Steve Benen finds a bunch of wingers on Fox fantasizing about all the pain the downgrade will cause the American public. I’m not surprised by this, the pundits feel the same way, David Brooks is always telling us the only way forward is to “make everybody hurt”.
Here’s what I don’t get. As I understand it, the basis for contemporary capitalism is convincing people to buy stuff they don’t need. I’m cool with that, I enjoy buying stuff I don’t need, and furthermore the whole enterprise seems relatively benign to me, at least compared with slavery, cannibalism, pillaging, and other such possible bases for economies. Where does pain fit in with convincing people to buy stuff?
I understand that if the government has a large deficit, eventually taxes will have to be raised or spending will have to be cut, that if a company goes under, people will lose their jobs, but the “pain” is supposed to be a bug, not a feature, right? One of the most curious things about contemporary discourse is the way both Villagers and wingers have decided that other people’s pain is an end in itself.
jeffreyw
If everyone, everywhere, is in pain, they can rest easy knowing that no one, anywhere, is having fun.
Captain Haddock
This is just standard propaganda at work. If the downgrade happened when Bush was in office the right wing narrative would be about the commies and jihadists at S&P.
Pliny
In the twisted hellscape that masquerades as their minds, the pain a rich person feels from having a slightly lower number of dollars in their bank account is the same as the pain a poor person feels from not having enough money to buy food for herself and her children.
Betsy
Puritanism, plain and simple.
It explains so much. It explains why Americans hate themselves (not all of us, but so many). We don’t think we deserve nice things like free college or a social safety net or decent assistance for families with disabled children or … etc.
Whereas, the Swiss think NO SWISS should be without these things.
But Americans? No, we think we deserve to eat dirt in a corner and DIE.
It’s Puritanism, and a form of the ‘Just World’ fallacy. If you been bad, you deserve to suffer. And if you suffer, you must have been BAD.
Betsy
… In support of my hypothesis, I offer up Georgie Bush, saying “Isn’t that great? Isn’t Amercia great?” to that poor woman who had just told him she was working three jobs to make ends meet.
There are any number of other data points, but that one stood out.
Brian R.
As Benen noted, the best part of the Cavuto claim that pain would be good for us is that was the Fox News line last week, when they didn’t think the downgrade would happen and they were trying to tell viewers not to worry about it.
Now that it has happened and the impact is clear, they’ve completely reversed course and insisted that the downgrade is horrible and it’s all Obama’s fault.
Apparently, we have always been at war with Standard and Poor’s.
Dave N.
Because wingers and Villagers are sociopaths. If an action does not piss off a liberal or cause someone (not them) pain, it ain’t worth doing.
Ol' Dirty DougJ
@Pliny:
FTW
drkrick
It’s fairly obvious they don’t expect any pain for themselves, not even the minor pain Pliny talks about. But OTHER people’s pain, LESS WORTHY people’s pain – that’s so beautifully purifying.
Roger Moore
To you and me, the pain a bug. To sadists and sociopaths it’s a feature. Take what that says about The Village as you will.
lamh34
And Tweety leads the show with the dow’s drop and “What is Your Plan Mr President”. Tweety says that the President came out today and blamed the downgrade on the Tea Party. Accordign to Tweety, “it’s not the time for blame Mr President…it’s time for leadership”. And then Tweety brings out Ed Rendell and Michael Steele to discuss it the President’s lack of leadership. I’ve already switched the channel.
And that is what the MSM takes away from the Presidents Press Conference. But hey, next time President Obama needs to try harder.
I’d be interested to see how the “national news” anchors cover it, cause the “partisan” press has already taken a side.
bartkid
Iz sadism, pure and simple.
Just like the satiation Bill Kristol feels when he reads about war casualties.
Chris
This. The rich aren’t in for any pain – they’re rolling in more money than they’ve ever had in their lifetimes, and they have a government that’s absolutely committed to never raising taxes a dime on them. “We all have to sacrifice” is something the rich tell the other 80% to try and make them feel better about the way they’re shafting them.
BGinCHI
No pain for people who aren’t at the cocktail parties I go to, no gain for me from the people who are at the cocktail parties I go to.
/Pundit tombstone
jl
@11 the MSM, corporate media, national affairs press, whatever you want to call them, is so mired in the gullible, incoherent ignorant and stupid on economics and finance today, that it is painful to listen too.
Chris
@Betsy:
All of this.
