't drinking a beverage when I read that.
P.S. She was uncharacteristically late with her first Blog of Sunday, "Distinguished Pol of the Week". Most of us were hoping the WaPo had finally come to its senses and fired her.
~
So the reform manifesto calls for slashing the minimum wage, funneling money to charter schools, cutting early childhood programs and aid to poor families and deregulating everything.
ReplyDeleteSomeone's read "Shock Doctrine / Disaster Capitalism" and picked up on the central message -- that every catastrophic consequence of Republican policies is itself an opportunity for more Republican policies.
"an outlook that favors limited but effective government."
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of sentence that makes me itch, because this is the position taken by every American politician ever.
The alternatives to a limited but effective would be what, exactly?
A federal government of unlimited power? An inefficient bureaucratic mess? Anarchy?
Is any mainstream politician arguing for those things?
And you could say, "well, the Democrats don't argue for those things, but their policies often enable them!", but sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; in practice, actual Republicans often argue for huge expansions of government power/useless, bloated bureaucracy.
For example, to me, "limited government" and "indefinite detention without trial" aren't compatible. So where are my reform Republicans campaigning to close Guantanamo?
It's just a matter of time before one of these human pustules is busted for grafting the entirety of A Modest Proposal into their cunning plan to help poor families support themselves.
ReplyDeleteAnd I did read the article. I'm not sure why you would do that to your brain, but you should give it a stiff drink by way of apology.
As Pierce says so often, we despair of the rebranding effort. But there is some comfort to be had in the notion that the same ol' platform will be draped with new bunting!
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if conservative reform was applied to a car with a flat tire, they'd just jack the thing up, rotate the tires, start driving again. And then complain that liberals was the reason why the car kept pulling to one side and had a terrible ride.
Personally, I'm looking forward to eliminating the onerous licensing requirements for airline pilots. I've spent many hours on Microsoft Flight Sim, so handling that New York-Frankfort Airbus A-380 flight should be a no-brainer.
ReplyDelete"The car is pulling to the LEFT!"
ReplyDeleteI think it was the constant clashing of gears, screeching of belts and Goldberg's serious exhaust issues.
ReplyDeleteUnder their logic, the best way to stop unemployment is to pay nothing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a feature, not a bug...
I was looking forward to Roy's column knowing it was going to be all about the Republican reaction to imprisoned soldiers finally coming home after five years. I am disappoint.
ReplyDeleteRight. We often say "They want to roll back the New Society" of "They want to kill off the New Deal", but it actuality, they want to reset things to right before Magna Carta.
ReplyDeleteConservative rules:
ReplyDelete1. Always project
B. Double think: know it, love it
4. When in doubt, double down
I can see it now: "While the history of slavery in America contains a few stories about abuse, it isn't impossible to imagine a system of slavery that benefits slaves as well as owners ..."
ReplyDeleteEd Roso, I don't know how you wrote this one. Do you have the opposite of hypergraphia where you obsessively read crazy and simultaneously boring writing?
ReplyDelete"While the old system of slavery was based on race, ours is based on the much more egalitarian idea that any poor person of any race or creed can be enslaved to their social betters."
ReplyDeleteWorth noting: Their one novel idea is "relocation assistance." This is a scheme in which the government pays people to move and seek work, in exchange for which those people no longer receive unemployment insurance.
ReplyDelete...used to call those "hobos"
ReplyDelete"let's be honest here - certainly there will be winners and losers in this system, but it sounds quite like the cultural left don't want you and your family to have your own permanently on-call manual laborer."
ReplyDeleteI can only assume these "manifestos" are essentially think-tank busy-work in the lull before the election gets going good. Because surely there isn't anyone out there that is not already a GOPer who would be persuaded to join them after reading such bland and toothless melanges of recycled talking points.
ReplyDeleteIt would be like trying to entice people to your restaurant by serving leftover braunschweiger floating in a celery flavored gelatin mold garnished with stale circus peanuts: Nobody wanted that crap in the first place, and they really don't want it now.
Wow, I'm loving this breakdown of the manifesto that AEI so helpfully supplied. One of the standouts is that minimum wage cutting proposal, which is actually kind of a trip when you read the details. The proposal is matched with a suggestion that the government use money from EITC to subsidize low-income workers.
ReplyDeleteNow that really threw me for a loop, because that sounded very similar to the guaranteed minimum income - something generally considered to be a radical leftist economic policy. But after a moment of thought, it became clear that this was less guaranteed income and more a very creative case of socializing the risk. McDonald's can pay their employees as little as they want, and you get to pick up the rest! I have to admit that I'd never considered using radical economics to benefit a multinational, but I suppose that's why I don't get paid six figures to think deeply all day.
Oh, but some of you may feel that this is another example of business interests trying to get the government to prop up the house of cards that is our economic structure. Well, AEI has an answer for you silly liberals:
This misunderstands how wages work. If a low-skill worker can only contribute $7 per hour in revenue to a firm, then the firm will not employ the worker at $10 per hour. If it did, the firm would lose three bucks for every hour the worker was on the job.
I'll let you guys make the noblesse oblige jokes on your own. And I encourage you to dig into AEI's itemized list yourself. You could start with the entry where the writer uses the phrase "return on investment" in relation to schools.
More adventuresomely, Room to Grow offered to "lower the risk
ReplyDeleteassociated with hiring long-term unemployed workers" for businesses,"
said Scholl. How? "By temporarily lowering the minimum wage," she
cheerily explained.
Indenture-to-Prosperity!!!
They want to stack the red state districts- I imagine they'd throw monkey wrenches in the "relocatees'" ability to vote.
ReplyDeleteReagan already did it (albeit by force) to the flight controllers, so, actual flying should be a lead-pipe cinch.
ReplyDeleteSure, there will be a few crashes in the transition period, but consumers will quickly get the hang of which flights have competent pilots and push the industry in the right directions.
In the meantime, though, conservatives do see a need for tort reform to prevent the victims' survivors from capitalizing on the reform. Lawsuits against the airlines is the Chicago school's idea of a perverse incentive, which, of course, we cannot allow.
Same pig, but with aesthetically pleasing new lipstick!!
