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cepalgTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:56pm
It is curious to me that he singles out there being no jobs for young men. Yeah, sure, there's no jobs for chicks either, but in David Brooks' world that's not worthy of callout.

There's a couple dozen different ways to snidely interpret that observation but I'm genuinely puzzled by what the hell that could mean.
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  Scalfincepalg
  1/17/14 2:03pm
  Employment for young men is lower, and are more likely to be low-paying.
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  ProstituteIsObviouscepalg
  1/17/14 2:03pm
  Oh come on, girls can't work in factories! You're silly.
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Joey DelmarTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:57pm
I do partly see his point.

Many people view the economy as the pie from the intro song in The Jeffersons, and they'd naturally like a piece of it.

The problem with this analogy is that it assumes the pie is static when the economy is always growing or shrinking. The true goal should be to grow the pie while ensuring everyone at the table gets to eat more.

Simple wealth redistribution will not grow the pie, only change how it's cut up.

That said, David Brooks is still an assclown.
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  Grim3 the woman card is my trump cardJoey Delmar
  1/17/14 2:20pm
  The ideal is to grow the pie, but he fails to grasp that some of the increasing income inequality has come from simple wealth redistribution in the first place - tax cuts for the rich, decreasing power for unions, increasing CEO pay relative to other workers, etc.
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  RTF916Joey Delmar
  1/17/14 2:22pm
  That's the problem. The wealthy are growing the pie, but they're hording the extra slices before anyone else even gets a chance at them. Bailouts, military contracts, etc. Whenever more money is pumped into the economy, they pounce on it like vultures, often before anyone else even knows it's there.
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RussianistTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:55pm
"If you have a primitive zero-sum mentality..."

Oh, you mean like the real Murkin heartland Teabaggers you lionise, Bo-Bo? You mean like the Libertarians who've supported you on your way to the NYT op-ed page and NPR where you can sell their doctrine of selfishness in a way that's palatable to educated urban Boomers?

What a weasel.
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  blameitonthecroutons goodbye tourRussianist
  1/17/14 2:03pm
  Don't worry, I'm sure like all Boomers he'll find a way to blame his parents for being so successful and leaving an impossible standard for his entitled lazy kids to live up to
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  Russianistblameitonthecroutons goodbye tour
  1/17/14 2:07pm
  As I'm fond of saying, there's no inter-generational hatred in living memory that matches the enmity the Boomers hold for the Greatests. Probably because their parents dared to accept being called the Greatests at all.
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Sean BrodyTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:50pm
Brooks really works the italics as a means of making a condescending point.

By the way, condescending means talking down to people.
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  Trough of LuxurySean Brody
  1/17/14 2:02pm
  This is a very good point, if a bit obvious.
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  The_MockingbirdSean Brody
  1/17/14 2:09pm
  I can't fault a man for loving a good orgy of italicization, it's the sotto voce of internet snark.
  
  It really must be awesome to have all your character flaws dissolved away simply by accumulating wealth...
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LangostaTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:59pm
There's a reason every hayseed who wins the lottery ends up broke.

Some people are just awful with money. Giving them more - especially when it was not earned - is pointless.

Don't believe me? Head to Foot Locker and check out who's in line for the latest $200 Jordans. Or, head to the tattoo parlor and see who's plunking down his last $500 to add a dragon to his awesome tat sleeves.
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  Johnny ChundersLangosta
  1/17/14 2:05pm
  Positively Brooksian.
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  blue-haired_lawyerJohnny Chunders
  1/17/14 2:19pm
  Russ Cargill, Tab Spangler, Brad Goodman, Jacques Cousteau, Cowboy Bob, and Hank Scorpio all agree.
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StenchofaburnerTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:55pm
One of these days we will wake up to news of a book co-written by David Brooks and Thomas Friedman with foreword (and perhaps further contributions) by Matthew Yglesias. That is the day we will realize the preppers were right all along and the end is, indeed near.
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  burlivesleftnutStenchofaburner
  1/17/14 1:59pm
  You have to include that repugnant fucker from the Washington Post too, Richard Cohen.
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  Johnny ChundersStenchofaburner
  1/17/14 2:00pm
  And the book is loaded with footnotes...citing the WSJ editorial pages.
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It takes a nation of millions to elect the corruptTom Scocca
1/17/14 2:09pm
Poor people are poor because they are lazy. At least we now know what David Brooks must mutter to himself as he slips into unconsciousness every night. Undoubtably, Thomas Friedman learned a similar lesson while discussing a recent squash match while at Davos.
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  HubcapJennyIt takes a nation of millions to elect the corrupt
  1/17/14 2:52pm
  Unlike David Brooks himself, who nearly breaks his back every day twisting his logic into knots. Such a hard worker! Amazon order pickers working mandatory overtime could learn a little something from him.
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  It takes a nation of millions to elect the corruptHubcapJenny
  1/17/14 4:08pm
  Don't forget that he also has to debate that mental titan EJ Dionne on NPR occasionally.
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RealAmurricanTom Scocca
1/17/14 3:47pm
#(*&%!)(TJUV#ht(%#&( J#@P!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before my brain explodes, a few (a ton of) thoughts:

None of this "Zero-Sum" talk is grounded in any kind of factual reality. At all. People love to talk moralize about how we focus on everyone getting their slice of the pie, when we should be talking about growing the pie, but the reality is that they are absolutely, and very obviously, connected!

The argument for income equality does not begin and end with some kind of hatred for the rich, or some long-haired hippy's belief that "...it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24"Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Side note: It would be great if Kinja could remove formatting within comments, so that the rest of this comment wouldn't all be formatted by that quote). It also doesn't have to be grounded in a concern for things like providing food and healthcare to human beings who don't have access to them.

