tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post2459385346157950733..comments2023-12-20T04:18:41.617-06:00Comments on The Hunting of the Snark: Those Knees Are Looking A Little RaggedSusan of Texashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-80854268530903095102012-01-25T11:06:15.951-06:002012-01-25T11:06:15.951-06:00I so have to write that script.I so have to write that script.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-78866532958180034292012-01-25T08:02:00.750-06:002012-01-25T08:02:00.750-06:00Megan is now third on the sidebar at the Atlantic ...Megan is now third on the sidebar at the Atlantic behind Fallows and Wright.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-24722913990044289082012-01-25T07:44:27.550-06:002012-01-25T07:44:27.550-06:00With that hilarious scene where she beats the work...With that hilarious scene where she beats the worker on the candy wrapper line for not being able to keep up with the rate of candy going by.fishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01522672049371678717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-65506051190660272132012-01-23T14:52:41.210-06:002012-01-23T14:52:41.210-06:00As always, I welcome all riffs, additions and amen...As always, I welcome all riffs, additions and amendments from aimai. <br /><br /><i>She'd make a great sitcom, like an evil I Love Lucy. Instead of scheming to get into Ricky's act, McArdle could scheme to aid Koch Industries. <br /><br />Wacky hijinks ensue.</i><br /><br />You realize you have to write this now, don't you? "<i>I Love Ayn</i>, starring Megan McArdle, who each week fights back the hoards of unwashed moochers!"Batocchiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02193752396025012825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-43676578380065452602012-01-23T14:14:44.307-06:002012-01-23T14:14:44.307-06:00I can't figure out what I like best--the way e...I can't figure out what I like best--the way everything is all about her, or her assumption that the entire world is trying to claw its way into a tiny elite world, or her idolatry of the rich and overt contempt for the poor. <br /><br />She'd make a great sitcom, like an evil I Love Lucy. Instead of scheming to get into Ricky's act, McArdle could scheme to aid Koch Industries.<br /><br />Wacky hijinks ensue.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-24056894522862317032012-01-23T09:46:56.591-06:002012-01-23T09:46:56.591-06:00Aimai,
I think you ahve hit the nail on the head ...Aimai,<br /><br />I think you ahve hit the nail on the head with the 'hoocoodanode' comment.<br /><br />Here is McMegan in a straight faced post about the 'cost of cancer drugs'<br />http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/what-cost-cancer-treatment/251700/<br /><br /><i>I tend to think that more of the questions are like this one. Is spending $50,000 to give a pancreatic cancer patient an extra 5-9 months of life a wasted expenditure, or a medical advance? On the one hand, 5-9 months isn't very long. On the other hand, for a typical pancreatic cancer patient, you've doubled their lifespan, which seems like a very long time indeed.</i><br /><br />I love the way she unquestioningly accepts that the drug company has the right to price the drug at 50k for a treatment and <b>someone</b> should reimburse them for it - only question is who - or the patient should die.<br /><br />She spent the entire health care debate railing against making precisely this kind of tradeoff decision as 'death panels' and here she is with 'hoocoodanode'.<br /><br />It never gets old, really.cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02438583188725326668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-56005958938238850712012-01-23T06:37:11.269-06:002012-01-23T06:37:11.269-06:00I like the implication of Batocchio's quote th...I like the implication of Batocchio's quote that "caring about taxing the rich in order to help the poor" is somehow vulgar and almost prurient while Megan's vapid Cavuto mark style "thinking" about the poor "I wonder about poor kids, I really do" is somehow itself a thoughtful and moral act of charitable goodness.<br /><br />Also, Megan's main "tell" and her go to phrase is "Lets Face It..." Just as Newt ricchochets from "Frankly" to something that I've suppressed Megan always follows "Lets Face It" with a straight up lie masquerading as a brave truth.<br /><br />I do wonder how conversation goes in that household:<br /><br />"Lets face it...you do not want dessert, you want me to have dessert."<br /><br />Lets face it, we all hate toddlers because they are untidy, expensive, loud and demand virtue.<br /><br />Lets face it, you would have forgotten to pay your taxes too.<br /><br />Lets face it, everyone is a six foot tall elf masquerading as an economist...<br /><br />Maybe Lets face it is her "whocoodanode?"<br /><br />aimaiaimaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03956073425680585780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-42630802554555038342012-01-22T22:22:43.080-06:002012-01-22T22:22:43.080-06:00Gawd, her title is unusually honest for her and es...Gawd, her title is unusually honest for her and especially loathsome.<br /><br />I can’t count how many conservatives and "libertarians" have made her basic argument or variations on it. Their key objective (hackwork is all about achieving/avoiding a specific outcome) is that <i>you should not raise taxes on the rich.