Cool Kids
It isn’t quite as extreme, but there are a lot of similarities between now and the Iraq debate. All of the Cool Kids know how fucking right austerity is, and are condescending to all of the silly children who think they’re wrong. Team Austerity is where the cool kids are, at the parties with the fancy drinks, and all the losers hang out at that dorky Paul Krugman’s house, playing dungeons and dragons.
None of those nerdy D&D anti-austerity people who hang out with Krugman are getting invited to Megan McArdle’s holiday party, that’s for sure.
Double bonus – no Cool Kids to put up with, and D&D to play? sign me up
Austerity works great if your goal is to dismantle the middle class.
And in case you’ve not figured it out by now, that is the goal…
Austerity has always been a means to the end of shrinking the state until it can be drowned in a bathtub.
The existence of a middle class isn’t even on the VSP’s radar.
I don’t know about that. “Shrinking government” was never an end in and of itself for US conservatives, but rather a means to hoarding more wealth(the anti-regulation, anti-tax crowd), recreating old power systems of class and caste(the segregationists), and replacing impersonal public government with personal systems of patronage(the middling rich in nearly every community everywhere). Part-and-parcel of this campaign is the destruction of the middle class; not only by tearing apart the social institutions it has created over the last few centuries to protect itself from the power of wealth, but also by shifting the tax burden entirely onto the middle class and poor, shifting the benefit of taxation to the rich, and finally by locking the middle class out of decision-making forums.
Whether the modern elite is pursuing it consciously or not, the destruction and oppression of the middle class has been a primary goal of “conservative” politics since its founding.
This phenomenon even has a Wikipedia entry now.
Dismantle” Who said dismantle?
Their goal is to right size the middle class with forward looking solutions.
Into a brand new paradigm.
Proactively.
I love the term “right-size”. It’s so perfectly Orwellian it’s a work of art.
Don’t you get it? Keynesian economics is old. It belongs to an era where we had an industrial base and millions toiling in large factories. The entitlement programs are those tottering pollution-filled factories.
We don’t live that way anymore. We live nimble. We live quick. We live in an ‘information economy’. An age where us betters network the shit out of our lives to get that information pumped faster to our brains than anyone else. I’m gonna e-mail your twitter to my facebook, and you can tell me if some chairman on the board has a nervous tick so I can dump a load of stock. Yeah the stock market, hippie. That is where wealth is made. All you dorks have no information, because you aren’t plugged in. I am the self-made multi-millionaire, arbitraging the hell out of markets after I hired some nerd to create the formula for me.
Giving free money to losers is so 20th century. I could buy the whole lot of you for far cheaper if you weren’t sucking at the tit of Big Government that I pay for. Only the quick survive and it’s time you people learn that once and for all.
-Mitt Romney’s horse.
I guess we’re Rafalcked.
-Mitt Romney’s horse.
Or any Tom Friedman column.
This is probably going to start a tangent that will burn throughout the comments, but I just want to say this.
Iran isn’t looking to make a bomb. They’re looking to operate Russian-built light water reactors. This is the case because you don’t need to enrich uranium to make a plutonium bomb.
To make a light-water reactor you must first enrich uranium to 20-30% U-235. The protium in light water reactors makes a poor nuclear moderator. This means hotter neutrons that have less chance of breeding Pu-239 from U-238. Pu-239 is what’s used in miniturized warheads that can be launched on a missile.
To make a plutonium bomb, it’s best to start with a heavy water reactors. Heavy water reactors, like the CANDU reactors, don’t require enriched uranium. Heavy water is relatively easy to generate in a hydroelectric dam. The equipment has a small footprint. Plus, destroying the heavy water facility would mean bursting a dam and the subsequent death tolls are an in-built human shield.
Good luck with that: I’ve been pointing this out for years, and all the response I get is …> Bomb Iran! Now! Because Israel! Holocaust! Never Again!!
It isn’t? Why the hell not?
If I were Iranian, I’d want a nuclear weapon very badly indeed. A nuke means the US quits fucking with you and sends diplomats instead of fighter jets when it wants something.
North Korea.
Nukes don’t provide you a buffer from US policy. Nukes can’t be used proactively to further one’s goals. Because if you can’t get away with actually using them. But energy independence and the ability to manipulate oil markets? Yeah, that offers a lot of proactive possibilities.
Just about everything in that statement seems wrong to me. You cite North Korea, but NK seems to be an example for my side of the ledger; we don’t ignore them, and we don’t use force on them, because even the shitty nuke they might or might not have could be disastrous is used.