Religion’s been used as an opium for the masses before, but the point of opium is that it’s supposed to make you feel (artificially) GOOD, maaannn, and forget how screwed up everything is down here.
American religious culture teaches us to wallow in the fact that our world is so screwed up, because we worthless worms DESERVE it. Interesting twist.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Captain Haddock: What do you take for a Haddock?
MattF
You’ve got it backwards– they’re sadists– pain is the point, not merely the outcome. See ‘Torture’.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
It doesn’t. The rentier class has decided — in the current circumstances where everyone is either broke or paying off debt — that pillaging is more profitable than selling stuff.
.
MTiffany
Inflicting pain on others is a means to making the masses think “it could be worse.” Which is preferable, in the minds of those doling out the hurt, to the masses demanding “we want better.”
TheStone
I do believe that the pain is a feature, at least in the minds of these folks. All of the features of our society that are currently under attack were resisted fiercely when introduced and it was hard work to get them up and running. It was naive to think that the reactionaries would ever stop trying to turn the clock back. It’s what they do.
Chris
@lamh34:
This from the people who started calling it “the Obama recession” before he’d even taken the oath of office. This from the people who since November 4th 2008 have admitted their main objective is “to make Obama fail,” damn the consequences.
But yeah, the OTHER person should totally lead. Be the bigger person. Whatever.
Reality Check
Think of an alcohol hangover. It’s painful, it sucks, in fact it’s often a living hell, but the last thing you should do is “cure” it by taking a shot of liquor. And after it’s over, you feel much better.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Reality Check: I don’t even drink but that is soooooo dumb.
NonyNony
@jl:
Dude they just saw their stock portfolios take a massive dive and their brokers have just told them how much this shit is costing them.
This shit just got real for people like Chris Matthews and our other overpaid millionaire pundits. This is also why we have legislation by Stock Market that Atrios complains about – our millionaire pundits see their portfolios plunge 600 points in a day and a couple thousand points in a week and suddenly the abstract financial concerns that were just a political horserace a week ago have become very real.
Of course they still know jack shit all about WHY this stuff is happening. They just know that suddenly it isn’t about rural airports or unemployed people not getting an extension or retired Medicare recipients taking a cut – it’s about their stock taking a dive and dammit somebody had better DO SOMETHING QUICK!
beltane
@TheStone: That’s right. And that’s why it is important to consider the benefits of applying a little pain to the teabaggers and their media servants. It’s all these people understand, unfortunately.
RareSanity
Ah, my good man Douglass, you do not understand the economic definition of “pain”.
Pain (economics): In a capitalistic society, when economic turmoil causes the majority of the population to have little income to spend on shit they don’t need, the wealthiest of the population then turn to the halls of Government. “Pain” is instituted when taxpayer money and social promises, or “entitlements”, are sacrificed, to force the majority of the society to buy shit they don’t need, through proxy. This softens the blow of turbulent economic times for the more wealthy of the population. It is based on the the premise that if the majority of the population did not want to feel “Pain”, they should have picked themselves up by their bootstraps and became rich.
Davis X. Machina
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Sometimes I take an aspirin, sometimes I take a calomel…
Kathy in St. Louis
Though all the comments above mine are very interesting and have a lot of good points, let me remind you that this is Fox News. This is a channel that starts out the day with some meme with the loonies on the couch, continues the same b.s. with some blond Barbie doll during the a.m. hours, has Hannity pick it up, then finishes off with the same thought for the day with O’Reilly. This is no coincidence. This is the memo from Ailes telling the on air people what to emphasize for the day. Today, it’s shared pain. The fact that the upper class really isn’t into sharing pain with much of anyone is not mentioned. It’s that sense of sacrifice, which is totally non-existent, but resonates well with those who like to consider themselves great patriots. Remember, these are the same people who thought the war in Iraq was noble while the reserves were fighting it and their own children and grandchildren didn’t have to be drafted to risk their hides. And the Fox News band played the patriotic bullshit card daily during that debacle.
Ruckus
@Betsy:
Same wavelength here.
Been saying for years: The puritans didn’t come to the new world to escape persecution they came to practice it.
The concepts invaded our culture and laws like a disease.
And the normal people have suffered ever since.
TheStone
@beltane: I’m with you, as long as we start w/ D. Brooks.
JGabriel
@Reality Check:
That’s actually not true. A hangover is a form of alcohol withdrawal. A shot or two of alcohol can help wean you through it — thus the popularity of mimosas at Sunday brunches.
