It Is Occasionally a Bad Idea to Irritate a Smart Guy — as David Brooks Will Have Discovered — in Arguing that Orders of Magnitude of Socio-Economic Inequality Are Not a Real Problem — Robert Reich’s Perfect One-Liner in Response

19 January 2014

Citations — to the dualing editorials

David Brooks, The Inequality Problem, New York Times (16 January 2014)

Robert Reich, David Brooks' Utter Ignorance About Inequality, Huffington Post (19 January 2014)

These two opinion pieces illustrate how the political Right likes to mislead voters by side-stepping social and economic problems — with superficial and poorly analyzed nonsense

Let’s use David Brooks as representative of the Right’s intentionally too-abbreviated thinking on socio-economic issues — my comments are in brackets:

[T]o frame the issue as income inequality is to lump together different issues that are not especially related.

At the top end, there is the growing wealth of the top 5 percent of workers. This is linked to things like perverse compensation schemes on Wall Street, assortative mating (highly educated people are more likely to marry each other and pass down their advantages to their children) and the superstar effect (in an Internet economy, a few superstars in each industry can reap global gains while the average performers cannot).

[In other words, the “best” mingle with the “best” and some of the “best” really shine and make bunches of money.

Brooks appears to forget that most people are indeed average, and the Social Contract was supposedly going to include us, as well.]

At the bottom end, there is a growing class of people stuck on the margins, generation after generation. This is caused by high dropout rates, the disappearance of low-skill jobs, breakdown in family structures and so on.

[In other words, losers tend to be losers.]

Second, it leads to ineffective policy responses. If you think the problem is “income inequality,” then the natural response is to increase incomes at the bottom, by raising the minimum wage.

[No Dave — no “fricking” anybody thinks that we are going to cure these socioeconomic problems simply by raising the minimum wage.]

Third, the income inequality frame contributes to our tendency to simplify complex cultural, social, behavioral and economic problems into strictly economic problems.

[Another straw man — virtually no one, on either side, sees America’s economic woes as “strictly economic problems.”]

America has always done better . . . when we are all focused on opportunity and mobility, not inequality, on individual and family aspiration, not class-consciousness.

[Meaning — let’s ignore extreme socio-economic distinctions for fear the 99 Percent Rabble might get upset.]

If we’re going to mobilize a policy revolution, we should focus on the real concrete issues: bad schools, no jobs for young men, broken families, neighborhoods without mediating institutions. We should not be focusing on a secondary issue and a statistical byproduct.

[Statistical byproduct? — Really Dave? Did you flunk math, statistics, economics, and critical thinking in school?]

Enter Robert Reich, “liberal” and former Secretary of Labor

Robert Reich got so irritated with Mr. Brooks’ intentionally camouflaging silliness that he wrote:

Occasionally David Brooks, who personifies the oxymoron "conservative thinker" better than anyone I know, displays such profound ignorance that a rejoinder is necessary lest his illogic permanently pollute public debate.

Such is the case with his New York Times column last Friday, arguing that we should be focusing on the "interrelated social problems of the poor" rather than on inequality, and that the two are fundamentally distinct.

Baloney.

First, when almost all the gains from growth go to the top, as they have for the last thirty years, the middle class doesn't have the purchasing power necessary for buoyant growth.

Second, when the middle class is stressed, it has a harder time being generous to those in need.

Third, America's shrinking middle class also hobbles upward mobility.

[A]s wealth has accumulated at the top, Washington has reduced taxes on the wealthy, expanded tax loopholes that disproportionately benefit the rich, deregulated Wall Street, and provided ever larger subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks for large corporations.

The only things that have trickled down to the middle and poor besides fewer jobs and smaller paychecks are public services that are increasingly inadequate because they're starved for money.

Unequal political power is the endgame of widening inequality -- its most noxious and nefarious consequence, and the most fundamental threat to our democracy.

Where Brooks completely avoided addressing the fundamental issue about political power and its seizure’s effect on the distribution of wealth, Reich went right to it.

Brook’s “statistical byproduct” is actually both real and indicative of how the plutocracy further skews the system to buy the political power that it needs, so as to further reward itself at everyone else’s expense.

The moral? — Don’t provoke people smarter than you are — When irritated they may make you look like the comparative idiot you are

“Occasionally David Brooks, who personifies the oxymoron ‘conservative thinker’ better than anyone I know, displays such profound ignorance that a rejoinder is necessary lest his illogic permanently pollute public debate.”

Robert Reich is being kind.

David Brooks’ problem is not ignorance. It is greed-masking stupidity.

Which pretty much categorizes the entire American Right these days — probably to the originating conservative, Edmund Burke’s (1729-1797) chagrin.

And I say that, not even being a liberal myself.

PeteFree.com

It Is Occasionally a Bad Idea to Irritate a Smart Guy — as David Brooks Will Have Discovered — in Arguing that Orders of Magnitude of Socio-Economic Inequality Are Not a Real Problem — Robert Reich’s Perfect One-Liner in Response