The argument for income equality is all about growing that god-damned pie! And the data backs it up!

When worker wages rose in line with productivity gains, and workers could expect their incomes to rise over time, and the share of income going to the 1% was under 10%, the economy grew at a tremendous clip! In Germany, it is no coincidence that keeping that share of income steady has driven the success of their economy. They even have a thriving manufacturing sector, without being a third-world country!

Meanwhile, as the 1% has captured more and more of the share of income — the fucking pie, if you will — the economy as a whole has slowed down with it. Yep. The pie grows much slower, as a result. That directly conflicts with all of the John Galt moralizing that Conservatives, Libertarians, and other assorted assclowns love to throw around (instead of, ya know, discussing the actual data).

And if "transfer payments", don't float your boat, consider this: those statistics on income share don't include unemployement benefits, social security, etc. So that success was driven by your beloved market, not by the big bad government taking your money and giving it to those lazy, misbehavin' poors.

Now, to get to this whole "Human Capital" business, why aren't you champions of business viewing our country's Human Capital as an asset, the way a business would? Our "achievement gap" - that is, the gap between our education system and everyone else's, drags down the economy with the same force as a permanent national recession. So if we're really just talking about growing that motherloving pie, why on Earth aren't you concerned with the fact that we're losing trillions of dollars annually by failing to effectively nurture that Human Capital? If the poors are poor just because they're too stupid to budget, why not advocate for better access to educational resources around budgeting?

And fuck the nonsense about "There are no jobs." You can't blame the robots, because the data tells us that we do not have structural unemployment problems. If we did, we would see high levels of unemployment in specific industries where technology has made those jobs obsolete, followed by a slow transition of those workers into new industries and jobs. But that's not what we've seen.

I just signed up for Quora the other day, and within minutes checked a question about Income Inequality and its negative consequences. The top two answers were exactly like this article - waxing poetically about the fact that inequality isn't bad, and if we'd just get rid of the government, we'd get a rising tide that raises all boats. No data, no evidence, just anecdotes, feelings, and a huge boner for Ayn Rand. It sucks, because I thought Quora was supposed to be full of intelligent people, not just Yahoo Answers with better grammar.

So fuck you, David Brooks, you smarmy-ass thought leader. Read a goddman white paper before you weigh in on economics.
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  elumere11RealAmurrican
  1/17/14 5:25pm
  I mostly agree and thank you for this comment. Not entirely sure about the ever growing pie, though.. (We have a somewhat finite world with finite resources..)
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  RealAmurricanelumere11
  1/17/14 5:59pm
  Sure - my point is more about taking the beloved Conservative "Grow the pie" analogy and pointing out that the reality of our economy is completely at odds with the way they're using it.
  
  They pretend that Keynesian macroeconomics is just the silly ideals of a bunch of naive hippies, or a dream of some socialist utopia entirely opposed to capitalism. So David Brooks and his ilk frame the conversation around beating up those strawmen, and pretending to be the serious ones in the room when all they're doing is trying to create a moral framework that justifies their depravity.
  
  When they say "A rising tide lifts all boats", they're ignoring the way that actually works. A growing economy (or pie, or rising sea levels, or what-have-you) is great for everyone when everyone benefits. When it's done in a way that the vast majority of us reap the benefits - as it used to, when executive pay was closer to 10x worker pay - then the economy's growth does benefit everyone, and as that pie grows, everyone gets a bigger slice.
  
  But that hasn't been the case since the 80s, and indeed as the pie has gotten bigger, more and more Americans are finding themselves with little to no slice (God I fucking hate this analogy). And for shits and giggles, I'll add that as the tide has risen, some boats have sunk, or something. (Seriously, how can something so simple be the entire basis for your political/economic philosophy?)
  
  Back to facts though: since the recession, it's only gotten substantially worse, with the 1% reaping all of the gains - and it's not only at the expense of the poor, who are getting less and less pie - but the pie is actually growing a whole lot fucking slower. So if your main concern is "How do we all make the biggest pie?" then you're either disingenuous or stupid to suggest that income inequality has no affect.
  
  I need a drink.
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The Ghost of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ AKA BabyStepsTom Scocca
1/17/14 1:51pm
Welcome to David Brooks' world where NO man-made, structurally wrought problem is not really a cultural failing of the individual and community that, like Athena, has emerged fully formed.

I am glad you were able to get through it because I clicked on the link this morning by accident (it was just a title that didn't name the author). I began to read it and his "separate problems" notion and wanted to hurl. Needless to say, I clicked on the close button in the Safai tab.
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  the_elisThe Ghost of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ AKA BabySteps
  1/17/14 4:11pm
  How do you think I feel - I actually read his book, The Social Animal, in 2011...ugh. The whole thing.
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  The Ghost of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ AKA BabyStepsthe_elis
  1/17/14 4:14pm
  you are made of sterner stuff than I!
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IrishishTom Scocca
1/17/14 5:14pm
I don't get why people shit all over low-wage, unskilled laborers and people in the service industry when increasingly often those are the only jobs available and those jobs are crucial to the society in which we live.

Man, if you didn't want to struggle to keep children fed, you shouldn't have become a janitor! Who else will clean shit, dude?

Man, those garbagemen are so overpaid! Fucking unions! Would you rather they get almost nothing to keep your streets and alleys clean?

Baffles me. Even the smallest cog is crucial to the machine.
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  lampost451Irishish
  1/17/14 7:05pm
  I am reminded of the Martin Luther King Jr quote
  
  “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
  
  because yes, these jobs need done, and they should be done, and the people that do them deserve dignity and a way to live with hope. I can't see vilifying them either.
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  lampost451lampost451
  1/17/14 7:05pm
  Not sure why my pasted quote got embiggened so much
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