Posted on 10/10/2011 10:01:44 AM PDT by Nachum
For those inclined to rhapsodize Harvard Law Professor and now Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, it is a salutary experienceas salutary as a cold showerto read this analysis of Warrens major politically significant work by Atlantic blogger and brilliant student of economics Megan McArdle. Of Warrens book The Two Income Trap, McArdle writes the deeper problem is that some of her evidence doesn't really support her thesis, and can be made to appear to support her thesis only by making some very weird choices about what metrics to use. McArdle eviscerates Warrens
(Excerpt) Read more at campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com ...
The quote sounds good, and yes, if it were someone with a conservative worldview, it would be correct and applauded.
The problem with just judging that statement is that you have to understand the underlying assumptions that the speaker is making before passing judgement on what it means.
Palin would mean that big, socialist government is the cause of the decline of the middle class, and that decreasing that influence is the solution.
Warren’s assumptions are that capitalism is the cause of the destruction of the middle class and that more government regulation and economic planning are the solution.
Ask her about enforcing private property via the constitution..
And WHO is doing this NOW?
I don’t see ANYONE doing ANYTHING to protect private property TODAY.
Actually, Clinton's croneys in Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac and Goldman Sachs and some other high positions in Wall Street were among the principals pushing those. They had accumulated hundreds of billions of crap debt, of their own making, and needed to sneak it off onto the ignorant general private sector.
Then you've just defined yourself as an economic totalitarian collectivist. What are you doing on Free Republic?
The rank and file yes, the politicians, no.
I don’t see anyone on the political stage that is for destructing the edifice of the unanswerable bureaucratic system that has been expanding since FDR.
Thanks everyone for the responses. I went to school. Your posts and my follow up google serches that they prompted has convinced me of the error of my position here. I liked a couple of her positions but when the surface was scraped, it was not gold, but tungsten.
I was properly spanked and have learned my lesson. :-p
Seriously though, some of the connections some of you made are really disconcerting. This whole progressive thing almost reads like the takeover of Russia or Germany in the length and depth of its tentacles.
It is so apparently complex as to almost smack of being spiritual in its source. Are these people really that smart?
Leftist policy, forcing banks to loan to people who can’t pay back, forcing a practice that the free market doesn’t support -
that’s what caused the meltdown. Leftist policy. Leftist, feelgood, “it works in my head” policy.
—Then you’ve just defined yourself as an economic totalitarian collectivist.—
No, that is your inference. What I defined myself as is a person that was focussed only on a very narrow part of her message. And I agree with that narrow part. The rest, not so much, as I learned on this thread.
Heck, I agree with pretty much every human being alive on SOMETHING. Maybe Obama and I like the same flavor of ice cream or golf club. :-D
Two incomes is a trap for families.
First off, the automatic expectation that married women will work full time has increased the labor force to such a degree that most jobs don’t pay enough wages or salary to support a family on that one salary. It is simple supply and demand: a huge increase of labor into the workforce is accompanied by a huge drop in pay because the labor supply outpaced demand for what were formerly family-wage jobs.
Two-incomes is also virtually guarantees that the children in those families will have their care hired out to others, and typically these children will be subjected to an overwhelming amount of nanny-state big-government brainwashing, typically starting in daycare.
To the extent Warren acknowledges this, great. To the extent she proposes massive nany-state solutions (which I am certain she must - because she is a leftist - without ever having read her work), she is another dolt faux intellectual.
Are they really that smart?
No, but the ones using them are that evil...
Read “You can still trust the communists to be communists” (http://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Still-Trust-Communists/dp/0936163208)
for some detail about the “layers” of communism. There are people who could pass a lie detector with flying colors, because they truly aren’t lying, when they say they are opposed to communism, but they are, in their ideology, voting patterns, and intellectual efforts, totally and fully working towards the same goals as the communists.
NO doubt about that!
But the banks were just as free to NOT make those toxic MBS’s as the people were free to NOT buy a house at the top of a housing bubble.
I don’t disagree, I just see that the left is going to get away with blaming capitalism when so called “capitalism” just sits on it’s hands and pretends nothing is wrong. A lot is wrong.
Truth is, we are not a capitalistic country anymore. Do the great unwashed KNOW that? Don’t think so.
The growing unemployed, underemployed, and the jobless loaded with student debt grad without a job are NOT going to go away. This is not clearing out, the country is jobless and there are more massive layoffs in the pipeline.
The conservatives better wake up, or the marxists among us will get the upper hand, and will appeal to these people who feel left out.
We better have answers, and solutions, and a well pointed finger, better than just the “it’s their fault” line of thinking.
Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain appear sincere in seeking to do so. We shall see.
You must have missed this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20110042-503544.html
No. I think you are in the womb still, slacker.
Give him a break - he’s presented a genuine mea culpa later in the thread.
Ronald Reagan was the first president that I followed and watched.
The Dept of Ed is still with us.
In fact, I remember the problem with his presidency was the bureaucrats weren’t willing to follow him. The underlings resisted and fought and THEY won, didn’t they?
It will take alot more than just a leader at this point in history, to turn this country around.
Ah... the bureaucrats...
These “regulatory” positions of power are usually lifelong, have unlimited, unchecked power within their scope, and are unaccountable to the people they exercise power over. Liberals and leftists are attracted to these positions like moths to a porchlight.
It’s not going to work to get “our guys” into these positions. We’ve got to break out these porchlights.
It takes a village!
No they weren't.
Every financial institution is subject to CRA exams, and Clinton made passing those exams a prerequisite for any bank expansion, merger, or entrance into non-banking financial activities. This was required to get Clinton's signature on Gramm-Leach-Bliley.
Freedom is a use it or lose it deal.
AND this country has been losing it more that using it, for a long time now.
And all the while the left nibbles on the carcass of a nation it hates.
Heck, can’t even get enough Freepers to leave the school system, and IT IS SOCIALIST TO THE CORE.
Until MORE Freepers and others of like mind USE their freedoms, ... this nation will continue to slide into the God cursing oblivion it deserves.
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