ReplyDelete"Hey, maybe if we changed the name of it on the menu..."
ReplyDelete"Great idea! (why didn't we think of that before?)"
Um. Good luck convincing working parents that lower-cost childcare is a bad thing because it makes grandma doing it for free less valuable. And also, let's reward families who are already well-enough off that one of the parents can stay home with the kids with some tax credits, which we'll take away from the families so poor that both parents must work. WTF are these asshats smoking?
ReplyDeleteBut the most dishonest bit is the one about how long-term unemployed don't have jobs because they're just not worth $7.25 an hour...so let's pull the bottom out from under that wage, and make up for it with more in Earned Income tax credits, the tab for which of course is picked up by everyone who pays income taxes. This way, the poors can subsidize the even-poorers. This will allow the owners and shareholders of large, profitable companies to boost the profitability of the businesses they own, thereby boosting their return on investment. It's a bold new plan to help party benefactors to help themselves ... to the contents of our wallets.
Seriously, I don't know why this hasn't become a Democratic war-cry in the current "debate," such as it is (going nowhere), about raising the minimum wage. We have working poor people for the precise reason that businesses would rather pay the owners or investors than the people who do the work of the business. EITC just doubles the insult by forcing everyone to subsidize a bad business model. There's not much "free" about the "free market" when it's set up to allow the richest family in America to reach into my pocket and help themselves so their company can pay bigger dividends in lieu of higher wages - particularly when I've made a conscious decision to NOT do business with them, thanks to their repulsive labor practices. Conservatives screech like scalded cats about "the government" getting into their pockets, but at least the government is, in theory at least, answerable to the citizens. These private companies extracting taxes from me are not, in any way, shape, or form. So it's hard to escape the conclusion that, as always, it's not the principle of the thing for conservatives - it's just the same old bullshit of trying to convince the rubes to distrust the one large institution that ostensibly they can control, if only in a very small degree, in favor of placing unquestioning trust in private institutions whose interests are diametrically opposed to their own.
As it's currently practiced, however, that "relocation assistance" is actually moving one area's problem out of state, thus making that person some other state's problem, and seems to be done most typically not as a benefit to the individual, but as a cost-saving measure for the individual's state of residence, thus not actually solving a problem, but providing yet another reason to not raise taxes on the rich.
ReplyDeleteSo, one new "novel idea" is yet again just another bad conservative idea in a nice, new summer frock.
"Liberals are throwing the car under the bus!"
ReplyDelete..
ReplyDeletealso, fuck matt yglesias.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just that - it's the utter stupidity of the premise upon which the "reform" is grounded. Conservatives like to shriek about the "size of government" as if it's just a given that smaller is better. That's what "limited" means, and they use the two terms interchangeably, though perhaps not in this piece (which I will not be arsed to read through). When they say "limited government," they mean shut down everything but the military. Then they turn around and tsk-tsk about the mess at the VA - a system tangential (at best, in their minds) to the one thing they think government should be involved in - blowing up brown people and the shit they've built - while systematically underfunding it at every opportunity. They're like the fucking building foreman for the pyramids - "the slaves will produce the same quota of bricks, but they will be given no straw!" The "limiting" they insist upon creates ineffective government, which then gives them more fodder. Public reaction, on the other hand, is in favor of just making shit work the way it's supposed to, which would not be impossible if not for Republican insistence that the only people with money shouldn't have to pay taxes, and that by definition, spending the money required to make shit work violates their narrow definition of "limited."
ReplyDeleteNeed more upvotes for this comment, my one ain't enough!
ReplyDeleteSame old shit, with some Luntz-driven rebadging and rebranding. But now they can go around pretending that their bundle of S.O.S. is actually an exciting new agenda for public policy, especially compared to the sad, doddering, intellectually bankrupt "liberal agenda", thereby proving that conservatives really and truly are The Party Of Ideas.
ReplyDeleteWould the Young Guns Network by any chance be related to the Top Guns network?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzY9a-WmE6o&feature=kp
(Also, Hess warned, "school choice can create some losers as well as some winners.")
ReplyDeleteFor Hess' audience I believe this is what's known as a "selling point."
Oh, indeed. My hypothesis on this is that the rich are the only ones creeped out by the possibility of attack from without, or within, because they're the only ones that stand to lose much, so they're greatly in favor of a big military. And, of course, the military is an integral part of that imperial process that makes them wealthy.
ReplyDeleteHowever, they hate paying anything for public services--even those that protect their wealth--because not paying taxes is a major part of the way they became wealthy, so, faced with a seemingly difficult decision, they opt instead to push taxation for the big part of government they like onto the plebes.
In essence, they want the peasants to pay for the defense of the wealthy through taxes and their lives, if necessary. Hey, it worked in 800 A.D. pretty well....
It's sort of like letting the surgeon who removed the wrong leg have a chance to take off a healthy arm as well.
ReplyDeleteAs minimum wage → ∞, employment → 0; therefore, AAFCPS, as wages → 0, employment → ∞. So there you go. If only we were all paid little enough and worked hard enough, we'd all be happy as clams.
ReplyDeletePhil Robertson had something to say about that.
ReplyDeleteF-u-u-u-u-c-k, this would explain why that "slavery wasn't so bad" narrative has been popping up a lot lately.
Because it worked out so well for them in pre-Revolutionary France.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that under the law existing pre-Revolution, members of the aristocracy were prohibited from working? Dabbling was acceptable, but working for income was right out. A noble would be stripped of his title for working. Also, members of the aristocracy paid no taxes - this in an era when war was fairly constant and the kings were building gold-plated palaces. The bulk of the citizenry was impoverished and starving, all while they were footing the bill for the high-living toffs.
Ah, I see. The AEI thinks we're all morons, and that they're geniuses. No surprise there.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to be an idiot. It's quite another to be a condescending idiot.
I believe they are going straight for the head-ectomy. Its quicker.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure they care about the liscencing associated with all jobs--as they push us into the all temp worker economy. They want the removal of regulations such as those designed to prevent workers from cleaning large industrial machines and being crushed into Hummous.
ReplyDeleteFunny how that works, eh?