ETA: Of course if you do it all the time, you’ll end up an alcoholic. But a weakly alcoholic drink is a perfectly fine supplement to a hangover cure for moderate drinkers.
.
Ol' Dirty DougJ
@Reality Check:
Hair of the dog is in fact the best remedy.
Sad_Dem
We all have strength enough to bear the suffering of others. The more suffering we can rationalize, the stronger we are.
mtraven
Pain means social control works much better. The lower classes can’t be uppity if they are (if lucky) living paycheck to paycheck and dependent on the good will of their masters.
I don’t think it has much to do with anti-fun or sadism, really. They just want servility and pain is a way to get it.
It’s kind of inept for them to state it this baldly though.
The Populist
Slightly off topic but related: Polls hint that a few of the GOP up for recall in Wisconsin are ahead.
Some troll here (Cornerstone) told me that my feeling that the dem voter didn’t show up was stupid. Yet, I’ve seen the data in both the Wisconsin and Florida house/gov elections. Whereas 60 some percent of the eligible Republitard voter showed up, only 40% of eligible dem voters showed up to vote.
So I know some won’t accept this concept and many will pin it on the midterms being a time people don’t get out and vote, I want people to look around and SEE what not getting up and voting has done to the country.
Look at the election “reform” laws these wingers are passing. Anybody insane enough to stay home tomorrow in Wisconsin deserves the bad government they have. Next time we all protest something, the right will just dig in some more and laugh at us. They will whisper “no worries, these people won’t show up and vote!”
Oh well…sigh. Somebody talk me off the ledge please.
trollhattan
@Ol’ Dirty DougJ:
Improved.
Hal
@lamh34:
Someone should tell Chris Matthews he had a plan. It was called “raise the debt ceiling like we’ve done every other year since Kennedy.”
Villago Delenda Est
Village asswipes need to feel the majority of the pain, and the pain needs to be so intense for them that they beg for the sweet release of death.
Reality Check
@Ol’ Dirty DougJ:
It’s not a “remedy”, it just postpones the hangover.
People borrowed too damn much. That’s why they’re not borrowing right now. They’re up to their necks in debt, credit card debt, student debt, mortgage debt. Until the debts are paid off, we’re not going to have a recovery.
And having the federal government pick up the tab is like hair of the dog. Short-term and ineffective, and ultimately, damaging.
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: Seconded. And we should take D. Stone’s sage advice to start with David Brooks.
The Populist
…and tweety needs to realize that congress is supposed to lay out the plans and the president signs or vetos. What is the plan, MR SPEAKER?
Reality Check
@beltane:
November 1st 2013, or whenever they happen to hold the next German federal election and the German public decides they don’t want anything to do with bailing out Mediterranean countries anymore.
The Populist
But austerity in a time of deep recession isn’t going to improve things either. What government HAS TO DO is be the consumer of last resort. In this case, building infrastructure with AMERICAN COMPANIES and AMERICAN MADE EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES.
JGabriel
@The Populist:
There are six Republican state senators up for recall. The polls have always predicted that two or three of them would win. I don’t think anyone will be surprised by that. We’re only expected to win 2-4 of the contested seats tomorrow.
.
Reality Check
Whoops, wrong thread above.
gwangung
Factually wrong in at least one instance.
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Problem with your hypothesis is that they will throw out their current leaders? Doubt that seeing how Germany has one of the steadiest economies going right now.
Reality Check
@The Populist:
Right now they do. Just wait until they try bailing out half of Europe, though.
First Greece. Then Ireland. Then Portugal. Then Italy and Spain. Tomorrow, it’s Belgium and then France. Their economy won’t be able to take it and they’re going to turn inward.
Poopyman
Nate Silver takes a look at S&P. Folks here won’t be surprised at what he says.
Villago Delenda Est
@Reality Check:
They’re not bailing out Mediterranean countries.
They’re bailing out greedy, fucktard German bankers.
There’s a difference, and it’s substantial.
The Populist
@JGabriel: Thanks man. I hope that to be true as we need 3 seats to turn the state senate back to us right?
Reality Check
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m talking about what average Germans think, not what is actually happening. There’s a lot of anti-southern (in the European sense of “southern”) sentiment in Germany right now. A lot.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Populist:
Not nearly enough short term ROI for our parasite overclass Galtian masters.
Please try again.
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Don’t bet against Belgium or France. As for Portugal, Italy and Spain? We shall see.
