Liberte, Suburbie, Fraternite!

The authors don’t seem to be saying that these are “communities in which people tend to earn similar amounts of money.”

Yes they are. Even though the authors give a very confusing explanation of the gini coefficient, it’s still true that the gini coefficient is lowest when everyone earns exactly the same.

OK, thanks. So we can return to mocking the idea that living in a homogeneous county means you “care about equality”.

I only could watch 6:58 of the bloggingheads, but here are my nominees for the stupidest claims (all Jonah):

“what’s gotten much less attention [from scholars of Nazism] is that [German anti-Semitism involved conspiracies of Jewish control of the economy*]”

Yes, few have dared remark on this particular fantasy of Hitler IN ALL RECORDED HISTORY.

“supposedly he [the white, heterosexual male] has rigged the system …. it’s [Hollywood and academia] all about how these evil, pale penis-people [snuffle-smirk from Will that makes me depressed for humanity] are controlling things from behind the scenes…”

Yes, because white men do not actually hold any public positions of real power, this is an extremely paranoid world view. Whereas in Nazi Germany, THE JEWS ACTUALLY RAN THINGS FROM VERY PUBLIC, VERY POWERFUL POSITIONS.

“I shouldn’t say that no one is talking about liquidating white people, the entire academic discipline of Whiteness Studies is aimed at getting rid of the concept of Whiteness”

Yes, so that they can ELIMINATE THE VERY SUBJECT THAT THEY STUDY AND DEPRIVE THEMSELVES OF THE OH-SO-CUSHY JOBS THAT ACADEMICS ENJOY.

Will was talking out of his ass, too, but I couldn’t take any more of it to find any other gems turds of monstrous idiocy.

*Jonah’s locution is not brief, here.

After all, what is inequality but another form of “diversity”? And what is “equality” but another word for homogeneity?

How delightfully totalitarian. Just when I thought that I was going to have to pawn my jack boots.

Honestly, what could be more egalitarian than “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”?

Right-wing intellectual has become an oxymoron. It’s really truly shocking the kinds of extremely daft arguments these guys make. John Edwards is not an advocate of equality because Missouri communities vote Republican? That’s very logical isn’t it?

The impression I get is that there must be a Supreme Being, because It in Its Majesty is assembling all the idiots together in one place and getting them to say the same thing in unison.

Now, if only they weren’t in charge, we might be able to get somewhere.

The impression I get is that there must be a Supreme Being, because It in Its Majesty is assembling all the idiots together in one place and getting them to say the same thing in unison.

If there is, in fact, a Supreme Being, and if It has any sense at all, It will be dropping a Big Rock, having assembled all the idiots in one place.

Watch the skies.

Looks like Frum is trying to encourage John Holbo to write a sequel to his review of ‘Dead Right’,

It seems that Frum doesn’t know what the word ‘egalitarian’ means – or this supposed to be some form of newspeak?

I think we’re dismissing Frum too quickly. There is a real, important puzzle here.

Internationally, countries with broadly progressive politics also tend to have egalitarian distributions of income. No surprise there. What is surprising is that in the US this is not the case at all.

Look at New York City. Little island of European social democracy somehow stuck to America. Political culture about three standard deviations to the left of the US average. Union density two or three times higher than the US average. And yet income inequality is also higher here than anywhere else in the country.

You can see the same thing across the country. Egalitarian politics and egalitarian outcomes don’t correlate at all. This, to me, looks like a genuine problem.

Where you find many different lifestyles and races; where you find singles, immigrants, and gays; where you find high-rise buildings, country estates, and really great take-out – there you find inequality.

So, diversity is the new “inequality”?

… communities that Democrats and liberals would inwardly disparage as “white bread”

Straw man.

Yes, low information voters are easily exploited. Well-informed voters, not so much. I guess this has become so obvious that it now needs to be spun?
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Lemuel, maybe I’m missing something, but doesn’t your point just show that New York City doesn’t run a welfare state sufficient to make up for the lack of an adequate one on the Federal and State levels?

Wow. That’s deep.