ReplyDeleteAs if lowering the minimum wage is not enough, the Republicans blocked legislation aimed at preventing wage theft.As Smithers would put it- they've gone beyond villainy into cartoonish supervillainy.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope Bronco Bama hits the campaign trail with a vengeance, because if the GOP keeps the house and takes the senate, there will be impeachment proceedings just for the hell of it. He needs to go "HULK SMASH" on the Republican party for good and all.
The AEI is a Dunning-Kruger Mill. Pity they can actually pull one over on the rubes every single time.
ReplyDeleteYou can fool some of the people all of the time.
ReplyDeleteAnd also, let's reward families who are already well-enough off that one of the parents can stay home with the kids with some tax credits, which we'll take away from the families so poor that both parents must work. WTF are these asshats smoking?
ReplyDeleteBased on where I last saw this proposal bandied about, I'd say they're smoking Canadian Tory, aka "northern dickweed."
I can't see that actually getting past the thinkpiece stage. The minute anyone proposes it to the state legislature, the Tea Party et al are going to start howling about how we want to send welfare queens on all-expenses paid vacations to the beautiful, exotic North Dakota fracking fields.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's not like unsanitary handling of salon tools can spread bloodborne diseases, or the improper use of caustic chemicals can cause serious skin disorders or respiratory issues. Liberals just make people go to beauty school because they looooooove regulations.
ReplyDeleteIncreasingly, I'm convinced that "conservatism" is a travelling medicine show--get run out of one town (election) after the townsfolk start expiring, just repaint the wagon, change the labels on the bottles full of the same arsenic and jimson weed extract, and press on regardless. The sales routine remains the same.
ReplyDeleteThis is, generally, the same party that's been in the pocket of the wealthy for, now, about 140 years. Sure, they manage to con the small businessmen and the (then) small farmers by saying they're protecting "free enterprise," even though they've been steadily fucking them sideways by shoving ever more money into pockets of the some of the most obscenely wealthy people the planet has ever seen.
So, what continues to puzzle me is why the little guys keep on voting for them? When a WalMart store is given all the state and local taxes it takes in, and the small businessman isn't, can't they figure out that they're being screwed--and recognize who's screwing them?
Maybe not. Maybe this is adjunct to what Tom Paine said, about "not thinking a thing wrong for a long time, gives it the superficial appearance of being right." Maybe the pitch works. Maybe Frank Luntz told them "reform" polls well, so they'll take every idea from 1890 and put it in fresh wrapping paper and apply a "reform" bow to it and the "common clay... you know, morons" will leap to buy it again, even though it's still pretty deadly stuff.
*sigh*
You could say that after most of what he writes.
ReplyDelete"So, what continues to puzzle me is why the little guys keep on voting for them? "
ReplyDeleteWhat're you going to do? Vote for a Democrat that will give the same tax breaks to walmart, AND try to take away your guns? Throw your vote away on a third party, which is basically a vote for the Democrats anyway? Field a primary challenger?
Wait, they have been doing that last one.
Republicans are voting for the lesser of two evils, same as Democrats are.
I'm more old-school:
ReplyDeletehttp://makewealthhistory.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/the-waste-makers.jpg
Good luck convincing working parents that lower-cost childcare is a bad thing because it makes grandma doing it for free less valuable.
ReplyDeleteThis type of argument is by far the weirdest to come out of this social con/libertarian merger, and I'd say one of the stranger in modern conservatism. It's just such an abstract argument in favor of a very concrete problem. Like that old saw about the dignity of work, as though someone just scraping by is going to hear that and say "When you put it that way, the fact that my income scarcely covers my basic needs isn't so bad."
I guess that's what you get from organizations staffed by people with no real-world problems. These think tanks treat all issues as though they were strictly intellectual ones that can be solved through argument.
"Field a primary challenger?
ReplyDeleteWait, they have been doing that last one."
Those primary challengers are even bigger charlatans, mudstompers, cranks and crackpots than the garden-variety grifters to which they've traditionally aligned themselves, so... seeking out the lesser evil doesn't seem to be part of their program. I'd say it's more an indication that extremism for extremism's sake works--on morons.
Variation on an old hospital trick" Greyhound therapy.
ReplyDeleteOne example is to roll back oppressive licensing requirements
ReplyDeleteNo specific examples given, alas. The AEI is not yet willing to take on the AMA.
Sadly, we're seeing the front end of the all-temp economy right now, as taxis and car services are replaced with Lyft and Uber. We're going to hell in a Toyota with a pink mustache.
ReplyDeleteEh, I think it's kind of tangential. There's a large chunk of the Republican party whose ideas are, uh, out of step with reality.
ReplyDeleteBut they've had some success in actually gaining some amount of pull in their party; they aren't just sitting there and voting for any Republican.
I wonder if the less insane people then flee towards the more "mainstream" Republicans as the least evil candidates, seeing them as a tolerable medium between Tea Party insanity and left-wing idiocy.
Basically, I come from the position that in general the Democrats are also a bunch of disingenuous, hypocritical grifters. So I figure the Republicans justify their votes more or less the same way my Democratic friends do, i.e. "Well, they're still better than the other guys".
Exactly. Some states have already been doing just that to the indigent, the mentally ill, the unemployed, welfare recipients--almost anyone perceived to be a long-term drag on services. I'd just forgotten the slang term for it, which you so ably provide.
ReplyDeleteWhat's particularly unfunny about these "policies meant to convince people to get married": Welfare was for years been denied to intact couples with children--I'm told that in many areas it still is--specifically because right-wingers refused to allow payments to a family that had an able-bodied man present, who should have been out earning money.
ReplyDeleteWhat's particularly funny: most of their suggestions are tax breaks. I don't know if these guys got the memo, but taxes are the least of the worries of the really poor.
There's something unorthodox about conservative reform...
ReplyDeleteObligatory civics nerd comment: It takes a simple majority of representatives to bring impeachment to the floor, but a 2/3 majority of senators to actually convict and remove someone from office. The GOP won't have a 2/3 majority in the senate unless the East Coast gets sucked into a black hole, so the only thing impeachment hearings would bring is a freak parade screaming 'Benghazi!' and 'Fast and Furious!' over and over again. Kinda like what we have now. In fact, they've had the numbers for this scenario since 2010, so I assume they must know it's a bad idea, but maybe a successful midterm will jazz them up enough to try for the hell of it. I say bring it on.