They are teetering but not out. Greece already got their cash and are being forced to sell assets. Ireland has already been bailed out too.
Reality Check
@The Populist:
Belgium makes our Congress look good, they can’t even form a government while being up to their necks in debt, and France, despite being (insanely) AAA rated is more expensive to insure against default than fucking Mexico right now.
The Populist
@Villago Delenda Est: LOL, I would but the American public is slowly going to our side on this issue.
If we do get some kind of investment going (Mr President, DO NOT call this stimulus okay?) the money HAS TO GO TO things the public will see. No bailouts, no special loans to insurance companies, no bailing out states…
The money HAS TO GO TO infrastructure. If a state doesn’t allow it, they lose their highway funds…plain and simple.
FlipYrWhig
“We all have to sacrifice” means “all those shiftless layabouts who have it too easy and buy big-screen TVs with my hard-earned tax money and are the real reason why the economy is a mess because Obama loves them and wants to marry them… have to sacrifice.”
RareSanity
@Reality Check:
That’s funny…I did not know that people were capable of borrowing, unilaterally. I always thought that there were arbiters, “lenders” if you will, that were supposed to assess a person’s income, current expenses and current debts. They would then take that information and make prudent decision on that person’s ability to pay.
Since it would be in this “lender’s” best interest, not to give money to a person that posed a high risk of not repaying, it would appear to protect both sides from “over borrowing”.
The only way a system like that could fail, if it existed, is if somehow it either became more profitable for these “lender’s” to lend as much as possible, regardless of a person’s worthiness. But, the only way that could happen would be if there were some mechanism to allow these “lender’s” to assign the risk of default to another party, somehow obfuscating the actual risks involved.
The U.S. should try a model where people can’t just borrow money without anyone assessing their ability to repay…
ant
hmmm. I always thought it was more of a water withdrawal.
advil withdrawal. lol
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Okay, I did a quick look up on Belgium and see some of your point. Problem with your hypothesis is betting against France. I don’t see it. Historically, they’ve had their ups and downs but never gone to the brink of defaults.
Germany, I will repeat, will continue to hum along as long as the USA starts getting it’s shit together. IF they fail it means China and the USA have fallen down hard.
Reality Check
@The Populist:
Heh, China is going to fall down really hard soon. Their gloating about our downgrade is a combination of projection and fear. In this case, it’s a nasty combination of the biggest housing bubble in history and local/provincial governments up to their necks in debt and bad loans because they were ordered to build literal bridges to nowhere by the CCP.
srv
Ask a Foxconn employee how benign your capitalism is.
And should they get uppity about it, time for some creative destruction.
The Populist
@FlipYrWhig: Huh?
Proof or you are making shit up.
Fact: Nobody is buying the kinds of shit the right claim they are. While I am a big believer in welfare to work programs, I am not going to fall for the same old talking point/think tank bullshit that these people somehow living high on the hog with barely nothing per month.
Sorry, I don’t fucking see it.
Corner Stone
@The Populist: Moran.
Villago Delenda Est
@RareSanity:
I smell mortgage “securities”!
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Okay, you and I agree on this. Question is…how hard do they fall when China has never followed the same rules as the rest of us. They’ll just devalue the Yuan again.
Corner Stone
Mary Meeker was on CNBC earlier telling us all how wage destruction and “shared” sacrifice was the necessary prescription for resolution.
Of course, all of her proposed remedies had zero pain involved for her and her class.
The Populist
@Corner Stone:
Prove me wrong idiot.
Reality Check
Ironically, do you know the only large economy in the world right now that has sane fiscal policies?
Brazil! That’s right, fucking Brazil. A country that used to be a synonym for fiscal basket case is now the sane one in the room.
Reality Check
@The Populist:
If they devalue the Yuan, they’ll end up with hyperinflation and a revolt of the populace when they can no longer afford to buy food. This started happening about a year ago which is the real reason they’re letting it slowly appreciate.
The Populist
@Corner Stone:
How about that…something we can both agree on.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
It’s called “torture.” If only someone smart and brave had the authority to do something about it, like try to repay the victims, investigate the perpetrators or perhaps even hold them accountable under the law for their crimes. Oh well, we’ll always have SUPER COKE!
.
.
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Agreed. Funniest yet is Lula is a socialist. The same kind of “evil” the right hates so much.
RareSanity
@Villago Delenda Est:
Credit default swaps, not just mortgages anymore!
