Shorter Megan McArdle: We had to bail out the banks or else we would have had "widespread bank runs," but saving the auto industry is corrupt.
Longer Version:
It was sheer political theater, and incredibly corrosive to public trust in our government institutions, as well as a gross misallocation of economic resources.
The same could be said for the banks, but won't be, at least not by McArdle.
The role of the state is to prevent human suffering, not prop up failing enterprises that happen to have politically well-connected employees.
Can we all stop pretending that she's a Libertarian now? Thank you.
I am genuinely struggling to come up with what principled argument Andrew might be making in his head for what has always struck me as a pretty blatant handout to a powerful Democratic interest group.
In other words, Sullivan zinged McArdle on her lies a couple of times and McArdle gets revenge by implying Sullivan's unprincipled. Sadly, their little feud is not likely to go far. Both are too self-absorbed to be truly vicious.
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4 comments:
The irrelevance of Meganism in the face of oil spills, economic meltdown & an utterly failed healthcare system has topped the levees of her ignorance.
Crooked Timber gets clinical on the whole damn noise machine-
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/05/03/the-oregon-petition-a-case-study-in-agnotology/#more-15678
"I am genuinely struggling to come up with what principled argument..."
That says it all, doesn't it? Unless someone On High gives Meg her daily Talking Points, she can't imagine why the Federal Gov would want to save thousands of jobs during a Depression!
One of the most galling things about Megan McArdle, as with her fellow twit and chickenhawk Richard Cohen, is that they're so astoundingly unreflective. Cohen doesn't really think - he's just a set of attitudes, but he just blathers away, pretending there's some higher principle behind his insular biases. McArdle's the same way. Every judgment she makes is based on furthering class warfare by the privileged and/or personal gain. Even David Brooks isn't quite as noxious – or maybe he's just a slightly more self-aware scumbag (who can turn on enough charm to appear as a "reasonable" conservative on NPR and PBS). McArdle and Cohen can barely write a single piece without demonstrating basic logical fallacies and/or personal hypocrisy. They've had such things spelled out to them very slowly and clearly, yet they just don't get it.
Me-gan says it would have been easier (and cheaper) to give $100,000 to each worker "and have them start over somewhere else".
Had I cared to register and log-in, I would have said, "Where? At what? All those well-paying manufacturing jobs the auto workers are just too dang lazy to go after?"
And she cites "bank runs" as having been appropriately fended-off by TARP. Yes, "runs" on FDIC-guaranteed accounts.
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