I should know better. Yesterday I made the obvious error of suggesting that maybe, just maybe, David Brooks iz lerning.
To be fair, I hedged a bit — but still, I suggested that we had at least the weekend before the essential BoBo-ness of the man reasserted itself.
Wrong. As commenter MattH pointed out, it was mere hours before the facile, flaccid stylings of the David Brooks we know and love reasserted themselves.
In Friday’s regular roundtable of horrors on NPR’s ATC, Brooks managed to produce a truly vintage performance, starting with this:
Mr. BROOKS: Well, the first thing that could be said is they’ve gotten it wrong and a lot of people have gotten it wrong. They didn’t expect this. Remember when the stimulus passed, they thought unemployment rate would be down around 7, when it’s up at 9.2 now. Then we have the summer of recovery, so we clearly don’t understand the way the economy’s going.
FSM help us all when Brooks gets to talking econ. People do understand a great deal about the way the economy is going. Brooks works with one of them, who happens to be a Nobel laureate. Just today he published data sourced from the Congressional Budget Office that describes what the stimulus did, and why it now has so little impact on employment.
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This isn’t rocket science. This is common knowledge, and it takes trivial effort to discover such numbers. Brooks doesn’t make that effort, because he understands economics in precisely the same way he was able to interpret the semiotics of nonexistent salad bars at Applebees.
It gets worse:
Now, part of the problem is not their fault. When you have a financial crisis, you have a long, long, slow, very frustrating recovery. And we’re sort of in the middle of a normal financial crisis recovery which is very slow and miserable. But the thing that can be done is, I think, over decades we’ve added weight after weight to the economy and made it less flexible, a little more rigid, made it hard for people to hire and fire with various regulations and taxes and things like that. And it’s time for a generation-long effort to really reduce that stuff.
This is pure Brooks. Say that out loud. It doesn’t sound overtly stupid. There are sentences and punctuation and things that sound like words organized into claims of meaning.
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But now read it again. Ignore the assumption not in evidence — the claim that a priori financial crises resolve themselves slowly and painfully as a “normal” — i.e. natural; i.e. not subject to policy choices — quality. Pay no attention the simply false claim that this is a “normal financial crisis” at all. What happened during the Bush II presidency was not simply a recurrence of prior follies. It was the specific and predicted consequence of a whole series of decisions about the way to regulate (or not) a banking system. But don’t mind that either.
Instead, look again at these sentences:
But the thing that can be done is, I think, over decades we’ve added weight after weight to the economy and made it less flexible, a little more rigid, made it hard for people to hire and fire with various regulations and taxes and things like that. And it’s time for a generation-long effort to really reduce that stuff.
Huh. I mean, truly, WTF?
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The problem with the economy today is that regulation makes it hard to fire people? Does DAvid Brooks not notice 9.2% unemployment?
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Somebody had to fire folks to get to that number. Or the 16.3% U6 measure that includes those temporarily discouraged from seeking work?
Take a good look at this. Enjoy it. It’s a type specimen of punditry by word salad.
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There’s no connection with reality — for one, Brooks would have to explain why more restrictive employment regimes and stronger labor movements, like those of Germany, don’t seem to be replicating our experience. But never mind. By this “analysis” (sic), our only hope is to suck it up through my retirement and my kid’s passage into mature adulthood just to get things right. On David Brooks say-so. On his deep understanding of the economy.
Mr. BROOKS: If there’s one thing we should learn from this – the government is really bad at short-term economic manipulation. It can lay the foundation for long-term growth, but manipulating jobs and the economy quarter by quarter, it’s just beyond its power.
Sez who? David Freaking Brooks — and no one who actually knows anything.
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In reality: governments are capable of driving short term effects; and lousy at long term directing of the economy, though Brooks is surely right if what he is trying to suggest that it makes sense to invest in infrastructure and knowledge over time.
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But such investments can generate precisely the kind of short term economic effect Brooks says lies beyond the capacity of mortal minds to master. That is: if Brooks were to consult an actual policy-knowledgable economist for example, he would discover just how many jobs each billion bucks of infrastructure investment (not tax cuts, notoriously inefficient as economic stimulus) would produce.