Where you really find inequality in St. Louis is between the city (St. Louis City County) and the county (St. Louis County).

In terms of municipal boundaries, St. Louis is something of an anomaly compared with other urban centers of similar size. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the city was teeming with relatively wealthy residents, St. Louis was legally incorporated (the city becoming it’s own county) so as not to divert tax dollars to developing infrastructure in rural areas. In the mid-twentieth century whites (Frum’s “egalitarians”) fled to the suburbs in droves (in 1950 the city’s population hovered around a million, whereas today it’s approximately 400k), leaving behind a large black underclass. The effect of the earlier incorporation of St. Louis simply reversed the effects of the tax structure, thereby intensifying the pernicious effects of white flight generally. There’s simply no tax base in the city, affecting the quality of schools and roads and employment.

The inequality Frum is (must be?) referring to is that between the incredibly poor black majority and the few thousand urban professionals, college professors (Wash U, Saint Louis U, UMSL), and hospital employees (Barnes-Jewish) remaining in the city. For 7/8ths of St. Louis City County there is no inequality, since all are equally poor (the egalitarian poor).

Unless I’m missing Frum’s (?) point.

“No, but if Frum wanted to make that case, then that’s quite a different argument to be having.”

There is a reasonable question here although trying to talk about it while simultaneously heaping scorn on Frum may be a fool’s errand, but what the hell.

So a high GINI is considered bad in a country even when those at the bottom are relatively well off materially by historical and developing worlds standards. In crude form, the argument is that those at the bottom — though they may have plenty of food and heated and air-conditioned living space, and entertainment and gadgets, still suffer because they compare themselves to others, see that all this stuff they have is really ‘junk’ in comparison to beautiful Lexuses and granite counter-tops of the rich and are unhappy.

It’s also a meme that once absolute income reaches around $10,000/year, that further increases in absolute living standards provide little benefit and that, above that level, we’re all wasting our money on ‘positional goods’ in a harmful, zero-sum status competition.

So assume you believe something like the above — that a high GINI in a wealthy country is mainly bad because of relative status. If you believe that, do you also think it is a good thing for people to sort themselves into low-GINI, economically homogeneous communities? If not, why not?

On the other hand, if you believe class diversity is good for a community, doesn’t that tend to undermine the status-based argument for redistribution?

Or — if you think a high GINI is bad for a the U.S. as a whole, is it also bad for a state? For a county? For a city? For a neighborhood? And if you say yes in all cases, aren’t you expressing a preference for economically homogeneous cities and neighborhoods?

” It’s that progressive politics on a local level are correlated with even stronger trends toward inequality.”

You’re god damn right.
Stupid motherfuckers

So, organizing your life so that you only live near other white people, and far away from those darn immigrants, means that you “care most deeply about equality.” Does he even think for five minutes about what he writes?

“I think we’re dismissing Frum too quickly.”

Well, if he didn’t spell out the “egalitarian communities” he’s describing as being so white, maybe. As it stands, it really does sound as if he’s saying that, if you live in a nice gated community that keeps all the riff-raff out, you vote Republican.

“Egalitarian politics and egalitarian outcomes don’t correlate at all. This, to me, looks like a genuine problem.”

Yes, because it suggests that the egalitarian politics isn’t working. Why the egalitarian politics isn’t working is another matter – that could just mean, as washerdreyer says, that there’s a limit to how much income equality can be produced by progressive politics at the municipal level, if the state and Federal governments aren’t in sync. But what it doesn’t suggest is what seems to be Frum’s point – that New Yorkers are voting Democratic because they just love inequality and want more of it. More likely, in the areas that have most inequality, the poor vote Democratic, and that’s what’s producing the difference he observes.

Slocum-

It’s not just a “meme” that relative income is very important, while absolute income is only important up to $10-15,000. It’s strongly supported by public health data. Things like life expectancy and infant mortality follow this pattern exactly.

if you think a high GINI is bad for a the U.S. as a whole, is it also bad for a state? For a county? For a city? For a neighborhood? And if you say yes in all cases, aren’t you expressing a preference for economically homogeneous cities and neighborhoods?

