I know nothing about macroeconomics, but anyone could tell that the pro-austerity arguments were about how good it feels to tighten one’s other people’s belt, not about any kind of reality-based quantitative analysis of anything (via Atrios):
“Even countries with relatively strong public finances such as Germany — the country’s budget deficit fell to just 1 percent of GDP in 2011 — are tightening fiscal policy,” Simon Tilford, the chief economist for the Center for European Reform in London, wrote recently. “In so doing, European governments are standing conventional macroeconomic thinking on its head. Governments are withdrawing demand from their economies at a time of pronounced private sector weakness.”
The awful truth is that for at least the last decade, western elites have been Jerry Sandusky, non-rich/non-white people have been pubescent boys, and the world has been a big locker-room shower. Going into Iraq felt good to Serious People the way molesting boys felt good to Jerry Sandusky. Same with austerity.
And then these douchebags have the gall to lecture us about how the hippies made everyone stop resisting their worst impulses. If wanting to bomb civilians and destroy the western middle-class isn’t one of the very worst impulses a human being can have, I’d like to know what it is.
redshirt
That’s pretty strong. I have a hard time comparing economic decisions with child rape, though I suppose the suffering may be more widespread.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@redshirt:
I don’t think it’s different at all. I know that’s harsh, but I can’t see the difference. Fucking with people to satisfy your urges is fucking with people to satisfy your urges.
And if it was a serious economic decision and not just something that seemed like fun, I would feel differently. But it wasn’t.
patrick II
you should have held on to that “angry” moniker just a little longer.
Justifiably so.
Hunter Gathers
Moore Award!
Svensker
See, DougJ, this is why I like you, even if you are using the nom de plume of one of the Satanic Hordes. (Go, Giants!)
Also, too, “Saul Alinsky is my copilot” is awesome.
burnspbesq
Macro isnt rocket science. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when the real interest rate on every Treasury security with a maturity of ten years or less is negative, the government should be borrowing its ass off to do infrastructure.
Also, if an economist tells you that something whose name is an oxymoron ( e.g., expansionary austerity) is a good thing, don’t believe it.
Loneoak
Not that it’s worthy of a flamewar, but I really do think rape analogies of any kind ought to be avoided. It’s hardly the only analogy available to you. It ultimately perpetuates our rape culture by minimizing the specificity of the violence.
different-church-lady
Was that analogy really necessary?
Spaghetti Lee
Well, they may be ‘standing conventional macroeconomic thinking on its head’, but I’m assuming chucklebutt here isn’t going to write about when conventional macroeconomic thinking falls over and cracks a rib.
I would argue though, that like the delicate snowflake, the exact crystallization of spite, stupidity, and smugness is different in every MOTU. Some of them may be indeed filled with an intense and implacable need to destroy people weaker than them, but with a quote like that I get the feeling this guy wants to be Mr. Unconventional Wisdom, willing to gamble that hundreds of years of economic theory is wrong just so he can get a book deal and maybe a chart named after him if he’s right. The lives that hang in the balance are a secondary/tertiary issue, and always will be.
Alison
@Loneoak: Thank you.
Thought this went without saying here, but I guess not.
different-church-lady
@Hunter Gathers: No, I’m thinking an Inverted-Hoekstroika.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Loneoak:
I’ll change it to molesting, I’m not trying to be glib here.
bemused senior
Good “This American Life” explaining the economic crisis in Greece this weekend.
ETA: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/455/continental-breakup
Maybe you need to subscribe to listen … it was played yesterday from my tote bag.
magurakurin
Why does it have to be compared to anything? The mismanagement of economic affairs or the debacle of the Iraq war are horrifying enough on their. There really is no need to make a comparison to the evil of Sandusky.
but, you know, whatever works for you I suppose. And in truth my first response to this post was
“Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Molesting is rape. You need to find something else. This is inflammatory for the same reasons that caused ABL to go ballistic. Use rape as an analogy for rape only, even if you call it molesting.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
That middle paragraph is going to catch you some shit, Doug J. I’ll get on the record that I think it’s in bounds, though I want to stay out of the flame war that’s almost certainly going to hit here – probably is hitting here as I type.
