Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
David Brooks: Bard of the 1 Percent
David Brooks delved deep into his storage locker of misinformation to tell readers that the idea of blaming the richest 1 Percent for the country's problems is just silly. He told us that the really big ideas aren't about reversing the upward redistribution of income from the top, they are from centrists who want to do things like cut our Social Security and make us pay more for health care. Let's have some fun with Mr. One Percent.
First he begins his piece by telling us:
"The U.S. economy is probably going to stink for a few more years. It is beset by short-term problems (low consumer demand, uncertain housing prices, too much debt) and long-term problems (wage stagnation, rising health care costs, eroding human capital).
Realistically, not much is going to be done to address the short-term problems, but we can at least use this winter of recuperation to address the country’s underlying structural ones."
In other words, Brooks wants all those people who are unemployed and losing their homes to just suck it up. Nothing is going to be done to help you: get over it.
And why is nothing going to be done to help the 26 million people who are unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work altogether? The reason is that people like David Brooks and rest of the 1 Percent don't give a damn about you.
We do know how to do something about unemployment. According to research, the stimulus worked just about exactly as planned. It was designed to create 2-3 million jobs in a context where the economy needed 10-12 million jobs. There is no economic reason why we can't go the route of more stimulus -- aid to state and local governments so they don't have to lay off school teachers, infrastructure spending, youth jobs programs etc. -- it is just powerful people like David Brooks who don't want us to do anything.
The Fed could also be more aggressive. For example it could move to deflate the debt that millions of households face from mortgages and student loans. This would mean following the path advocated by Ben Bernanke for Japan's central bank when he was still a professor at Princeton; deliberately targeting a somewhat higher rate of inflation (e.g 4-6 percent).
And of course we could go the work sharing route. With no better growth than us, Germany has used work sharing to bring down its unemployment rate to below its pre-recession level. If we can't raise the demand for labor by making the economy grow, then we can just share the work that we have.
This is all pretty simple, but David Brooks and his 1 Percent friends have already decided that they aren't going to let any of this happen. The 99 percent are just going to have to suck it up and protesting on Wall Street isn't going to make a difference.
Not only does Brooks want to tell the 99 percent that the 1 Percent are not going to allow anything to happen that will help them, he tells readers that they better not blame the 1 Percent for this situation:
"Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. They will have nothing to say about the way Americans have overconsumed and overborrowed."
Of course this is not true, even if the media rarely give attention to the views of the 99 percent. The reason that Americans "overconsumed and overborrowed," was that we had a huge housing bubble. As every graduate of an intro economics class knows, people will spend based on their housing wealth. The $8 trillion bubble led people to spend vast amounts of money, exactly as economic theory predicts.
That bubble was easy for people not in the 1 percent to see, and it was entirely predictable that its collapse would lead to an economic disaster, but Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and other people in the 1 Percent who had the responsibility for managing the economy opted to do nothing. This could have been due to astounding incompetence or it might have something to do with the fact that people in the 1 Percent with names like Angelo Mozilo, Richard Fuld, and Robert Rubin, were making money hand over fist off the mortgages that financed the housing bubble. In any case, this economic disaster was 100 percent due to the greed and/or incompetence of the 1 percent and was 100 percent preventable.
The other items on Brooks' list also have an awful lot to do wiith the greed of the 1 Percent and corruption of the political system. In the case of health care, we pay more than twice as much per person for our health care as people in any other wealthy country. The reason is that the richest 1 Percent -- executives in pharmaceutical and insurance companies, hospitals and highly paid medical specialists -- all make huge sums off our health care system. If we paid the same amount per person as people in any other country, our long-term budget projections would show huge surpluses, not deficits.
Education reform, in the sense of students learning in school, will fare much worse with Brooks' period of a stinking economy. When people lose their jobs and their homes they cannot provide the sort of stable environment that children need to do well in school. And of course wage stagnation and polarization has everything to do with the trade and regulatory policies that the 1 Percent have adopted to redistribute income upward.
