Crisis? Opportunity!

I always wonder how someone who can write such insightful narrative as Barbara Ehrenreich can also put forward such baffling analyses. In today's edition, for example, she seems to argue that the immiseration of the American working class as witnessed by a failure to make mortgage payments or afford even Walmart's low prices is a good thing because rich people suffer too:

Somewhere in the Hamptons a high-roller is cursing his cleaning lady and shaking his fists at the lawn guys. The American poor, who are usually tactful enough to remain invisible to the multi-millionaire class, suddenly leaped onto the scene and started smashing the global financial system.

Uh huh. Absent from the column is any gesture at ideas that might help anyone in dire financial straights. Instead, we get the view that "There should be marches and rallies, banners and sit-ins, possibly a nice color theme like red or orange."

Comments

Cmon
Mathiew Yeglesias is not Barbara Ehrenreich and vis versa. You're the policy guy she's the political activist here.
Subprime is a politcal opportunity, a massive political opportunity to demonstrate that rich or poor we are all in this economy together and that if you have policies that hump the least amongst us (republican policies), sooner or later the whole society is gonna pay a price. It is a social democratic vision that America is open to right now. But, the blue dog addeled Democratic Party can not advocate this and hense will miss the moment. Barbara is shouting from the sidelines, look a fumbled ball, political gold, yooo hooo.
Same thing is happening with product safety and china, the emphasis should not be on "We hate China", it should be on the need for an effective FDA and the role of government in a healthy free market. Same with mine safety.

I thought it was rather clear.

If you want to make fun of demonstrators why not post on the Montebello summit. Prime Minister Steven Harper had a good quip:
"A couple of [Canada's] opposition leaders have speculated on massive water diversions, and super highways on the continent, maybe interplanetary -- I'm not sure."

Posted by Northern Observer | August 22, 2007 12:25 PM

I think Matt may have missed her subtle sarcasm.

Number one, she's bitterly criticizing some recent right wing spin blaming recent economic problems on bad choices by lower income consumers, and she's doing so with ironic sarcasm.

Number two, she's pointing out how much of the economy does in fact depend on the economic activity of poor and working class Americans, whose needs, limits, and most of all perspectives are usually ignored in economic analysis.

Ehrenreich is not advocating these recent happenings -- she's lampooning the situations which led to them.

Posted by El Cid | August 22, 2007 12:31 PM

Yes! 'Crisitunity!'

Posted by Homer Simpson | August 22, 2007 12:32 PM

One more vote for "missed the sarcasm." The key sentences are on either side of the red-and-orange banners sentence:

Personally, I prefer my revolutions to be a little more pro-active. That is to say, the current situation is not a good thing. Certainly, there should be a vision of what you intend to replace the bad old system with--European-style social democracy, Latin American-style socialism, or how about just American capitalism with some regulation thrown in? There's your policy proposal; how about some more regulation? Well, it's not very specific, but her point is that the current American system is immiserating the working class, and steps need to be taken to stop that.

Posted by Matt Weiner | August 22, 2007 12:36 PM

I hope it is saracasm, otherwise it reads like The Onion.

Posted by Andruw | August 22, 2007 12:41 PM

I hope it is sarcasm, otherwise it reads like The Onion.

Posted by Andruw | August 22, 2007 12:41 PM

Remember Barbara Ehrenreich voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, in Florida. She also spent the 2000 campaign trying to convince people that there was no difference between Bush and Gore.

If you are a liberal you don't want her on your team. She has appalling bad judgement and does more harm for the progressive cause than right wingers.

Posted by DonB | August 22, 2007 12:45 PM

Yeah it is clearly sarcasm, with a side of irony. Matt couldn't understand how as clear a thinker as J. Swift could advocate eating babies, either.

Posted by Gar Lipow | August 22, 2007 12:47 PM

The only way to really effectively redistribute the wealth is with muscle and hustle like my HOMBRE Hugo down in Venezizzle. That cat bitchslaps the fatcats with his flagstaff and laffs laffs laff at their sputtering protests. And then the US, knowing what's best for Bourgeois Free-Trade NAFTAcracy worldwide of course, decides to COUP COUP CA-JOOB pobrecito HUGO and he smacks 'em down, and takes steps to prevent the Entitled Schmucks from stepping in again, and self-anointed Demockery Watchdogs (like this: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/22/opinion/edchavez.php) start foaming at the mouth.

Cockslap Global Capital AHORA MISMO. Grab the loot with both hands and stack them chips, dawgy! Power to the people, and by Power, I mean resources and means of production. Arriba! Viva Simon, Viva Fidel, Viva Hugo, VIVA LA REVOLUCION! En memoriam Arbenz, Allende, Mossadegh y mas, guerrillas por la lucha!