I don’t know why this is so hard for Democrats. Not incorporating Sandusky into a campaign commercial, for God’s sake, but just hitting hard and simple.
“Mitt R-Money wants to tighten your belt, not his. Think about that when you cast your vote Nov. 6. I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”
That’s a 15-second spot.
Satanicpanic
You’re just asking for a visit from our resident NAMBLA troll.
freelancer
Balloon-Juice: come for the pet pics, stay for the rape jokes, or leave, it’s entirely up to you.
jrg
Trolling one’s own blog.
Brian S
I get the analogy, but it makes me uncomfortable too, probably because I was a victim of molestation when I was 4. I wrote about it when I wrote about Paterno and Sandusky for The Rumpus, so it’s not like I’m queasy about talking about molestation on its own, and I’m not going to stop reading Balloon Juice or stop commenting here because of this, but I’d be lying if I said I was completely comfortable with the comparison.
That said, the last paragraph is spot on.
Svensker
Really? People are offended by what Doug wrote?
I’m offended that we bombed Iraq and that rich bankers stole all the money.
What Doug wrote was just describing it, pretty accurately if you ask me (which you didn’t).
freelancer
@Svensker:
I think someone wants to put their hat in the ring for the 2012 Moore Award.
magurakurin
@Satanicpanic: hey, maybe that’s a feature not a bug. Sandusky’s biggest fan hasn’t been around for awhile…
Hill Dweller
In the comments sections of K-Thug’s most recent blog post on austerity, someone recounted Goolsbee saying on This Week that cuts in government spending was holding back the economy. That led to Will and Laura Ingram literally laughing at his statement. In their ignorant view, that isn’t possible.
None of the half-wits on the TV pay any price for their ignorance. They can be wrong about everything but still get invited back on those shows.
andrewsomething
Bravo!
Brian S
@Svensker: Offended is a bit stronger than I’d use, but bothered? Sure. After all, actual molestation happened to me. I’ve been dealing with it for roughly 39 years now, and given that anywhere from 10 to 20% of the population was sexually abused as a child (depending on whose numbers you go with–some estimate even higher), then I’m almost certainly not the only one. Not every victim will feel as uncomfortable as I do; some will be bothered a great deal more.
Just keep that in mind when you’re blithely tossing around molestation comparisons. You’re demeaning the experiences of an not insignificant portion of the population because you think it’s a good comparison.
Yutsano
@magurakurin: He was about yesterday. But this is a big old batsignal for him to arise again.
eemom
Not an effective analogy, much less a hard-hitting one. Just a godawfully awkward, cringingly clumsy attempt at the same — and remarkably tone deaf, given recent history on this blog.
fasteddie9318
If analogizing it to rape is inappropriate, and I tend to agree that it is, can we come up with a better one soon please? Because just describing what the oligarchs are doing isn’t working, and what they’re doing might not be rape, but it is pretty fucking awful.
Mr Stagger Lee
I think that a better analogy, is the bankers are the Spaniards and the rest of us, are the Caribe and Tanio Indians of the Caribbean Islands who are just about to be wiped out. Or maybe they are the Mongol hordes and the rest of us are peasants of the Steppes about to receive a ravishing, lets hope will get their taste of the kamekaze(Divine Wind) and get a taste of Japan. Then again I could go Godwin and compare the Bankers to the Nazi Blitzkrieg and we are all Polish citizens.
magurakurin
@Svensker: I’m offended about the invasion of Iraq as well, but not because it’s just like Sandusky raping little boys. They are two horrible things but they are alike only in that they are horrible. As people have pointed out it doesn’t actually make the argument that the Iraq war was evil by comparing it to the evil Sandusky committed, it only muddies the water. Using Whiskey Pete in Falluja is an act of unspeakable horror. I fail to see how comparing it to what Sandusky did highlights the horror of burning other humans from the inside out appear more evil.