In fact, the 99 percent-1 Percent divide has almost everything to do with current situation. But, David Brooks' 1 Percent status depends on him telling people the opposite twice a week in the NYT. You might as well learn to enjoy Brooks' ill-informed semi-weekly diatribes, realistically, not much is going to be done to address the situation.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
49 Comments so far
Show AllOne suspects that Brooks' opposition on the PBS NewsHour, the alleged liberal Mark Shields, would offer little, if any, rebuttal to Brooks' staunch defense of the 1 Percent which he views as being so unfairly maligned in this country.
Yes this is all theater, staged by the 1% and financed by the 0.01%.
Brooks' and other media hype have convinced many working class Americans that austerity is inevitable. That is why my two US Senators and US Congresscritter received record quantities of correspondence in July from constituents demanding that they resolve the contrived debt ceiling issue. This gave Obama and Congress the green light to form the super catfood commission whose sole mission is cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other domestic programs.
As I never get tired of repeating: American are lazy, stupid, and greedy.
Any research would show that the better solution to the debt "crisis" is more spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Why? Because the recipients of the above spend the money, immediately.
See Alexander Cockburn's amusing and insightful June 30, 2005 "When Tedium is Totalizing-- The Political Function of PBS"*
Apart from inexcusably misspelling "MacNeil" as "McNeil", it discusses the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour's virtually hypnotic or anasthetic method of presenting "balance" and "even-handedness" that pretends to dialectically explore conflict and controversy, but actually serves and reinforces the status quo.
This shtick didn't originate with MacNeil/Lehrer, or at least isn't confined to PBS; old heads will recall the "Point/Counterpoint" interludes between James Kirkpatrick and Shana Alexander that were long a staple of "Sixty Minutes".
It's a variety of the "false equivalence" tactic that still pervades both corporate and alternative mass-media talking heads programming to this day.
It's a well-worn diversion: pairing off a "respectable", vaguely wingnutty conservative ass like Brooks with a tired, centrist liberal "inside politics" hack like Shields and pretending that deep and trenchant analysis or synthesis will result as the sparks fly.
_______________
* http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/06/30/the-political-function-of-pbs/
I would never confuse Shields with being a liberal. He is an Establishment pundit who makes a great living with his political opinions. He is a moderate at the best of times. As for Brooks I have nothing but contempt for him. He is a 1 per center through and through but, as Glenn Greenwald said, Brooks has this gimmick of trying to make himself look like Joe Everyman. His "analysis" on the News Hour is usually a watered down version of his right wing columns at the NYT. The fact that PBS is just fine with these two pundits on its flagship news show says a lot about the suits in corporate at PBS. I don't take the show seriously as they frquently have The Usual Suspects on to explain to us naive citizens out here in the boonies just how the country works. I'll think a bit better of them when the News Hour decides that, after a 20 year absence, it is time to have Noam Chomsky back on for his astute analysis. No way am I'm holding my breath for that. By the way, someone asked Ray Suarez of the News Hour why we don't see someone like Amy Goodman on the show. He replied that it wouldn't be possible because she practices "advocacy journalism".
On NPR they contrast him with E.J. Dionne, who is consistenly able to deflect Brooks' predictable diatribes in an educated and articluate manner. I am very surprised actually that Mr. E.J. Dionne is not a frequent CD contributor?
Thank you Dean Baker for so prompty exposing David Brooks for the elitists he is and the conveyor of misinformation and arrogance that is so typical of his columns. I can remember a time a decade ago that I respected Mr. Brooks even though I did not share his opinions most the time, but then he is fighting for the status quo of what his party has built over the last 30 years. They have done an excellent job of dividing this country with misinformation and out and out lies. They have transferred more wealth to their 1% which allowed them to buy our media not just faux news and thusly being the driver of ideology. We now have a conglomerate of media owned by a relatively few who want to maintain the status quo.
They remind me of my x who was a cheater but accused me of cheating. They know exactly what they are doing and have done, and it has been a concentrated, orchestrated effort worldwide. Now, they are being confronted so they are accusing us of doing what they have been doing for years. We are now standing up for our rights of personhood, being human, rights given to us under our constitution of equality and justice for all. A just system that protects the rights of all people and not just the wealthy banksters and corporate moguls. A economic system that is designed to work for many not just a few. A political system that is not corrupted by money and free speech is not determined by the amount of money you have in your pockets. Corporations are not people. This system is so corrupted and there are so many things wrong with the system that it is hard to focus on one things but that one thing should be GET THE MONEY OUT OF POLITICS /SHORTEN ELECTION CYCLE TO SIX MONTHS MAXIMUM AND CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE.