Billy Mays (R.I.P.) must have been sellin’ these things in the early aughts…
“Billy Mays here for the CDS! Do you want to loan unlimited amounts of money to people that have no chance in hell of paying it back? Do you prefer the steady income of loan origination and credit fees to trying to collect interest from people with no money? Well have I got the product for you…”
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Agreed. Funniest yet is Lula is a s o ci al is t. The same kind of “evil” the right hates so much.
Chris
OT: I’m seeing something in the adds about a poll for “Is Sarah Palin doing a good job.” WHAT job? She doesn’t have a job.
kdaug
@Reality Check:
Tell it to the banks.
Reality Check
@The Populist:
He’s a SINO. He’s kept the same fiscal policies as the center-right party before him, the only difference being a marginally higher welfare budget and different rhetoric.
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Excellent post. Yep, I agree. I do worry about this but I also wouldn’t shed a tear for the people disposing of the government there.
Reality Check
@The Populist:
Soc1alist in Name Only. When he was elected he kept the same fiscal policies as the center-right party before him. Were he President of the US he’d be regularly denounced as a neoliberal disaster capitalist sell-out.
Corner Stone
@The Populist: What’s to prove you fucking joke? You want to compare midterm elections in 2010 to a state senate recall for WI in 2011?
You make the case jackhole.
The Populist
@Reality Check:
Proof positive you can take care of the poor while building an economy with sane fiscal ideas and regulation.
Reality Check
@kdaug:
Indeed. They should have been allowed to fail. We’d be better off for it by now. The recession would be deeper, but it would be over, the toxic junk flushed out, and we wouldn’t be facing double-dip.
The Populist
Economically, this FAA issue has the potential to affect flyover country in ways that will kill their economies.
I find it funny that the very people who whine about “big government” do not see the problems of giving the airlines power to be able to stop using small airports.
Proof positive that when you allow business to have some say in regulations, they will always find ways to screw the consumer for a quick buck.
The Populist
@Corner Stone:
LOL, do you know how to read idiot? MY POST was talking about the fact that the voter turnout in both Florida and Wisconsin was LOW, lower than low actually.
The point I am making is that it seems that history MAY repeat itself in Wisconsin which seems to be an important battleground.
If you would get over your trollish, cartoony anger for a minute and READ my point was rebutting your idiocy that the turnout was the reason dems lost in the midterm. Since we did not turn out in even respectable numbers (especially in those states) the tea baggers are now running these states INTO THE GROUND.
Kindly educate yourself if you want to play idiot. Since I still have not gotten proof to the contrary from you, all I see is an idiot foaming at the mouth with nothing to say.
Read next time. My point about Wisconsin was segueway into the argument that staying home IS NOT AN OPTION.
Tard.
The Populist
@Reality Check:
LOL, so true.
jwb
@The Populist: From what I’ve read, the ground game for our side sounds pretty good, but the polls are very close, Walker is not nearly as unpopular as you would hope (approval rating around 45%), and in the closest proxy to this, the election of the state Supreme Court justice, the conservative turnout was exceptional, indicating that their supporters are quite motivated.
Carl Nyberg
They think the solution to the fear they experience in their own heads–and conservatives live in fear–is to inflict enough pain so the rest of us will get it.
And by “get it” they mean experience the fear they experience.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The Pain in Spain stays mainly on the Plain*.
*socio-economically speaking, i.e. the common man, not the geomorphic term for a land surface which is broad and flat and what-is-the-matter-with-Kansas like.
TK-421
Oh, this is an easy one. You see,
RudyDoug, the pain is a justified result because those people EXTRAVAGANTLY BOUGHT THINGS THEY DIDN’T NEED AND HOW COULD YOU BE SO WASTEFUL AND JUST LOOK AT THE MESS YOU’RE IN YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF BY BUYING ALL THOSE FLAT SCREENS AND CELL PHONES YOU SELFISH BASTARD NOW WHY DON’T YOU HURRY UP AND DIE ALREADY?For a lot of Americans, our economic adventure is simply a morality play. Upthread some people mentioned that it’s Puritanism- that if we’re in a bad economic situation, then we must have done something bad to deserve this result.
I imagine Krugman’s (The Return of) Depression Economics would have exploded their heads because the recession examples he used would have been UNPOSSIBLE to them.
John Puma
“(T)he whole enterprise seems relatively benign to me.”
Oh, really, do a little more analysis.