</i> I particularly like:<br /><br />"And I care about whether income inequality itself produces some sort of structural advantage in the political system. (I'm skeptical). But I don't care whether Bill Gates lives in a giant robot house that cost eighteen-squintillion dollars. What I care about is whether some kid is growing up in a roach infested shack with no heat--something that has basically nothing to do with the size of Gates' fortune."<br /><br />Yes, what possibly can be done about this? It's such a puzzle! Public policy <i>cannot</i> address income and wealth inequality in any significant way! <br /><br />'Capitalism is about winners and losers,' so who cares if the losers have to eat cat food or go without health care and die? Gosh, if McMegan really cared about the "absolute condition of the poor," we could just make a much more progressive tax system and investing that money in the Commons (with some extra help for the poor).Batocchiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02193752396025012825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-38423331609344671492012-01-21T10:43:32.215-06:002012-01-21T10:43:32.215-06:00"Everyone in the country cannot be above aver..."Everyone in the country cannot be above average. For the poor to have a better shot at ending up in the top quintiles, the folks in the top few quintiles have to run the risk of ending up in the lowest."<br /><br />Those two sentences may be the most sub par lines of thought that these eyes have ever read.<br /><br />Were this reader someone who believed in violence merely for the pure enjoyment of violence, this reader would strongly support the extended beatings of one Suderman, Peter and McArdle, Francis X. with steel crowbars. Preferably steel crowbars Made in the Ole' U.S. of A.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-69970163347682287702012-01-21T06:34:45.881-06:002012-01-21T06:34:45.881-06:00Aw, come on aimai... she comes from a family of ac...Aw, come on aimai... she comes from a family of academics who are intellectually intimidating.<br /><br />So there.cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02438583188725326668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-31069285729851454402012-01-20T20:58:09.162-06:002012-01-20T20:58:09.162-06:00I agree with everyone except that its clear she...I agree with everyone except that its clear she's not borderline evil--she's beyond even the banality of evil. She's straight up evil. The only human weakness I see here (other than a propensity for self deception) is that she can't face her evil alone and she subsitutes "we" and "they" and "the middle class" for the truly degraded thinking that she would otherwise have to attribute to...herself.<br /><br />Of course pouring money into--say--public parks, sanitation, cleaning the streets, public schools, public hospitals, public libraries, public spaces, public arts would materially raise the salaries and job prospects of the working poor and the middle class while simultaneously ameliorating all of the ills she sees that keep the middle class from being able even to tolerate the presence of the poor.<br /><br />Enough jobs means rising wages, loss of fear of unemployment, and more money in the economy to pay people for the work they are doing. High taxes to pay for public goods that are evenly distributed (including care of public spaces) create low unemployment and that, in turn, creates a healthy, happy, society in which people don't need to steal (theft isn't really a big problem from poor to rich its really a big problem within poor neighborhoods or from rich to poor when credit cards, banks, realtors, police, hospitals, and etc... rip off people who have the least chance of fighting back. And people who have good, safe, jobs don't need to self medicate to get through the pain of life.<br /><br />Jeebus on toast points you don't have to be any kind of economist to know that. You just have to be minimally observant and minorly humane.<br /><br />My grandfather was an economist. A new dealer and a Keynsian and all like that. It used to be that whenever I travelled through India if I bumped into an old white guy in his sixties or seventies he would turn out to be a development economist who knew him. These guys always had some powerful story to tell about why they became economists. One told me , he was Dutch, that as a boy he had been in a Japanese Internment camp in Indonesia and the sight of the other prisoners starving to death, and his own hunger, had given him a lifelong purpose to alleviate suffering and hunger.<br /><br />Megan and her ilk just aren't fit to lick their boots.<br /><br />aimaiaimaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03956073425680585780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-80392877694790477392012-01-20T14:21:59.230-06:002012-01-20T14:21:59.230-06:00Fish: but there should not be a "limited"...<i>Fish: but there should not be a "limited" number of middle-class, upper middle class professions being fought over tooth and claw.</i><br /><br />Yup, the real miss in the article isn't that people will strongly resist losing advantages, it is that income inequality forces all the issues she brought up.fishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01522672049371678717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-84393854472913054052012-01-20T12:48:54.359-06:002012-01-20T12:48:54.359-06:00http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/ob...http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/obamas.html<br /><br />Oh hey, McArdle shows up and accuses Andrew of cherrypicking data and that a FRESHMAN would get FLUNKED for it. <br /><br />*yawn*Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-24022502945055406062012-01-20T11:29:52.554-06:002012-01-20T11:29:52.554-06:00McArdle likes to traffic in "let's face i...McArdle likes to traffic in "let's face it" demands that, she thinks, invoke universally-acknowledged facts (about human nature, mostly) and mark her writing as sensible and honest. <br /><br />So it's "let's face it: middle class parents will fight for advantages for their kids, regardless of their politics" and "let's face it, New York City finance workers are embedded in a certain lifestyle as a consequence of living in NYC, and need their bonuses." The exigencies of "human nature" must be acknowledged and accommodated.