And of COURSE nukes provide you a buffer from US policy. That was one of the fundamental underlying principles girding diplomacy during the cold war, for gods sake.
It’s not NK’s nukes that keep the US out. It’s China.
To be clear–the fundamentals he gets at here is the way group mentality works with Beltway types. The problems with austerity are obvious.
Now it’s the Central Bankers who calling for austerity and the Investment Banksters who are committing the fraud?
Right?
It’s so cute that you think there’s a difference.
The problem is these people don’t know what “cool” means.
“Cool,” means ‘white.’
The ‘darker’ people come from ‘warmer’ areas.
And now, with global warming, they need to either be encouraged to return there, by hook or by crook, to roast and die of thirst and starvation, or cut off financially here, and left to their own devices, so that the remaining resources in the ‘cooler” climates can stay in the white peoples hands.
I now have an image of Paul Krugman as an exasperated Dungeon Master, trying to explain to David Brooks, I mean the cool kids, about D&D.
Krugman: “Ahead you see a gazebo.”
Brooks: “I WASTE IT WITH MY CROSSBOW.”
Friedman: “Fireballs coming on line!”
Krugman (poker-faced): “You’re attacking the gazebo?”
Brooks: “What’s it doing? Is it attacking?”
Krugman: “It’s just … standing there. It’s a gazebo.”
BROOKS and FRIEDMAN share a shrug.
Both: “ATTAAAACK!!”
Krugman, both a- and be-mused, rolls for initiative.
If they can, they really should redo the Dr. Demento D&D segment with NY Times columnists or at least people who could reasonably impersonate them.
Wow, Rick and the Gazebo has it’s own Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_and_the_Gazebo
He can roll for initiative, but against stupid, there is no saving throw.
Careful, Joe Bob Briggs says that gazebos come in pairs.
I don’t think that’s so. I don’t think austerity is even winning the debate.
The people who are pushing austerity might have been the Kool Kids during the run-up to the Iraq War, but they aren’t the Kool Kids anymore. They’re the loser establishment Republicans, the despised Village, and the nuts in the Tea Party.
Yeah, they’re NOT the Kool Kids!
They’re the people who are running this High School.
The new black Principal’s kind of cool though. A lot better than the last idiot we had.
And the new Assistant Principal’s not the meanest, angriest, craziest dick on the planet, like the last one was.
Austerity isn’t winning the debate? Tell all the laid-off teachers that.
The ones laid off by states and municipalities, which are run by governments that are able to act on their own, even against the broader national public opinion?
Um…ok, I’ll do that, but I don’t exactly understand why.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the states are a bit broke right now. Thus, they’ve been slashing jobs to make up for their budget shortfalls. If they had money, they wouldn’t need to do that. The federal government could send them money as part of stimulus and preserve those jobs. Unfortunately, austerity advocates have won the day.
Compare and contrast:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/20120728_woc683.png
The day is not over.
Stimulus supporters won the day in 2008-2009. Austerity supporters won the day in 2010-early 2011.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the discourse about the economy and spending has changed since the end of the debt ceiling fiasco.
Great, the discourse has changed. I doubt the unemployed give two shits about the fucking discourse.
If you don’t care about the debate, don’t comment on a thread about the debate, or reply to a comment about the debate.
But, if you actually did give a shit about the unemployed, you might consider it a good thing that national politics are turning in a way that benefits them.
You said austerians are losing the debate. You’ve pointed to no evidence of this.
Alexis Tsipras: Austerity will send us ‘directly to … – Amanpour – CNN
May 16, 2012 … By Lucky Gold Going directly to the hell Alexis Tsipras, head of Syriza, Greece’s extreme left-wing political party, appeared on Amanpour …
amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/…/alexis-tsipras-austerity-will-send-us-directly-to- the-hell/ – Cached
French President-elect Hollande casts doubt on austerity – CNN.com
May 7, 2012 … The election of François Hollande as French president sent shock waves through markets Monday, and led Germany to lay down red lines.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/world/europe/france-election/index.html
European voters revolt against austerity, cuts – CNN.com
May 8, 2012 … Europeans are revolting against established political parties, a German-made austerity plan, and a future with lower living standards.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/08/world/europe/europe-revolt/index.html
French President-elect Hollande casts doubt on austerity – CNN
May 7, 2012 … The election of François Hollande as president of France sent shock waves through markets in Asia and Europe on Monday and prompted …
articles.cnn.com/…/world_europe_france-election_1_nikkei-index-markets- tokyo?_… – Cached
Zakaria: Europe suffers from too much austerity – Global Public …
Apr 22, 2012 … By Fareed Zakaria, CNN A new poll in the United States shows that Americans are still deeply frustrated at the slow pace of the economic …
globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/…/zakaria-europe-suffers-from-too-much- austerity/ – Cached
Articles about Austerity – CNN
Austerity News. Find breaking news, commentary, and archival information about Austerity from CNN.
