Comments for David Brooks' Parallel Universe at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 18 out of 18 comments http://www.cepr.net Wed, 22 May 2013 12:53:37 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16401 Who, at the Times, thinks Brooks is an asset? Guy's like this really can't float to the top, can they? I have to think they're being held up by someone else. - dick c Wed, 09 May 2012 01:00:20 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16399 "This is scary." you say. If you're only now scared by the possibility that people may take Brooks seriously, you're coming late to the party. - John Q Tue, 08 May 2012 20:34:12 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16398 Its best quote definitively applies to Mr. Brooks: “He is an errand boy for grocery clerks.” - theod Tue, 08 May 2012 18:52:34 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16397 David Brooks: the triumph of anecdote over evidence.... - MaryinChicago Tue, 08 May 2012 17:35:13 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16395 I had to laugh, a maniacal laugh of madness, to hear Brooks give his oh so quaint concern for what happens in the long run, when he suggests to allow the engine of the economy to suffer permanent (or only nearly so, if we got lucky under his plan). In this short a space, I can only describe my view via imperfect metaphor. When the car engine is running low on oil and you're low on money, you (the person who is truly thinking about the future) put oil in the car, even if you have to borrow. Because if you don't, your penny-wise $5 in savings will not be able to pay for the $1000-2000 replacement engine. So, yeah, it's laughable that Brooks says he's concerned about the future when it is most obvious that he is not at all concerned about the future or the present, for whatever reason that may be. - David Tue, 08 May 2012 12:33:19 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16394 What kind of sickness has made it common for people to believe said "superstars" exist? What "cult of the personality" makes anyone believe that these guys are not just simply talented (and perhaps mostly at self-promotion) rather than some lesser deities from the capitalist plane? Seriously, have any of these people worked for a big business? Have they actually paid attention the last 4 years as these scathingly brilliant people crashed and burned our economy? Where is the credulity? There are not gods, there are just, well bigger assholes. Is that what we want to worship as a society? Certainly there are very talented hard working people in the upper reaches of some companies, but this sophomoric implication that they are somehow beyond the thousands of smart and hard working people "below" them is truly an act of self-delusion. It's like high school with the likes of Brooks worshiping the "popular kids". He represents their sycophantic court, self-deluding in the hope that they will love him, actually love him. Grow up David. They are people, just people like you and me. You show yourself to be a man-child through your comments. - Carl Weetabix Tue, 08 May 2012 12:32:41 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16393 Brooks believe globalized companies are "hyperefficient." Well sure. Efficiency relates to lowering labor costs, so manufacturing in countries where almost slave labor is available is efficient. But is that really the best free enterprise in the USA can do? Put us into a race to the bottom for wages? I thought free enterprise was supposed to make everyone better off, not just the titans of industry. - Ember Tue, 08 May 2012 12:32:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16391 actually mark, dr baker & other columnists have explained this repeatedly. the board of directors have a unique link with the ceo. a typical member of the board might be on 10 other "boards". he (not to be sexist, but they're mostly men) flies around the country spending a week or 2 at each board meeting, & picks up a check at each one for say $200,000. so he will do nothing to ruin his wonderful way of making money. so he votes with the other members unanimously for the ceo to receive say $50 million as a bonus. at the same time, the workers get a new contract for $5 less per hour, a reduction in their work week down to 30 hours, & all benefits are eliminated. the question is, what to do about it? well the brilliant prof. noam chomsky believes the occupy movement may be able to effect change much as mahatma gandi, martin luther king, & nelson mandela have done in the past. one thing for sure, there will be a lot of blood spilled before the established power at wallstreet & their enforcers the police departments & homeland security ever relinquish anything to we the people. wish i could say otherwise but the united states has always been a very cruel & brutal nation easily surpassing ancient rome. 300 million black slaves, the genocide of native americans & the theft of half of mexico prove my point. - mel in oregon Tue, 08 May 2012 11:09:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16388 That's one question no one seems willing to broach. Yes, the CEO makes out like a bandit when he moves production to a cheap country, but why him and not the workers displaced? It's not like it takes a super genius to figure out that you can make more money selling T-shirts if you pay people $5 a day rather than $10 per hour to make them. If that's all the value added then I don't see what makes the superstars so super that they deserve what they're getting paid. - MarkJ Tue, 08 May 2012 08:56:15 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16387 Brooks is what happens when you get a generalist who used to write opinion pieces for a local newspaper - where he might have