ReplyDeleteThese think tanks treat all issues as though they were strictly intellectual ones that can be solved through argument.
ReplyDeleteRightwing think tanks are not interested in solving issues--or even addressing issues. They're interested in comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted--primarily through shifting the tax burden onto the poor and middle class, privatizing as much profit as possible, socializing as much risk as possible, and rigging the entire system so that the entrenched kleptocracy becomes a permanent overclass. To this end, the think tanks dress their policy prescriptions with the thinnest raiment of "issues" to make them seem relevant.
For the most easily grasped example of this, consider that there is no "issue" that cannot be "fixed" by cutting taxes on the wealthy. Indeed, if only we could eliminate the estate tax, there would be no more threat from global warming.
I seem to recall reading that "Big Media Matt" is a regular dinner guest at Our Little Megan's House o' Kitchen Appliances. Maybe it's something in the pink Himalayan salt that makes you turn into a contrarian whose contrary views always manage to prop up the existing class structure.
ReplyDeleteIf they had a car with one flat tire, they'd just give it more flat tires, then blame liberal tires and Benghazi.
ReplyDeleteA more enraging example is what's going on in my town. One of the largest employers, and one of the few remaining factories in this old New England mill town, has struck a deal with the local temp agency. The temp agency provides workers at a top rate of $12/hour for the overnight shift. The workers get $9/hour, and get laid off after 90 days. No benefits. No prospect of advancement, ever. After 6 months cooling their heels, the workers might get called back for another 90-day slot.
ReplyDeleteThe Toyota may have a pink mustache, but these workers all get a Dirty Sanchez.
They know they won't succeed, but they'll do it out if spite to "taint" the Obama presidency. Knowing they wouldn't succeed didn't stop them from dragging Clinton into a sordid dog and pony show.
ReplyDeleteThe run-of-the-mill conservatoids, not the pigs at the top running them, but the front-line grunts, remind me of starving people in North Korea who would not accept the "tricky" food aid from the outside world, but would readily eat from crates repackaged as gifts from loving Dear Leader.
ReplyDeleteIs this the answer to the tribal idiots in America, who will drink gasoline if a "liebruhl" says they shouldn't? Is it as simple as letting them keep their weird tribal identifiers, hoop and holler about "winning," and get them on-board by letting them pretend that humanitarian, progressive, economically sound policies are "conservative" and "right wing"?
Seems like the only way to manage these angry, ignorant, people, and get them to help save humanity in spite of their spite, is a reverse Briar-Patch strategy.
"Do anything to me, B'rer Redneck, but don't throw me into that single-payer healthcare patch!!! Anything but that! Or, the living wage sinkhole--not there either!! Woe is me!"
Yes, Lawyer's Guns and Money has written extensively on the use of "temp" workers in industrial jobs and in field/stoop labor in agriculture. It ought to be illegal to employ anyone as a Temp for more than a day, or a total of maybe 10 hours during the week. Its just a way of underpaying and handicapping the worker, preventing the formation of unions, and making it impossible for the worker to receive benefits or unemployment insurance. Its truly frightening.
ReplyDeleteThey believe (correctly, but indirectly) that impeachment let Bush beat Gore. There really is not much of a downside for them to get live continued saturation coverage of all the "scandals" of the Obama regime, while simultaneously preventing him progressing any of his agenda.
ReplyDeleteI also love that it is based on a bizarre model of Family that doesn't even fit their standard bizarre model of Family and sure as hell doesn't fit their model of the economy.
ReplyDeleteBecause the kids are supposed to get married ASAP and start producing pups, in order to prevent sin, right?
But that results in grandparents who still have a couple of decades (at least) before they retire (and might produce a pup of their own). In other words, Grandma is at work getting a paycheck. Except suddenly she's this nice, retired lady who has nothing better to do than watch kids, gratis.
Naturally, none of the current infant-having generation out of the area, or perhaps the kids work out some sort of deal where the grandmas are distributed in a way that everyone has a free child minder.
So apparently the secondary Family Model calls for a the younger family to have enough income to support at least one 45 year old Grandma who for some reason, does not work.
Or maybe it hooks back into their underlying belief that women should not work because [mumble argle bad for society]. So I guess the model is Grandpa supports Grandma, who watches the kids while ... Wait, mom shouldn't be at work either!
I'm surprised they haven't concluded that daycare centers should be outlawed because it contributes to the dissolution of the family and next thing you know we're up to our ears in sassy lesbians. (Not that this would be a bad thing).
Meanwhile, the neocon economic model calls for every human being over the age of 3 hours to work 48 hours a day 8 days a week so the only one needed to watch kids will be the supervisors at the factories.
But maybe THAT'S their ultimate model. They want to return to the days when entire families did piecework (is that the word) in their homes. That way the family can be together while it works. I'm not sure how this would work for making cars, but I guess what temp workers can't accomplish, outsourcing can.
Beat inflation!
ReplyDeleteWow, a conservative admitting there's such a thing as workplace discrimination against women -- they must want reform really bad.
ReplyDeleteIt might seem that way to normals, but in the conservation mind, misogyny only happens when women are raped and beaten (without justification), and racism is only when "coloreds" are killed (without justification). That is why most of them are truly confused and defensive about being called either one (when they haven't raped/beaten/murdered (without justification)).
Lower barriers that now keep workers from potential jobs. One example is to roll back oppressive licensing requirements.
ReplyDeleteStep 1: Destroy OSHA
Step 2: Profit
"The tree of the free market must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of innocent workers."
To which the only reply should be, "You first."
ReplyDelete"Conservatives ain't ready for reform." Zombie Paddy Bauler
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of shithouse business is out there that can only squeeze $7/hr of revenue out of an employee? So you get permission to pay her $5/hr instead: wow, that's a whole sixteen dollars in pure profit! Now that's six sigma paradigm!