It just seems counter productive to one’s argument.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Brian S:
This was meant to be anything but blithe. I apologize if it seemed blithe.
different-church-lady
@Satanicpanic: To be fair, he never waits to be asked anyway.
Svensker
@Brian S:
I can see why you’re uncomfortable on the subject and sensitive. I’m not trying to be demeaning. Just trying to understand.
Do you think that the word “rape” should only be used for a violent sexual act, and never as an analogy? For example, to say that mountain-top removal is “raping the countryside” — is that out of bounds? Not trying to be flippant, just see where you’re coming from.
magurakurin
@Yutsano: really? I guess “I missed him by that much.”
I need a life.
Brian S
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: No, I know it wasn’t meant that way, and we’re cool. And I appreciate your response.
Short Bus Bully
Violence is violence, but it’s a different kind when it’s done face to face, looking your victim in the eyes.
That’s why the rape analogy will always fail.
Pressing a button next to monitor half a world away to shoot a hellfire at a figure your screen is not the same as sticking a knife into your mortal enemy and feeling their life’s blood on your hand. They both get to the same result in the end but the path there is very different.
Your point, once you get past the inappropriate analogy, is a good one however.
Brian S
@Svensker: I wasn’t always of that opinion, but I’m getting there. And part of the reason is because rape as metaphor is so often used to describe minor inconveniences that it becomes hard to swallow the metaphor when it’s being used to describe bigger, more violent acts. Maybe one day I’ll be less sensitive to its use, but that’ll come only after it’s not used for bullshit comparisons (like having a high cell phone bill, for instance) anymore. And if that means we have to come up with a different metaphor for the wealthy taking unfair advantage of everyone else, I’m willing to go there.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I’m also not quite so much offended as just put off. The problem with the analogy is that rape/molestation is intensely personal. Combine that with the sexual element and it overwhelms any analogy you make with it. You don’t want to do that with an analogy; you need to draw equivalence. That just won’t happen for most readers in this case. It can’t.
Svensker
@Brian S:
Fair enough answer. Thanks for taking the time.
Now, I’m for bed.
Cheers all.
PIGL
I am fine with the rape talk, because the prescriptions of serious economists and conservative politicians for austerity are a manifestation of sadistic impulses to discipline and punish…it is an explicitly sexual fetish, and it is forced on an unwilling population. To refer to rape is not even a metaphor, because the people pushing this are advancing a sick sexual obsession with observing pain.
John Raulston Saul talked about this at some length in Voltair’s Bastards, a book that people here might find of interest. There are free versions on line. Of course, it was the 90s, so his exemplar was Maggie Thatcher as opposed to, you know, the entire fcuking western political class.
Citizen_X
Hey, crude analogies work. Economically, we got raped/we got fucked. Works for me.
And the Iraq war shouldn’t be compared to sexual assault? The bloody, pointless, America weakening/Iran strengthening Iraq war? Three words, people: Suck. On. This.
Dogs
Oh please. The shining way in which tausterity is nothing like Jerry Sandusky is that there’s an entire segment of society SCREAMING ABOUT IT.
PIGL
Come to think on it, the likes of Foucault and Marcuse and Freud also talked about this connection between perverted sexuality and political power, in much more learned and convincing prose than mine. The point again is, there are serious thinkers who argue that “rape” in this context is not metaphor or analogy but is rather a precise description.
BBA
46 comments and no mention of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
It’s called Protecting Democracy, you hippie freak. Sometimes you have to burn the country down and insult its charred remains in order to save it.
.
different-church-lady
@Citizen_X:
There’s a difference between a generalized use of rape as analogy and using a very specific instance of child rape as analogy.
JGabriel
@different-church-lady:
It’s not like we’re talking about baby nuns.
.
Satanicpanic
@different-church-lady: Well we don’t need to feed it quite this much.
Comrade Luke
@BBA:
Or Greenwald…
PeakVT
If by elites you mean the media elites who see everything as a 1-act 1-scene morality play, the Iraq=Sandusky analogy works to a certain extent. It probably holds for some of the mid-level policy elite, too. However, I think that the people that worked behind the scenes to make it happen had more conventional goal-driven motives. Same for austerity.