Posted by Gregorio | August 22, 2007 12:47 PM

Okay when I read it before I thought it was clearly sarcastic.... I mean, I guess, it could not be? It really wouldn't seem to be in Ehrenreich's style if it's not. And, I mean, the red and orange thing, that doesn't scream irony to you?

Posted by Freddie | August 22, 2007 12:50 PM

Matt: Irony for me but not for thee

Posted by Ryan | August 22, 2007 12:57 PM

This is not analysis at all. Unless your post is meta-ironic, you are missing not only the boat, but the whole effing ocean. This is a humorous piece designed to lampoon the whole WSJ-style handwringing at the subprime mortgage crisis, not some kind of "America's Next Step Post Invisible Revolution" vanguard material. Northern Observer was right on. El Cid calls the sarcasm subtle, but come on. The economics of 21st Century USA are a fucking joke to begin with. The wealth is positively flying up the ladder towards enriching the richest, Bush's trickle-up economics and trickle-out war-onomics are leeching the sagging middle class even further, and the cufflinked whitecollars bemoan every attempt at regulation, reform, or redistribution as some kind of assault on the very beating heart of the free market. The discourse is so slanted, the story so muffed by the mange-stream media, ignorance on the issue- especially on the part of supposedly educated moneyed professionals, there is little hope of even honest discussion. People ignore John Edwards talk of two Americas. But there's really only one America. The wealthiest wealthy; they set the tone, and the rest of us are 3/5ths of a person at best, humming along to the tunes they pump into are fetid little cages, gnawing at the giblets that come our way, signing up to our eyeballs in endless debt, following the lead of our reckless government, mortgaging our pallid asses into oblivion. Fuck orange or red, there's been a plastic revolution, and we lost.

Posted by Gregorio | August 22, 2007 1:03 PM

Absent from the column is any gesture at ideas that might help anyone in dire financial straights.

That's funny, Matt. I hadn't heard that Barbara Ehrenreich had taken up a new career as a money manager or financial planner.

One might also complain that your many posts offering political analysis of the impact of the war on the Presidential race typically contain no gesture at ideas that might help someone who has lost a loved one in Iraq, or who is having trouble getting the VA to pay for their medical expenses.

I know all these crazy far-lefties with their socialistic, highly non-libertarian ideas about revolutionary social change make you somewhat uncomfortable. But I thought Ehrenreich's central point was summed up fairly well in her concluding paragraph: "a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis." Do you disagree with this? Or is it you just don't think people should make political arguments of this kind when there is important legal and loan re-financing advice to dispense?

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 22, 2007 1:03 PM

I like how Matt knows fancy words like "immiseration" but can't spell "straits." Harvard education at work.

Not a new observation around here, I realize.

Posted by larva | August 22, 2007 1:05 PM

My daddy taught me to never draw to an inside dire financial straight.

Posted by James Gary | August 22, 2007 1:13 PM

Pointed, amusing, ironic.

Hello, earth to Matt.......do you read......do you read?????????

Yesterday the egregious (unconscious?) ad hominem swipe at GG. Now this.

Time for a vacation. At least.

Or maybe you're gearing up for the Levin-led, "centrist" Democrat capitulation on Iraq. Let's see, if Levin can get to the right of Snow, surely you can move right of, say, Jonah.
Don't want to be left out of the "serious" debate, do we?

You can still rehabilitate. I'd suggest going back to that last Fafblog post about how the devilishly subversive prisoners at Guantanamo were attempting suicide just to make us look bad. See where you come down on that one before you consider your next critique.

Posted by Adams | August 22, 2007 1:40 PM

Of course, it's irony! Geez, this has to be one of the more clueless blog posts that I have seen in quite awhile. Is David Broder subbing?

Posted by jonm | August 22, 2007 1:45 PM

So much for the notion that it is the Left that lacks a healthy sense of humor. Its the Center that is afflicted with Very Serious Disease, whose major symptom is an inability to see the absurd forest for the wonky trees.

Posted by YoloMike | August 22, 2007 1:46 PM

This guy went to Harvard? I'm glad that he's able to 'splain the world to us state-collegers. For crying out loud, learn to hesitate and second-guess yourself before posting tripe (i.e., 'obviously the Nation is exagerating the consequences of the sub-prime loan crisis, but of course I don't know jack about that there econonics'). Does he get paid to write this blog for the Atlantic? Wish'd I could get me a's job there but that'd probably take sum book-learning...

love,
rihi

Posted by rihilism | August 22, 2007 1:54 PM

I don't think Matt missed Ehrenreich's sarcasm guys, since her article is, as always, dripping in sarcasm. But Ehrenreich clearly does take a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact that some multimillionaires in the Hamptons might finally be feeling just a tiny bit of the pain that the poorer victims of financial exploitation have felt. And behind the sarcasm is the serious, but very skeptical hope that this episode might actually spur important changes to our economic system, since only when pain is inflicted on the rich does it register politically.