<br /><br />But when you counter with, "let's face it, greed is a universal, eternal human vice and all of society (and capitalism) must be protected from its proven bad consequences" or "let's face it, privilege, and the desire to defend it, have been with us since the dawn of civilization, and every noble political development, from Magna Carta to Tahrir Square, has served to limit its power," she's a "libertarian," living in a world in which all things are possible for people of merit and ability, nothing is fated, and there wouldn't be any poverty if it weren't for all those damn poor people.Mr.Wonderfulnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-76498811768943839432012-01-20T09:57:29.001-06:002012-01-20T09:57:29.001-06:00"...and your darling daughter is going to wor...<i>"...and your darling daughter is going to work the supermarket checkout...."</i><br /><br />I fucking hate this kind of bullshit. So McArdle is happy to receive her million dollar ThermoCookbot contraption. Does she not understand how she received it, about how many lesser human beings had a part in assembling it, packing it, shipping it? And how these lesser humans then unpacked it, put it on a shelf, opened the damn store on time in the morning, waited on superior humans like McArdle, took her money, processed her credit card transaction, answered her questions about the item's use, and then in all likelihood said "Thank you for shopping here" as McArdle breezed out.<br /><br />Did she notice that she didn't slip and fall on broken steps, malfunctioning escalators, or widely strewn garbage - because some lesser working stiffs keep working on that shit? And where exactly did she get the food items she fed into that fancy new machine? Ooh! A kind of store-like establishment that offers vegetables, meats, and cheese in exchange for money.<br /><br />Age quod agis, McArdle. Do what you're doing. All the checkout clerks at my favorite local supermarket do their jobs better than McArdle does hers.Larkspurnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-52024811743861632522012-01-20T09:36:20.921-06:002012-01-20T09:36:20.921-06:00"No matter how deeply ideologically committed..."No matter how deeply ideologically committed you are to public education and income mobility, you will not leave your kid in a high-poverty school where gangs are valorized and college is not--or even in a working class school that will close off the chances for admission to Harvard. "<br /><br />Who the fork is her audience for this essay? The parents of Harvard freshmen? What about the rest of the nation? I guess all friends plan to send the prodgies to Harvard...where else.<br /><br />But not all American kids expect to go there.tony in san diegonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-41721668180279791792012-01-20T08:50:16.328-06:002012-01-20T08:50:16.328-06:00McArdle simultaneously acknowledges and ignores th...McArdle simultaneously acknowledges and ignores the fact that income inequity is a symptom, and not the problem in and of itself.<br /><br />Normally, I would be impressed with a writer who could pull that off with as little visible effort as she showed, but since it's McArdle, it must have been a happy accident rather than the result of effort or skill or anything like that.<br /><br />- spencerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-72938336938356710952012-01-20T07:14:29.971-06:002012-01-20T07:14:29.971-06:00I am utterly speechless with horror at this one. ...I am utterly speechless with horror at this one. Upper middle class comfort or squalor? Those are literally the only two options she can imagine? How can she be so completely ignorant of the economic history of...the industrial world?Lurking Canadiannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-56569964149909901082012-01-19T19:56:47.387-06:002012-01-19T19:56:47.387-06:00What McArdle seems not to realize is that increasi...What McArdle seems not to realize is that increasing inequality has altered the ratio of poor to middle, and middle to rich. <br /><br />When a greater portion of income goes to the top 1% every year, more middle-class people fall into poverty; and when this continues for decades, our nation, which used to be dominated by a large and prosperous middle class, becomes more like the banana-republic/oligarchical model of small, obscenely wealthy ruling class, small and struggling middle, and large, hopeless underclass.<br /><br />In such a society hardly anyone lives comfortably: the rich cower in fortified compounds, the middle class sees its living standard constantly falling, and the poor are powerless to change their lot in life, short of revolution. <br /><br />Historically, people have come to the United States to escape such societies. Now we are becoming one.<br /><br />She is right that any parent, no matter what their politics, will fight for their children's chances in life.