Hint, start here:
http://tinyurl.com/5uy93
There have been a lot of folks suffering, for a long time, so we can buy shit we don’t need.
Countme In
It’s unfortunate that so many of my stolen tax dollars have gone to the NIH to research pharmaceutical and other therapies for combating multiple sclerosis, and which may have permitted the vermin murderous Republican filth and MS sufferer Neil Cavuto to issue his cocksucking, anti-American plea for pain to all of us through a larynx and voice-box that otherwise would have been strangled and silenced long ago.
As for Stossel, the other Republican bug in Benen’s clip, a machete cleaving his fucking skull in half would be a start.
Pain is coming.
Linnaeus
Neofeudalism’s lurking, folks.
lllphd
hm. i dunno, but imho, going for a bunch o’ stuff you don’t need sorta puts us in the selfish brat category, doesn’t it? i mean, i want my MTV and all those un-necessities almost as much as the next guy, but, um, isn’t this precisely what put the planet in such jeopardy?
the whole capitalist experiment is up, and i believe what it shows is that it can work ok for those in power (not so great for those being enslaved, abused, exploited, eradicated, etc.) for a time, but there just seem to be limited resources for the gazillions of consumers who accumulate all that excess stuff at exponentially exploding numbers.
like pond scum, we seem doomed to snuff ourselves out with sheer greedy environmental consumption. not something i’m willing to be too cavalier about, frankly.
sherparick
The Right and the VSP elite, horribly infected with the ideas of Ayn Rand and her acolytes are hoping to use this crisis to terminate Social Security, Medicare, and basically all the programs created since 1929 to mitigate the business cycle and immiserate all but the “deserving rich.” But in impoverishing and demoralizing the mass of people, they inadvertently strike at their own wealth. And they are actually extremely ignorant of the intellectual basis for capitalism.
http://www.salon.com/news/us_economy/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/08/adam_smith_tea_party
“Not the all-powerful king, however wise and mighty, but the assistance and co-operation of many thousands.” (Says Adam Smith, as elicited by Paul Craig Rollert and Gavan Kennedy, LostLegacyofAdamSmith.blog. The butcher, the baker, and the brewer, the countless men and women who support and extend the division the labor — these are the people who ensure the increasing efficiency, growing complexity, and continued development of society. They are the base of the economic pyramid, and their actions ensure the bounty of the Invisible Hand.
So what happened to Smith’s account? Consider Andrew Carnegie’s perspective on who makes capitalism work in his essay “The Gospel of Wealth.” Writing a century after Smith’s death, the steel magnate describes the decisive moment when human beings began to favor a model of free competition that saw the separation of “the drones from the bees,” a process that allowed for the “accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it.” Carnegie says of such people (who happen to look a lot like him) that they are so essential to society’s development that those who object to the inequalities of a free market system might as well “urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man.”In the same spirit, roughly 75 years later, Ayn Rand, in her aptly titled “What Is Capitalism?,” focuses on the “the innovators” who promote a society’s development. They are an “exceptional minority,” she says, “who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements.” What does everyone else contribute? On Rand’s account — nothing. “The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him,” she says, “but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contribute nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.”
This is a striking alternative to Smith’s vision. Instead of “the assistance and co-operation of many thousands,” it is an elite caste that provides the vision, brains, and organizational savvy that ensure a thriving economy. They are the Visible Hand of capitalism, and for Carnegie, Rand, and others like them, if you want to know who makes capitalism work, simply stand at the base of the economic pyramid and look up. You’ll find the “job creators” at the very top.
Smith would be highly skeptical of such claims. In the final edition of the “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” written over a decade after “The Wealth of Nations,” he added a chapter in which he describes the “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition.” This disposition, Smith says, colors the way we view the world, leading us to conflate wealth and greatness with virtue and poverty and weakness with vice.
It also leads to confusion in thought. Who makes capitalism work? is a very different question from For whom has capitalism worked best? We should guard against presuming the answers are necessarily one and the same.”
Countme In
Add the word “parasite”, please, in front of Cavuto’s name as well.
There, now that comment sounds like a Redrum Republican wrote it.
Incidentally, I like President Obama, but I thought his little speech today sounded as Lincoln might have after Fort Sumter has been fired on by the Confederate vermin, if Abe had said, “Here, take couple of New England States with you as you secede, as a bonus for being such absolute fuckwads.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Reality Check:
No, not at all. Look at the recession we have now, how long it took to recover from. Economics does not work like ripping off a bandaid. If anything, it is self-perpetuating. ‘Depression’ and ‘Recession’ are very different. If the banks failed, the credit market would have seized up completely and we’d be in a depression. If you hit 20% unemployment, you are not coming out any time soon. It didn’t work in the 30s, either.