And what makes this all yet more echt-Brooks is that he didn’t even have to trouble himself to read anything. He could, you know, just listen to his long-suffering foil on his NPR gig, E. J Dionne:
Mr. DIONNE: And just one thing on that, though. You know, David Leonhardt, a great blogger, economics writer at The Times, made the point that we’ve lost a half a million jobs in state and local government over the last two years and we’re – if we added them at the same pace we were, we would’ve added a half a million jobs. That’s a million jobs lost. Government can clearly affect government employment and the withdrawal of the stimulus from state local governments has been caused…
But never fear. Our man David sees the debate over whether to shoot all the hostages or merely some of them in Washington as a signal to rejoice:
I think what’s happening in Washington is kind of great. You’ve got Republicans and Democrats, serious negotiators doing serious things. Liberals on the left, on the extreme left and extreme right are very unhappy. But this is the first time in years we’ve begun to see real talking on big stuff. I think it’s kind of great.
Except, of course, this “real talking on big stuff” is a fantasy. A fiction. Not happening (as I just noticed ABL has flagged too) — because the Republican representatives amongst these putative “serious negotiators” are running like the curs they are, tails between their legs, unable to sustain the pressure of reality in the major leagues.
And who is the guy in particular racing from the scene of his inadequacy? Exactly the man Brooks singles out for praise:
I think he’s been masterful for a year. And I think he’s exceeded expectations on all fronts. He’s doing a very delicate dance where he’s being open to a lot of stuff, a lot of revenues, a lot of changes that Republicans don’t like.
Well, just to reiterate the link. No. John Boehner is not and has not been a masterful leader of the House. And right now, he’s punting. He’s folded. He’s surrendering to the real powers within his party, those whom Brooks himself knows are incapable of managing a rowboat, much less governing a country.
So: to all who’ve read so far, my deepest apologies. BoBo is unchanged, a hack’s hack, a waste of oxygen and carbon. I should always remember this corollary to DeLong’s law:
1. Remember that David Brooks is always wrong.
2. If your analysis leads you to conclude David Brooks might be right, refer to rule 1.
Images: Jan Steen, Rhetoricians at a Window, 1662-1666.
Hokusai Katsushika, Temma Bridge, Osaka, between 1827 and 1830.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
I told you so. Some people never learn, even the brainiacs at MIT.
sherifffruitfly
(shrug) He’s an over-40 white guy with glasses, a suit, and a decent command of the English language.
To Americans, THAT MEANS HE’S KNOWLEDGEABLE.
That, and he confirms what dumbasses “just know”.
jl
I agree with all the mean things TL said about Mr. Brooks, who don’t mean well even if he looks it.
But I disagree with the idea that Brooks is pulling his line on macroeconomics from nowhere.
TL apparently, horror or horrors, believes that Keynesianism is the best macroeconomic theory we have. I agree.
Unfortunately, probably more than half the academic macroeconomic community do not think Keynesiansim is the best theory. And nearly all the influential rentier class in financial corporations that need to pretend they understand macroeconomics also do not think so, or at least will not admit publicly that they think so for selfish reasons (even if the forecasting departments in their corporations, that have to actually produce something remotely related to reality if they are keep their jobs, do believe Keynesianism is the best theory.)
Stuff like the following:
“the government is really bad at short-term economic manipulation. It can lay the foundation for long-term growth, but manipulating jobs and the economy quarter by quarter, it’s just beyond its power.”
“We’ve added weight after weight to the economy and made it less flexible, a little more rigid, made it hard for people to hire and fire with various regulations and taxes and things like that. And it’s time for a generation-long effort to really reduce that stuff.”
Is right out of mainstream macroeconomic conventional wisdom.
Brooks may have no idea how to explain or justify these assertions, but he can get experts to agree and support him.
We have to face the fact that macroeconomics, as a coherent intellectual field, is currently a smoking ruin. I, when I put on my economist hat, have to face that fact. When I put on my statistician hat, I can laugh like a hyena and yell ‘I told you so!’. But when I put on my economist hat, I guess, if I have any intellectual integrity at all, I would be obligated to cry (and chuckle in secret).
Corner Stone
Soooo…MIT, eh?
kuvasz
B
kuvasz
Brooks is a stupid mother fucker; say it again.
JGabriel
Tom Levenson @ Top:
I don’t know, Tom. Sometimes I get the feeling that Brooks and Krugman don’t like each other very much.
It’s just an intuition. I could be wrong.