Matt seems to find that sort of class-conscious lefty schadenfreude and antagonism toward the rich, and wan left-wing hopes that the pain the rich feel might lead to some significant regulatory reforms, to be unseemly, ugly, crass, unfeeling or unhelpful in some way.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 22, 2007 2:18 PM

Okay...good job everyone establishing that Matt missed the ironicalness of the writing.

I would add to El Cid's post a number three: she is sarcastically commenting that about the only agency left for the poor to shape the world economy is to default on bad loans.

Posted by Musa | August 22, 2007 2:19 PM

Seems like the same joke that the daily show did when their senior black correspondent noted that blacks had realized that social change through the ballot box was useless as a way of sticking it to the man so instead they didn't pay back their loans.

Posted by Parmenides | August 22, 2007 3:03 PM

Stop hanging around Megan McArdle, Matt. I don't care how cute she looks on your arm, she's no good for you and it'll all end in tears. First you miss the angry, despairing gallows humor of one of the last true progressive elder statesmen(women?), next thing you know you'll be advocating smacking protesters around with two-by-fours. And at that point there's nothing left but to run for the hills.

Posted by jonathan | August 22, 2007 3:27 PM

All this confirms my candy theory of economics.

Corporate America knows what is best for it, just like a four year old. Candy is the best food. It tastes best. Any other consideration is overthinking the matter.

Posted by Njorl | August 22, 2007 4:01 PM

@ Njorl: And now we all have Wilford Brimley style diabeetus, with nary an affordable health plan in sight.

Posted by Gregorio | August 22, 2007 4:40 PM

I always wonder how someone who can write such insightful narrative as Barbara Ehrenreich can also put forward such baffling analyses.

Barbara Ehrenreich puts forward nothing but baffling analysis. That's her whole thing. It's just you never noticed until she wrote about something you understood well enough to see through. Regardless of the fact she may be "our" shitty propagandist, she remains a shitty propagandist. Basically a less talented Christopher Hitchens, with the Brit replaced by Yuppie and the alcoholism swapped with an almost mindful stupidity. She's the epitome of everything wrong with the last generation of leftists - carefully balancing a comfort-borne cluelessness with a blatantly hypocritical hatred of the wealthy simply for sake of their wealth, all wrapped in a saccharine "solidarity" with the working class that she does so little to hide her true revulsion of. Every word of hers I see spoken or written makes me yearn for a return of the HUAAC, and I say that as a dyed in the wool liberal.

Posted by MAX HATS | August 22, 2007 8:11 PM

Dur, Matt.

What's this? A solution:

"When, for example, the largest private employer in America, which is Wal-Mart, starts experiencing a shortage of customers, it needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror. About a century ago, Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy Fords. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, never seemed to figure out that its cruelly low wages would eventually curtail its own growth, even at the company's famously discounted prices."

You really didn't get that the orange and red marches thing was sarcastic?

Did you and Ross run afoul of an experiment or an ancient Hollywood Chinese curse and switch bodies today?

Posted by witless chum | August 23, 2007 9:10 AM

Dur, Matt.

What's this? A solution:

"When, for example, the largest private employer in America, which is Wal-Mart, starts experiencing a shortage of customers, it needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror. About a century ago, Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy Fords. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, never seemed to figure out that its cruelly low wages would eventually curtail its own growth, even at the company's famously discounted prices."

More than one? How about three?

"Certainly, there should be a vision of what you intend to replace the bad old system with--European-style social democracy, Latin American-style socialism, or how about just American capitalism with some regulation thrown in?"

You really didn't get that the orange and red marches thing was sarcastic?

Did you and Ross run afoul of an experiment or an ancient Hollywood Chinese curse and switch bodies today?

Posted by witless chum | August 23, 2007 9:11 AM

Oh em gee, I wonder why old-generation liberals managed to get such a bad name.

Ehrenreich remains a white member of the same elite she writes so derisively of, while expressing the same sort of faux and patronizing solidarity with the lower class that is so popular with the upper middle class undergraduates and their professors who tend to love Nader and Chomsky; and provide the bulk of her income.

Or, perhaps she is just a massive troll on the scale of Ann Coulter, and secretly voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Posted by drew | August 23, 2007 12:56 PM