A high Gini (it’s not an acronym, it’s the inventor’s name) is indeed bad right down to the neighborhood level. And yes, there are real and important benefits to economically homogeneous communities. (This is one reason why Hispanics tend to enjoy better life-chances in the US than other groups with similarly low incomes.) But recognizing these benefits does NOT mean “expressing a preference” for segregation by income, because there are also important costs to segregation of communities by income, especially in the political sphere.

The solution, of course, is greater equality at the national level so that equality at the local level does not require segregation by income.

I do agree with you that Holbo and others are too quick to dismiss the real problems here.

So a high GINI is considered bad in a country even when those at the bottom are relatively well off materially by historical and developing worlds standards.

Probably because a high GINI is characteristic of the developing world, rather than the developed world, and Americans like to think that the have the best of everything, rather than being on the ass-end of the developed world in so many ways of measuring.
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36 by gmt is an excellent comment. Inequality is the cause, egalitarian politics is the effect; circumstances determine consciousness.

And yes, there are real and important benefits to economically homogeneous communities. (This is one reason why Hispanics tend to enjoy better life-chances in the US than other groups with similarly low incomes.)

Or rather it might be if Hispanic communities were economically homogeneous. They aren’t. What they do share are non-economic arrangements of support, something we will miss if we insist on dumbing everything down to dollars.
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Race. Race explains everything. Here’s the question. What does it say about our country that none of those equality centers is racially integrated?

Note that the centers are on the fringes of areas that are integrated or are heavily African-American in population and that they are Republican. Why might that be? Why do Republicans move out of urban centers into homogeneously white enclaves? Why?

The ugly truth. The faux “egalitarianism” of Republican whites is rally just ______ (you fill in the blank).

Or rather it might be if Hispanic communities were economically homogeneous. They aren’t. What they do share are non-economic arrangements of support

You are right that income (in)equality is just one dimension of solidarity, altho quite an important one. But I wonder why you think income inequality is as high in Hispanic communities as elsewhere in the US. because I’m pretty sure that Hispanic communities in general are more economically homogeneous than most low-income communities. More to the point, the social universe of Hispanic immigrants is — for language and other reasons — largely composed of other immigrants, so they effectively live in more income-egalitarian communities than others even in the same physical neighborhoods.

Income isn’t everything, but under capitalism it’s a pretty big thing.

I’ll try to put up some cites on this but I’m curious why you think I’m wrong.

I’m from Kansas City, so I’m familiar with the “equality centers” Frum is writing about. These are largely lower middle to middle working class areas, largely white, and largely composed of people who moved closer to the city from small towns (or whose parents made that move. .. ). They haven’t “organized their lives to live in egalitarian communities.” They’ve organized their lives in order to: 1) be near the jobs in the urban area (and many would rather be in the small towns, but not so many jobs there. . .); but also to 2) be far from the urban center and its horrors, real or imagined. And in the midwestern white pastoral imagination the city is a place of unrelenting horror; part of that, alas, is really nothing more than zenophobia. They stay away from the urban parts of the metropolitan area partly out of fear, partly out of a desire to be around people like themselves. Nothing egalitarian about it; if there is homogeneity in income levels that is because folks with much higher incomes tend to live in areas with more expensive housing stock and, often, better schools. If we feel we must paste a political label on people in these “centers” I would say it is more libertarian than anything else, though of a particularly jingoistic flavor. They like to be left alone, they don’t want their tax dollars going to “welfare queens,” and when the first Gulf War started they were all quite keen on killing “towel heads.”

But if your car is broken down on the side of the road they will be the first to pull over and ask if you need a hand.

Sorry, I have no data to back any of this up, but when I worked new housing construction in KC, I spent many days with these very people, and had many frustrating conversations with them.

45-

Yes, I think race is a very big piece of it.

Egalitarian politics and egalitarian outcomes don’t correlate at all.

If you surgically remove the excess stupid from Frum’s original statement, you get ‘people living in homogeneous communities tend to be less worried about inequality as a political issue’.