And to all those who say it's wealth envy - bullsh!t.
It's when greed has a negative impact on me; then we have a problem
I dont know, Baker could have mentioned the most obvious - end the wars, end the Imperial overstretch and use the money saved to help people in this country. He should call the elites on their game. We are already "stimulating" the economy through deficit spending on the military, something that doesnt create real wealth, so just tell the elites to STFU about their opposition to deficit spending on jobs and infrastructure, because such deficit spending at least creates real wealth and increases quality of life.
_________________________________________________________
The US is 13 trillion in debt, and I dont think anyone thinks it is ever going to be payed back. Let's cancel the debt and take away money creation from private banks and give it to the government, which can then create debt-free money. The interest we pay the banks on the US government debt would alone provide lots of money for helping people in this country.
________________________________________________________-
So Baker should come clean and admit that to just go further into debt with our present monetary system is just kicking the can down the road and ensuring a day of reckoning that is going to be catastrophic. With cheap fossil fuel a thing of the past, there is no way to "grow" our way out of debt. Time to stop playing games and pretending that a growth economy still makes sense in a world of Peak Oil, global climate change and massive ecological degradation. It's time to start talking about a steady-state economy.
______________________________________
The concluding excerpt from your post sums it up very nicely. Nice job!
______________________________________
"So Baker should come clean and admit that to just go further into debt with our present monetary system is just kicking the can down the road and ensuring a day of reckoning that is going to be catastrophic. With cheap fossil fuel a thing of the past, there is no way to "grow" our way out of debt. Time to stop playing games and pretending that a growth economy still makes sense in a world of Peak Oil, global climate change and massive ecological degradation. It's time to start talking about a steady-state economy."
I wonder if it is worthwhile to discuss the idiocies propounded by pundits like Brooks. Why give him any consideration at all? Better to respond to the ideas of Naomi Klein, Chomsky, and Stiglitz than to waste our precious time on David Brooks. Why waste precious brain cells attempting to process the deluded thought patterns of someone like him?
Because lies need to be refuted, or after multiple restatings they become viewed as the truth. Remember how we got sold the war in Iraq. Had more than a handful of thoughtful knowledgeable people refuted those lies, we wouldn't be there.
Good point, but it is so hard for me to even read his columns, when I remember that the Times plucked him out of the Spectator, perhaps the worst of the right-wing rags. So now he doesn't sharpen his teeth each morning (in case he runs into someone one the street with a tin cup), but his attitudes are still those of the eye-bulging, teeth- clenching, spittle- producing, right-wing nuts.
I agree, but all the more reason to keep an eye on the venom he is spewing. He and his ilk have done way more damage than they should have been allowed. To ignore him is a risk I am not willing to take.
______________________________________
Brook's ideas only resonate with morons, the rich, and some people on the fence. The rich we need to take on by growing resistance, like "Occupy". The morons we need to ignore because they're beyond reason and/or steeped in loathsome morals that require too much energy to alter, and where the success rate would be small. And the fence-sitters we need to help educate through grassroots community organizing, not through defensive pontificating in a forum dominated and owned by elites. What Brook's typically says is so patently absurd that to confront it on elite turf ironically validates his garbage. It's not a wise expenditure of any progressive's time. Time would be better spent proactively fighting for our causes on our own turf.
Disagree. Better to use the ideas of Klein, Chomsky, and Stiglitz as ammunition to fight the ideas of those like Brooks. Which is what Baker does and, hopefully, will continue to do until the ideas of these men and women (excluding Brooks and his ilk of course) become the dominant paradigm.
_____________________________________
That's a strategy destined for failure, and indeed has failed for decades.