.
cbear
@ kuvasz
You don’t have to stutter when you call someone a stupid motherfucker. Many of us here like that kind of clear concise statement of fact.
:-)
Yutsano
Some folks never recover from the Catholic nuns from catechism. Or a slip of the fingers. One of the two.
jl
Thought I would add, that a statistician can laugh at conventional macroeconomic wisdom that Brooks spouted because they abandoned anything that other scientific fields, hard or soft or in between, would regard as responsible statistical procedure needed to test the predictions of their theories.
As long as the data they were most interested in, like GDP growth, moved roughly along historical trend lines (which includes the relatively mild 2001 recession) everything was OK. All theories would produce about the same predictions. But when the economy majorly deviated from historical trends, as it has since 2008, all hell has broken loose. (Edit: all hell has broken loose for conventional macroeconomic wisdom, not, IMHO, for Keynesian theory. See DeLong, Krugman, Stiglitz, Galbraith and Baker for details)
slag
Just think of David Brooks as you would any other untrainable dog. When he makes outside, you’re doing right by praising him. But try not to be surprised by the pile of shit lying in your entryway the next day.
cbear
@ kuvasz
Btw, if your nic is in reference to the fact that you have a Kuvasz pup then I am incredibly jealous as my dream is to have a pack of Kuvasz’s and Goldens with several feline overlords.
If my supposition is true, please post pics.
cbear
After hearing about your Marine encounter, I’m just hoping you washed those fingers before you started typing here tonite. :-)
Yutsano
ZOMG. ME. WANT!!
:: whistles innocently ::
cbear
@ Yuts:
This is what I want the goopers to see when they come to my house looking for that last dime they didn’t steal.
Yutsano
@ cbear:
Yeah. That’ll do. You might wanna put up a sign to beware of tongue though. :)
Cliff in NH
Obama Sees 10% Unemployment Rate, Chides Wall Street Critics
By Julianna Goldman and Rich Miller – June 16, 2009 22:30 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=auTTvgeN294Y
June 17 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama offered stern words for Wall Street and a prediction of 10 percent U.S. unemployment even as he said the “engines” of an economic recovery have begun to turn.
“Wall Street seems to maybe have a shorter memory about how close we were to the abyss than I would have expected,” Obama said, referring to criticism of the government’s growing role in the economy and markets.
Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg News on the eve of the release of his plan to revamp financial-market regulation, voiced confidence the economy would recover soon, while warning that robust growth was needed if the U.S. is to rein in its budget deficit without raising taxes on most Americans.
“You’re starting to see the engines of the economy turn,” Obama said. Still, he said, “It’s going to take a long time” for a full-fledged recovery as households work off the debt accumulated during the real estate boom.
The jobless rate will continue to climb from its current 25-year high of 9.4 percent as employers are slow to take on new workers, the president said. “Jobs are a lagging indicator,” he said, while adding that he didn’t have “a crystal ball” to predict when unemployment will start to decline.
..snip..
Growth and Taxes
He left open the possibility he would have to raise taxes on most Americans to decrease the deficit if growth were too weak. He also indicated he might tax the most-expensive employer-provided benefits to help pay for his health-care revamp. Both would reverse pledges he made during the campaign.
“If we are growing at a robust rate, then we can pay for the government that we need without having to raise taxes,” Obama said. “If we’ve got anemic growth, if we don’t have a strategy for recovery without bubbles, which is essentially what we’ve had over the last couple of recovery cycles, then we’re going to continue to have problems.”
The president has repeatedly said he would keep his presidential campaign pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans while rolling back tax breaks for households making more than $250,000 a year.
During the campaign, Obama opposed taxing employer-provided health-care benefits, a proposal gaining traction among Senate Democrats to pay for a $1 trillion health-care plan.
He said he preferred other means of funding the legislation, including reducing itemized deductions for the wealthiest Americans and focusing on cutting health-care costs.
‘Vigorous Debate’
Still, he said, “Congress is having a vigorous debate on the Hill, and I don’t want to predetermine the best way to do this.”
“I’ve already put forward what I think is the best way, but let me see what comes out of the Hill,” Obama said.
..snip..
cbear
Yuts: Um, actually no—the Kuvasz was bred to guard livestock from wolves and are fierce protectors of their family. I want my Kuvasz’s to be outside ripping the nuts off random goopers while me, the Goldens, and the cats stay inside with the guns.