Donut
@Dogs:
January 29th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Yeah, gotta agree with this. Sorry, Doug. This analogy don’t float cuz what Sandusky and his ilk do is shrouded in secrecy and can only be maintained when it’s kept under wraps an people who are in a position to do something about it turn away. That is how Sanduskey went about doing his damage.
The oligarchs are not exactly hiding what they are doing to the global economy.
I get your point and obviously agree with it, though.
handy
DougJ scores goal on self, reminds us again he is better off dusting his practice trolls than doing FP work, and yet…
@fasteddie9318:
Also this.
jl
What this blog needs is a little more Nietzsche, an opinion I have long held.
” The exploitation of the worker was, it has now been realized, was an action of monumental stupidity, an exhausting of the soil at the expense of the future, an imperilling of society. Now we have almost a state of war: and the cost of keeping the peace, of concluding treaties, and acquiring trust, will henceforth be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and of long duration. ”
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878-80 section 286
I lost my handy dandy copy of HaTooH, so this is quoted in An Introduction to Neitzsche as a Political Thinker, Ansell-Pearson.
DanielX
@efgoldman:
Well, yes. Actually, it became apparent to them that fucking the proles was the only way to go on getting their bonuses, because middle class home ownership was the only large pool of assets remaining that they hadn’t looted already. It wasn’t like there were any bucks remaining in investment banking as such, because nobody was or is investing in domestic production and the folks overseas have figured out they really don’t need Wall Street to do deals. At that point the only question remaining was not whether the proles were going to get fucked repeatedly and without lubricant – that was predetermined; yay deregulation! – but who was going to get left standing up without a chair when the music stopped. That was the proles, of course. I remember very well when the Bush Regency bailed out AIG and thinking, hey, now I’m an insurance magnate! George W. Bush, first socialist president of this here Yewnited States. Who knew?
The major issue for Mittens and his ilk, including any number of Wall Street douchebags residing in Darien, Greenwich, etc, is that the proles have noticed – finally – that capitalism, as practiced here for the last forty years or thereabouts, isn’t working very well any more for the average American. Therefore, it cannot be the fault of Wall Street, perverse compensation incentives, short term thinking or any of that; it just has to be the fault of the dirty fucking hippies, or brown people, or people who want to preserve what’s left of the New Deal and Medicare, or anybody except the people who have more money than they or their descendants unto the fifth generation are ever going to be able to spend. Perish forbid that someone with a billion dollars be asked to spend an additional $200k a year in taxes, because then they will get their undies in a knot and will feel unloved and won’t create any more jobs. (Jesus, I just kill myself sometimes.)
Obviously this is Obama’s fault. It is also, as always, good news for John McCain.
srv
The VSP’s are objectively worse. They get off fucking populations.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Brian S:
Thanks for having the guts to have written about your experience. It really makes a big difference to others who have gone through it when people like you talk about it.
patrick II
I think the rape metaphor is apt. Like rape, the real motive for the various permutations of autocracy damaging our lives is power. Abstractions like “free market” and “capitalism” remove their proponents from the immediacy of being accountable for their advocacy. About 45,000 Americans a year die from lack of health care, ostensibly to live within the logical boundaries of a theoretical social philosophy book written 235 years ago. We start wars where rape is a blessing compared to getting a power drill through one’s brain or having white phosphorus burn down to bone.
“Austerity” is only the latest abstraction to be distorted and used as an attack on an enabled democracy, the only real competitor for power we have. It’s a nice word that moves its proponents away from its consequences. We need stronger and more direct words to convey the immediacy of its consequences — impoverishment, death, and despair.
Loneoak
@PIGL:
The problem, of course, is that those guys weren’t raped (maybe they were, but I somewhat familiar with their work and lives and haven’t heard of it). It was still just a metaphor to them, a non-specific crime that could be used to stand in for another.
slag
I always hate the rape analogy. Always.