The self organizing dynamics of the Occupy Wall Street movement foreshadows the coming changes, not just to the economy but to the entire political system. The waves of people coming together to address issues directly, to take charge of changing situations by connecting with other protesters to solve problems, demonstrates that there is no longer any need for the charade of Congress where other 1%ers impersonate representatives of the 99%. We are witnessing the birthing of a new form of social organization, one that will alter the core elements of democracy and thus capitalism, because we cannot change one without altering the other.
I hope you are right.
Hear, hear, Your Holiness! This is more of a spiritual-social movement, an awakening or a renaissance, and its open-source process of direct, participatory democracy makes it systemically more robust and enduring than a mere political protest. It is more about questioning the big picture, about seeking a new paradigm with a new value system and new econometrics, and less about prescribing or dictating a manifesto.
This makes it far more inclusive than the divisive Tea Party and ultimately resistant to co-optation. So it also avoids the fatal trap of looking to stronger leaders, better “elites”, or a new messiah. Been there, done that. Obama can’t jump out in front of this parade. It is more like a great cloud of witnesses.
I believe you are right. We are witnessing the birth of a new form of social organization, a revolution more transformative than prior agricultural and industrial revolutions. 2012 portends great promise.
Plus the 1% is scared because this is all happening without two billionaire brothers manufacturing it.
You have a good point that has not been made often enough. Comparisons continue to be made between the OWS and the Tea Party. But virtually no one ever points out (as you have) the the Tea Party, far from being a grass roots movement, was invented by Dick Armey and his various PAC's and funded by the Koch brothers.
Our Democratic and Republican politicians are the agents of capitalism. Its priesthood is our media.
""The U.S. economy is probably going to stink for a few more years. It is beset by short-term problems (low consumer demand, uncertain housing prices, too much debt) and long-term problems (wage stagnation, rising health care costs, eroding human capital)."
Funny things is everything the 1% proposes (those "big" ideas). in response to these problems does nothing but agravate and prolong them. So, either the 1% are not too bright, or they see it in their own profit seeking interests to do so.
"Eroding Human Capital" I just hate being viewed as a commodity. But I am thinking the top 1%'s "human capital" quotient has been over valued for quite some time and could benefit from some "erosion".
Those who understand how the monetary system works, know that trickle-down is real, and is happening —
That's why the rich are so intent on getting things fixed... the expensive plumbing going up to the penthouse leaks far too much.
David Brooks is interesting, because he's sometimes unpredictable. Also, he's a good writer.Most of the time, he's on the wrong side of the issues important to me.However, I read him now and then because his point of view ( usually gently expressed) reminds me of whose side I'm on. Not his. And his credentials are impeccable: he's the authentic voice of cradle-to-grave Ivy League entitlement. Screw 'em gently, I say.
He's a freakin lying dumbass. If it walks and talks like a dumbass, it's a dumbass.
Good writer? Are you hearing yourself think ricardo? Obummer had credentials, Cheney had credentials...authentic? are you hearing yourself? Get off that pablum train and start think with your cahones...please. And speak from them too. Enough is enough. You just aren't mad enough yourself. You'll get there, I'm certain of that. It takes a walk on this side in the dark of night with no place to lay your head and your stomach aches with hunger.
Dean Baker is among just a handful who are calling out the American media on their dishonesty.
He and a few others (eg, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Matthew Murray) have taken on the absolutely monumental task of pushing back against nearly the entire American media, including NPR, which has really become little more than a corporate shill, with their advertisments for fracking masquerading as stories and the like.
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/2009/09/shilling-for-shale-fronting-for.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2011/10/07/141148994/covering-an-oil-boom-techno-tone-and-impact
I'm really suprised Baker and the others keep at it and don't just throw up their arms and say "screw it."
There are so many lies backed by so much money (including millions of YOUR tax dollars in the case of NPR and its member stations) that it must seem an impossible task.
He is a good writer, but never mind. My remarks were sarcastic. Maybe they needed to be labeled as such.Mad? I'm mad enough to be on the lines with the OWS folks.Re: your interpretation of my use of the word "authentic", you are making the point I made, you just missed it.Thanks for repeating it.Your last point: you don't need to be homeless to be pissed off at the 1%. Most of the rest of us are not homeless, but a lot of us live with the possibility that it could happen to us at any time.That's bad enough. As for cajones, there are better uses for them than thinking.
