From Ezra, I see that David Brooks is trying to minimize the damage done under the Bush administration to the great unwashed 95% of us who have to actually work for a living by claiming, falsely, that the economy is working out just great. In particular, Brooks claims that real wages are not an issue, that what feels like slippage and stagnation in your wallet is actually rising. You must just be crazy if you think otherwise.
I’m no economist, but claims like Brooks’ send me into a skeptical nosedive. I live in a town heavily populated with government employees of some sort, the sort of people who actually have old-fashioned stability and middle class wages to live on, and even then, I know their annual percentage wages are below the inflation rate. It seems to me if you can buy less every year with your annual salary than you could the year before, then that’s a sign that your real wages are going down, not up. Considering that gas prices are rising so quickly and taking food prices with them, this pinch seems even more pronounced than what it was before. Granted, there’s probably some economist mojo going on that I don’t understand with this, but in real-world, human-beings-trying-to-survive terms, the Bush economic policies of robbing working people blind to increase the wealth at top doesn’t actually do anything to help said working people.
Luckily, Ezra’s put together a number of refutations that demonstrate that Brooks is engaging in misinformation and blatant lying. In his initial post, he easily demonstrates that wages aren’t up and the poor are (unsurprisingly) not doing so well under Bush. He follows up to show that Brooks lied even more than he initially thought. In fact, it looks like Brooks might have packed in more lies and bullshit into this small space than previously thought possible, outside of the realm of speeches offered by members of the Bush administration, of course.
I get all red-faced and stompy when I see various misinformation techniques, from outright lying to pretending that the improvements in the fortune of the very rich is enough to bolster the claim that the economy is doing well, used to cover up what is essential a huge transfer of wealth from your pocket to those who need the money the least. It’s worse than most garden variety political bullshit, because these lies that are meant to establish the false belief that most Americans are doing just fine under conservative economic policies have a great potential to be internalized by hapless, hard-working people. If you believe that everyone else is doing great, then your stagnant wages/unemployment/impending bankruptcy seem like personal failures, when it’s quite likely that you’re just being ground up by a system designed to grind up hard-working people like you so that the very wealthiest can own more houses than they really have time to visit. Lies like the ones Brooks are telling are a form of kicking people while they’re down; first you grind them up in the system and then you make them feel like it’s their fault that you fucked them over.
Yes, I realize that Brooks is just another conservative with his head up his ass and he probably isn’t thumping his fingers together with the glee of getting that a dig in on the very people he helps screw over economically with his ass-kissing support of the Republican party. He just doesn’t care about people enough to care who he fucks over with his defense of conservative economic policies. Still, it feels like an added dig, a desire not just to exploit people but to make sure they feel as bad as possible about it. It’s a classic example, in the end, about how indifference to people’s suffering can often be indistinguishable from openly encouraging it.
20 Responses to “The real face of class warfare, Bobo edition”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
MikeEss, as long as you’re not a red-shirt, you should be okay.
Every person who commented on the NYT website about Brooks’ article — every last one of them — said they disagree with Brooks.
It seems he can’t even convince his loyal readers that he’s right.
Badges would be simpler, and there’s precedent. Pink triangles, yellow stars…. maybe we could use green crescents for the Muslims and … yeah. red targets for the liberals. That’d work.
Green is for the Clovers. Gotta keep the Irish in West Roxbury, since they’ve escaped Southie.
Bitter Scribe, from the old place:
…and then if you yelled at him to quit being a dick and just fucking save you, already, would call you a socialist and refuse.
Since Amanda kindly warned us we were writing out comments in the sand at low tide, I copied my special brilliance and can now say “nyah nyah, ya missed me” here it is again. And hopefully , lurker will stay banned in this new venue.
Where was I? Oh yes….
———————-
If you want to know just how fucked a working stiff is in this country go read what the conservatives with money are being told about the economy: the dollar will tank and take your pay check with it. The mortgage defaults have only begun to ripple out side the subprime market [to which your government flunkies have said it is confined] Trust me or go do the reading at Bonddad: Greenspan did you no favors, he only propped up bush and the people who owe little, own lots and can arbitrage.
MoneyNews.com is owned by Newsmax, an organ of the most fear mongering conservatism and blather. From them, I get constant advertisements telling me I can make money on a declinging dollar. Great! Fucking turncoat rich people! sell your currency short and to hell with folks who must live on dollars they earn.
And If you are wondering why the stock market has been so robust in spite of YOUR real buying power shrinking, just note that much of the industry shares comprising the DJIA are globalized companies who constantly shift jobs and cash to overseas operations and insulate themselves from the decline of the dollar. I.e. the stock market is becoming a way to buy with dollars securities that are not entirely dependent on or may even benefit from the decline of the dollar.