Dunno if it is true or not, but it does make a certain amount of sense, at least to the extent you can split up ‘relative inequality’ and ‘absolute poverty’ as distinct and independant issues.

Then again, the same holds for white poverty.

That’s dumb.

Right. I think you can do better than that.

Look: New York City has the highest Gini index of any major metro area, despite also having the highest union density and a relatively high minimum wage. That doesn’t seem like a problem to you?

Here’s where I’m coming from.

(1) Income inequality is very important — one of the most fundamental social variables there is.

(2) Historically, social democracy has offered powerful tools to reduce inequality — strong unions, universal public services, labor market regulation, redistribution through the tax system, etc.

(3) In the US, many of these policies vary substantially between states and localities. But the states with the most extensive social democratic policies also tend to be the ones with most inegalitarian outcomes.

To me, as someone who is committed to social democracy, this is a serious problem. To you, evidently, it’s not.

But I can’t tell if you disagree with my first premise, that income inequality matters; or with my second, that things like unions and minimum wages are important; or with my third, that inequality continues to be worse in places like New York or California than in the rest of the country; or if you just think I’m dumb.

During my online debates about LF, I’ve been told that a tax increase is as bad as fascism, and that public education is an example of fascism.

The point perhaps being that Jonah’s book is most successful among people who had no concept of fascism at all before they read the book by their friend Jonah, who told them all they needed to know: fascism is transfer payments and government interference in the economy.

And Jonah is a hyper-inflated version of the bright, glib, lazy frat boy college student who successfully bullshits his way through most of his undergrad years and then hits a wall during his senior year when a teacher actually requires him to perform, and who for the rest of his life whines about the biased teacher who ruined his career.

He’s the avatar of lazy undergrads, and he has has hundreds of thousands of disciples.

Also, the U.S. is doomed. Goldberg is going to successfully pull this off. The big Movement Conservatives will support him, or at least not blow his cover. The big media people will continue to pay him lots of money. And with his help, the American people will become just a smidgen stupider.

the U.S. is doomed. Goldberg is going to successfully pull this off.

You know, Emerson, the fate of the US might not actually depend on Jonah Goldberg one way or the other.

The Missouri study cited (as we see it here) seems to compare the suburban or exurban parts of metropolitan areas (conservative) to the urban parts of the same metropolitan areas (liberal). It’s just a form of segregation, where the middle class leaves the poor behind. The resultant urban area will be liberal but cash-strapped.

A lot of political pontification requires geographical correction.

New York City. Little island of European social democracy…

Have you ever lived in NYC? City income taxes are slight compared to, say, Copenhagen. And a middle-income NYC resident has nowhere near the range of services available to him that a similar Copenhagen resident would.

Edwards is more concerned with poverty and wage stagnation than with income inequality in and of itself. Indeed, he rarely uses the words equality or inequality. Even his Cooper Union address did not do so. Inequality matters for Edwards to the degree that it results in policies that create greater burdens for the middle-income on down.

Lemuel compared a city to a nation.

I’ll add it to my list.

In the meantime, I read your first sentence as ‘I think that all “world cities” are very unequal, because these are the places where the world’s wealthiest and best-laid people congregate.’

More coffee, please.
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all “world cities” are very unequal, because these are the places where the world’s wealthiest and best-laid people congregate.’

If only it were so….

I think that Slocum is talking about the difference between “world cities” and cities which are just big — the rich have to be somewhere, and a lot of them want it to be a first-class city. (Not all — the Koch brothers are happy with Wichita). And some big business has to be done face-to-face.

Lists of world cities vary, but all would include NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo, and LA. I’m not sure about the rest — Shanghai? Chicago? Amsterdam? Rio?

These world cities drawn both wealth and poverty, and while they don’t all “soak the rich”, up to a certain point they can.

So right now, New York has the most progressive politics because it can—because the rich really can’t move out.

New York has no suburbs? Learn something new every day.

As a born Amsterdammer, I can assure you, it should not be on the list.

New York has no suburbs?