And yet, this post turns David Brooks’s odious column on its head and (if Brooks had any sense of shame) shoves his nose in it. And I always like that.
So, I’m torn. I find it justifiably grotesquely offensive. In that respect, this post must be high art.
J. Michael Neal
@patrick II: Perhaps. But the purpose of analogies is to persuade and explain. That’s not the effect that using rape as an analogy will have. It sounds perfect to a set of the people who are already convinced, but that’s not really the point. To those not already persuaded, rape will just overwhelm the point being made.
jl
The Atrios link has
” BRUSSELS — Bowing to mounting evidence that austerity alone cannot solve the debt crisis, European leaders are expected to conclude this week that what the debt-laden, sclerotic countries of the Continent need are a dose of economic growth. ”
This is an odd, and confused paragraph, and surprised that Atrios, an economist, did not toss some snark at it.
There is NO structural debt crisis in Euripe, except for Greece (which is tiny compared to the overall problem). There is a badly designed currency union crisis triggered by a financial panic, and then deep and long lasting recession. This is the problem of a currency union operating in a recession without the mechanisms needed for fiscal transfers and productive factor mobility (particularly labor).
So, after misdiagnosing the cause of the problem, we hear they want some ‘economic growth’. As if that can be ordered up separately from their mistaken austerity policies, or from supposed structural government deficit problems.
I did waste a link on this NYT article. The main conclusion is that the Euro VSP class finally realizes that austerity will not be enough to solve the problem, but sounds like they have little clue about what will solve it. A few sentence that seem to allude to neo Washington consensus structural reforms, but that will fail, since in those kind of structural reforms usually involve making individual national economies more prefectly neoclassical competitive (in the fantasies of economic masters of the universe) which is an inadequate half measure without solving the currency union problems, and I don’t see how they can work quickly enough by an order of magnitude in years, since that would involve really turning the Eurozone into a United States in terms of labor mobility and trade in services.
jl
No one here respects my Authorateh!
So, as punishment, more Nietzsche.
Nietzsche’s prophecy.
“ Henceforth the individual will see only the side of [the state’ that promises to useful or threatens to be harmful to him… None of the measures of government will be guaranteed continuity; everyone will draw back from projects that will require tending for decades or centuries for their fruits to mature. No one will feel towards the law any obligation beyond that bowing for the moment to the force that backs up the law; one will then at once set out to work to subvert it with new force. Finally, one can say this with certainty, distrust of all government, insight into the uselessness and destructiveness of these short winded struggles, will impel men to a quite novel resolve: to do away with the concept of the state, to the abolition of the distinction between private and public. Private companies will step by step absorb the business of the state; even the most resistant remainder of the functions of government (for example the activities designed to protect private person from private person) will in the long run be taken care of by private contractors. “
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, from section 472
This extract is from same book as above.
Nietzsche certainly did rail against socialism, which he saw as a kind of spiritual slavery. The concept of the modern libertarian did not seem to exist yet, but I think Nietzsche talked about the basic motivations of the libertarian movement.
He did not think that these impulses were in any way related to a ‘return’ to a Golden Age of liberty, or removing state oppression from a nice Lockean minimal state. I think he saw it as an result of the easiness of life in the modern social democratic state, where a massive cultural, technical and physical infrastructure created by the state gave people the illusion that they were responsible for their easy modern state of life. The idea of the public and private spheres of life, and their respective dignity, was replaced by what Nietzsche called the ‘merely personal’, which was not dignified at all, but but what I interpret to be a kind of self centered childishness (as opposed to the child like, which is more positive, and exists in the dignity of the private sphere, which withers away).
There are more, what I think are, uncannily accurate insights into the course of modern social democracy in Human, All Too Human, but I misplaced my copy, so just have excerpts from the book on his political thought.
jl
Damn, in moderation due to overlooked naughty b * n * r p * l L words. Try again.
No one here respects my Authorateh!
So, as punishment, more Nietzsche.
Nietzsche’s prophecy.