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge fan of this rant. It reminds me of a piece I can't lay my hands on now about the history of the working class. The author points out that the freak out about women working outside the home was a middle class thing. The working class pretty much always had to have two incomes to make things work.
ReplyDeleteOf all the evil Roy cataloged in the VV piece, the family stuff seems like the worst: the bullshit is out of touch, and the bite of the con is on the people who can least afford to be bitten.
Hmph. Obviously you don't understand the benefit of an extra ten dollars a week. Please get with the program.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought it was the Reformation, but you might be right.
ReplyDeleteI keep wondering how extreme things have to get before there's some kind of revolt. But all signs now indicate that we really ARE going to have to repeat the entire Gilded Age (including child labor, share-cropping, and a return to the gold standard) before people once again rise up.
ReplyDeleteLast time, this took the form of labor unions. Next time, America might not be so lucky as to get away with so little bloodshed.
Or, same shit sandwich, but now on pumpernickel instead of rye!
ReplyDeletewe'd all be happy as clams in chowder.
ReplyDeleteSo, what continues to puzzle me is why the little guys keep on voting for them?
ReplyDeleteBecause those "little guys" have been completely snowed under with bullshit. My sister is one of those: Owns a flower shop and most of her friends are other small business owners. All of them are convinced that the federal budget breaks down as follows: 50% is welfare for Blacks and Hispanics, 50% is foreign aid to countries that don't like us, 50% is money given to unions and evil bureaucrats, 50% is money that's wasted on stupid shit like lesbian studies, and 30% is wasted on other crap nobody cares about.
So when conservatives like Ted Yoho say things like, "We have to shrink government!", people like my sister say "Yeah, brotha!" Because they have no idea what government does, and they can't make the connection between taxes being slashed on the wealthy and the fact that their sewer fees have quadrupled and the damn system still doesn't work.
Well, she did say "temporarily." Which means, I'm sure, just long enough to resolve the unemployment crisis. Because we all know that Congress will put the minimum wage back up to where it was because they always do that.
ReplyDeleteThe Clinton impeachment might go down in the books as a huge waste of time and gross misuse of Congress's Constitutional authority, but in dog-whistle terms it justified everything the Mena Airport crowd had been saying about him from the beginning, despite the outcome. And Hillary's about to have to deal with the same shit all over again.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Johnson: one fucking vote.
Upvote for "raiment," plus all the rest.
ReplyDeleteThis, and simultaneously, Republicans are pressing for "reform" for social security - i.e., later retirement ages. So Grandma continues to work past 65. Or, if she's a public employee, her pension has been bargained/bankrupted away, so now she really has no prospect of retirement. Grandma's going to be eligible for providing that free child-care just about the time when Grandma needs a full-time home care provider herself.
ReplyDeleteGood point. People won't be moving to blue California, which they can't afford; they'l be moving to red North Dakota, which they can. Keep the newcomers from voting and you keep red states red, at least for the time being. It still would be a ticking time bomb, voting-wise, since I doubt there are many useful stats on the political characteristics of the new Joad Family demographic.
ReplyDeleteRebranding worked in Kentucky, where the implementation of the ACA is called "Kynect." People can look at that "KY" at the front of the word and think it's all about some kind of States' Rights issue or something, and never know that they are participating in the evil Obamacare program.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny. Mitch McConnell is in the strange position of having to run against Obamacare but in support of the popular Kynect, all the while desperately pretending that they aren't the same thing.
Still I wonder how many pinkertons will have to shoot how many (white) strikers before people start voting for more liberal lawmakers at the local and state level?
ReplyDeleteI've known plenty of small business owners who think exactly like that.
ReplyDeleteFrom all the new financial burdens their "reforms" put on the government, I guess right-wingers have given up pretending to care about the deficit.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but I'm starting to think the freak is a combination of myth and a willingness to overlook the impact of institutionalized sexism on a woman's job prospects, especially if she has the bad taste to produce another consumer-citizen.
ReplyDeleteSo sure, many middle-up to upper class women did nothing but work at home, often with the help of at least one lower class woman. But did the former Vassar girl with the BA in biology want to take a gig as a secretary for a couple of years before she got hitched and spent her days making sure she and the place looked good for when the man came home?
I'm gonna use my women's intuition and say No. But you know, that's the way it was before (sort of) so it is unfair to ask questions like "Who had his thumb on the scales."
I think this metaphor is dangerously close to going off the rails...
ReplyDeleteIt is easy to think of poverty as a passive state of not-having, of not being able to buy the things one needs. But I think in the US there were places where poverty, even what you'd consider modest lower middle-class comfort, is like being continuously subject to small acts of predation--everything from health insurance to payday loans to junk food to time share sales to mysterious fees on your cable TV bills to boiler room junk stock and oil well salesmen to get rich in real estate with no money down to lose weight while eating pizza and watching TV to multilevel marketing, religious hustlers demanding money money money. In all of it is embedded the sacred principle of giving people nothing for something, while promising them that they will have something for nothing. Remember that Rick Perlestein piece on the RW grift machine? "The Long Con."
ReplyDeleteTheir economic world is similar to the world in which they feel it is necessary to carry guns. Of course they are carrying guns against the imaginary threat of young black men in hoodies, or brown men in turbans. They can't do anything about the economic world--chances are lots of them are not only victims of the continual predation but employed in carrying it out as well: I don't imagine it's anybody's life dream to work at a call center for some skeezy collection agency--except pin their hopes on those who promise to give them an edge over the other strugglers and junior predators. Extremism for extremism's sake, because it is so politically useful to their political masters, becomes the one permissible area in which they can assert something like human dignity in a political sense. I mean it is all the expression to me of something mean and sordid and cruel that seems to have existed here nearly as long as the US. They don't believe it can be any different; they take their views of human possibility from this squalor, which is why they are contemptuous about liberals and their idealism.
Grandma's going to be eligible for providing that free child-care just
ReplyDeleteabout the time when Grandma needs a full-time home care provider
herself.
Reading this I realize I should shorter myself:
The GOP's economic and social models are firmly based on unpaid labor performed by women.
In your example, the younger mom is supposed to provide elder care because [mumble grumble fart] family.
