Kevin Drum asks who David Brooks is arguing against in his most recent column:
I don’t quite get who Brooks is arguing against here. Larry Summers is the obvious target, but Summers has been clear that he thinks education is important, both individually and for the economy as a whole. He just doesn’t think that improved education is likely to have much impact on growing income inequality, which is driven by other factors.
But Brooks never even pretends to address this. I don’t think there are any prominent Democrats arguing that education isn’t important. Pretty much all of them are on board with good early-childhood education and better community colleges, among other things. That will help individuals and make the American economy stronger.
But will it rein in growing income inequality? As long as inequality is driven primarily by the gains of the top 1 percent—which it is—then it won’t. To address that particular problem, we have to look elsewhere.
I think the answer is “everybody”. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have much of an economic policy beyond education. It’s been our substitute for an industrial policy for the last three administrations.
As to Kevin’s assertion that the reason that income inequality is increasing is that the incomes of the top 1% of income earners are growing faster than those of the rest of us, that’s true but only in a mathematical sense. The incomes of the top 1% are growing because of policies that Republicans and Democrats, including Kevin, have supported for the last forty years or more. Those include trade, immigration, monetary, fiscal, healthcare, and on and on.
If you don’t like the inequality, you’ve got to change the policies.
“The incomes of the top 1% are growing because of policies that Republicans and Democrats, including Kevin, have supported for the last forty years or more. Those include trade, immigration, monetary, fiscal, healthcare, and on and on.”
And many, if not most, of those 1% were capable and energetic enough to develop their own “personal industrial policy” to capitalize on it. And there is not a damned thing anyone can do about it except……………..change the policies. Change the rules of the game if you will. I don’t see one iota of evidence that progressives or corporatist Republicans, large govt fans both, desire to change their large govt ways.
Patrick Kane will, over time, almost always get the best of the goalies. He has the talent, and he’s figured out how to get it done in his environment. If you want to change it, trade him to the Bulls. Otherwise….he scores!!!
They are all invested in the present system, and I do not mean monetarily. Their entire worldview is predicated upon those policies and the underlying assumptions being correct. If they are wrong, there is a lot that will necessarily be wrong also.
What is little understood about the story of Galileo is that it was the university professors who were threatened. If he was correct, everything they taught was wrong. All the books they wrote were wrong, and they were wrong. They were ruined.
They could never look through his telescope because it would either prove him correct or it would show a lack of faith in their teachings. You have a similar situation, and it applies to all parties.
You have one party that touts the evils of income inequality while doing everything to increase it. You have another party that denounces irresponsible borrowers, but refuses to accept the axiomatic logic that for every irresponsible borrower, there is an equal or even more irresponsible lender.
The truth is that they know that if they admit the nonsense of their position everything else begins to crumble. It is all a wonderland, and as long as they keep their eyes shut tightly, all will be well. The Red Queen can run as fast as she can and remain in place. This is not only perfectly logical. It must be perfectly logical. Lobsters dancing a Quadrille does not require any special effects. One need stroll any beach to see such a sight. And of course, one would never be surprised that the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.
CGI is only required if one would like to see 2 + 2 = 4. As long as no side speaks the truth, all is well. All parties will unite to crush anything that gets too close to the truth.
The only thing to fear is the Boojum. For then, you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again.
That was a wonderful example of Galileo, Tasty, in describing the conflicts arising when changing course in order to take another path — whether it involves monetary/political policy, personal proclivities/values, scientific theories etc. Once people are invested and locked into a stance it’s like they throw away the key to considering any other POV or even data that may contradict that POV.
@jan
Few people know the real story. The Church only got involved because of the scientific community. The settled science was being challenged, and the scientists of the day convinced the Church that he would undermine the Church’s authority as well.
If any of this sounds familiar, this is why I bring it up over and over.
Actually, the story is much pettier than that. The Church got involved because Galileo wrote up his ideas in a book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, in the form of a Socratic dialogue in which one of the characters who was obviously Pope Urban VII is presented as a dope. That Urban was Galileo’s principle sponsor didn’t help matters.
“The settled science was being challenged”
Except it wasn’t science.
Steve
The stars and planets had been charted since the ancients. Greek geometry was known and well understood. The mathematical models matched the observed data, and there was a consensus.
This was the medieval scientific method. The modern scientific method rejected the subjective, and it established an objective methodology. It ushered in the Age of Rationalism.
Unfortunately, there are those who despise the objective for precisely the reason it was established. There is no consensus. A thing is measured against a standard, and it fits or not. There are no votes, but more importantly, there is no vote rigging.
All of those measurements were made with the assumption that the Earth was at the center and everything rotated around it. There was no real science behind the idea that the Earth was at the center, it was just an assumption built into what they believed and how they analyzed everything. It necessitated ignoring many things that they had observed, like consistently varied brightness and retrograde motion. (Yes, the family physicist is home.) That assumption was largely necessitated by religious beliefs.
Steve
Science had been largely based upon Aristotle or his derivatives. There were exceptions. There was a physician Galen, but I cannot remember the others. Copernicus was using the best instruments he had, but they were no better than the ancients.
And, many of these Greeks were agnostic at best.
I’m not sure why everything has to be binary. Belief/proof/evidence for “Climate Change” isn’t a either-or thing.
Climate change is absolutely true. It’s always changing; no doubt why the moniker has been adopted to replace global warming, which is in it’s death throws.
But the real problem is that the climate models don’t predict. Models of a theory which don’t predict are about as good as dancing and chanting at the sky for rain. The theory is only good because someone demands that it is so; but it’s really just supposition.
” based upon Aristotle or his derivatives”
Sure, and he started with some basic assumptions, like the earth is at the center of everything, which was not science. But, even if you wanted to call it science, I would still say that you go with the best explanation that you have, and when you get new information you modify existing theory to account for the new data. So in the case of climate science, the large bulk of the data supports AGW. Until that changes, I will accept existing theory, and I expect it to be modified further as develop new data or better ways to measure.
“Models of a theory which don’t predict are about as good as dancing and chanting at the sky for rain”
So what will happen if we cut top marginal tax rates? What will happen if we cut cap gains rates?
Steve
The ancient Greeks were quite sophisticated for the instruments and mathematics they had. The Romans were great engineers, but they were not as good at science.
I am not familiar with Chinese science, but they must have had some engineering expertise to build the Great Wall.
The Egyptians were phenomenal engineers. In addition to the actual pyramids, they had devised irrigation systems, and they worked out the math and instruments for the fields after each flood. I am not sure about anything we would consider even rudimentary science.
Copernicus used the same instruments as the ancients, and theoretically, the Greeks could have worked out what he did. Actually, there was a Greek who proposed a heliocentric theory, but it never went anywhere. I do not remember the details.
It is always a conceit of the present generation to think they are the apex of civilization. In a few hundred years, we will be but backward monkeys flinging fecal matter to those who come after us. They will be unable to understand why we could not grasp the simplest concepts, and they will assign our understanding to religious beliefs.