“ Henceforth the individual will see only the side of [the state’ that promises to useful or threatens to be harmful to him… None of the measures of government will be guaranteed continuity; everyone will draw back from projects that will require tending for decades or centuries for their fruits to mature. No one will feel towards the law any obligation beyond that bowing for the moment to the force that backs up the law; one will then at once set out to work to subvert it with new force. Finally, one can say this with certainty, distrust of all government, insight into the uselessness and destructiveness of these short winded struggles, will impel men to a quite novel resolve: to do away with the concept of the state, to the abolition of the distinction between private and public. Private companies will step by step absorb the business of the state; even the most resistant remainder of the functions of government (for example the activities designed to protect private person from private person) will in the long run be taken care of by private contractors. “
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, from section 472
This extract is from same book as above.
Nietzsche certainly did rail against s o s h ul I s m, which he saw as a kind of spiritual slavery. The concept of the modern libertarian did not seem to exist yet, but I think Nietzsche talked about the basic motivations of the libertarian movement.
He did not think that these impulses were in any way related to a ‘return’ to a Golden Age of liberty, or removing state oppression from a nice Lockean minimal state. I think he saw it as an result of the easiness of life in the modern s o sh u l democratic state, where a massive cultural, technical and physical infrastructure created by the state gave people the illusion that they were responsible for their easy modern state of life. The idea of the public and private spheres of life, and their respective dignity, was replaced by what Nietzsche called the ‘merely personal’, which was not dignified at all, but but what I interpret to be a kind of self centered childishness (as opposed to the child like, which is more positive, and exists in the dignity of the private sphere, which withers away).
There are more, what I think are, uncannily accurate insights into the course of modern s o s h ul democracy in Human, All Too Human, but I misplaced my copy, so just have excerpts from the book on his political thought.
Gustopher
At least that terrible metaphor neither killed brown people, nor anally raped ten year old boys.
a1
This is an excellent non-overheated Balloon-Juice discussion about the analogy – who would have thought?
I came in thinking that it comes close to expressing the grotesque nature of the elite’s behavior, and in a world where class “warfare” and “bombshell” scandal revelations are used in spite of veterans’ sensibilities, are we really going to make *this* analogy an issue?
But it’s a great point that Sandusky’s actions are a much more personal nature than those of the austerity promoters.
For them, it’s more of a bigoted abstraction about how “those people” don’t deserve any more money, security, health or happiness than what the People Who Matter deem to allow them to have.
However, the analogy’s very good at describing the power imbalance between the two groups, and how the friends of the powerful can get away with their actions for so long.
patrick II
@J. Michael Neal:
Alan Grayson used some pretty strong words when in congress. The proof of their affect was the huge monetary effort the republicans put forth to remove him from office. They did not like what he had to say, and certainly did not want him back in office to continue his plain speaking.
Done right, strong wrongs are needed to convey the result of abhorrent actions.
Samara Morgan
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
the basic problem that free market economics only “works” under resource abundance.
Under resource starvation (Peak Oil) the market has begun to cannibalize the middle class. Examples; for-profit education, housing bubble, college mortgages, and the health insurance industry.
See ecophagy.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Market forces emerge under conditions of scarcity.
The market is prehistoric. Trade existed long before there was any kind of abundance. e.g. Trade networks in flint and ochre and seashells and obsidian during the paleolithic.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Sorry but I’m not offended by the description of economic rape as rape. It’s up close, personal and it destroys whole communities.
It is what it is, analogy or not.
bjacques
Can’t we just say we’re getting fucked and can expect more of the same, and move on?
I think [email protected] was going in the right direction. Since austerity isn’t working, it’s time to think about job creation. Ten bucks says “job creation” means making it easier to fire workers, slashing the amount of severance paid when laying off, and making “emergency” exceptions to minimum-wage laws. You know, “labor flexibility.” Like in the US and the UK.
Brian S
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Good for you. You’re not offended. But don’t you care that some others who share this space might be, if not offended, then caused some pain by such a needless comparison? Have some empathy.