Nor was debt or borrowing the problem. Government debt certainly didn’t cause it. A bubble formed because banks found a way of fraudulently reselling products they knew were worthless that wasn’t technically a crime. It infected the financial market (which certainly needed much more regulation, but tell that to the GOP) so deeply that when the bubble popped and the truth came out, the entire banking system nearly died. Letting the banking system die is ridiculous. It doesn’t cure the problem and makes you go through the worst suffering before it’s over.
TARP felt offensive because it let the bankers off scott free, but that doesn’t make the banks themselves less necessary. And it was George Bush who let the bankers off scott free. Obama was given a project already codified and half finished. Then he got gigantic pushback on regulating the banking industry to fix the problem. Pushback from the GOP, greatly aided by the Tea Party.
Debt was not the problem. Debt might eventually be a problem, but it is not itself automatically bad. Clinton’s success in balancing the budget makes it quite plain that the core of government spending is not the problem. The economy tanked because of deregulation. Our debt shot up because of Bush cutting taxes, funding gigantic expenses outside of normal operations, and refusing to regulate the medical industry.
America’s resemblance to Greece is as superficial as ‘Well, they both have debt’. Europe’s problems could cause us problems, but they are not a model of our problems. Hell, every country is different – Greece is not a model for France or Germany either.
PurpleGirl
@Chris: One correction — it’s the other 98%.
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Betsy:
I don’t know. I think that the fundamental Christianity that so many conservatives believe says that other people are not worthy; the conservative fundamentalists themselves are. Now it’s a neat trick to make poor fundamentalists whose interests you’re trampling believe that, 1., you (the fundamental-Republican leaders) have their interests at heart, and, 2., that the poor fundies are, in truth, doing soooooo well–or, rather, that they would be if only the government weren’t “confiscating” or “stealing” (also lknown more realistically as “taxing”) them to death!!!! so that the less worthy among our American rabble sucking unworthily at the government tit can buy their T-bone steaks and caviar every week woth their food stamps. But that’s what they’ve done. They’ve made these rubes believe that their uneducated, barely-scrabbling-along children are going to have to shell out millions of dollars in “death taxes” when the rubes die, all so that the unworthies can get free health care and free food stamps and free wide screen televisions and free who-knows-what-else. These idiots believe they’re rugged individualist millionaires in the making, who have been unfairly held down by the black guy in the White House and all the black-loving Demoncrats for the benefit of the lazy, parasitic black underclass.
And these rubes go to church and they hear that they are the salt of the earth. They are the righteous ones. They don’t need Social Security or Medicare, and the rubes believe this, even as they use Medicare and live on their Social Security payments. It’s the others who are the leeches, and they are the ones who don’t deserve any help. It’s a wonder that they can believe this shit, since you’d think even the most cursory self-examination would show them what two-faced assholes they are. But one thing about the bigoted asshole rubes: they aren’t big on self-examination. Once again, I can’t recommend this enough:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Bago
My dad is a truck driver who got furloughed after his company could no longer afford the project length loans to make payroll. My mom is a public school employee who has adequate medical insurance thanks to her union, the SEIU. However, due to Fox News, they hate unions, unemployment, and stimulus spending that would create demand for truck drivers.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, they also buy lottery tickets.
This scam is one of the best ones ever perpetrated.
Matt
Can we just take up a collection to buy some dominatrices (plural?) for the GOP and friends? One suspects a few sessions where they finally get to be the pig bottoms they’ve always dreamed of would seriously improve their temperament. ;)
Marginalized for stating documented facts
On the contrary: this is perfectly typical for America.
America loves suffering and despises pleasure. Americans adore pain and hate joy. The pre-eminent American motto is “No pain, no gain,” which explains why Americans dote on torture in Abu Ghraib, and love to make fun fun fun jokes about prison rape.
America is a fanatically puritanical country, and the puritans’ greatest fear is that someone, somewhere, is experiencing joy.
Everything in America is based on making people suffer. American prisons, American military policy, American education, American business, American politics, are all about inflicting torment and suffering on as many people as possible. Reasons don’t matter. All that counts is making people scream in agony: that’s the American way.