And yes, I know the Libercons argue that the things provided by the husband (shelter, food) are a form of payment, but until they start working out deals with their employers in which they won't get money but instead will live in the employers' home, they can kiss my ass.
The fact that the Housewife Economy keeps women and children are dependent on a man (father, husband) is a bonus for the Cons.
Now there's just the pesky issue of the fact that Dad can't get a job that will support mom and kids. Oh well, if they keep up with the Climate Change Denialism, Church Sponsored Anti-Vaccination Propaganda and get rid of those government shackles that force job producers to at least try to keep tainted food and collapsible housing off the market the population will shrink to the point it can be drowned in a bathtub.
I mean, function as they think it should function.
Haymarket Riot was 1870-1(?) and with the exception of Wilson, it was all Republicans up until Roosevelt. So, 30 more years?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, was there supposed to be something new here?
ReplyDeleteIf it actually solely embraced funneling money to charter schools, it would be at least somewhat new. But it's their usual worse-than-charter voucher thing again, which involves funneling money to private schools, even religiously sectarian ones. (Funneling money to for-profit charter schools is currently the Democratic school reform plan.)
An employee would have to be fast asleep on the job in order to cause them a loss @ the rate of 7$/hr. Morons.
ReplyDeleteThere's something unorthodox about conservative reform...
ReplyDeleteIf only we could reconstruct exactly what.
The utter cluelessness of the AEI response lies in the fact that this is exactly the result of the current, depressed-far-below-market-rate, minimum wage. No one can live on $7.35 per hour, so every hour that an employee works at that wage he is going deeper and deeper into the hole. But that's ok because minimum-wage workers don't contribute to GOP politicians. No one would open a business knowing that their profit would be only $7.35 per hour, yet somehow lots of thriving businesses pay this amount to their employees. Which indicates that those employees are contributing quite a bit more than $7.35 per hour in revenue to those firms; otherwise, they wouldn't exist.
ReplyDeleteI used to read lots of horse books, when I was that age. One of them described the solution to a horse which has gone lame in one leg and is visibly limping in front of the judges. Whack it on the other leg so it doesn't know which one to limp on. This seems to me to be a good analogy to the way the Republicans prefer to cover up problems and mistakes rather than cure them.
ReplyDeleteGet your entire FLDS mormon family to upvote it. That's how to leverage family values in commenting!
ReplyDeleteAnd at the same time the rage and resentment of the senior citizen class at their "entitled" kids needing "child care" when grandma and grandpa want to be vacationing in their air stream is a sight to behold. Walmart is full of crappy, anti-kid/anti grandkid signs like "I'm spending my kids inheritance now!" because of senior citizen ressentiment and the Ann Lander's blog is filled with their rage filled letters attacking their own children for needing the occasional fill in help with the grandkids because of the shift work/no sick days policies that the kids live under.
ReplyDeleteSigh. This. I hit the "like" button with a nerveless finger, and fall dead beside the computer.
ReplyDeleteIts really too bad that every Tax form doesn't come with an easy to read pie chart showing the miniscule portion of the budget that goes for foreign aid, or education, and the massive portion that goes to tax breaks for the koch brothers and military expenditures.
ReplyDeleteI think in some cases the anger might be better off directed at the shitty employer, but I've also witnessed some fairly toxic behavior by people who need someone to watch their children and in the majority of cases it is a woman or girl who gets left holding the diaper bag.
ReplyDeleteAs in, showing up unannounced and leaving grandma of the choice between saying No while Jr. is looking at her with big blue eyes or scotching her plans for the day to watch him. Or forcing teen girls to provide babysitting for siblings even if it interferes with homework or extra-curricular activities.
In short, it sucks that someone is stuck with a shitty job, but that doesn't mean people get to pass the shittiness on to other relatives, and the expectation of child care makes no more sense than the expectation of rides to work, financial support, shelter or anything else..
And maybe people just get sick of watching kids? I don't know. I don't have any of my own, but I've done enough to know it is damn hard work.
(My wife--who used to work for the IRS--has been saying this for years.)
ReplyDeleteHere's the best description of what you're talking about I've seen yet: Living in poverty is like being punched in the face over and over and over on a daily basis.
ReplyDeletePossible, but the whole thing that made the Clinton impeachment a sordid dog and pony show to begin with was the fact that it was all about sex and infidelity, which gets lots of people's attention. Republicans have been talking non-stop about the supposedly ruinous scandals of the Obama white house ever since he got into office, but it hasn't really moved the needle much. The only people who care were either already not going to vote for Clinton in a million years, or are 'independents' who can be swayed by similarly meaningless crap. I just really can't see how it would tilt an otherwise winning effort for Clinton.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of the old joke:
ReplyDeleteMy own opinion is that Bush was better at playing the campaign game than Gore, and that the Supreme Court was and remains stocked with anti-democratic (in both senses) turdmuffins. Clinton left office after 8 years with an approval rating of, what, 66%? That's almost unheard of. I just don't get the idea that Clinton dragged Gore down.
ReplyDeleteClinton didn't drag Gore down. That is why I said it was indirectly correct. What happened was that Gore ran away from Clinton. And he did that as a direct result of the impeachment. If Gore had used Clinton's immense ability to enthuse, then Gore would have won Florida. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are hoping that they can get the same result again. Impeach Obama. Neutralise him for the next election, and thus hurt Hilary.
Absolutely, agreed! Its a problem from both sides--I've heard/read horrendous stories of grandchildren being dropped on grandparents with no warning and no chance to refuse, of people being co-opted as child care and also of people being punished for refusing to be regular baby care when its just not possible or desirable for them to take on this charge.
ReplyDeleteIts not that I think people should be comandeered to watch babies or kids at any age. I'm just pointing out that this fantasy that America's grandmas want to be called back to the baby front, like old war horses snuffing the smoke of the battlefield, is very overblown. Dealing with babies and toddlers if very strenuous work at the best of times. As you get older it gets harder and may not even be safe.
I'd also like to point out that women in the 45-65 year range are probably already dealing with serious eldercare issues with their own parents and may have motor or sensory issues themselves which make handling an infant or a toddler difficult or dangerous.
