Peanuts generator here.
Oh sweet Jesus.
Friday Girl Talk: Can a Professional Woman Go Curly?
By Megan McArdle
Last week, I went up to New York on business, and my mother persuaded me to get my hair cut at Devachan, a salon that specializes in curly hair. Devachan isn't so much a hair salon as a cult, whose bible is Curly Girl, the how-to book written by salon owner Lorraine Massey.
As the journalistic cliche goes, I went in a skeptic, and came out a believer. My hair felt amazing. My curls were bouncy, and lasted for days. It was hands down the best curly cut I've ever had.
Two hundred thousand dollars a year, more or less. $200,000 a year. That's four teacher salaries. You could pay someone to educate 600 students for that much money.
Or you could pay Megan McArdle $200,000 to reprint funny pictures and talk about her naturally curly hair.
Wonder if she paid for the cut, or just promised to plug it on her blog?
ReplyDeleteOf course, if it's the latter, "My curls were bouncy, and lasted for days" isn't the greatest endorsement I've ever seen.
I would be very disappointed in her if she did not trade the service for a plug on her blog. I know how fond she is of gains from trade.
ReplyDeleteAt least she didn't tell us to not hate her because she's beautiful.
Wait - the Atlantic is paying McArdle $200K for her editorials? Where does that number come from?
ReplyDeleteJeebus. Must be nice to come from a family that smooths out life's rough little edges for you like that. I figured she was making six figures, but closer to half that.
(on a related note - how does The Atlantic even HAVE $200K to hand out for someone to write up blog entries that misunderstand business and economics in ways that make sophomore econ majors weep? Shouldn't they be doing something useful with that money - something that improves their brand instead of driving it into the ground?)
I don't know exactly what she makes but she has said twice that she and P. Suderman make around $300,00+ a year. It wasn't very wise to discuss her salary in public but she wanted to complain about not being richer. I discussed this here.
ReplyDeleteThe Atlantic has gone from losing millions every year to making over a million in profit (last year, I believe). The salons, the Ideas festival, the on-line advertising are all raking in money.
ReplyDeleteThe Atlantic has gone from losing millions every year to making over a million in profit (last year, I believe). The salons, the Ideas festival, the on-line advertising are all raking in money.
ReplyDeleteCheerleading for the plutocrats as they win the class war they've been waging for three decades?
Awesome.
What comes after? Heh. Only libtards contemplate such things.
~
Are the McArdle-Sudermans changing their name to the Short and Curlies?
ReplyDeleteUgh, McArdle's striving is really kinda sad. Her household can obviously live very comfortably. Still, they are at best Galtian Underlords and can't afford the luxuries of the really rich. So Megs settles for owning the fanciest kitchen knives, getting the best haircut, buying the first iPhone, etc. Meanwhile homeownership appears to befuddle her.
ReplyDeleteShe reminds me of a friend of a friend who made decent but not spectacular money and always insisted on buying the prestige brand of everything. He had a large set of Wusthof knives just in case he needed to cut the top off a carrot. Mostly, though, he boiled his spaghetti and warmed his jarred pasta sauce in All-Clad pans. He could go on and on about how the gun he owned (which--I'm not making this up--he had never once fired) was the very best thing on the market. He had custom suits to wear to his IT job. Etc.
Of course, he could not quite afford a residence worthy of himself, so he lived in a dumpy apartment in a dodgy part of town (that's why he needed the gun!) in order to buy the other stuff.
To each his own, I suppose, but the guy was quite a sight to behold.
Oh, and the best salt! How could I forget about the pink grains of crystalline status gracing the McSuderman tabletop?
ReplyDeleteI can understand splurging on a really good haircut if you must go on tv for your job. I can't understand blogging about it in The Atlantic. She doesn't have a lot of respect for her job.
ReplyDeleteNow she's discussing aliens. What the hell, it's not like there's anything going on in the markets.
ReplyDeleteI find McArdle calling herself a "professional woman" almost as adorable as when my son used to call himself a "certified pilot paleontologist".
ReplyDeleteok, not quite.
Now she's discussing aliens. What the hell, it's not like there's anything going on in the markets.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing going on in the markets. It's all summer doldrums. Many of the traders and fund managers are on vacation.
What happens in the markets right now is completely irrelevant; stock prices don't start counting until after Labour weekend. (And in any case, stock markets aren't the most determinative in terms of economic fundamentals; the market that matters the most is bonds.)
(Or the old proverb: "Sell in May and go away, stay away till St. Leger Day/Halloween")
the problem with her personal blogging is that she's such a horrible person.
ReplyDeleteHeh! That says it all.
Myles is groping around the edges of the vestiges of a point. (Congratulations!) But missing the important one. (Awwww.) I agree that the stock market right now is frothy and irrational, but something actually has happened, and there are people who are panicked because their savings on paper have shrunk by 15% or so. Discussing this, even if just to calm down fears of catastrophe, would seem like the job of an economics and business columnist, no?
ReplyDeleteI agree that the stock market right now is frothy and irrational, but something actually has happened, and there are people who are panicked because their savings on paper have shrunk by 15% or so. Discussing this, even if just to calm down fears of catastrophe, would seem like the job of an economics and business columnist, no?
ReplyDeletePeople's savings have not shrunk by 15% or so. It seems they have, but they haven't. The only way to discuss this is to say "this is froth and there's nothing really going on." You can't discuss something that is phantasmal. For the whole downgrade/euro-mess thing, you still have to wait until September for the results to fall into place, because lots of major fund managers are still on vacation.