Yutsano
Take pictures. And please let us know how you trained them to attack by political bent. That may come in handy in the future.
scav
There really is a wide strain of economic thought that is essentially theology expressed in mathematical equations. It’s also easily recognized by the shrill cries of poutrage when the mere here and now dares to disagree with their theoretical expectations: the adherents instantly reach for the dial they claim adjusts the vertical hold on reality. Despite all this, they polish and wear their shiney tin “Science!” badge with all the pride of kids on airlines in the 70s just after the stewardesses handed out the goodie bags.
jl
@18 cbear:
“the Kuvasz was bred to guard livestock from wolves and are fierce protectors of their family.”
Jeez. This country needs a whole bunch of those. And they are way cute. Need to get a lot of them asap. Not sure I’d trust a cat with a gun, though. They would be great for recon, but with a gun… I duuno.
ABL
Brooks is a stupid mother fucker!
Tom- I love that painting.
Citizen_X
Nice hat that Mr. Yer-Borin-Me-Dude has, eh wot? Nice stein, too.
patrick II
Brooks:
Tom Levenson:
You created a straw man here. Brooks did not say governments are capable of of “directing” the economy, but “laying the foundation” for long term growth. I think Brooks is right, although I am sure his ideas of exactly what changes in government policy would encourage economic growth are the polar opposite of mine.
cbear
Yuts:
Oh, that’s easy, you just have a friend put on a Gingrich mask, cover himsef in shit, and run at them screaming obscenities. They get the message pretty quick.
jl:
You don’t know my cat. She’s a pretty good marksman too, although we’re still working on how much she needs to lead the fat fucks like Christie or females like Bachmann or Palin.
Having said that, I only allow her to use the single-shot and always stay behind her just in case she flashes back to that nasty incident at the vet that put a damper on her sex life.
jl
@25
OK, I trust you. When you have some extra troops, let me know. I may change my mind about not having time for pets right now.
Brachiator
Brooks is dumber than rocks.
Also, I haven’t seen any companies that are having trouble firing people.
scav
and can I just give an OT style-shoutout for The Guard apparently frontpaging with the U.S. treatment of Lindh when everyone will be showing up there expecting to see gloating about NotW?
jl
@24: TL is repeating standard Keynesian line. I think it is Brooks who is more guilty of strawmanning. No one thinks that the government can ‘manipulate the economy quarter by quarter’.
I also think Brooks is guilty of equivocation. ‘Laying the foundations’ can mean almost anything, from a crash government program for energy conservation programs and rearranging tax policy to encourage green energy industry, to standard GOP dogma on low taxes and no regulation.
cbear
scav: link please.
scav
The Guardian where the main article right now is Frank Lindh: America’s barbaric treatment of my son John Walker Lindh
patrick II
@ jl
I agree with you that “laying the foundation” can mean most anything — I pointed out that Brooks and I would have polar opposite ideas of what laying a good foundation is. If Levenson would have said that it would be fine. But he changed Brooks words and argued against that. If Levenson would have made your point, I would not have bothered to comment, but governments have no choice really than to lay some sort of foundation and the argument should be over what that foundation looks like, not whether government has the capability to influence the foundation of the long term economy at all.
cbear
Thanks scav, great article.
Martin
US corporations have roughly $1T in cash. They’re not hiring because they don’t need to hire. Employees don’t gain them anything when the government is willing to boost their profits more through tax cuts, subsidies, and bailouts than the company would be able to generate through hiring.
And I can attest that neither hiring nor firing is particularly difficult, even working for the state, even with public sector unions. There’s no fucking way it’s harder in the private sector.
ZB IV
Step 1: Cut taxes on the wealthy.
Step 2: ?!????!?
Step 3: Jobs!!!
” But haven’t we been trying Step 1 for ten years?”
“and what is step 2 anyways?”
Yutsano
The underpants gnomes cannot fail, they can only be failed.
ZB IV
@Yutsano:
Is that the new IOKIYAR?
:)
Yutsano
Uhh…sure! Let’s go with that!
mattH
You obvious aren’t aware of all internet traditions.
mick
bobo is not unchanged. it is bobo, unchained!
cue the van halen
ciaran
the idea that america has a rigid labour market is pretty wrong headed to.
Mary
No need to go insulting curs like that.
Stu
[email protected]
It’s an easy mistake for Brooks to make. Examine the syllogism:
David Brooks is incompetent.