Anybody know a good recipe for roasted billionaire?
Could we have a fake Lurker comment (or even a real one), and then a humpin’ bunny video, just to open the new place for business?
perhaps a picture would help. Note in this graph that the stagnation of a former trend of increasing prosperity that gone on in the 50’s and 60’s. Basically it flatlines just as america starts drinking the Reagan koolaid.
You just want to turn us into socialists so you can eat!
—Lurker
tom–that’s because most conservatives boycott the NYT…I wish that there were actual koolaid drinkers who didn’t buy into him.
Bunnies!!!!!! (please)
“Anybody know a good recipe for roasted billionaire?”
Believe in all the good things
That money just can’t buy
Then you won’t get no bellyache
From eatin’ humble pie
I believe in rags to riches
Your inheritance won’t last
So take your Grey Poupon my friend
And shove it up your ass
Eat The Rich
There’s only one thing that they are good for
Eat The Rich
Take one bite now - come back for more
Eat The Rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat The Rich
Take one bite now - spit out the rest
- Aerosmith
…
I wonder when the Rethugs will just come out and admit all they want is cheap servants.
If they pass laws to mandate your clothing color/style so as to mark your position in society, that would be the icing on the cake…
Soak ‘em in milk first, to get rid of that “off” smell and aftertaste. Lots of cumin helps, too.
MAJeff:
Too bad that’s not kosher.
Not that I keep kosher. Just sayin’, is all.
Do you want it religiously ok, or do you want it to taste good?
Those bourgeois bodies get some nast things built up in them, and you’ve gotta get rid of the funkiness somehow.
You see this attitude all the time. Here’s one case that I looked at on my site:
Tweeter Etc. was doing badly and decided to close a bunch of its stores, but since they weren’t going to close them right away they needed people to stay to close the stores. To get people to stay, they promised to give bonuses. After the stores did close, Tweeter declared chapter 11 bankruptcy and reneged on the bonuses. They did relent a bit and agreed to compensate the employees for unused vacation and sick days, but when it came to the bonus the firm noted:
‘workers can file a claim to the court as creditors to try to recover some severance pay.’
Ok, not very nice, still they were bankrupt–they’d pay them if they could right? Later Tweeter was bought out. During the negotiations, Tweeter tried to get bonuses for the top executives. Why?
‘In its filing, Tweeter said its executives and officers have shouldered more responsibility and worked more hours since the Chapter 11 filing.
The bonus plan, it said, “is designed to reward those employees that have (been) and will continue to be most critical and bear substantial burdens” in restructuring the company.’
You can see that the executives believe that they are more deserving of a bonus than the employees. The employees that stayed to close the stores helped Tweeter a lot, but obviously they aren’t as important as the execs. It’s just the mindset of a lot of these people–if they’re doing well than the economy is because they’re the important ones.
MAJeff:
Actually, I was thinking about it, and I’m pretty sure that billionaires aren’t kosher all by themselves. So there’s really no need to invoke the “no mixing meat and dairy” provision at all.
“Actually, I was thinking about it, and I’m pretty sure that billionaires aren’t kosher all by themselves.”
Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.
- George Harrison
…
Oooo…quite a change. Assume scabby troll defenses
Post was lost…won’t tell ya where else it got [Offsprung..nice place]
I am so self-absorbed.
“SO, so-ooo torn.
And not that any of my ’strange bubblings-up’ are two-blog-worthy but
maybe some will actually rise to the boil..somewhere.
Here– from P’gon.
“We have GOT to stop using THEIR ‘Economy’ word!
They use it to imply that there IS a common extant & actual
framework for how well one is doing.
[In the day there might actually…have been.]
Their GDP doesn’t reflect shit about how I’m doing.
It reflects how well they’re doing.
THEY are:
Shareholders/dividend clippers,
Capital Gainers,
Landlords,
CEOs/Hedge-fund management types
‘Financialators’….the Wall Street stirrers of monies & their minions
the Gamers, Schemers, Scammers .
Stop.
[Ezra also has a classic use of ‘heuristic’ - a word that keeps escaping me -
alongside ‘trust’ and David -fuc*king - Brooks.
And to believe that not very long ago I really and kinda widely & generically
believed in & trusted the NYT; CNN…too. Jeez!, stupid, stoopid me.]”
P.S. Anyway here’s actual Ezra on heuristic. Liked it.
“[All of us]use certain heuristics to help them navigate the media sphere —
chief among them trusting that authors operating out of established media outlets are being basically truthful.
Conversely, they can rely on the aggregate disreputation of an outlet —
the reason I don’t read or critique the Wall Street Journal editorial page is that most everyone I can reach already knows it’s a stew of lies and disinformation.”