I personally think no time-current finance blogging should happen over the summer at all, because the financial markets aren't really doing anything. Megan should just take one long vacation like the major participants in the financial markets she's paid to write about.
Are the McArdle-Sudermans changing their name to the Short and Curlies?
ReplyDeleteThis is one arrow that splits in two and hits two bull's eyes. Come on, Anonymous! Claim your prize.
the market that matters the most is bonds
ReplyDeleteHere Myles and I agree! And what is the bond market telling us?
Krugman is right! (Not to mention, Atrios, myself, etc.)
~
"...Labour weekend."
ReplyDeleteIs that a McArdlesque affectation or are you Canadian? Just curious.
I would think the managers/editors of the Atlantic would frown upon Megan posting personal, Facebook-type gossip on her Economics Blog. But then, they let her post a video of herself making a big mess in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteMyles, one certainly can discuss something that is phantasmal. What I am saying is that we should discuss this — in point of fact, you are trying to.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, your point about savings only seeming to have shrunk is, to non-financiers, ludicrous. I do understand what you mean, I'm pretty sure (I have a degree in economics, so my comprehension of bullshit is fairly good), but it reminds me of Harold Wilson's famous statement when trying to explain why he had devalued the currency that "the pound in your pocket has not been devalued" — which basically caused laughter and panic in equal measure.
The Atlantic really needs a competent business and economics columnist, precisely because the level of understanding of economics generally is terrible.
Myles, king of the pivot. Mistress mcmegtard taught him too well
ReplyDeleteHere Myles and I agree! And what is the bond market telling us?
ReplyDeleteKrugman is right! (Not to mention, Atrios, myself, etc.)
And I agree with you too. The logical thing to do is for the US Treasury to borrow more until they push yields up.
Is that a McArdlesque affectation or are you Canadian? Just curious.
I'm Canadian.
but it reminds me of Harold Wilson's famous statement when trying to explain why he had devalued the currency that "the pound in your pocket has not been devalued" — which basically caused laughter and panic in equal measure.
This isn't the same thing at all. When Wilson (I thought it was Harold Macmillan?) devalued the pound, the real value of the pound did decrease. If the US dollar had been devalued at the same time, however, the same would not occur because the USD was the world's reference currency and the pound sterling was not.
But the stock market is something else completely. The kind of swings we've seen recently are in the long run negligible. Right now the chief immediate problem is the euromess, and if people cared about their money that's what they should be following intently, because if the euro unravels we are looking at Armageddon.
Oh dear, Myles, you also did not understand Harold Wilson? I am disappointed in you.
ReplyDeleteIt was Wilson, who cut the then-fixed pound/dollar exchange rate by about 14%. This was soon successful in adjusting the balance of trade, but at the time he felt it necessary to explain that it did not automatically mean an instant 14% rise in domestic prices, though he conceded that some limited domestic inflation was inevitable.
Unfortunately for Wilson, he did not do that very artfully; which is where competent columnists ought to come in, which brings us back to where we started.
This was soon successful in adjusting the balance of trade, but at the time he felt it necessary to explain that it did not automatically mean an instant 14% rise in domestic prices, though he conceded that some limited domestic inflation was inevitable.
ReplyDeleteWell of course there wasn't going to be an immediate 14% rise in domestic prices, but factually speaking his point was false, because you could at that point buy less with the pound in the pocket in real terms. For example, if you had wanted to buy a German car or take a vacation to France.
Incidentally, the post-war British exchange regime until the full floating of the pound was really an unmitigated disaster. The capital-controls implication of the trilemma hurted Britain more than it did just about any other industrialized country (and it in fact hurted the British economy more than the shitty exchange rate itself); the London economy was almost completely dependent on the absence of capital controls. The current-account balance problems that Britain continually faced were structurally insoluble by periodically tweaking exchange rates.
(This is not to mention that the Wilson statement was logically inconsistent on internal terms; if the devaluation was to be useful at all imports must decrease, and if imports were to decrease the prices of imports must go up, and if the price of imports go up the value of the pocket-pound must go down. The policy would be ineffective otherwise.)
ReplyDeleteCorporations need to be re-modeled, their aims & goals amended from just existing to make as much money in as short a time as possible, to achieving other aims, such as preserving environment, contributing to the well-being of their employes.
ReplyDeleteOur "consumerist-progress-building/growing" world needs to be restructured -and I suppose it will be when vital natural resources run out! Right now the whole system is run like a positive feedback loop, and you know how that scenario ends.
The banks & Wall St. actually DID destroy themselves, their whole concept and behavior is not self-sustaining without massive interference by governments, either in the form of strictly enforced regulations, or the staggering cost of intermittent "bailouts".
Sigh. I just took 10mg vicodin...
Susan, I'm sorry if this has already come to your attention or you already knew about it, but I had to make absolutely certain you were aware of its existence. Behold this quote, from McMegan's idiotic "both sides are doing it" entry on climate science:
ReplyDelete"If someone is wrong about the facts, you should explain to them, calmly and concisely, why they are wrong. If it's really that obvious, it shouldn't be hard to convince them."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/climate-science-shouldnt-be-religion-for-left-or-right/243944/
Megan is so deluded she is convinced she is an expert in everything.
ReplyDeleteMegan of all trades, Master of None
The comment about convincing people was the first time I've seen absolutely none of her minions trying to defend her.
ReplyDeleteNot that it's that much wronger than other stuff she's said. They don't mind wrong; they just hate naive.
Oh dear... they're debating evolution in the comment thread on the climate change post.
ReplyDelete