This is sort of true, actually. A much higher percent of the NYC metro area population is in the city itself than in any other major urban center. In large part because the 1898 merger resulted in what would have been the inner-ring suburbs becoming part of the city itself. This is certainly a major reason why NYC has done so much better than other east coast and midwest cities.

Also, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — but are clearly very strong — there are powerful incentives for businesses and some individual rich folks to be located in Manhattan.

the rich were not really stuck in the city itself and moved themselves and their enterprises to the lower-tax periphery (see Detroit especially, but also any number of comparably shrunken cities—St Louis, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Cleveland, etc).

Two observations:
1) the rich don’t have to be where the work is being done (one of the advantages of being rich, I guess). I suspect that’s why huge development of biotech and telecom outside the US doesn’t trouble our political class: they’ll be buying those products regardless of where they’re made.
2) industries have been moving to the largely non-unionized south for some time, a move not limited to industries associated with rural areas (like the wood products industry), but also those usually associated with urban areas, like Hyundai and Honda making cars.

As communities develop in those areas, however, I’m pretty sure they’ll turn blue. At least, that’s been the pattern so far in VA and TX. That is, the problems that the rich have with The Help will follow them, or at least their economic activity.
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“Take a look at a map of the state of Missouri. A recent study conducted by the state identified a dozen of the state’s 114 counties as “equality centers.”

After all, what is inequality but another form of “diversity”? And what is “equality” but another word for homogeneity?”

But this is just….Conservative Communism!

(Show-Me State Communism?)

Also, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear—but are clearly very strong—there are powerful incentives for businesses and some individual rich folks to be located in Manhattan.

Yes. None of which suggests that, pace slocum, the rich “can’t” leave New York for lower-tax suburbs. There are any number of very affluent suburbs in the NYC metro area where Manhattan-employed high level professionals and executives live. The notion that wealthy city-dwellers “can’t” move to the ‘burbs the way they do in other US cities is nothing short of laughable.

In other words, what engels said. Can we at least get the most basic facts straight here, or is that too much to ask?

Since my comment apologizing to lemuel pitkin is still under moderation, let me just say that I apologize to lemuel pitkin.
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I think that Slocum’s point is that the rich can’t, or don’t want to, move from NYC to some other big city, because NYC (along with a few others) is the best. The other high-tax cities didn’t just lose people to suburbia, they lost people to the south and southwest.

I suspect that most of the very rich who don’t have to work don’t live anywhere in particular; they have a penthouse in Manhattan, apartment in South Beach, villa in LA, condo in Paris, ranch in Texas and so on.

Rich people who do work live in Manhattan because they work in Manhattan. But some commute; Letterman, for example.

But isn’t the root question why some people like uniformity of neighbors on some measures(race, religion, ethnicity etc.) yet don’t support measures to promote a wide-ranging equality of income?

It seems to cut both ways, that suburbanites are narrow-minded in wanting uniformity by segregation, and that urbanites are inconsistent to if they don’t add income to the diversity list.

I don’t think egalitarianism is reality-based. Last month Harry B. said he would address moral diversity and why its reasonable to morally prefer things to be other than they currently are and I’m looking forward to that post.

“But isn’t the root question why some people like uniformity of neighbors on some measures(race, religion, ethnicity etc.) yet don’t support measures to promote a wide-ranging equality of income?”
“But isn’t the root question why some people like uniformity of neighbors on some measures(race, religion, ethnicity etc.) yet don’t support measures to promote a wide-ranging equality of income?”

No.
I have one in moderation already. Let’s try for two:

Sitting at a local bar last year and talking to the hot eastern european bartender (Bulgarian) the subject of manhattanites came up, and whether or not they’d succeed in taking over the neighborhood.
“I hope not” she said, “I like the diversity”
Queens is 46% foreign born and the population has a better understanding of [feeling for] social democracy than native born americans, or of course, the majority of readers here.

But Seth, what does Ivanka, the bartender, think of Edwards?

those who care most deeply about equality – deeply enough to organize their lives to live in egalitarian communities – overwhelmingly vote Republican

Damn it. I’ve got to say it again — what they care about is not living near black people. They don’t “care most deeply about equality” at all.