articles.cnn.com/keyword/austerity – Cached
Anger at austerity, immigration feeds far right’s rise in Europe – CNN …
May 9, 2012 … Two European elections, in France and Greece, have thrust the radical fringe into the spotlight.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/08/world/europe/europe-far…austerity/index.html
Anger at austerity, immigration feeds far right’s rise in Europe – CNN
May 8, 2012 … Two European elections, in France and Greece, have thrust the radical fringe into the spotlight.In Greece, voters disillusioned by a brutal …
articles.cnn.com/…/world_europe_europe-far-right-austerity_1_marine-le- pen-austerity-freedom-party?_… – Cached
FULL LENGTH EDITION: Greek left wing assails austerity …
May 17, 2012 … Part 1: Greek left-wing and the Eurozone Alexis Tsipris, leader of Greece’s Syriza party, talks about his country’s place in European politics.
amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/…/full-length-edition-greek-left-wing-assails- austerity/ – Cached
Of course, you’ve said that austerity advocates are winning the debate, and then not only presented no evidence that this is true, but then changed the subject to policy and insisted that the debate doesn’t matter.
This, itself, is a pretty good bit of evidence as far as I’m concerned.
No evidence? Look at the graph I posted.
It’s not evidence about the state of the debate.
No more than the number of American troops in Iraq in December 2007 was evidence of the state of that debate.
The state of the debate is that the state and federal government have slashed spending and reduced the number of government employees because austerity advocates have prevented stimulus.
Unless the government ramps up hiring, then austerity advocates will continue to win the debate. It doesn’t matter what the state of the debate subjectively looks like in a newspaper article.
Good grief.
No, that is not the “state of the debate.”
Do you even know what the word “debate” means? I’m starting to have my doubts.
de·bate (d-bt)
n.
1. A discussion involving opposing points; an argument.
2. Deliberation; consideration: passed the motion with little debate.
3. A formal contest of argumentation in which two opposing teams defend and attack a given proposition.
4. Obsolete Conflict; strife.
Your conception of a debate seems to involve one side not having their well-argued positions acted upon, yet still be considered to be “winning” the debate because their arguments sound convincing.
When one side in a “formal contest of argumentation” attacks “a given proposition,” but the proposition is nevertheless adopted, that side is commonly defined as the “loser” of the debate.
The debate isn’t over. We don’t know which side’s arguments will be acted on next year, because this round of the debate is still ongoing.
No matter how much you talk about the policies implemented in 2011, that will not make them relevant to the question.
And in the debate over these matters in 2008-2009, the austerity camp lost, and the largest stimulus package in American history was adopted
But that doesn’t tell us anything about the debate in mid-2012.
And in the debate that took place during the 2010 election campaign, the austerity camp won, and there was no further stimulus.
But that doesn’t tell us anything about the debate in mid-2012.
And now we’re having – we are having, the present progressive form of the verb “to have,” used to indicate ongoing action – the 2012 iteration of that debate.
In 2008, the Iraq War was still going on. (I don’t know if you noticed. Ahem.)
Tell me, were the Iraq War advocates winning the debate over the Iraq War in 2008?
Yeah, we finally agreed that invading Iraq was a bad idea and that we should leave…AFTER we had killed a bunch of Iraqis and plunged their country into chaos.
Learning your lesson is great, but it’s far better to do things right the first time.
No question, it would be better if the side that was winning the debate right now had been winning it throughout.
So the folks against war in Iraq “won” the debate?
Eventually.
This cannot possibly be the first time you’ve discovered that the Iraq War became unpopular.
Eventually?
Wow.
I suppose the Patriots could have eventually won the Super Bowl if they had played an extra 15 minutes.
Was that supposed to convey any sort of thought or point, or was it just pouting?
I suppose the Patriots could have eventually won the Super Bowl if they had played an extra 15 minutes.
It’s politics, not the Super Bowl. There’s always another game tomorrow.
And state governments are required to balance their budgets, while the federal government is not.
Actually, even the corporate/D.C. media has started to pick up on the point that austerity sent Europe back into recession.