I would share my soup with this comment any time!
ReplyDeletePage 85 of this pdf found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040a.pdf
I had an enormous, knock down, drag out, fight with a staunch liberal over this idea a year or so ago at another blog. It seemed so self evident to him that it was a great idea to have a 1000 dollar per person fund to help individuals "move to get jobs" that he ended up accusing me of nymjacking myself because I didn't agree.
ReplyDeleteBut it seemed like an incredibly crappy and stupid use of public monies, if they could even be freed up. And it was, of course, a direct subsidy to the company--if a company needs workers it should either hire locally or, if it needs to raid other cities or states it should pay a premium to bring those workers in. Having city X pay 1000 dollars to move one citizen to city Y to take up a job there which doesn't cover moving costs seems like a direct subsidy from the taxpayers in city X to the business in city Y.
I couldn't get him to agree and he got really, really, angry with me for being so mean and stingy with hypothetical imaginary public money for "some guy" who could absolutely get that good job if he only had money to move.
And, as a sidenote to all of this, when I was a kid back in the early '60s, our milkman supported his family of four on what he made delivering milk. Sent his two daughters to college on that as well. That job disappeared by the late '70s, but it's back now--as a minimum-wage, part-time, no benefits job.
ReplyDeleteTo me, that kind of change encapsulates everything we're talking about here. Jobs that once supported a family so that one parent could stay home with the kids now don't even support one individual. And the bulk of THAT particular societal change has been a direct result of the policies instituted by the people who most deplore that particular societal change--conservatives.
Well, you did have TEDDY Roosevelt in there. He, at least, went for trust busting in a big way. Even after you take into account that TR was only following the lead of the states (Kansas, of all places, was the first state to pass anti-trust legislation--aimed at Rockefeller's Standard Oil), at least he signed the damn bills and pushed the prosecutions when it came to it.
ReplyDeleteBut they can't use Obama to drag down Hillary unless she didn't learn Gore's lesson, and I'm pretty sure she did. If they were to impeach Obama he'd be more popular than ever and when he campaigned for Hillary it would bring out voters for her that might otherwise sit on their hands. Plus she'd have Bill who is still a crowd pleaser. The only way an Obama impeachment matters is if it caused Hillary to shy away from Obama or claiming the mantle of a continuation of Obama's successful policies and a progressive move forward. If she's stupid enough to do that then she won't win anyway.
ReplyDeleteMy wife went to the University of Chicago law school, which, as you might expect, attracts a lot of glibertarians. In one of her classes, a student argued that the free market should take care of the role of the state in licensing doctors. You can only give so many people blood infections before someone notices, obviously.
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect, I should have told my wife to pass along the offer that anytime she needed an appendix removed my services are extremely cheap, though it's BYOB sterilization. Chemo? I've got a smoke detector, a blender, and make a mean smoothie.
Two Jews, three opinions.
ReplyDeleteAs a new parent, I'm really depressed about the state of child and family policies in the U.S., which are the worst in the developed world. Basically, we're neck and neck with Mexico. I got zero family leave aside from what I can take without getting fired via FMLA. (Women at my office get a tiny bit and then have to take disability, because that's the message we want to send to parents.) My wife and I gave up about $30k to be with our kid for the first few months. Sorry, small businesses that we used to patronize! Every time I had to push the customer-assistance button to get the baby-formula shelf unlocked by heart sank.
ReplyDeleteFrom birth to kindergarten, you're mostly on your own (really, even before birth), even though those years are developmentally critical. Then we complain when Our Children Can't Read, even though they're our children, in a collective-responsibility sense, only when they turn five or six. Then we blame the teachers for not catching students up fast enough. That's what I recall from the data here in Chicago: students are, on average, way fucking far behind when they start, and merely behind when they finish.
The cynic in me thinks that it's ultimately a system designed to lock in privilege, and that's why think-tank dickheads like it. Those first few years are enormously important, and if you can afford to stay home, a nanny, or a good day-care center (not a trivial process to navigate), it's a huge head start.
You think that Republicans can learn something that complex? Their logic is simple:
ReplyDeleteYep. A fun thing to do is point out that the intent of the minimum wage was to allow one person to support four. Maybe we're supposed to build our own time machines so we can work in the 21st century but live in the mid-20th.
ReplyDeleteOr again, maybe it is all of those horrible job killing regulations that have driven up costs so that the current minimum wage doesn't go as far as it should. Bread would still be a nickle if we were all willing to explore the dietary benefits of sawdust and rat bits!
But it's neo-feudalism. With a fresh lilac scent. And Retsyn™!
ReplyDelete"It's like my old acting coach used to say to me: We've got all the words, Eddie. Now we just have to get them in the right order." [/montypython]
ReplyDeleteTo quote redoubtagain - You first.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention you can get Gray's Anatomy for next to nothing on line.
ReplyDeleteI know right? So far as I know, lye is still a key ingredient in relaxers. And let us contemplate the many ways in which the use of hot wax can go horribly wrong. OK, let us stop because Eeeeeee!
ReplyDeleteBut I guess they figure that since they only ever go in for a short session with an electric trimmer (assuming they aren't DIY Comboverists) so the fuck to anyone who needs anything more complex. They're probably gay a darkie a woman some combination of the above so who cares?
I read the Room To Grow manifesto and Peter Wehner's introductory essay started to read like something out of The Nation:
ReplyDeleteIn 2012, according to the Census Bureau, the typical household made $51,017, roughly the same as the typical household made a quarter of a century ago. “America has been standing still for a full generation,” writes Porter.
At the same time, those in the middle class have been working longer hours— an average of more than 200 more hours per year than they did in 1979 (and an average of more than 300 hours per year for the upper middle class). So mid- dle-class Americans are working longer even as, in several important respects, they are losing ground.
...
The odds of escaping poverty are about half as high in the United States as in more mobile coun- tries like Denmark...
...
Many European countries now have more social mobility and opportunity than the United States...
(But then this was all just a set up to excoriate Obama with crap like
No president has amassed as bad a record when it comes to job creation.