<br /><br />But that misses the point, which is that increasing inequality is bad for everyone, and bad for our country; whereas policies that aim to increase the size of the middle class will offer opportunities to the children of the poor, WITHOUT creating the zero-sum "if they rise, we must fall" scenario which McArdle seems to believe is the only option.<br /><br />Nancy IrvingAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-61588967197537899272012-01-19T18:34:36.084-06:002012-01-19T18:34:36.084-06:00Fish: but there should not be a "limited"...Fish: but there should not be a "limited" number of middle-class, upper middle class professions being fought over tooth and claw. That wasn't the case in the 50's, 60's and 70's, probably thanks to the high taxes levied on "teh rich".<br /><br />But once the Rich were allowed to keep more and more of their un-rightfully earned wealth, <i>they</i> created the class war between poor & middle class and upper-middle class, in order to keep from ever again handing over "their" money (as if it hadn't been created by the sweat of the Poor/Middle Class).<br /><br />And now they're sitting on that money. Money that used to be constructively to fund schools, hospitals, build roads, send men into space. <br /><br /><b>Just. Sitting. On. It.</b><br /><br />Sneering at the 99.9%ersKathyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03176801494652946278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-77826662406769322682012-01-19T17:53:49.691-06:002012-01-19T17:53:49.691-06:00But how many doctors and lawyers would simply glum...<i>But how many doctors and lawyers would simply glumly accept it if you told them that sorry, junior's going to be an intermittently employed long-haul trucker, and your darling daughter is going to work the supermarket checkout, because all the more lucrative and interesting slots went to smarter and more talented people?</i><br /><br />Usually, with pundits of the McArdle sort, they are perpetually a-tremble in Paris during the summer of 1789. The peasants are on the march. They advance, hideously, criminally, armed with pitchforks and knives. They arrive, scowling and cackling, at the estates of the haplessly powerful. Can this ungodly upheaval be stopped in time? <br /><br />But now, re-working the formula a bit, McArdle offers some variety. Here we are, stranded in China in the depths of the Cultural Revolution. Observe professors forced to scrub latrines! He was once the emperor of China, but now he is a lowly municipal gardener!<br /><br /><i>After a disappointing year, the big banks are pulling back on their bonus pools. A lot. This is going to be hard on bankers whose salaries are usually a very small part of their overall compensation--and yes, yes, before you drag out the world's smallest violin, let me agree that they have no entitlement to anything more. Nonetheless, people tend to build their life around their expected salaries, and in New York, this choice is particularly important.</i><br /><br />But not so important if one is part of the hoi polloi. Offshored jobs, downsized jobs, vanished pensions, loss of benefits: they're the birth pangs of an evolving world, and you'd better evolve along with it. Pity the rich who are threatened with change; babble smugly to everyone else.<br /><br />A libertarian sycophant: it's an ugly, smelly job, but someone's got to do it. You dream of mastery while drudging away as a hack. One day, surely, you will rise. You will get to be as busily lazy-minded as a David Brooks or Thomas Friedman. You will be a sage, a mover and shaker, a seminal force. In the mean time, however, you must pretend to be an economist.antonellohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12982114674256413921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-357153162524724442012-01-19T16:33:54.221-06:002012-01-19T16:33:54.221-06:00I like how one of her two examples of "crappy...I like how one of her two examples of "crappy jobs" that nobody wants is caring for Alzeimer's patients. Sanitation work and caring for the elderly were the two worst jobs she could think of. Bizarre.atatnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-70266718244301724742012-01-19T15:22:49.395-06:002012-01-19T15:22:49.395-06:00As much as it pains me to say it (and I only read ...As much as it pains me to say it (and I only read Susan's excerpts not the whole thing), and as much stupid as there is in the post, I think her main point is that when push comes to shove, people (even so called liberals) will resist allowing upward mobility if it means they and their kids will lose the advantages they have. And <a href="http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ofmk.htm" rel="nofollow">she is probably right</a>.fishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01522672049371678717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-82913158342253695482012-01-19T14:30:29.179-06:002012-01-19T14:30:29.179-06:00Everyone in the country cannot be above average. F...<i>Everyone in the country cannot be above average. For the poor to have a better shot at ending up in the top quintiles, the folks in the top few quintiles have to run the risk of ending up in the lowest.</i><br /><br />It simply does not occur to her that it is possible to actually raise the average. <br /><br />The woman is borderline evil.cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02438583188725326668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-26930427252824572042012-01-19T14:26:14.209-06:002012-01-19T14:26:14.209-06:00I can't stomach McArdle, but I usually enjoy y...I can't stomach McArdle, but I usually enjoy your take-downs. I was too disgusted by her to get through this one, though. It may take me a few tries...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com