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Jan. 18th, 2010 06:49 pmI'm hard pressed to decide which of the latest verbal turds dropped by David "Embarrassment of the NYT" Brooks is more infuriating. So I leave it up to you, dear reader, and put it to a vote.
First we have this beauty:
Gail, can I draw you into the America versus Europe debate? This is the old argument over which model of capitalism is better, the Anglo-American model or the continental one. It was recently rekindled by two bloggers extraordinaire — Jim Manzi and Jonathan Chait — and then joined by our colleague Paul Krugman.
My own background on this matter comes from having been a Wall Street Journal editorial writer in Brussels for more than four years early in the 1990s. I was sent there to flog American-style capitalism into the natives. I came away convinced that the American model is in fact better, but it was useless to try to persuade continental Europeans of this fact.
I became convinced that our system was better not for the wealth-generating reasons the current bloggers are arguing about, but because it leads to more exciting lives.
[...]
The continental model encourages less work at the cost of boredom. I knew people in Brussels who went to work at an organization at 25 sitting in one desk, and they could tell you exactly what desk they will be sitting in and what job they will be doing when they retire at 60 or 65. Yawn.
Yes, that's precisely how I'd describe the inherent instability of a boom and bust economy built to maximize the wealth of the privileged few over the stability of the majority...exciting! I mean heaven forfend any of us should be exposed to the boredom of a calm, secure future.
But wait, before you vote let me lay this nugget from his commentary on the Haiti tragedy on you:
Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile.
[...]
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
Haiti's problems couldn't possibly be attributable to its history of colonialism, slavery, one brutal repressive government after another. Nope, it's the fault of voodoo, clearly. As for the second quote, allow me to refer to Doghouse Riley who replies:
But I'd rather quibble about the notion of China "not receiving aid", since it has been the great beneficiary of our policy of unfettered acquisitiveness at no cost to the importer and retailer. It's like the old saying: Give a man a fish, and he'll have lunch; give a man license to set up a chain of seafood restaurants built and maintained by slave labor, designed to skirt US environmental and product safety laws, and those pesky near-living-wage labor costs while making "selling cheap shit cheap" the ridgepole of your economic policy, and he'll wind up eating your lunch.
Vote in comments, though I probably won't blame anyone for picking both.
First we have this beauty:
Gail, can I draw you into the America versus Europe debate? This is the old argument over which model of capitalism is better, the Anglo-American model or the continental one. It was recently rekindled by two bloggers extraordinaire — Jim Manzi and Jonathan Chait — and then joined by our colleague Paul Krugman.
My own background on this matter comes from having been a Wall Street Journal editorial writer in Brussels for more than four years early in the 1990s. I was sent there to flog American-style capitalism into the natives. I came away convinced that the American model is in fact better, but it was useless to try to persuade continental Europeans of this fact.
I became convinced that our system was better not for the wealth-generating reasons the current bloggers are arguing about, but because it leads to more exciting lives.
[...]
The continental model encourages less work at the cost of boredom. I knew people in Brussels who went to work at an organization at 25 sitting in one desk, and they could tell you exactly what desk they will be sitting in and what job they will be doing when they retire at 60 or 65. Yawn.
Yes, that's precisely how I'd describe the inherent instability of a boom and bust economy built to maximize the wealth of the privileged few over the stability of the majority...exciting! I mean heaven forfend any of us should be exposed to the boredom of a calm, secure future.
But wait, before you vote let me lay this nugget from his commentary on the Haiti tragedy on you:
Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile.
[...]
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
Haiti's problems couldn't possibly be attributable to its history of colonialism, slavery, one brutal repressive government after another. Nope, it's the fault of voodoo, clearly. As for the second quote, allow me to refer to Doghouse Riley who replies:
But I'd rather quibble about the notion of China "not receiving aid", since it has been the great beneficiary of our policy of unfettered acquisitiveness at no cost to the importer and retailer. It's like the old saying: Give a man a fish, and he'll have lunch; give a man license to set up a chain of seafood restaurants built and maintained by slave labor, designed to skirt US environmental and product safety laws, and those pesky near-living-wage labor costs while making "selling cheap shit cheap" the ridgepole of your economic policy, and he'll wind up eating your lunch.
Vote in comments, though I probably won't blame anyone for picking both.