Nope, still not getting Slocum’s point. The argument appears to be that the rich abandoned Detroit for the suburbs, but rich New Yorkers “can’t” move to the suburbs–and even if they do, and even in the absence of a commuter tax, they still “fill the city’s coffers.”

I live in NYC, Slocum, and I work for some people who are quite wealthy indeed. Some of them live in the city, and pay income property taxes to the city. Some of them live in comfy bedroom communities in Connecticut or Westchester or Long Island or exurban New Jersey, and pay whatever state and local taxes apply there. Your assertion that those in the former group live in the city because they “can’t” live elsewhere is simply untrue.

Nope, still not getting Slocum’s point. The argument appears to be that the rich abandoned Detroit for the suburbs, but rich New Yorkers “can’t” move to the suburbs—and even if they do, and even in the absence of a commuter tax, they still “fill the city’s coffers.”

Yes — even without a commuter tax, NYC commuters work for companies that pay taxes and in downtown office building that pay taxes. And they also spend money dining and shopping in the city.

But the businesses also left Detroit, which meant not just some of the rich people left the city, but they virtually all did. And they didn’t just leave to sleep and commute back in to work (still spending most of their waking hours in the city), they stopped going into the city (and spending money there) almost entirely.

“My point is that many of the NY City rich can’t move and make the same money or have the same jobs somewhere else”

There are a lot of things to enjoy in NY that only the rich can afford to enjoy. The culture of New York is based among other things but very much on the public theater of disposable income. The history of the city is as the most international and most [if not only] truly cosmopolitan city in the country, and cosmopolitanism isn’t progressivism it’s noblesse oblige. It’s less cosmopolitan than it used to be due to the influx of post MTV-generation children from the heartland who no longer come here to escape hell but to bring it with them. Call it The Great Leveling: Ohio is more sophisticated than it used to be, and Europe more American.

“But Seth, what does Ivanka, the bartender, think of Edwards?”
Her name wasn’t Ivanka it was Lily, Liliana to you. She’s been to more countries than you ever have and speaks more languages. My neighborhood goes 95% democrat, though on the whole I hear nothing but contempt for the party.
The idea that NY, or academia is “progressive” is absurd. I know a professor who tells his grad students: “You’re time is too important to do laundry. Get a housekeeper!”
And he votes democratic too of course.
And I’m still waiting for a comment to get out of moderation. I don’t even think there were any four letter words in it.

Slocum maybe the rich don’t leave NY because the social democratic policies we’re hearing about actually suit them? They don’t have to pay for The Help’s health insurance, they don’t have to use their car every day, and there are enough police to protect their property… If all this social democracy stuff is so bad, why did the rich go there in the first place? Couldn’t they have used their capital to set up their businesses somewhere more deregulated?

I think your argument follows the same confusion of cause and correlation as Frum’s.

Seth,

Ok, I now know its Liliana, she’s been around and speaks in tongues, but I don’t how she relates to the argument that Frum is making, that Holbo is saying is silly, that White Bread Republicans care about equality and also think the John Edwards does not.

Isn’t there some kind of Godwin-type principle about Seth Edenbaum threatening to kick someone in the face?

Anyway, I think this thread is done.

“The probability of a belligerent and/or incomprehensible [sic]

On this site I’d have to agree.

Uh, isn’t one obvious cause of high inequality in NYC that the city’s relatively generous welfare state keeps poor people from leaving? In other cities, the poor would move out, but NYC has way more public housing than anyplace else in the country.

By the way, I’ll see Lemuel’s NYC, and raise Minneapolis, Honolulu, Seattle, and Portland — all relatively social-democratic places at the bottom of inequality list.

if it keeps poor people from leaving it should be good enough to ease their poverty and thus reduce the gini index?

Actually, no. Lemuel linked to an index of income inequality. Income here means cash income. Public housing presumably provides benefits to its residents, but not cash income. Similarly, much of the US (& NYC) welfare state provides in-kind benefits, not cash income: food stamps (food), WIC (more food), medicaid (medical care), etc.