Is there a problem somewhere in the world? Send American bombers to burn brown babies with napalm! Is the economy out of kilter? Cut unemployment, crush the homeless, send out cops to brutally beat vagrants! Is there a drug problem? Harsher prison sentences, more prison crowding, privatize the lockups so prison rape becomes epidemic! Do Americans face difficult political or social issues? Demonize political opponents, scream lies, viciously assault the opposition with envenomed verbal abuse!
America dotes on torture, rape, murder, suffering, humiliation, brutality, and endless sadistic pain. Our movies are filled with it, our TV shows celebrate it, our leaders boast about it in this foreign policy speeches, our soldiers glory in it, our police worship “pain compliance” (a fancy word for “torture”) and “getting tough” and “cracking down” (translation: murder and torture more innocent people).
Betsy
@Too Many Jimpersons:
Yes, that seems right, and your theory explains how people can be downtrodden and poor and buy into Puritanism and the Just World fallacy, and still feel good about themselves and basically view themselves as righteous and moral (even tho according to their own worldview, their status should be an indication of punishment): just blame [insert hated group here, usually an oppressed group that is re-characterized as the oppressor].
If you’re a Puritan (religiosity is not a requirement, only a bad-ass, self-hating, indignant, mean-spirited, illiberal in the classical sense attitude) and you end up with the short end of the economic stick, it’s almost a necessity that you demonize some other group for keeping your rightful treasures and rewards from you — otherwise, you’d have to believe that you done wrong and deserve the wrath of Providence, yourself. Or the wrath of the market, for non-religious Puritans. There are plenty, of course.
The Republic of Stupidity
And therein lies the key concept… Other… People’s Pain…
As long as it happens to somebody else, I’m cool w/ it…
Betsy
@marginalized — Agree — look at our vacation time, shortest in the world.
We need more Mardi Gras. We need more dance halls. We need more picnics with bottles of table wine. We need more backrubs and footrubs and laying in the grass looking at the clouds and eating ripe summer peaches. And throwing Frisbees with kids.
And days off work and homemade pound cake and foosball.
Less driving.
Betsy
@marginalized — Agree — look at our vacation time, shortest in the world.
We need more Mardi Gras. We need more dance halls. We need more picnics with bottles of table wine. We need more backrubs and footrubs and laying in the grass looking at the clouds and eating ripe summer peaches. And throwing Frisbees with kids.
And days off work and homemade pound cake and foosball.
Less driving.
El Cid
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
Yeah, there’s some happy stuff at the end about how we can all be saved by Jesus, etc., but for our Modern Conservative Movement, that part vanishes just as quickly as anything said by Jesus about how he was with those who fed him when he was hungry or clothed him when he was nekkid, or any other of those parts of the Bible which weren’t about denouncing people who hate America.
“Sinners” are liberals and anyone not sufficiently hating themselves for deviating in the tiniest from a fantasized right wing reality.
Kyle
The Foxtards love it because the billions in higher interest costs will go to increase a Repuke corporation’s profits. Whereas a tiny increase in taxes is Worse! Than! Eleven! Hitlers!
It’s the same mentality that screams about a proposed 5c a gallon gas tax increase to fund infrastructure, but shrugs as market manipulation jacks up the price of gas by $2. Or blames it on ‘libruls’ or the EPA.
priscianusjr
FlipYrWhig
@The Populist: I think you misunderstood my translation of what Big Media means by “shared sacrifice” as what I want in terms of policy. I don’t want anything of the kind. But when pundits say they want sacrifice to be shared, they don’t mean by everyone, they mean by the people they think have been getting a free ride. “Shared sacrifice,” to pundits, means cutting off “welfare,” it means public employees having their benefits and salaries cut, etc. It certainly doesn’t mean that the pundits themselves are volunteering to sacrifice.
OzoneR
@lamh34:
tastes like bully pulpit
OzoneR
@Marginalized for stating documented facts: builds character!
The Raven
I tell you truly that these people have fallen in love with death, pain, and destruction.
Croak!
PWL
Well, I think there are two reason why Villagers like to talk about “making everybody hurt.” First, they think it makes them sound hard and tough, and ruled by logic, not emotion.
Second, when Villagers talk about “making everybody hurt, they really mean “making everybody ELSE hurt.” Given their own well-paid and sheltered lives, they’ll never feel the pain they’re so eager to call for.
Sort of like they way they always root for war and “firmness and “toughness” –from a nice comfy office 6,000 miles away from any danger of being struck by a bullet….