actually understood something of which he was writing about - who fails upward to the NYT and now is tasked with writing opinion-leader sorts of columns about very specific topics about which he has little to no practical nor academic knowledge. Paul Krugman - whatever you think of his economic theories and politics - is certainly qualified to occupy the space he holds on those pages. David Brooks - NOT. I'm actually more than a little embarrassed for him. Don't get me going on Tom Friedman... - sconosciuto Tue, 08 May 2012 07:37:07 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16385 David Brooks doesn't mean [i]those[/i] kind of structural problems. He means whatever the ones are that make it pointless for the government to act in any way about unemployment because it's all just useless and the poor ye shall always have and so on, from something he read somewhere by a right wing propagandist in the academic world. David Brooks always does this. He reads some claim that was questionable to begin with, doesn't really understand it, and then spins it into a column as some grand unified theory about why there are "two camps" on something and thoroughly embarrasses himself making up reasons why, by extrapolating the things he didn't understand into things he just made up. - TimeXoned Tue, 08 May 2012 06:30:35 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16384 "Then there are the structural issues surrounding the decline in human capital. The United States, once the world’s educational leader, is falling back in the pack." The austerity policies pursued by Bobo's clique - cutting public employment combined with insufficiently expansionary monetary policy - is actively degrading America's human capital. It's unnecessarily turning cyclical unemployment into long term unemployment. Mostly Bobo has been ignoring (or mischaracterizing) what his fellow columnist Krugman has been writing about. To not even understand what your opponent is arguing is a bad sign in a debate. - Peter K. Tue, 08 May 2012 05:17:42 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16383 Despite any of these critiques of the rigor of his thinking or using factual evidence, Brooks remains a reasonably effective influence on public perception on this topic. We are facing an election this fall in which the underlying demographics have been moving strongly in favor of Democrats for 20 years or more (or so we've been told), and Republicans have not been shy at all in pushing for policies which are inimicable to the non-wealthy majority of the country. Yet there is a good deal of doubt that Democrats will retake the House, may lose the Senate (and if not, have a majority too small and fragmented at the margins to be very effective) and while the President looks like a decent bet to win, it could be pretty close. Who are the dummies, really? - Eric 377 Tue, 08 May 2012 05:05:46 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16381 There are people who think that government spending (investment) determines how fast the economy grows, but the real formal advocates of this idea are socialists, who have essentially zero influence in the US. Actually many people in Congress, belonging to both parties, take this position when it comes to federal spending on the military and other things in their states and districts. They invariably claim that this spending will boost the local economy. - skeptonomist Tue, 08 May 2012 03:23:35 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16380 Is NYT trying to compete with SNL? I always get a good lough listening to Brooks. - azimir Tue, 08 May 2012 02:58:25 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16379 Mr Brooks presents no data whatsoever. He simply states whatever he believes, and feels no need to support that belief with data. "Common sense" and "gut feeling" are all he needs. Mr Brooks is exemplary of conservative "thinking". [i]Bumper-sticker thinking Fact-free decision-making[/i] [b]Welcome to Tea Party America![/b] - Bob Nelson Tue, 08 May 2012 01:20:36 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16378   The world experienced a financial crisis not a cyclical downturn.  There were very specific structural reasons for the financial crisis that have yet to be fully addressed, which include the mostly unregulated nature of derivative contracts and the bloated obscenely powerful financial sector, none of which is mentioned by Mr. Brooks.    Mr. Brooks assertion that globalization is somehow the root cause of growing inequality, the hallowing of the middle class and stagnant wages is just wrong.  Unfair trade agreements, systematic dismantling of workers rights and a tax code heavily tilted towards favoring income from investment over wages from work are among the real structural problems unmentioned by Mr. Brooks.    If we do have a structural problem, it's the fact that wage growth has largely been decoupled from productivity growth since around 1980.      Mr. Brooks fails to mention that America's biggest structural problem is that we spend around twice as much as we should on healthcare.  America spends about 8% of GDP more on healthcare than any other country in the world.  Until America embraces universal healthcare and the price controls that entails, our biggest structural problem will be unsolved.  - Robert Salzberg Tue, 08 May 2012 00:41:53 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-parallel-universe#comment-16377 Once again, David Brooks writes about his years as an undergrad and reminds us that he majored in Sociology and slept through Economics 101. He mints a label, "political sclerosis" to describe the condition we know as crony capitalism. That must be the new PC in GOP intellectual circles. - Ron Alley Tue, 08 May 2012 00:39:53 +0100