Which is, of course, false. According to the BLS, more jobs have been created under Obama in 6 years than all 8 of Bush's term, despite a huge loss of employment in the public sector.)
For a long time, conservatives wouldn't even acknowledge that stagnant wages, inequality, or lack of healthcare even existed, no less that these things were problems. So, on the surface, it looked like they'd finally come round. But I think what we're seeing here is just a new tactic to regain some credibility with a middle-class public that's experiencing all of these problems firsthand. Of course, it's just a coincidence that the radical and reactionary agenda they've been pushing for decades just happen to be the solutions for these newly acknowledged problems. But these guys are like used car salesmen who are always closing: "You want it in red? If I can get if for you in red will you buy the car?" becomes "If I agree that inequality is a problem will you buy my tax cut?"
But you see, Lukas believes there's only discrimination against pregnant women because of the burdens government places on people who hire them. For instance, as she said elsewhere, if pregnant women can sue for discrimination, employers won't want to hire them, therefore if we eliminate discrimination laws we eliminate discrimination.
ReplyDeleteJob security in the new millenium...
ReplyDeleteNo doubt, but I'm referring to the fact that KY is the official abbreviation for Kentucky.
ReplyDeleteThe small business owners that I know would look at that and think that the government was only trying to deceive them. They know that the real facts come from the AM radio.
ReplyDeleteThese people meet one another and smile knowingly when they talk about where their tax dollars are being spent. These are the people who impress one another with how strong and smart they are by imitating their favorite personalities on conservative talk radio. That pie chart wouldn't impress them at all.
It's true. I've been there.
ReplyDeleteThere's no dignity at all in living the life of the working poor, no matter what people say.
a system designed to lock in privilege
ReplyDeleteYes. Yes. Yes.
When looked at that way, it makes sense. From any other perspective, it's nuts.
I guess its still worth doing. I also think that people receive information in a number of ways--some of them quite passive and through repetition.
ReplyDeletei woulda built that time machine BUT SOME GUMMIT BUREAUCRAT says plutonium is "deadly" and "too" "dangerous" to keep in my apartment building's basement, and anyone who'd try is "insane" and "probably a criminal anyway" and i say I READ MATT YGLESIAS AND WHERE'S MY FREEDOM
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have to agree. It's probably still worth doing.
ReplyDeleteYou really can't blame people for not receiving information if it isn't being put out there. I should hope for the best even if I expect the worst.
Hey, ten bucks buys a lot of ramen!
ReplyDeleteThis works for everything! If we make employers pay people lots of money they won't hire them. So if we end all laws that force employers to pay any wages at all (such as anti slavery laws) employers will be freed up to hire lots of workers. Albeit for no money at all.
ReplyDeleteMmmm, copper gluconate is yummy!
ReplyDeleteIsn't there already a tax deduction for moving expenses? But that doesn't help much if you have a job.
ReplyDeleteSo, Denmark and many other European countries have lapped the US in social mobility, one conservative even manages to point it out...And then advocates for something that those countries are pointedly NOT DOING, but we are? How about we try what makes Denmark and France more successful? These people are really amazing.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be great if someone (Ezra Klein?) could start something like WikiBudget and WikiRegulations: not only a breakdown of what gets spent for what, but "this program/regulation was started because of this problem; this apparently incomprehensible legalese essentially means this, and it's there to try to anticipate this kind of loophole."
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as someone who makes their living via a license that is required in 49 states (fuck you, Mississippi!), I'm rather suspicious that ending that requirement would reduce my salary.
ReplyDeleteOh wait, look at Mississippi: yep, reduced by a significant, middle class-exiting amount. Proof of concept!
If The Feminine Mystique is any indication, they did, but they were soaked in Bernays sauce basically from birth to make them that way. (See what I did there?)
ReplyDeleteAs we've just found out about the Hudalek, even in Canada, things go evil with Koch...
ReplyDeleteI think there's a fair amount of wanting to smash something the other guy likes. Not just because the other guy likes it, but because they know it works and despite all of their bitching about how horrible it is, people like the other guy's thing and they can't come up with a better idea.
ReplyDeleteOr even an equally good alternative.
Or even something that's kind of shitty but could be improved with a little thought and work.
Or even a Godawful fucktastrophe of an idea, but their hearts are in the right place and they mean well.
I want to dance with these two comments...well, from my side of the mechitza, anyway. :D
ReplyDeleteHow about we try what makes Denmark and France more successful?
ReplyDeleteBecause they're not innately more successful, merely currently less unsuccessful, and all because we've finally become even more socialist than Europe, thanks to Obama.
(To tie it back into their school "reform" shtick, how come they holler about how other countries beat us out on education, yet somehow the answer isn't Finland's teacher's union, high teacher salaries, and avoidance of teaching to the test? The answer may surprise you!)
Hee. I'm a mid-Boom boomer, and this was totally my Greatest Generation-parents' shtick. "We're spending our kids' inheritance!" It was a big LOL deal. My father even suggested once (1990s, I forget when), only half-jokingly, that it was time for the three of us kids to start sending them money for, I guess, child-raisin' reparations. (None of us had children of our own, thus no potential conflicts of interest.) Thank goodness the union he despised ensured that they had solid, reliable pension payments to cover what turned out to be a good quarter century of retirement in Florida. Do I resent them for their good fortune? No way. I only wish everyone were so fortunate. It was a brief post-WWII moment in time, an exceptional moment, a not-normal moment. Remember? We now return to our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.
ReplyDelete(whoosh)
ReplyDeleteI had no idea! Wow.
ReplyDeleteI know its late to contribute constructively, but this just occurred to me while I was off buying booze to kill the pain of existence. Conservatives fundamentally just do not understand how a society, in particular a modern society, works. There are many goods I will never consume directly (such as someone else's education, certain kinds of public transportation) that I benefit from enormously because of my dependence on other's having access to those goods. Frequently, these are common goods (or public goods in the economist's sense) that require government action to either facilitate their production or produce them directly. This is key; its not exactly selfishness: they honestly can't see very well past what is in their actual consumer bundle to how there are all sorts of goods that have generally beneficial effects even if only some are making direct use of them.
ReplyDelete"Go home, social scientist; you're drunk."