BOTH Brooks and Shields as commentators are wildly inadequate and obsolete for October2011 Occupationists to pay any attention to........just as 99% of Congress equals feverish inaction!........ David Brooks no compassion & Mark Shields dem perfidity!!
Brooks v shield, the 1% v the 1%
Remember why we are occupying two country's , Freedom is not Free , Honor our Troops and Support our Troops ,, protest everything, I mean what are our military fighting for, to protect the Constitution of America and our freedoms provided to us by Constitutional law. Thats what the war mongers , and National Security no bid contractors, the DHS,TSA,FEMA, Bankers, and military industrial complex keep telling us why we are fighting. Protect Americans Freedoms, so lets not let them down. Spread the Word, protesting is way to honor and support our Troops who we have been told fight for us.
WE are not occupying two countries (wars in at least 4 others) to protect our freedom! Please stop spreading this nonsense! If you really support "our Troops" then get them the hell home and stop putting them in positions of killing innocent people to protect the 1%'s interests. This country is the only threat to our freedom and it has been proven over and over if you have been paying attention. No terrorist or other country could ever have damaged and taken away our Bill of Rights like our own government has.
Brooks should be swinging from a gallows.
I kid you not ...concerning the beginning of the Iraq invasion #2 on PBS.
" Do you know how much money it would cost to bring back the troops now (just prior to invasion.) Let us quit all this debate and just get the job done."
I kid you not. Did we not hang a Nazi newspaper editor for the same kind of thing.
Yes. The winners get to hang the losers. Good thing we were on the winning side.
The winners also get to write the history books, sadly enough.
"The U.S. economy is probably going to stink for a few more years. It is beset by short-term problems (low consumer demand, uncertain housing prices, too much debt) and long-term problems (wage stagnation, rising health care costs, eroding human capital)."
I just about give up on people who see "low consumer demand" as a problem, in a world suffering from shortage of resources, horrific pollution, etc. Especially since those phenomena have more than a little to do with rising cost of health care.
Cranking up demand is the only way to get a consumption-based economy going again.That's why Krugman, Reich et alia talk it up: it's classic Keynesism. if the consumer economy is suffering from lack of demand, that causes huge unemployment and misery. I would readily trade a resumption of 'growth' to alleviate the current misery, for theorizing about what would replace a consumption-driven economy.Maybe if we get 'growth' going again, restore Glass Steagal, rein in the banks and do some redistribution of income, we might then be in a position to adress what kind of economy we'd like to see in the future-once the emergency was overcome.
David Brooks is usually wrong about everything. Where are the weapons of mass distruction that he cited as he cheered the invasion of Iraq.
The one-percenters are sitting on a vast pool of money - estimates say about 2 trillion - which they intend to use when public assets and infrastructure are sold off at fire sale prices as a means of addressing federal, state and local budget deficits.
Before amanda cox was released, i saw her as just another decadent, spoiled coed, and then upon her release and a few hours of having my brain massaged by the media, i got the new reality. And in the process, i became terrifed by the mallebility of my so called rational mind--and i would guess that my mind is not that different from most of yours. The point being, what i would have seen just a few days ago as an absolute impossibility, a violent revolution, seems no longer unthinkable.
Maybe not unthinkable, but not to be desired. I wouldn't, for instance, want to see some of the posters on CD in positions of power following a successful revolution.People with scores to settle don't make good decisions, especially in matter of life and death.Maybe it's my Russian background.
I gave up reading Brooks years ago when I realized just how unprofessionally biased he is.
David Brooks, the mildly sedated Jack Russell of punditry.
The Chipmunk is an ass, always was an an ass, and always will be and ass. Remember the middle 2000's and his NYTs comments and girly pom pom cheerleading of the idiot child Bush's "Ownership Society", the selfsame screwy concept that added gas to the 1%, kleptocapitalist real estate bubble. Brooks is an ass.
David Brooks did get one thing right: He refered to them as "the evil 1%". He was being facetious but still ya gotta give credit when it's due.