Sorry ragout, I don’t know much about either the gini index or NYC’s supposed social democracy, I am passing time between debugging simulation runs.

Certainly if the index describes only income inequality it seems plausible to me that an effective social democratic system, delivering its poverty-alleviation measures through non-income transfers, would have a high income inequality if it was an otherwise thriving economy. People who are structurally incapable of earning more money would have no interest in leaving to less supportive areas, but since NYC is a city and not a nation-state it’s not in a position to make the larger changes required to reduce income inequality.

Alternatively, being pressed into a dense urban area with a lot of poor people makes New York voters want to reduce social inequality, but they don’t do it as well as nations with a better history of that sort of thing.

It would be interesting to overlay a map of ‘sunset’ towns (whites-only enclaves) on a map of Frum’s ‘equality zones’.

Also w/regard to cities, a city has been described as an economic boom in geography rather than time. It’s no surprise that you get the high end of the income curve. Given the relative rate of pay for low-end service and the social safety net, the high GINI is not surprising.

The very point about the exurban frontier having the least inequality is a function of development in these areas being the most recent. Developers may pitch these areas to people who will sacrifice a long commute for cheap housing. These people can be expected to have similar incomes.

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism

The book goes into some detail on the NYC after the fiscal collapse in the 70’s. I haven’t read it yet but there’s a discussion of both the book and the history in the rough draft of an unpublished paper by a friend at mine at UC London. You might want to read it or something similar before pontificating on the “social democratic” character of the city.

Why’re you taking their irritable mental gestures so seriously?

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

Yes, they have more money. ;)

I have nothing to add except that I truly hope Zenophobia is a fear of ‘Zen’ (52)

Jonah Goldberg is a symptom, not a cause. In the name of whatever you find holy, don’t give that fatuous gasbag even the grudging respect due to a genuine scourge.

He’s a parasite, a little leech who saw an opportunity to ride the coat-tails of the (actual) fascists who are trying to dominate America and reshape it into their own feudal/fascist/kleptocrat dream nation.

He would be disgusting, if he were not so utterly pathetic.

>the U.S. is doomed. Goldberg is going to successfully pull this off.

>You know, Emerson, the fate of the US might not actually depend >on Jonah Goldberg one way or the other.

>posted by lemuel pitkin · january 23rd, 2008 at 4:48 pm

sorry, wrong thread

Yeah, it’s true: If I ignore Goldberg it does us no good. If you ignore Goldberg, it does us no good.

If we ALL ignore Goldberg, and when other people ask us what we think of Goldberg, we say “Who, that idiot? I don’t think of him at all.” that does some good.

I don’t ignore Goldberg, I frankly deny him. I refuse to even let him sit on a couch at my virtual symposium. In short, Goldberg is not merely dead to me, but never born.

My daddy used to say “Never get into an argument with an idiot…It just means there are two idiots.” My dad wasn’t all that bright at times, but he nailed that one. When Goldberg spouts this stuff, and we respond, we give it credence. By addressing it, we acknowledge that he is an actual player in the game, worthy of our recognition. Why? He hasn’t earned it. He doesn’t deserve it. I don’t pay attention to Rush Limbaugh either, and Goldberg is nothing but a polysyllabic Limbaugh.

>Charlie, Goldberg’s on national TV and writes for a national >newspaper. Neiwert has no comparable soapbox. Until people like >Goldberg are laughed off the stage, we’re in deperate trouble. >Goldberg is not going to be laughed off the stage.

>You seem to be recommending the tried-and-true “he’s SO >beneath us, ignore hima and he’ll go away” tactic. It doesn’t work.

>posted by john emerson · january 26th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

Well, ya know, it’s funny you should mention it, but I know of at least two people who stopped listening to his crap largely because I ridiculed it.

And I think that Rush is no longer a factor in the lives of rational people. There are still that hard-core of righties who will never actually change, but that’s about it. He used to be damned near mainstream.