David Brooks has not been fired.
It is impossible for businesses to fire incompetent people.
He can see the evidence for himself in the mirror every day. :)
RossInDetroit
The NYT. So fair and balanced. They’ve got Krugman, doing original research, analyzing it and painstakingly boiling down the conclusions for general readership.
And Brooks, a fool who pulls whatever conclusion matches his prejudices out of his ass/off the top of his head/same thing and seriously presenting it as fact.
You pays your money and you takes your pick.
arguingwithsignposts
@patrick II: i think more of what’s wrong with brooks’ statement is that he conflates two separate things:
Clearly, the government can’t be very efficient at manipulating jobs quarter by quarter, but it can do a number of things to manipulate the economy, like bailing out wall street, taking over GM, raising or lowering interest rates, quantitative easing, printing more money, etc.
Gregory
Because it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it (Upton Sinclair).
patrick II
@ arguingwithsignposts
Agreed. Most of what he says is memorized talking points gibberish. But in a country where the majority of conservatives are free market idealogues and deny the governmnet has the capability or any role in the economy it is right to say the government lays the foundation for econoic success. Is that too general to act on? Yes, he doesn’t say how, but by saying the government has that capability he concedes more than most of his fellow travelers.
Which doesn’t say he knows much of what he’s talking about, only if you talk long enough that you will say something right.
El Cid
If only we could finally have a political party and President or two who said we needed to have lower taxes, fewer regulations, make it easier to fire people, and have a more ‘flexible’ economy, we might finally have a decent country.
Not like we’ve had where trade is completely regulated and tariff-choked, you can’t fire anyone because the Unions control every job in America, the EPA seizes and breaks up any company with even the most minor oil spill, and the rich have to pay a 99% marginal tax rate over $100,000.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
so what we are tasked with, is measuring the government effect on slowing the momentum of unemployment, over the last few years?
and brooks swears by golly he can gauge this? i mean i suppose he does have expertise in living in an alternate universe, very similar to ours, one that only emerged as distinctly different, recently.
do they give a nobel prize in economics of alternate histories?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
so what we are tasked with, is measuring the government effect on slowing the momentum of unemployment, over the last few years?
and brooks swears by golly he can gauge this? i mean i suppose he does have expertise in living in an alternate universe, very similar to ours, one that only emerged as distinctly different, recently.
do they give a nobel prize in economics of alternate histories?
Bill Murray
And the Government can do both better than big business
Tim Connor
@20
bill
“I can attest that neither hiring nor firing is particularly difficult, even working for the state, even with public sector unions. There’s no fucking way it’s harder in the private sector.”
Just to pile on, besides that small percentage of people who are working under various contractual agreements, who among us is not working under an at-will employment agreement? I can “let you go” any time I want, and for any reason I want. I just can’t make stupid allegations or admit that I really wanted someone younger and sexier.
At-will employment has been the new black for a very long time for most people and I assume that everybody understands that. Perhaps it’s the court system that Bobo is secretly referring to here, the threat of which is what makes firing or laying off difficult sometimes.
JR
Well, I worked for the state of WV for a long time, and in 20 years we got close to firing one employee, who transferred to another department for a raise before we got close. We did fire contractors who turned out to be unable to do their (very difficult high-tech) assignments; or who got confused about the difference between project management and performing tasks as directed.
But employees? Nope. Just too hard, time consuming, lengthy, why bother.
That being said, I was not particularly safe as a manager, nor as one who typically had an opinion and was willing to proffer it without being asked, regardless as to it’s PC-ness. I lost a lot of sleep over trying to do a good job, which was not unusual among my co-workers.
uptown
@54
Many private companies don’t fire for the same reason: lazy, incompetent management (also, they don’t want to look bad to upper management for their hiring decisions). They just wait for the next layoffs and get rid of the folks they don’t want.
I’ve seen folks fired in both types of organizations. You need to document what the issues are, and give the employee a chance to try and improve. Again you have to document the process and outcomes.
El Cid
I’ve worked in plenty of places where someone clearly not sufficiently competent or valuable — not the blatantly inept and disaster-causing — were kept on not because anyone was blocked from firing by some fear of retaliation or punishment, but because (a) they just weren’t strong enough to do it; or (b) they weighed that person’s having a job more than having the company improve by his or her not having a job with us.